Chapter 8
Although she was still sedated, Ajna’s eyes began to blink back to life. This prompted the nurse to turn off the overhead lights and recheck her vital signs.
“Ajna?” the nurse said. “You just got out of surgery! Can you hear me?”
She was still intubated and unable to answer any questions, but the nurse was simply looking for a response of any kind. Ajna’s semi-conscious eyes slowly turned toward the nurse’s voice and closed again as she gave in to the concoction of sedatives and painkillers that constantly dripped through her intravenous lines.
“Mr. Drake?” the nurse said.
Her words startled him and whipping his head around he looked at the nurse, his eyes still red and wet with tears. He released a tense sigh, regaining his composure and acknowledged her words.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Maybe you should have a seat in the waiting room. I have to check her surgical site,” the nurse said. “We’re going to transfer her to intensive care soon. When that happens you can follow her up.”
“Thank you,” Edward replied.
It took all his strength to walk away from her bedside. He knew that the nurse had a job to do, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty about leaving Ajna’s side, as though he was somehow abandoning her. The nurse led him back to the waiting room where he returned to the same chair he found himself in when he first arrived. Although he felt a little more at ease, having seen Ajna in the recovery room, he found his thoughts racing as he tried to reconstruct what must have happened at the clinic.
He wasn’t consciously keeping track of the time, but the next forty-five minutes went by at a pace that seemed almost painful. As he sat waiting, Edward’s mind ran rampant with ‘what-if’s’. How would he live his life? Ajna was his life. What would he do without her? Then, almost on cue, the familiar voice of the nurse reached his ears.
“Mr. Drake?”
All this time he had been discovering that waiting was indeed the hardest part of any difficult situation and was so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed her approaching. He raised his head with a slightly bewildered expression.
“Yes,” he answered. “Is everything o.k.?”
“Oh, yes,” said the nurse calmly. “We’re moving Ajna to SCU-4.”
The nurse motioned for Edward to come out into the hallway where Ajna’s bed was being wheeled toward the elevators. The staff managed to squeeze Edward in for the ride, even though they were only going up one floor. When everyone got off Edward trailed behind, keeping Ajna’s face in view. He knew that the staff had a job to do and didn’t want to get in the way. He continued to walk into SCU-4 behind them until they stopped at room 1045. There was what seemed to be a small army of nurses, doctors and technicians gathered near the room, all waiting to perform a piece of the magic that would hopefully save Ajna’s life. Edward was shown yet another waiting room and asked the nurses a few minutes to get Ajna settled in. Another twenty agonizing minutes went by before he was allowed to see her. The nurse walked Edward down to the room where other nurses and aides had just finished organizing the tubes and wires into something less chaotic looking. There were two doctors standing outside the room reviewing her chart and planning out the management of her immediate future. The nurse continued to walk Edward into the room, introducing him to those who were charged with sustaining Ajna’s life. He once again approached her side, still unable to fully process her lifeless appearance. He was so accustomed to hearing her breath, especially at night as he lay beside her in the dark. This had now been replaced by the sound of air forced through blue corrugated tubing and the rhythmic, muffled clicking of valves as air was being cycled through a pattern determined by a machine sitting a mere two or three feet from her head. The tube that had been placed in her throat was already making her lips crack and Edward noticed that her still open eyes were becoming red and slightly swollen.
“Is there anything you can do about her eyes?” he asked. “She has such beautiful eyes.”
“They never cover the eyes during surgery, just in case they need to check the pupils,” the nurse replied. “So, by the time someone gets to us they’ve got one hell of a case of dry eye. I’ll put some ointment in her eyes to keep the dryness down, but the doctors will still be checking her pupils occasionally as they assess her responsiveness.”
“Oh,” Edward said.
He found that he wasn’t much on words with everything else going through his mind. But, the nurses had been trained to deal with people who found themselves suddenly caught in these circumstances and they knew what to ask and how to listen.
A chair was brought in and Edward sat next to Ajna’s side. The rooms in the SCU units were very small – just enough space for a bed, a ventilator, IV pumps, and a sink. In a crisis, a code team could easily fill the room with no thought to the idea of personal space. Edward’s gaze was transfixed on Ajna’s face, searching for any signs of consciousness - anything that would let him know that she was still inside the battered, unconscious shell that lay in front of him. The intensity of his focus was shattered by a gentle tapping at the glass door.
“Hello, Edward?”
A middle-aged man stepped into the room and put out his right hand.
“I’m doctor Summerlin. I worked on your wife Ajna in the O.R.”
Edward stood and readily shook his hand. He was dressed in green scrubs and carried himself in a confident manner. It was very obvious to Edward that this was a man who was an expert in his field and had likely seen more human tragedy than any person should. The doctor held Ajna’s chart while he spoke to Edward.
“She was actually pretty lucky,” he said. “The bullet just missed a pulmonary vein.”
“So, she’ll be o.k.?” Edward asked.
“Well,” the doctor replied. “I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s gonna be a bumpy road and she’s gonna be with us for quite some time.”
Edward walked up to the head of the bed and touched Ajna’s forehead.
“Can she hear me?” he asked.
She had been put on a Diprovan drip and her level of consciousness was being monitored.
“She’s pretty heavily sedated,” the doctor answered. “It’s possible that she might hear you on some very deep level. Now, whether or not she’ll remember after we wake her up is a different matter.”
Families always asked that question, especially if the injuries were severe. They always seemed to hold some hope that if they can hear them, maybe they’ll get better. But, Diprovan is a surgical anesthetic and used to induce a state of chemical nonexistence – no feelings, no thoughts, no pain, no experience - of oneself or anything else. Doctors and nurses didn’t tell the families about this because they wanted to hold out some hope for the patient’s survival. In more than a few cases, family members needed to think that their goodbyes could be heard for the sake of taking the first step toward closure. It was a small white lie that was intended to allow people to make a connection with those who may or may not survive. After all, everyone should be able to feel some degree of hope, if for no other reason than to maintain their sanity.
“How long is she going to be like this?” Edward asked.
“Probably a few days,” the doctor replied. “At this point, we have to breathe for her, but we don’t like to keep patients on a ventilator too long. So, once her lung tissue starts to heal the drip will be turned down and we’ll let her wake up a little a little at a time and maintain her pain level.”
Oddly enough, Edward felt as though he understood everything the doctor said.
“What about the tube in her chest?” he asked.
The doctor responded quickly saying that once Ajna’s surgical site stopped draining the tube would be removed.
“This may sound like a stupid question,” Edward started. “But, does she have any broken ribs?”
“There is one rib that was shattered from the gunshot,” the doctor replied. “But, we put in a bone graft – it’ll heal over time with no significant problems.”
Out of curiosity, Edward asked about the bone graft and discovered that almost any broken bone could be grafted with cultured coral that was engineered to bond with healthy bone, as long as blood flow was intact. A nurse entered the room and introduced herself as Bonnie, saying that she would be working with Ajna today for the next twelve hours and if Edward had any questions he could come to her.
“Is there anything you need?” she asked. “Anything I can get for you?”
“I don’t think so,” Edward said after a few moments hesitation. After Bonnie left, the doctor continued.
“Look, I lost a son to the war zone – wrong place, wrong time. So, if you ever wanna talk to someone who’s been there, the nurse can always page me.”
Doctors were never allowed to get personally involved in a case. But, some doctors believed that there were rare exceptions to this rule and Doctor Summerlin was one of them. Having no other words to say, Edward simply gave a quiet ‘thank you’.
“Um…I’m sorry about your son,” he said.
“Well, the important thing now is that we do everything we can to get your wife back on her feet,” the doctor said. “So, if you have any questions about any part of her treatment, just ask.”
The doctor then stepped out of the room and Edward was left sitting at Ajna’s side as she lay unconscious, drifting among a sea of tubes and wires. He noticed that her wrists had been restrained and when he asked why he was told that at some point they would slowly wake her and that some patients become confused during the process. The restraints were there to prevent Ajna from injuring herself.