20 Questions

Chapter 4

It was a frigid November night and I was on my way home from work at the hospital. My thirteen-hour shift had taken everything out of me, physically and mentally. I couldn't wait to put on my pajamas and climb into bed. I had just taken off my shoes when the phone rang. My mother's name flashed across the screen and I wondered why she was calling so late.

"Jen, it's Mom." I could hear it in her voice. It was the call I had been terrified to receive but knew was eventually coming. Let it be jail, let it be jail. Please don't let it be the morgue. She went on, anguish in her tone. "Honey, it's Jansen. He's overdosed. He's in the ER now." I confirm which hospital and change my clothes. I grab my keys, not knowing for sure if I should actually be driving, but I wasn't going to wait for somebody to come pick me up. The drive to the hospital was long and my mind was racing faster than the posted speed limit. What am I going to find out when I get to the hospital? Is he even still alive? Is he going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life? I was a nurse, I could take care of his medical needs if he needed total care. I pull into the ER parking lot on two wheels, I think. I was dead tired from my shift at the hospital, but my adrenaline was pumping so fiercely that I couldn't feel the exhaustion anymore.

My whole family was in the waiting room, heads in hands. They all looked like somebody had punched them in the gut. They didn't know anything, the hospital staff just said they "were working on him." What does that mean? Are they pounding on his chest and sticking a tube in his mouth in an effort to resuscitate him? Did they get him resuscitated and now they are cooling his body temperature to preserve brain function? Sometimes I hate being a nurse because I know what goes on in that code room. Except as a nurse, I was emotionally detached from the person I am doing compressions on. Tears aren't rolling down my face as I shove a needle in someone's arm to administer life-saving medications. I want that patient to live because that's why I become a nurse, to help people. But I'm not going to having Christmas dinner with them if they survive. I'll go home and they'll go home and we will live our separate lives. That person on the stretcher isn't a piece of my heart.

We never saw him in the ER, he was resuscitated and taken up to the ICU. I felt a small tinge of relief knowing that he was at least still alive, but I was mentally preparing myself for his condition post-resuscitation. We sat in the ICU waiting room for what seemed like an eternity until the nurse came out and told us that we could see him. We take turns going into the room, trying to abide by their visitation policy in the ICU. I fall back and let his parents enter first. I'm not sure I want to be present when my aunt and uncle take in the sight of tubes and lines protruding from their baby boy's body. I knew what to expect, although I'm not sure it did anything to numb the pain.

When it is my turn to visit, I walk slowly into the room. To be honest, they had done a nice job with him. Despite all the tubes coming out of him and all the equipment in the room, he was clean and the sheets were straight. That gave me some peace, not a lot, but a little. I knew he was being kept alive by machines, but at least he hadn't left us. They had initiated therapeutic hypothermia on him. Of course they did. It made sense after a cardiac arrest. Preserve brain function for a couple days by cooling down his body temperature. He would be kept sedated and chemically paralyzed for several days while they allow his organs to rest and the machines to do all the work. After a few days, they would slowly warm his body back up and attempt to wean him off sedation. We will have to wait and see.

The next couple days were pure torture. I was at the hospital every day talking to him, holding his hand, kissing his head, telling him to come back to me. We will get through this. I was taught as a nurse that hearing is the last sense to go, so I spoke to him in hopes that he would hear me. Family and friends rotated in and out of the hospital. I didn't rest much. If I did, it was because I cried myself to sleep. Even then, I would wake up throughout the night, gasping and drenched in my own sweat. The police told us that he was at some drug dealer's apartment when he overdosed. He found Jansen down, but decided to clean up the drug paraphernalia before calling EMS, who just happened to be right about the corner from the shitty apartment. I was so angry because all of this could have been avoided if he would have just called for an ambulance as soon as he found him. I knew my anger could be displaced. Deep down, I was angry that he chose the drugs in the first place. He chose the drugs over life, over his family, over me. I had so many emotions coursing through me, but anger was the strongest.