Mitt hit the elevator call button multiple times despite knowing full well that it wouldn’t bring the car any faster. Now that he was on his way, his sleep-deprived brain had cleared considerably, bringing with it a definite case of the jitters. The idea that another one of his assigned patients, who had been doing well, was now struggling for her life was an issue he didn’t even want to contemplate. Although he was realistic about not being needed with the crash team on-site, he felt a responsibility to be present. And there was a slight possibility he could help because he’d had a bit of experience with cardiac arrests as a medical student. He’d participated in a handful during his third-year internal medicine rotation and had made it a point to read the most recent medical literature on the subject.
“Where the hell is the goddamned elevator?” Mitt growled under his breath while slapping an open palm against the nearest elevator door and mentally cursing whoever it was who had come up with the idea of siting a hospital in a high-rise. As he stood there waiting, he marveled that it was Latonya Walker who was in trouble. Earlier, he’d worried that there was a good chance he might be called on an emergency with Elena Aguilar, considering how precarious her clinical state was. He’d even forced himself back to the ICU to check on her before heading to the on-call room, in a kind of superstitious hope that making the effort might forestall it from happening.
The moment the elevator arrived, he jumped into the empty car, pressing the 15 button almost a dozen times. He wracked his brain, trying to imagine what could have caused Latonya Walker to have a cardiac arrest. The only possibility that came to his mind was her obesity, since he knew that there was a direct correlation between being overweight and heart disease. Yet why would it happen now, when she’d not shown any signs suggesting that she was developing a problem? Could it have been merely from having had anesthesia, even if there hadn’t been any problems whatsoever during her procedure? Mitt had no idea, especially since he knew next to nothing about anesthesia other than it was a medical specialty in its own right.
As the elevator door finally opened on fifteen, Mitt charged out and turned toward the west rooms. But he didn’t get far beyond the elevator lobby when he came to an abrupt halt. About twenty feet down the nighttime-darkened hallway stood the blond girl, arms akimbo, seemingly laughing at him soundlessly. Thankfully there wasn’t any accompanying terrible odor.
Mitt closed his eyes tightly for a moment, hoping the hallucination would vanish like it had that afternoon in the operating room when he’d momentarily averted his gaze. But it didn’t work on this occasion. When he looked back, she was still there and still silently giggling, giving Mitt the sense that she was making fun of him. Then the girl stopped laughing, and when she did, she raised her arm and extended her hand, which was gripping the same stainless-steel, pencil-like instrument he’d seen before.
Overcoming his shock, Mitt started forward, intent on getting to Latonya Walker’s cardiac arrest despite this distraction set up by his overactive imagination. The hallucination’s response to his approach was seemingly glee, as her smile broadened. And similar to the previous night, as Mitt neared she again disappeared into the surgical conference room. It had happened so quickly — one minute there, the next minute gone — that Mitt wasn’t even certain if the door had been opened or if the girl simply passed through it.
Mere seconds later, Mitt himself was abreast of the door, and despite his being on an emergency call, he thrust it open, lunged in, and flipped on the lights all in one continuous motion. His thought was that the bright, fluorescent light would dispel the hallucination, as it had the night before. But on this occasion, it didn’t. Instead, he saw not only the blond girl but the horde of apparently surgerized people who had been behind her in the operating room. As close as they were, Mitt could see they were in all manner of period dress and undress and varying levels of cleanliness and filth, some carrying their missing limbs or organs. And to add to the horror, swirling around their feet and climbing up their legs were hundreds if not thousands of rats. Then, on top of the almost incomprehensibly repulsive scene, the cacosmia returned with a vengeance, making Mitt stagger back from both the stench as well as the sight.
As the young girl and the crowd surged forward, Mitt leaped back out of the room, noisily yanking the door shut behind him. Terrified that the blond girl, the mob, and the seething mass of rats would in the next instant pass through the door and come at him, he flattened up against the opposite wall, preparing to defend himself as best he could.
But then nothing happened. A few seconds passed. To his left down the hall, he heard someone shout a question, although he couldn’t make out what it was. A moment later he heard someone else respond, again unintelligibly. But the reassuring sounds of normal people doing normal things meant he was in the real world and not an imaginary one.
Building up his courage, Mitt took a step back across the hallway to the door and grasped the knob. He waited for a moment, listening, sure that there was no way the horde could be silent — although now he couldn’t remember if he’d heard anything when he’d confronted them or not. It had all taken place so quickly.
When Mitt didn’t hear anything from the room beyond, he pushed open the door suddenly while anticipating he might have to close it in a flash. But he didn’t have to. The room was empty of people and rats and spotlessly clean despite what he’d seen just a few moments earlier. And the stench had also mercifully evaporated.
Quickly, Mitt leaned back out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. He took a deep breath to fortify himself. He couldn’t believe what his imagination was apparently capable of doing. It boggled him. At the same time, he knew he didn’t have time to ponder the issue.
With renewed urgency, Mitt rushed the rest of the way down the hallway from the elevator lobby to the corridor that ran along the west-facing patient rooms. Latonya Walker’s room was a six-bed ward to the left, and as Mitt turned the corner, he saw a small group of nurses and residents clustered at its doorway. As quickly as he could, he joined this group.
“How’s it going?” Mitt asked the first nurse who turned in his direction. Despite being stressed from his most recent hallucinatory experience, he tried to act normal.
“I don’t think they are having much luck,” the woman responded. “But it’s not been going on for that long.”
Mitt nodded. He pushed into the room. Latonya Walker’s bed was the first one on the left, near the door to the en suite lavatory. The privacy curtain was drawn shut, leaving about four feet of space between the curtain and the bed. The crash cart was on the bed’s right side with the curtain partially draped around it.
There were four residents obviously in charge of the resuscitation, and Mitt assumed they were the on-call cardiac unit. Teaching hospitals, like Bellevue, all had standing, highly trained resuscitation teams available 24/7. It was a service that was too important to be left to chance. Currently the team was three woman and one man, all dressed in full whites, and they were busily engaged. A female resident was at the head of the bed using an Ambu bag to respire the patient, another was up on her knees on the bed doing closed-chest cardiac massage, while the lone male was operating the defibrillator. The final resident, who was obviously the most senior and in charge, was watching the blip of the cardiac monitor as it traced a flat line across the screen. She appeared frustrated and confused, slowly shaking her head with her lips pressed tightly together.