Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Chapter 20
Josie
“Code blue. Room 4304. Code blue. Room 4304.”
I lurch out of my chair where I’d been doing some charting and check the pager at my hip, which is also showing a code blue, or in other words, cardiopulmonary arrest.
I’m on the code team today, which consists of multiple nurses and doctors to respond to such an emergency and to have a redundancy system in case some on the team are stuck in another emergency. I take off out of the emergency department because my patients are all stable and there are plenty of others to cover the load. I hit the transport elevators, which aren’t slowed down by visitors to the hospital, and make it to the fourth floor in under a minute.
I’ve perfected the brisk walk, which is almost a run in these emergency situations. Turning a corner around the nurse’s station of the cardiac unit, which comprises the fourth floor, I run smack into a solid wall of muscle. Before I can fully bounce back, a pair of large hands grab my shoulders and I’m blinking up into the face of Reed.
He smiles at me in pure delight to have me in his arms, but I don’t have time. “Not now. Gotta go.”
Reed immediately releases me, concern washing over his face. I have no time to wonder why he’s here in the cardiac unit because I’ve got more important things to do. I brush past him and jog the rest of the way to room 4304, but I can feel Reed’s eyes on my back the entire way.
When I arrive, I see a nurse already doing compressions on an elderly man with snowy white hair and a gray complexion. He’s completely flat lined on the monitor.
“Where are you at?” I ask her as I hit the antiseptic dispenser on the wall and coat my hands quickly.
“Second cycle,” she says, indicating she’s in the second round of thirty chest compressions with two breaths.
Another nurse bursts into the room pushing a crash cart. Without any need to exchange words, I smoothly take over the chest compressions while the nurses get ready to intubate the patient.
My pager starts vibrating on my hip but I ignore it. Nothing takes precedence over a code blue. At the end of the thirty compressions, I do two one-second breaths into the patient, and when I pull back, the nurses start to insert the breathing tube.
Before I can make it halfway through the next round, Dr. Levenson—a cardiothoracic surgeon on the code team—comes into the room with another nurse with an IV setup. I update him on where we stand, and he takes my place while the nurses work the airway bag compressions. Dr. Billroy, an internist, also slides in with a tight smile. She hates being on the code team because she doesn’t like people dying, but she’s very good at her job.
I take a moment and look down to my pager. Multiple GSVs. ETA 5 minutes.
Multiple gunshot victims heading into the Emergency Department.
“You got this?” I ask Levenson and Billroy.
Levenson says, “Go,” in response, and that’s all I need. They know that I would be the first release from the code, since emergency medicine is my game and I easily could be needed elsewhere.
I rush out the door and immediately see Reed standing in the hallway outside a patient’s room four doors down. His worried eyes are pinned on me as if he had been waiting for me to come out.
Approaching Reed, I glance at my watch. I can spare thirty seconds. When I look back up, Reed is nodding at the patient’s room I just left. “Is everything okay?”
“They’re working on him now,” I say briskly, but there’s no hiding the affection I have for him that comes through in my tone. “What are you doing here?”
He smiles and nods over his shoulder toward the room behind him. I lean to the left and peek in to see Marek standing there with the Stanley Cup and the Cup attendant who accompanies it wherever it goes. A man in his fifties is talking to Marek from his bed.
“I was going to tell you, then thought I’d keep it a surprise,” Reed says, and I lean back to look up at him. “I decided to use my day with the Cup here at the hospital taking it to all the patients who want to see it and have some pictures taken. I plan on being down in the ER a little later. The hospital administrator coordinated everything.”
There should be no time for it, but my stomach flutters as if a thousand butterflies have taken up residence in there and my entire body flushes warm with adoration for Reed. God, this man. That he would do that for his day with the Cup. We hadn’t even talked about it other than I knew each player got the Cup, but because he hadn’t said anything about it, I’d assumed perhaps he had his day before we became an item.