Chapter 5 - Code Blue in the ICU
"Code Blue! Room Four-Twelve! Code Blue, ICU!"
The overhead announcement blasted through the waiting area speakers before Barbara could even finish her sentence.
My blood ran cold. Room 412 was the cardiac intensive care unit.
Room 412 was Richard Reynolds.
I spun around instantly, breaking into a dead sprint down the hallway, leaving Daniel and Barbara shouting behind me. My fatigue vanished, replaced by a sudden, violent surge of adrenaline.
I reached the ICU doors just as two resident physicians and a team of critical care nurses were scrambling frantically into Room 412. I pushed past them, stepping into the sterile room.
Richard was thrashing slightly on the bed, his monitor flashing a chaotic, erratic ventricular fibrillation. The color had drained completely from his face, turning a ghastly, translucent gray.
"What happened?" I demanded, snapping on a pair of sterile gloves as I shoved the resident aside and stepped up to the side of the bed.
"Spontaneous acute arrhythmia right after extubation attempt," the nurse shouted over the shrill alarm of the monitor. "Blood pressure is crashing—sixty over forty!"
"He's throwing a secondary ischemic event," I said, my mind racing. The graft was secure, but the sudden stress on his compromised heart muscle had triggered a fatal electrical storm. "Charge the defibrillator to two hundred joules. Clear!"
I pushed the paddles against his chest. Richard’s body jolted violently with the electrical shock.
We stared at the monitor.
Flat line.
"Charge to three hundred. Clear!" I shouted again, pressing down with all my weight.
Another violent jolt.
The monitor flickered. A weak, erratic pulse appeared, then immediately dipped back down into erratic ventricular tachycardia.
"Chief, we're losing him," Harrison said, his voice laced with panic. "The heart isn't recovering perfusion. Do we open the chest again?"
Before I could answer, the glass door of the ICU room flew open.
Barbara stood in the doorway, her eyes wide with unadulterated horror as she watched me pounding on her husband's chest. Daniel tried to pull her back out into the hallway, but she screamed, breaking past him.
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"Richard! Richard!" she shrieked, lunging toward the bed.
"Hold her back!" I ordered, never breaking rhythm as I delivered another round of chest compressions. "If she touches this bed, she contaminates the sterile field!"
