The Edge of Death by John Benedict (best ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📕

The Edge of Death

By John Benedict

CHAPTER 1

Tuesday, 5:00 p.m.

Consciousness crept slowly into Nick Chandler’s brain, fingers of awareness snaking into his mind like shafts of sunlight penetrating the morning haze. Here, in the meadow where he lay, there was no time—or pain. He was content to bask in the warm sun and drink in the mingled scent of freshly mown grass and the heady nectar of honeysuckle. Such peacefulness was beyond his experience.

Voices that seemed miles away hummed lightly about his ears. Or was it just the sound of insects flitting about in the hedgerow? The only other sensation he felt was the rhythmic whoosh of air being forced into his mangled chest.

Thoughts began to coalesce, disturbing ones. Questions queued up for attention, threatening to perforate the fuzzy cocoon of his mind. Where am I? What happened to me? Then a stranger thought, more insistent, jumped the line. Am I dead?

Chandler shooed these thoughts away—he didn’t want to deal with any questions right now. Answers usually brought pain and he preferred the tranquil limbo of his nonexistence. But one question buzzed back, like a pesky horsefly, refusing to be ignored: Was this what it felt like to be dead? He couldn’t be sure—and, he realized, he didn’t care. Deep down, though, he remembered that people were supposed to care about such things.

He sensed that something was different about him, changed somehow, though he couldn’t put his finger on it; the feeling was way too vague. But he knew he was right.

Chandler sighed. Too much work for now—he was bone-tired. Besides, the sunlit meadow beckoned. He let his mind submerge again, bobbing just beneath the surface of consciousness.

An unknowable amount of time passed as Chandler drifted in and out, until the buzzing returned and grew louder, finally nudging him awake. He sensed other people around him, picked up bits of conversation.

“ . . . congestive heart failure secondary to viral myocarditis . . .”

“ . . . overwhelming sepsis with full-blown ARDS . . .”

“ . . . multi-system organ failure with progressive renal and hepatic shutdown . . .”

Later an older male voice, deep and resonant with a professorial tone, commanded his attention. “Lauren, bring us up to speed on what happened yesterday.”

Chandler struggled to focus and stay awake to hear this part; the meadow would have to wait.

A young female voice, crisp and assertive, answered. “He coded around noontime and we consider it a miracle that we brought him back in the first place. An hour later, though, he arrested again and this time we couldn’t get him back. He was pronounced dead. He was then rushed to PML.”

“You mean Dr. Mueller’s lab?”

“Yes. The postmortem lab.”

“I assume you are all familiar with Dr. Mueller’s groundbreaking research into resuscitation science?” the professor said, garnering quiet murmurs of assent. “Go on, Lauren.”

“The patient was immediately placed on full cardiopulmonary bypass. His heart was stopped with a hyper-cool cardioplegic solution, ultra-low oxygen therapy was instituted, and a slew of cerebral protective drugs and antithrombin agents were administered. After twenty-four hours of this treatment, combined with sufficient resting of the myocardium, they attempted to restart his heart. Amazingly, after several countershocks, his heart resumed beating and he was soon transferred here to the ICU. The patient hasn’t regained consciousness, though.”

That certainly answers a lot of questions, thought Chandler. Carol Sue was right about the virus—should’ve listened to her. And now that they mentioned it, he did remember signing some weird form dealing with resuscitation. It was from the Buchanan Med Center Bioethics Committee and was so chock-full of legalese, he hadn’t been able to make heads nor tails of it at the time. But the gist of it was, if any of it came into play, you were basically fucked. And by signing it, you had just helped the hospital install an ironclad covering for their collective butts.

He had been so sick when he was admitted that this particular form and all the others he signed had been a complete blur to him. Except now, he could call to mind clearly the five-page experimental resuscitation protocol that dealt with the Mueller lab. He could page through the sheets in his mind, backward, forward, and zoom into any paragraph for a closer look. He had no idea how this was possible.

The professor spoke again. “So, what is his prognosis at this point?”

Prognosis? The word was delivered with such grave overtones. Again, Chandler fought off a wave of drowsiness.

“The patient is basically terminal and will be lucky to survive the night,” Lauren answered, delivering her clinical assessment with a tasteful touch of sorrow.

Talk about your good news-bad news. He wasn’t dead, but it didn’t sound like he had long to live. Except again, Chandler knew they were wrong, as they’d been about the consciousness part. He couldn’t say how he knew, or why, just that he felt certain. But what was it the perky med student, Lauren, said? She considers it a miracle that I’m still alive. A tiny smile curved his swollen, cracked lips and pulled painfully at the tape holding his endotracheal tube in place. Miracle might not be quite the right word for it, he thought, drifting back down into the narcotic haze of the soft meadow.

CHAPTER 2

Tuesday, 11:30 p.m.

Many hours later, Nick Chandler floated in that peculiar void between consciousness and dreaming, the drugs coursing through his veins only heightening the strangeness of the experience. His last intact memory played images through his mind. The fact that he recalled the exact details of that night, right down to the vibrant colors of Carol Sue’s tattoo, went unnoticed.

* * *

Halfway through his graveyard shift, on a night that seemed as ordinary as countless nights before, Nick pushed his cleaning cart out of the ICU room, being careful not to bump the doorframe with the various mops and brooms bristling from his cart. He shook his head. The room still stank of death, despite all the industrial-strength cleaners he had used. He was happy to leave.

Nick yanked off his mask and cap. Fresh air never tasted so good, he thought, peeling off the flimsy yellow gown and the latex gloves and chucking them all in the trash bin outside the room—the red plastic one with the biohazard label on it. The laundry bag hanging off the back of his cart was filled to the brim with dirty rags; better take care of those.

Nick made his way down to the hospital basement and navigated the twisty corridors to the laundry with ease, something he hadn’t done two years ago, when he had first started working at the med center—he used to get lost down here all the time. Now, he knew the layout well—past the MRI machines with all their funny magnet signs, and past the CAT scanners.

Nick hoped the laundry room would be empty, but his luck was not that good; several other members of the janitorial staff were taking a break, or trying to hide from their supervisors. Carol Sue was there. So was Nasty Mike Kuzmich. Both were seated on plastic crates tipped upside down on the dusty floor, puffing away on their beloved cigarettes.

“Hey Nick,” Nasty Mike said, sniggering. “What you got there? A full load? Three bags full?”

“No,” Nick said, “just one bag.”

Nasty Mike snorted loudly and started laughing.

“Don’t pay him no mind, Nick,” Carol Sue said before taking a long drag on her cigarette.

Nasty Mike continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Fuckin’ moron!”

Carol Sue belted Nasty Mike across his upper arm. “Shut up,” she said, and made an ugly face at him.

Nasty Mike frowned and rubbed his arm for a moment. But he wasn’t done.

“What’s that smell?” Nasty Mike stood and scrunched his nose up something fierce. “What’s that god-awful smell?”

“Leave him be, shithead,” Carol Sue said. She got up and walked over to Nick. He watched the bright pinks and greens in her Tinker Bell tattoo slide in and out from under her sleeve as her arm moved. Carol Sue’s teeth were yellow and crooked, but he liked her and thought she was pretty, with her long black hair.

“Maybe you oughtta throw that stuff in a hazardous waste box,” she said, eyeing his laundry bag. “It does stink,” she added in a soft voice that only he could hear.

“Okay,” Nick said. He looked around the room, then pulled a large flattened cardboard box off a stack in the corner. He tried to fold the preformed cardboard piece into a three dimensional box, but all the confusing flaps and arrows quickly turned into a jumbled mess in his mind. Carol Sue reached out to help him.

“Let me be,” Nick snapped at her. “I’ll do it myself.”

Nasty Mike was staring at him. Nick felt his face heat.

“I seen it all now,” Nasty Mike bellowed, shaking his head. “Outsmarted by a fuckin’ box!” Nasty Mike bent over and mashed his cigarette in his Pepsi can. Then he looked straight at Carol Sue. “Just like I said, sweetcakes—a fuckin’ moron.”

Carol Sue glared at him. “You’re the moron. Now, get the hell outta here.” She pointed to the door.

“Don’t worry, I’m leaving.” Nasty Mike walked toward the door, bumping into Nick on his way. As he reached the door, he called back over his shoulder, “Bitch!”

Carol Sue turned to Nick. She had a nice smile on her face and touched his arm. “He’s such an asshole. Forget about the box, Nicky. Those buggers can be tricky.”

Nick felt ready to cry. He bit his lower lip.

She looked again at his cart and her smile faded. “Were you cleaning that room?” she asked. “The filthy ICU room with the patient who died? The one with the horrible smell?”

“Yeah, they told me to,” he said meekly.

“You washed your hands, right?”

Nick looked at the floor. “I was about to,” he mumbled. “I wore gloves.”

“Shit,” she said, shaking her head and looking plenty worried. “Go wash your hands. Now! And use the goddamn disinfectant.”

Nick went over to the sink. “There was some serious bad shit in that room,” Carol Sue continued, watching him wash his hands. “When you get home, take a good shower. Don’t forget, now.”

“I won’t,” he said, keeping his face turned away so she wouldn’t see the tears.

CHAPTER 3

Wednesday, 11:45 a.m.

Tequila. What a cool name. He liked saying it—almost as much as drinking it. Chip Allison poured another shot glass full of tequila—his third, or maybe it was his fourth. But who’s counting, anyway? No, this wasn’t your Don Julio Anejo tequila, the stuff his dad liked to drink, aged for two years in oaken barrels and poured from the neat bottle with the fancy wooden stopper. And no, this wasn’t even Jose Cuervo Especial tequila. Rather, this was the cheapest rotgut money could buy, complete with the chintzy metal screw cap.

Of course, let’s be honest here. Honesty is the best policy, right? He wasn’t really drinking it to savor the flavor. That much was clear. And who gives a flying fuck that it’s only twelve noon. There was a celebration going on here—his twenty-third birthday—so he had every reason to get hammered. And as long as we’re telling the truth, it’s not really a shot glass, either. It was one of those mega shot glasses. You know, the three or four ounce jobbies—the true volume of which, only God Almighty knew.

He spilled a little tequila on the dingy white Formica countertop. Shit. Can’t even do that right. But then, just as quickly, he came to his own defense: Wait, hold on—no worries. Just a smidge, no need to panic. His mom liked that word—smidge, that is, not panic. Short for smidgeon—whatever the hell that was. Although, truth be told, even dear old Mom wasn’t too