A Nurses Secret

Episode 1

The sounds of buzzing screams to my left as I look down and see a red light flashing.

“Code Blue!” My heart pounds against my ribs as I dash to room 112. Its where an elderly man lay recovering from his hip replicant after falling and breaking it.

“What’s going on?” I ask the nurse who called the code. She was dropping the head of the bed so he lay flat. I grabbed the pillow, removing it from under his head.

“You!” I point to a nurse who just ran through the door frame. Her eyes were wide with panic. She was newer. I could tell by her reaction and not to mention the charge nurse greeted her to us in the break room earlier that week.

“Grab the crash cart and if you can find one, bring a doctor ASAP!” I barked an order at her. The nurse began to tell me she just pushed a hundred and fifty micrograms Fetenal into his IV and I cursed in my mind. That’s enough to cause us to question the dosage.

SHIT! He’s crashing from opioid overdose!

“Someone get a for Narcan!” I shouted. I checked the monitors over quickly with the other nurse.

“He’s O2 stats have dropped below 90%.” I glanced at the O2 and noticed she was right.

“Mask him!” I called out. Her hands flew up above the man’s head grabbing the oxygen and turning it on. I was checking his pulse while she took his blood pressure.

“I’m getting 40 beats per minute and its weak.” I announce my findings. She removed the stethoscope from her ears tossing it around her neck. The sound of Velcro ripping apart.

“Well?” I ask awaiting her measurements.

“BP is eighty over fifty-eight.” Crap. That is way too low!

“Any news from the Doctor?” I called out. I looked around. “And where’s that nurse with the crash cart? We need a doctor!” The monitor was screaming at me. This man’s wife was just out the door crying. She was losing her husband before her very eyes.

Fuck this! I crawled on top of the man, placing my hands-on top of each other on his sternum and started compressions. I started counting in my head.

“Oxygen!” I called out as I paused. The nurse tilted his head up and pumped the bag twice. I went back to compressions.

One, two, three, four, five…. Here I was, pumping blood through this man’s body with my own hands.

“It’s been ten minutes.” I finally heard the nurse call out to me. I looked at her, painting. My whole upper body ached. I looked down at my patient, feeling defeated.

“Call a doctor. Tell him to call time of death.” I whispered to her. I slowly crawled off this man and stood by him, holding his hand.

“Here.” The nurse handed me the phone. I took it and put it up to my ear.

“Hello. This is Nurse Lizzy. I have a male patient, Samuel Lee Carter, eighty-nine years old.” I started going through the patient’s information. “Hip replacement surgery less than twenty-four hours ago. After being administer one hundred and fifty micrograms of fentanyl patient went into cardiac arrest. Administer oxygen after they fell below ninety percent.” It all flowed together. I was all too use to losing people. I always hated it. You could feel their life leave them. They would go unnervingly still. It used to freak me out but after a few years you get use to it.

“Samuel Lee Carter. Time of death 2343.” His voice rang in my ears. It was low and slightly husky. It was Dr. Smith. He was the physician on night duty. He was currently in an emergency surgery and the only one on the premises. We were a small hospital yet always was short staffed.

            I heard the phone click off and looked at it. The tan phone in my hand looked old and well worn. I trailed my eyes on the spiral cord until I met the nurses sorrowful face. Her name was Betty. She had been here almost as long as I had been. Her blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail and flowing straight down to her shoulders. Her brown eyes were filling with tears. I could see her normally tan face fade a shade lighter.

“Did I…?” Her whisper trailed off. I sighed and looked at his charts. I shook my head and gave her a slight smile.

“It was ordered, and the head nurse signed it off.” Truth be told, something did happen. We both knew it. I set down the chart in the plastic holder and went out to tell his wife, now widow, that he had passed on. A lump rose in my throat that stung as I tried to swallow it back down. Patients who are together for a long period of time tend to not handle this news as well. I looked up at this frail looking lady. Tears had stained her wrinkled face; her eyes were lined with redness. Her short grey curls were a frizzy mess. She looked up at me, wanting to hear good news. I bit my lip and shook my head.

“I’m so very sorry Mrs. Carter. He didn’t make it.” I told her in a low voice. I gave her a wave of my arm to tell her she could go in to see her husband. Betty was still standing by his side, removing his tubing, making him more presentable. Mrs. Carter shuffled in the room her husbands body lay in. Betty looked up at her with a mournful look on her face. Betty and I would need to make an incident report tonight once we have handed the body off. I heard Betty apologizing to her. Mrs. Carter was touching her husbands face crying. I could feel tears stinging my eyes, threatening to spill over.

            I took a few deep breaths and walked back to the nurses’ station. Samantha, a young nurse who was on the quiet side, looked up at me, questioning. Her light brown hair flowed to her jaw line in a straight bob. Her skin was tan like Bettys’ and her eyes were dark brown. She sighed; she already knew what had happened.

“Two incident reports coming right up.” She told me as her hands danced over her desk, It was a chaotic mess and I could not, for the life of me, do what this woman did. She practically ran half of everything for the who nursing staff down to the scheduling. She quickly handed me the two reports and went back to work. This hospital is too understaffed for it to run properly, everyone knew that. We were in a small village town. Most of the people here traveled out of town to make a living. Being a hospital, we were sort of in the middle of three towns. However, the other two towns had much nicer facilities and they been much more equipped to handle what came at them.

            I stared down the barren hallway. We started seeing less and less patients since our death rates had risen. Most employees here were looking for work elsewhere. We knew that shortly this place would be taken out of commission. I nibbled on my lip as I went to the office area. Betty was already there sitting at the desk, hands on her face, sniffling.

“Hey Bets.” I whispered. Her head snapped up to look at me. She’s taking this hard. This is our third patient in a week’s span that has passed away due to medication error. We both knew what it was. But, not being doctors, all we could do was write our description of the nights events that had led up to our patients passing. Threw sniffles and comforting each other we had finally managed to finish the reports.

“Wanna grab a coffee and a snack?” I give Betty a light smile and she returns it as she nods. Were both big into food. I hook my arm threw hers and lead us down to the cafeteria.