Chapter 5: Code Blue

At two in the morning, I was alone in my office with Lacey's imaging on three screens.

I had told myself I was only reviewing it for Cleveland.

The overhead speaker clicked on.

"Code blue, Pavilion four, Room 412. Code blue, Room 412."

I was out of the chair before the second call.

I didn't think about the recusal form or the committee.

I thought about a girl with a rabbit, and I ran.

The door of 412 stood open, and the room was full of people.

Lacey lay flat on the bed with her gown cut open.

Her skin had gone grey, and her lips were blue.

A young resident knelt on the mattress, pushing down on her chest and counting too fast.

"How long?" I asked.

"Just over a minute," a nurse said. "She went into ventricular fibrillation on the monitor."

"Charge the defibrillator to two hundred."

The resident looked up at me. "Dr. Shirley, you're recused from..."

"Not in an emergency."

I put my hands over his and slowed the count.

"Push harder. Let the chest come all the way back up. Again."

Dustin came through the door with the airway kit still swinging from his shoulder.

He took the head of the bed without a word, and I loved him for it.

"Clear," I said.

The shock jerked her body off the mattress.

The monitor drew a ragged line and then a worse one.

"Resume compressions."

I took over from the resident and set my hands on her breastbone.

It was a small chest.

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