He was no longer in the car, but lying in a bed instead. Only it wasn’t his bed. And this definitely wasn’t his house. Bewildered, he looked around, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the bright lights and bare, white walls. Upon waking, what his sleeping brain had perceived as white noise gradually separated into distinct sounds: a series of slow, steady blips, accompanied by a soft, mechanical hiss. That was when he realized he was in a hospital room.
He tried to sit up, but his head felt too heavy to lift from the pillow. His chest hurt like someone had been sitting on it, and it was hard to breathe. There was a hose sticking out of his mouth like a big, blue snake that was slowly suffocating him. He tried to reach for it, but found that his wrists were tied to the bed rails.
He began to panic.
In the background, he heard the high-pitched bleeping sounds accelerate as his heart began to race. An alarm went off as he writhed back and forth on the bed, fighting to free himself from his restraints before he choked to death on whatever was clogging his throat. In the midst of his struggle, he became aware of someone saying his name.
“Nick… Nick, relax. You’re okay, Nick.” Her voice was soothing, even though her words meant nothing to him. A pair of hands, warm and soft, pressed against his shoulders, gently but firmly holding him down. As the woman leaned over him, he looked into her brown eyes and realized he recognized them.
Dani? His tongue touched something foreign in his mouth as he tried to say her name, only to find that he couldn’t make a sound.
“Shh… Don’t try to speak,” she said softly. “You’re in the hospital. We had to put a tube down your windpipe. It’s hooked up to a ventilator that’s helping you breathe, so just lie back and let it do its thing.”
As she spoke, Nick stared up at her face, forcing himself to focus on what she was saying. Once he finally surrendered, he was able to feel his lungs fill with the pure oxygen being pumped into them through the breathing tube. Slowly, his body began to relax. The frantic blips became spaced apart again, as his heart slowed back down.
“There you go,” said Dani. “See, the machine’s doing all the hard work, while you get to take it easy.” She smiled and patted his shoulder, releasing the pressure she’d been applying to keep him in place. Then she took off the stethoscope she was wearing around her neck and put it in her ears. She rubbed the round end with her palm to warm it before she pulled back the front of Nick’s hospital gown and pressed it against his bare chest. Her smile faded as she listened, lips pursed in concentration.
Nick watched her with impatience, wishing he could communicate all the questions he had. What was he doing here? What was wrong with him? He racked his brain, trying to remember what had happened. The last thing he could recall was leaving the bar with her. Had they been in an accident?
It was hard for him to assess what kind of condition he was in when he was lying flat on his back, tethered to the bed by tubes, but he gave it a shot, moving different parts of his body to check for pain. He worked his way from head to toe, slowly shrugging his shoulders, bending his elbows and knees, rotating his wrists and ankles, wiggling his fingers and toes. Everything seemed intact, with no obvious injuries. He felt groggy and weak, but otherwise fine. So why was he here?
“You want out of those restraints, don’t you?” said Dani, watching him squirm.
Nick tried to nod, but found it difficult to move his head much without tugging on the tube in his throat.
Dani seemed to understand. “Dumb question, huh?” she added, draping the stethoscope around her neck again. “Of course, Captain Obvious. I’m sorry we had to put them on; we just wanted to make sure you didn’t accidentally pull out any of your tubes when you started to wake up. You’re not going to do that, are you? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
Nick blinked twice.
Dani smiled. “Good. Okay then, let’s get these off!”
She unhooked the straps that restrained his right hand first. Immediately, he reached up to touch the ventilator hose. When can this come out? he wanted to know, although he had no way of asking.
Dani seemed to understand. “One thing at a time,” she said, taking his hand and giving it a pat. “The doctor needs to assess your breathing before we can remove that.” She moved around to the other side of his bed. “Watch out for the arterial line in this one,” she warned as she freed his left arm. Lifting it carefully, Nick could see a length of clear tubing connected to a catheter on the inside of his wrist. “You’re right-handed, aren’t you?” Dani asked, and he blinked. “I thought so. That’s why we put it in the left.”
On sudden inspiration, he raised his right hand and mimed writing in midair. If he couldn’t talk, maybe he could write out his questions instead.
Dani raised her eyebrows. “You want a whiteboard?” she offered, and he blinked again. She smiled. “Sure thing. Give me just one sec.”
She walked away from his bedside, leaving Nick to stare up at the plain, white ceiling, his barely-controlled panic closing in again as he waited for her to return. But before it could take hold of him completely, Dani came back, carrying a miniature dry erase board and marker. She uncapped the marker and handed it to him, holding up the board so he could write on it.
“Y M I here?” he scrawled.
Dani cocked her head to the side as she deciphered the message. Then she gave him a grim smile and said, “I’d better get a doctor to help explain. Sit tight, and I’ll be right back.”
Nick’s mind raced as he lay helplessly in bed, listening to the unnatural hiss of the ventilator that was breathing for him and the annoying blip of the monitor that measured every beat of his heart. He had no idea what was wrong with him, but from the amount of equipment he was hooked up to - not to mention the look on Dani’s face just then - he knew it must be something serious. He held his right hand up in front of his face so that he could read the hospital bracelet around his wrist. Printed on it was his name, date of birth, and other basic information. The name of the hospital - Lower Keys Medical Center - was included at the bottom, but nowhere did it list the reason he’d been admitted there. Frustrated, Nick let his arm fall back to his side.
He waited an agonizing few more minutes for Dani to return. Finally, she walked back into the room with a dark-haired man in a white coat. Nick didn’t recognize him until he smiled and said, “Hey, Nick. Remember me?” Then he realized: it was Dani’s husband. He looked a lot different without his zombie makeup, but then again, so did she. “Dr. Rob,” he added, shaking Nick’s hand as he had in the bar.
Nick merely blinked, too nervous to smile back.
“It’s good to see you awake, man,” Rob said, reaching for the stethoscope around his neck. “You mind if I take a quick listen? I hear you’re pretty eager to have that breathing tube taken out - don’t blame you one bit. Dani, let’s sit him up a little more so he can lean forward for me.”
Dani raised the head of the bed until Nick was at a forty-five degree angle, instead of flat on his back. This was a definite improvement - he didn’t feel as helpless that way, at least. He waited impatiently while Rob moved the stethoscope around his back and chest, which he could now see was wired up with electrodes that connected to the constantly beeping heart monitor. It brought back bad memories of being in the cardiologist’s office over a decade ago, undergoing the battery of tests that had led to his diagnosis of cardiomyopathy. Thinking back to those days made Nick uncomfortable, and his anxiety only intensified.
Finally, Rob removed the stethoscope. “Good bilateral breath sounds,” he told his wife. “We’ll be able to attempt a spontaneous breathing trial and, assuming he passes, hopefully extubate him later today.”
Dani nodded. “That’s great news, Nick,” she said, giving him an encouraging smile. “We’ll get that tube out of your throat soon so you can talk again.”
Frowning, Nick pointed to what he’d written on the whiteboard. Rob read it, his eyes narrowing, and nodded. “You wanna know what the hell you’re doing here, huh? Of course you do.” He glanced at his wife. “Why don’t you start, Dani? You’re the one who was there.”
Dani took a deep breath before nodding her head. “You mind if I sit down?” she asked Nick. When he blinked twice, she lowered the side rail of his bed and perched on the edge, twisting her body around so that she was facing him. She took his right hand in hers and held it tightly. “Do you remember Halloween night? When we met at the bar?”
He blinked, surprised by her questions. Why wouldn’t he remember what he’d done the night before? He hadn’t had that much to drink. Then again, everything after they’d left the bar was still a blur. Obviously something had happened that he couldn’t recall.
“Well, we left together… and, um... you collapsed.” Dani bit down on her bottom lip, a dire look in her dark brown eyes. He frowned, not entirely understanding what she meant. Maybe he’d drunk more than he remembered, enough to make him black out and forget.
Rob helped her to explain. “What we think happened was that your heart went into this weird, chaotic rhythm called ventricular fibrillation, where it sort of quivers but doesn’t actually pump any blood. Basically, your heart stopped beating.”
Nick’s eyes widened with disbelief. His heart was sure beating now, harder and faster than before. How could it have just randomly stopped?
“We call it ‘sudden cardiac death,’” Rob continued. “It’s a scary thing - it usually happens without any warning, and obviously, a lot of people don’t survive it. But thankfully, you had this wonderful nurse with you who was able to start CPR right away.” He clapped his wife on the shoulder. “She kept your blood circulating until the paramedics came. Without her, you’d probably be brain dead.”
Nick looked at Dani, still struggling to process what she and Rob were telling him. She squeezed his hand. “They had to shock your heart five times to get it beating again,” she said softly. “But, thank god, they brought you back.”
Nick’s mouth fell open, but of course, he couldn’t speak. Not that he even would know what to say. He was still holding the marker, but there was no way he could put into words what he was feeling at that moment - an unexplainable mixture of shock, horror, gratitude, and confusion.
“You’ve been in a medically-induced coma for the last couple of days,” Dr. Rob went on. “We had to cool your body down for twenty-four hours to keep your brain from being damaged by the lack of oxygen; then we gradually warmed you back up. You’re doing better now, but obviously, there’s still some things you’ll need to discuss with the cardiologist. I think she wants to wait until you’re extubated to talk to you so you’ll be able to ask and answer questions. Is that all right with you?”
Nick blinked, already overwhelmed by what he had just been told. He took his hand out of Dani’s and pressed it to the left side of his chest, holding it there until he could feel his heart pounding steadily against his palm. The sensation brought forth a powerful surge of emotions he hadn’t been prepared for. Unexpected tears sprang into his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Dani asked, as Rob reached for his stethoscope again.
Nick blinked a second time, waving them off with his other hand while the tears trickled down the sides of his face. There was no way for him to explain. Even though he could hear the rhythm of his heartbeat on the monitor, he had wanted to feel it for himself, fluttering beneath his fingertips. He tried to remember what it had felt like for it to suddenly stop, but he had no memory of that moment or anything that had followed. All he could recall was feeling nauseous and dizzy as he and Dani had walked out of the bar. He had just wanted to sleep, sure that it would help him feel better, never guessing these could be warning signs of something much worse than a hangover. Had it not been for Dani, he would have died in the back of some stranger’s car - or at home in his bed, with no one there to help him. Either way, the thought was so horrifying, it made his heart skip a beat and brought even more tears to his eyes.
Hearing the slight change in his heart rhythm, both Dani and Dr. Rob looked up at the monitor above Nick’s bed. “Relax, Nick,” Dani told him, as his heart began racing again. She placed her hand on top of his, rubbing the back of it reassuringly. “You’re all right now. Just relax and breathe.”
Nick fought the suffocating waves of panic, feeling his chest expand as air was forced into his lungs. Breathe. Dani’s face swam in and out of focus, blurred by tears, so he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound of her voice instead. Just breathe. He let her words echo inside his head until, eventually, his heartbeat became slow and steady once again.
***
