Terrence Holt: Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories

I heard a knock and an unfamiliar face appeared in the doorway. “Are you the doctor on call?” Shift change. I grunted something affirmative. “Do you know the patient in twenty-six?”

An uncomfortable sensation stirred in my chest.

“I got report on her,” the new nurse said. “Do you still want frequent vital signs?”

“How’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to check?”

“Please,” I said, and settled my head on my folded arms.

A HAND SHAKING MY SHOULDER. “Doctor?”

I stirred unpleasantly. My face was stiff. My sleeve was wet.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but that lady in twenty-six, she’s not looking so good.”

I sat upright.

“Her O 2sat?” the nurse went on. “It’s only eighty-two. And her rate is over thirty.”

“Is she wearing her mask?”

“No.”

“Christ.” I was out of the room, stalking down the hall.

She lay in the bed, looking expectantly toward the door, the mask gripped in her hand. Her other hand went up as I approached, waving me away.

“Mrs. B,” I called to her, pitching my voice as if into the distance.

The head bobbled for a moment, turned my way. The eyebrows were lifted slightly, but the skin above them was unfurrowed. The mouth was a hole air moved through.

“Mrs. B,” I said again, willing her to look at me.

She did.

“You have to keep your mask on.” It did not sound so idiotic when I said it as it does now.

She shook her head.

“If you don’t do it,” I said, reaching out to take the mask from her hand, “you’re going to die.” She made an ineffectual motion as I placed the mask over her face, looping the cord behind her head. Her hair was greasy with sweat. She reached up and placed a hand on the mask. My hand and her hand held it there. Did her breathing start to slow? I held the mask through one long minute, another. The nurse was a silhouette at the doorway. Another minute more, and I was sure the rate had fallen, the laboring of her shoulders lessened. To the nurse: “Let’s check a sat.”

Ninety-two percent. To Mrs. B: “There. That feels better, doesn’t it?” She nodded, faintly, and seemed to settle into the bed. I let my hand fall away from the mask, crooning, “There, there.” After five minutes pressing the mask to her face, my outstretched arm felt like wood. I reached behind her head to snug the cord.

She pulled the mask away. “I can’t breathe. I don’t want it,” she gasped. “It’s too tight.”

And pulled harder until she snapped the cord in two.

I grabbed the mask and held it on her face. She reached up and clutched my wrist, and for a moment I thought we were about to struggle over it, but then she stopped and her hand fell away. Her eyes were fixed on mine.

The nurse was still at the doorway.

“Ativan,” I said. “Two milligrams IV. And two of morphine.”

Mrs. B still stared at me, her face remote and motiveless behind the mask. My arm was aching. Was I pressing the mask too hard? I eased up, fumbled with the broken cord, but the ends were too short to make a new one. Mrs. B didn’t take her eyes off mine as the nurse reached for the port in the IV tubing. Just as the nurse’s fingers caught it she snatched her arm away.

“No.” The voice was a whisper.

The nurse turned to me, her expression stricken. “I can’t, Doctor.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t force a patient. It would mean my license.”

“She’s going to die if she doesn’t keep that mask on.”

“Then get Psychiatry to declare her. But until then it’s her decision. We can’t make it for her.”

Psych wasn’t going to declare her. I knew that. It was her decision. I knew that. But I couldn’t let it end this way. Surely I could make her see.

“Mrs. B,” I said finally, “is there any way we can make this easier for you?”

“How about a bucket?” said the nurse.

My expression must have requested explanation.

“A face tent, they call them. It’s open at the top. It works for claustrophobia. Do you want me to call Respiratory?”

“Please.”

THE RESPIRATORY TECH ARRIVED after an interminable period during which Mrs. B refused again and again to wear the mask. Eventually we found a compromise. She would hold it a few inches below her chin. It bumped the pulse-ox to 88 percent. But her respiratory rate continued to climb. I couldn’t tell if it was hypoxia or anxiety. A blood gas would have told me, but I was reluctant to try. I didn’t know what I would do with the information. When the tech arrived and fitted her with the bucket, I stood at the door watching. It seemed to be doing something.

The next page from twenty-six came around four. I had gone into the call room fifteen minutes before, but the moment I lay down it was clear there was no chance of sleep. I lay rigid in the lower bunk, unwilling even to turn out the light, bracing against the sensation of my pager at my hip. My thoughts were an incoherent jumble: scraps of medical education — the innervation of the hand, the watershed areas of the mesenteric circulation, drugs to avoid in supraventricular tachycardia — none of which was relevant to any of the calls I had gotten that night. I was thinking of anything but the patient in twenty-six, two floors overhead. The next page was, of course, about her.

The nurse picked up on the first ring. “Doctor? I think you’d better get up here.”

I was out of the door without a word.

The scene in twenty-six was superficially unaltered. But from the bed I was hearing small whimpering noises, rhythmic, paced almost to the beating of my heart.

She was sitting bent over, the exaggerated movements of her chest and shoulders making her head rise and fall, rise and fall. I counted, but lost track in the twenties, somewhere around half a minute. At least forty.

“Mrs. B?” I laid a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t turn. Just the rapid rise and fall of the head. Her shoulder was clammy, her gown damp. Was she febrile? Was there something I’d missed? Should I have gotten cultures? Hung antibiotics? Was she having a PE? The body on the bed wasn’t telling. Only the same carrier wave of distress, up and down, up and down. I looked to the door, where the nurse was standing. “Get Respiratory up here.” She started to go. “And get me two of morphine.”

The patient didn’t resist this time. I don’t know if she was even aware, but as the plunger went down on the syringe I could see a change in her; she settled and her breathing slowed. The pulse-ox, which had been in the mid-seventies, climbed up a notch or two, settled in the low eighties. I had no idea if that was something she could live with. I stood at the bedside and watched. Her respiratory rate was in the low thirties. An eye opened, swiveled around the room until it met mine. The mouth moved, no sound came out.

“Mrs. B,” I said, and my tone was frankly pleading now, “you’ve got to let me help you.”

The eye held my gaze for a long moment, the dim gleam of the nightlight streaking across the cornea. A hand made a brief sweeping gesture, fell. Away.

Somewhere in the course of the night I had developed a fixed idea: if I could get her to morning, it would be okay. I had no idea where that notion came from. Years later, after what seems like countless midnight vigils, the trust and hope of it chill me. But then I clung like a child to the thought of morning. In the morning, her primary team would be on hand; someone would know what to do. By the light of the morning, ill spirits flee. In the morning, it would be off my hands.

The respiratory tech was at the door.

“It isn’t working,” I said.

The tech didn’t actually shrug. “You don’t think you can tube her?”