All For Anna (5 page)

That first week in
Phoenix had been mind-blowing, and my fear so intense that I was often
paralyzed by it. A trauma nurse could be wrapping a broken arm one minute and
the next be assisting in pulling a lead pipe out of someone's chest.

What happened in the
Emergency Rooms of large metropolitan cities were the nightmares your
nightmares had while they slept. People who came through Emergency lived to
tell their stories of horror. Those that didn’t leave often died after living
out their worst-case scenario. That’s what Trauma was, a world of worst-case
scenarios.

After a month of
cowering behind the more experienced nurses and pretending to be busy with
paperwork, IV’s, and administrative tasks, I was called out of hiding. A bus
full of high school football players had crashed on the interstate. All hands
were needed, including mine, “green” as they were.

I had watched the
trauma nurses work quickly and effortlessly, setting shoulders, bandaging open
wounds and applying burn towels to the students who had been closest to the
engine when it caught fire. All were busy when my patient was rushed in with a
severely mangled leg and arm. He was unconscious and receiving CPR by the EMT.
I ran to meet them, shaky and uncertain. But then it happened, a rush of
adrenaline like I had never experienced before. It was all-consuming.

The EMT who was using
the manual resuscitation bag pointed and yelled for me to do chest compressions
until we got to the defibrillator. In an instant I was the breath for his lungs
as we raced to bay one. Dr. Bradley met us there as the EMT went over his
vitals and injuries.

I lifted the paddles
and charged them to life, positioning them on his chest. Feeling the power and
the terror of death that hung in the balance, I stood with him at fate’s door.
And just like that, he had a heart beat again.

“Good job today,
Green,” Dr. Bradley had said later that day.

“It’s Tori—and thanks!”
I corrected, smiling at her.

“Ha! I’ll tell you
what, ‘
it’s Tori
’, I’ll call you that after you’ve survived six months
here…until then, it’s Green,” she said.

Though it wasn’t as
dramatic as pulling a lead pipe from a chest, I had helped a boy come back to
life…and I was hooked. The fear would still come, but I no longer hid from the
unknown. The adrenaline rushes were more addictive than anything I had ever
encountered, and I needed and wanted more.

When adrenaline pumps,
every other thought and emotion takes a step back. You are a slave to it;
willing to do whatever it asks, no matter what the cost.

And if that cost threatened to make me forget
who I was...then I would be a slave to it forever.

Noon to midnight was a
surprisingly good shift for a newbie in Emergency. It was one that I suspected
was not entirely left to
chance,
but I couldn't let myself dwell on the
things I couldn’t yet control. Soon it wouldn’t matter anyway. Once Dr. Crane
signed off, I’d be back to working 70 to 80 hours a week if I could just put up
with a few more sessions. Last night’s shift was pretty much what I had
anticipated: tours of the floor, introductions met with unfriendly exchanges
from female nurses and overly friendly exchanges from male counterparts who saw
me as another fish in their sea.

It had been a
relatively slow evening; nothing too dramatic had been called in, which always
made for an interesting balance. On the one hand, emergency nurses were happy
when the general public didn’t break any stupidity meters by getting caught
doing something crazy, illegal or dangerous. On the other hand, it was slightly
depressing when we couldn’t be a part of any extreme lifesaving efforts.

Stacie had been online
with Jack for the majority of the morning, which was his tomorrow
afternoon
in Australia. I could hear her contagious bouts of laughter even through the
layers of drywall in between us. They had been high school sweethearts and a
couple I had secretly hoped to emulate one day.

Fat chance of that now.

Broken and damaged
didn’t usually make the top of the list for best life partners.

For almost as far back
as I could remember, Jack had been a part of our lives. His jovial personality
and big brother-type attitude made him impossible
not
to love. He taught
me to drive, ski, and even how to hold and shoot a gun. He was a computer nerd
by trade and an over-achiever to any and all experimental feats and activities.
He could master almost anything he tried; whether it was fixing an electrical
issue, learning a new instrument, or mastering mixed martial arts. He knew how
to dissect whatever was at hand and break it down to steps and strategies,
overcoming it mentally before he even laid a hand on it. I poked my head in
quickly and said hello to him. Then I went to my room and pulled on my running
shoes.

“Tori…if you are
thinking about running you should go tonight when it cools down a bit! There is
a heat advisory out—supposed to be a hundred-and-four degrees by this afternoon!”
Stacie called to me from behind her door.

Urgh…it’s almost
mid-September for crying out loud! Aren’t temps supposed to be decreasing
instead of increasing already?

“Thanks, I’ll be fine!”

I shut the front door
before I could hear her argument and then I was off. The air was hot—stifling
really. It was like running head-on into an industrial sized blow-dryer, set to
high. I avoided the street where the kids had played the other day and headed
down to an area with an open field. It was being groomed for yet another street
of mirrored brick houses, each of them the size of a city block.

I rounded the corner
past the crews of construction workers eating lunch under their makeshift
shade. They gawked at me as I ran by. Perhaps they were wondering why anyone
would be out running in this heat today.

I was starting to ask
myself the same thing.

I became more
purposeful with each stride, pushing myself to go on. I had never been one who
cared much about the time or distance of my runs. That was not why I had
started in the first place. I never had a goal to achieve some physical
greatness, or a long distance record.

Running was just a way
to deal.

I’m sure there were
lots of other ways to cope. Alcohol, for instance, which was good at numbing,
seemed too easy and never lasted long enough. It also required more each time I
drank, in order to get me to a place of forgetfulness. And was that really what
I wanted, to forget Anna?
No.

Some people in my
position with access to pharmaceutical drugs might become pill-poppers, but I
had seen how that ended up and I knew that it would only jeopardize my career,
and ability to work. There was no room for mistakes in trauma. So, that left me
with physical outlets only.

I chose what I hated
most: running.

Fighting emotional pain
with physical pain made sense to me when not much else had, so I stuck with it.
I imagined I had run as far as ten miles on a single jaunt before, and most
likely averaged closer to around four or five now. I wiped at my forehead and
fanned my shirt in vain trying to vent myself, but to no avail. The sun bore
down on me and for a second I thought of the Australian desert.

Had Jack seen it?

I bet it feels just
like this…dry, hot, and no mercy for anything living in it.

I pushed on.

Only five blocks to go.
You can do this Tori, PUSH!

I ran diagonally
through the tall grassy field. I had to get back on the main path which led to
Stacie’s block. It was then, while I was in the grass, that the ground started
to shift.

Right to left.

Left to right.

I shook my head to
clear my vision, but it was unrelenting. Everything was distorting. The ground
kept moving beneath my feet.

Is this an earthquake?

I tried to run toward
the cement sidewalk, but my legs were like rubber and trembled under my weight.
My head felt as if it were being pulled down by some invisible rope. It no
longer seemed attached to the rest of me.

Regaining balance was
impossible.

The ground was coming
fast.

Right before I hit, I
heard myself utter, “Oh, crap.”

**********

I heard it long before
I could see it, the loud obnoxious sound of a siren. It wasn’t too long before
I felt myself being lifted up off the ground. The surface I laid on actually
seemed harder, if that were possible. I couldn’t open my eyes or respond, yet I
could still hear in this foggy black world that engulfed me. My head ached, as
did my left hip.

I must have fallen on
my left side.

Why? Did I trip?

I could hear two
distinct voices talking—both male. I felt a tight grip on my upper left arm
that was growing more intense with each passing second.

Blood pressure.

Someone is taking my
blood pressure. 

I tried to lift my
head, but it was pushed down.

I tried again, but it
was pushed back down. This time I worked to open my heavy eyelids, slowly.
Fuzzy shapes were swirling around, dancing before my eyes. If I weren’t so
desperate to understand what was happening, I would have tried to reach out for
them. It was a like a freaky side-show. It was then that I felt a prick in my
left wrist.

“Ow!”

I swung my right arm in
front of me trying to hit whatever or whoever it was that was holding me down.
This time, I heard the voice that was attached to my wrist yell, “Okay Mike.
Let’s take her in to Dallas Northwest.”

No...No Please! Stop!

I forced my eyes to
focus. I was blinking rapidly when I saw him.

“
Tree Man?
” I
asked, completely confused as my head was pushed down yet another time.

“Please relax,
Victoria. You have heat exhaustion from running in a hundred degree weather.
Did you just call me ‘Tree Man’?” he asked, sounding almost as confused as I
was.

I felt the ambulance
lurch to life and then remembered what was happening.

“Please, no! Don’t take
me in. I’ll be fine, I promise. No more running today. Just take me home, I can
rest there!”

“You are dehydrated,
overheated and need more fluids than what I have on hand. There were other…
geniuses
like you out there today, believe it or not,” he said.

Hey…is he mocking me,
again? What’s with this guy?

“Please, I can’t go
there. I just…can’t. I’m a Trauma Nurse and just started work there yesterday.
I can’t let them see me like this. Please! I’ll do anything!”

My voice was high and
squeaky, very out of character for me, but it came out that way nonetheless. I
was desperate. This was not the impression I needed to make at my new place of
work. This kind of thing could stick with me for the duration of my nursing
career. I could just imagine the nicknames I’d be called…and I just got rid of
“Green”.

He looked down at me,
“Is that a promise?” he asked grinning widely, raising his perfectly groomed
eyebrows at me in question.

“Uh, will you take me
home?” I asked again, still desperate, but nodding in response.

“Okay. Mike, turn left
in two blocks on Baker Ave. It’s the third house on the right,” he said to the
driver.

“How did…who are-”

My head started to
pound again before I could finish my question.

“Shhh…just rest. Lay
your head back. The home remedy won’t be nearly as enjoyable for you, though,”
he said, chuckling lightly to himself.

We pulled up to
Stacie’s house.

If being carried in by
an EMT while sweaty, hot and delirious wasn’t embarrassing enough, seeing my
sister in a full-blown panic attack on the sidewalk was.

“Oh. My. Gosh! What
happened? I told you not to go running, Tori! It’s heat stroke isn’t it, Kai?
Oh. My. Gosh!” she said again, sounding like a teenager caught up in a MTV
drama.

Kai? So, he has a name.

“It’s just heat
exhaustion for now, but she does need to get cooled off quickly. Where’s your
nearest shower, Stacie?” he asked, carrying me through the doorway and heading
down the hall.

What? He can’t possibly
mean-

“Sure, of course. Right
this way,” Stacie said, leading us both to the nearest bathroom.

“Take her shoes off and
turn the water to cold,” Kai said.

I was the one in a full
panic now, “Is this really necessary?”

“Yes!” They both said
in unison.

The next thing I knew I
was lying in a bathtub, fully clothed, with freezing water sheeting down on me.
I gasped and cried out for air, flailing my body around the tub like an octopus
on the loose. No one seemed to care though, and no one offered me any help. In
just a matter of seconds, I was fully alert and angry as ever.