It’s clear I’m not going to get any answers tonight so I shove the thoughts to the back of my mind and get out of the car, dragging my pedestal and the sad remnants of my membership card in the feminists’ club along with me. Fortunately I have a death to look into, something I find much easier to deal with than men.
Chapter 7
After popping a couple of Tic-Tacs to mask my garlic breath, I make my way into the ER at a little after six. The waiting room is fairly crowded and as I scan the occupants with a habitual eye toward triage, I don’t see anyone who looks critically ill, just miserable. Most of the folks are coughing, sneezing, and snotting all over the furniture and one another, ensuring the sharing and survival of whatever nasty little virus is dominating this year’s flu season.
The gal behind the registration desk recognizes me and buzzes me into the back patient care area, where things are hopping. Every bed is full. I hear some poor soul barfing up his toenails in one room, and the screams of a miserable child in another. The nurses are all running about in a carefully choreographed dance of controlled chaos. I know from my own years working here that the arrival of the PNB most likely turned what might have been a merely busy shift into one that is now a mad and desperate scramble to catch up.
I make my way to the nurse’s desk, where I see Ricky “Rickets” Masterson standing in front of a full rack of charts. ER nurses have a habit of referring to patients not by their name, but by their bed number and diagnosis. So instead of John Doe, Bob Jones, and Susan Smith you get the Pancreatitis in Room Four, the Bowel Obstruction in Room Two, and the Bitch-On-Wheels Hypochondriac in Room Six. Several years ago when I worked in the ER, a bunch of us decided to make up nicknames for ourselves that were both close to our real names and to a disease or disorder. As a result, Ricky became Rickets, faring a whole lot better than my good friend, Phyllis, who is now referred to as Syph for short.
“Hey, Rickets, are you the charge nurse tonight?”
He shakes his head. “Nope, Lupus is,” he says, referring to a nurse named Lucy. “But she’s tied up at the moment with a Five-Year-Old Head Lac in Room Four who is trying out for a role in the next Exorcist movie. You here for the PNB in Room Two?”
“I am.”
He hands me a clipboard containing the code sheets—a written summary of what happened during the attempts to resuscitate.
“Has the family been notified?” I ask.
“There’s a daughter who apparently found him and called it in. She was here when he first arrived but I don’t know if she’s still here or not. Check with Constance.” Constance, who was hired after the nicknaming session, has remained just Constance, probably a good thing since her last name is Pate and I’m pretty sure she’d be known as Constipation by now.
“Do you know where she is?”
Rickets gives me an apologetic look and shakes his head. “Sorry, it’s been a zoo here tonight.”
“Can you log me onto a computer so I can review the PNB’s chart?”
“Sure.” Rickets gets me into the computerized charting program and then leaves me to my own devices. After grabbing a notepad and pen, I glance at the data at the bottom of the code sheet and write down the man’s name—Harold Minniver—and his age, which is seventy-two. Next I look up his chart on the computer and start taking notes. A scan of his medication list shows that he was on several heart drugs as well as one for high blood pressure, and his medical history includes a three-vessel heart bypass surgery five years ago. So far so good, I think, since these facts make the likelihood his death is attributable to some type of cardiac event that much higher. I switch to the nurse’s narrative section but there is nothing entered there yet. This isn’t too surprising; charting sometimes takes a backseat to actual care when things get hectic. Stuff gets written down as it’s done, but sometimes the notes are scribbled on whatever’s handy—paper towels, the bedsheets, the palm of a hand—and then entered into the computer chart later. A quick scan of the code sheets tells me that Constance was the primary on the case, so I’ll have to wait to talk to her before I can get a thorough history of the night’s events.
I move into a section of the chart that contains documentation by Mr. Minniver’s primary physician. Here I see that the patient underwent a cardiac catheterization just two weeks ago following an episode of chest pain. Curious, I click on the tab that takes me to the cardiologist’s notes and feel my hopes for a quick resolution sink faster than the blood count on a hemorrhaging patient: the cath showed no blockage of any sort, meaning Minniver most likely died of something other than a heart attack.
Since the nurses are all still busy and I have yet to see Constance appear, I head for the room holding Mr. Minniver’s body. He is lying on a stretcher with a sheet across his pelvis and various tubes sticking out of his body. There is an IV in each arm, a breathing tube protruding from his mouth, and a urinary catheter snaking out from beneath the sheet. His chest is covered with little stickers from the cardiac monitors and the EKG machine, and there are also two large pads—one on his upper right chest area and one on the lower left—that are connected to the defibrillator. His skin is cold to the touch and reddish-blue in color, and I can see the edges of a darker purple hue indicative of lividity beginning to form along his back. His hair, which is sparse, white, and short, is sticking up in little tufts along the sides of his head. The top of his head is bald.
The door to the room opens and Constance comes in accompanied by another nurse I don’t recognize. “Hey, Mattie. Sorry to keep you waiting but the place has been crazy busy tonight.”
“No problem.”
“This is Karen Alcott,” Constance says, nodding toward the other nurse. “I’m orienting her and I can tell you it’s been a trial by fire tonight. Karen, this is Mattie Winston. She used to work here but these days she’s with the ME’s office.”
“Nice to meet you,” Karen says, looking thoughtful. Then she adds, “Are you the nurse I heard about who was involved with the nipple incident?”
I nod and quickly turn my attention back to Constance. “What can you tell me about Mr. Minniver?”
“Not a whole lot. The EMTs said his daughter found him slumped behind the wheel of his car in his garage. He was already pulseless when they found him and the daughter didn’t do any CPR. By the time he got here he was straight line on the monitor but we worked on him for about twenty minutes anyway, mainly for the daughter’s sake. We’re guessing he developed chest pain or some other serious symptom and tried to drive himself to the hospital but collapsed before he could. His daughter says he has a cardiac history so we’re guessing he had a heart attack.”
“Is his daughter still here?”
Constance nods. “Her name is Patricia Nottingham. I just left her upstairs outside the chapel. She’s making phone calls.”
“I’ll head up there to talk to her.”
“Can I disconnect this stuff and take him to the morgue?” Constance asks, nodding toward the dead man. “We could use the bed.”
“Not yet. There are some things I need to look into. Let me talk to the daughter first.”
Constance sighs. “Okay, let me know.”
I leave the room, grab my notepad and pen, and head for the second floor where the chapel is located. There is only one person outside in the hall, a fiftyish-looking woman who is pacing and talking on a cell phone. I hang back, watching her for a moment. Her face is drawn and tearstained, and her voice is hoarse, though I’m unsure if that’s its natural state or if it became that way from crying. She sees me and seems to sense that I’m waiting on her because she tells the person on the phone, “There’s someone here. Let me call you back.”