Here After

chapter ten

Friday, August 29

THE ALARM ON THE ANESTHETIC machine sounded again, and for the fifth time in as many minutes Peter silenced it, checking the monitor—again—for its source. He kept getting the same result, a flashing gray box identifying the problem as HIGH PEEP PRESSURE, which was odd because he wasn’t using PEEP on this patient, an otherwise healthy fourteen year old with a fractured wrist.

He said, “Angie,” and the circulating nurse looked up from her charting. “Call Biomed for me, would you? Tell them I’ve got a nuisance alarm.”

The nurse made the call and Peter started backing off on the anesthetic, the surgeon almost finished closing the skin. The kid woke up promptly, a little combative as kids sometimes were, and Peter told him everything was fine, his surgery was over. Jake from Biomed came in as they were transferring the patient onto the stretcher. He hadn’t seen Peter in a while and his face registered a faint horror when their eyes met. Peter was unfazed; he’d been getting a lot of that just lately.

He explained the alarm problem and Jake said he had an idea what it was, he’d be back in ten minutes to sort it out. Peter dropped the kid off in Recovery and returned to his room to prepare for the next case, an open femur fracture in a twenty year old girl who’d fallen off her mountain bike. He drew up the drugs he would need, then checked the integrity of his anesthetic circuit, making certain there were no leaks, something he’d done before every case since his first day of training.

As he completed his checks, a recovery room nurse hailed him from the doorway, waving an anesthetic record at him, telling him he’d forgotten to order something for pain. He did that now, scratching the order into the appropriate box, apologizing for the lapse. Then he went to the john in the change room, filled the sink with cold water and bent to douse his face in double handfuls, the water soothing against his throbbing eyeballs, his pounding forehead, his unshaven cheeks. He straightened to dry his face and caught his reflection in the mirror. A ghost stared back at him with skull eyes that registered the same faint horror he’d seen in Jake’s eyes, in almost everyone’s eyes over the past several days. It was no surprise, really. He hadn’t slept more than two hours straight in weeks and had lost ten pounds from a frame that could have stood to gain twenty.

He went to the abandoned doctors’ lounge and sat on one of the worn couches. A copy of The Globe and Mail lay strewn on the table in front of him, but it held no interest for him. He put his head back and fell asleep. A few minutes later a couple of anesthesia residents came through the door in animated conversation and startled him. Peter looked at them with red eyes, disoriented at first, then waved off their apologies. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.

He got up and started back to his room, meeting Jake in the hallway. The tech had a piece of equipment in his hand, which he held up for Peter’s inspection.

“Condensation in the pressure sensors,” he said, and Peter could see the droplets in the clear plastic valve ports. “You got a fresh one in there now.”

Peter thanked him and continued along the hall, the nurses just wheeling his next patient into the room. Though he caught only a glimpse of the girl—blond, deeply tanned and slim—it was clear she was in a great deal of pain.

He took a deep breath and followed them inside. In the wake of his brief nap, which had seemed more like unconsciousness than sleep, the whole scene seemed faintly unreal to him: the lights too bright, creating shimmering auras around metal surfaces; the girl’s moans and the nurses’ murmured reassurances sounding somehow arcane, like a prelude to human sacrifice.

Peter grabbed the girl’s chart and moved to the head of the operating table. After a quick scan of her lab results he prompted her through a brief medical history, then injected a potent narcotic into her IV. Within seconds the tight mask of pain on her face relaxed into blissful calm.