13
Tuesday, June 6, 2006 – 9:17 a.m.
Aspen Memorial Hospital – Room 505
Crashing through the doorway, Dr. Slaterbaugh and Dan were met by a shaking, ice-cold, blood-covered and dying Benita Noveen. The EKG machine lay haphazardly on the floor, the LCD display smashed out and glass spread across the tile. Rushing to her side, Ken grabbed Benita’s arms. Overpowering him, she broke free of his grip and swung at his face and arms with outstretched fingers. Catching his right forearm, Benita’s fingernails left a gash and blood began to ooze from the wound.
“Call security!” Ken yelled to Dan.
Dan ran to the bedside phone, being sure to keep out of Benita’s reach. He dialed the security desk and asked for assistance.
“Call for Dr. Johansen as well! I need someone who’s used to dealing with emergency situations like this.”
Picking up the receiver, Dan called the ER. Quickly explaining the situation, he was told that Henry was on his way. Benita’s right arm swung in a wild arc connecting with the side of Dan’s face. Dan stumbled backwards, the phone receiver smashing into the wall as he fell. Catching himself on the edge of the bedside table, Dan didn’t fall all the way to the floor. His momentum, however, knocked the tissues, glass of water, cradle of the phone and a bedpan onto the floor. His back plowing into the wall, Dan came to a sudden stop. Semi-stunned, it took him a few seconds to regain his stability.
Meanwhile, Ken continued to hold onto Benita’s arms. He was trying to keep her from hurting herself and anyone else. She’d already done serious damage to her face and arms. Deep gouges in her cheeks and neck as well as on her arms indicated that she’d been digging deep into her flesh with her fingernails as if trying to purge her body of some unwanted being.
Calming down some, Benita’s body began to go limp. The EEG machine was still functioning. Extremely high brain wave activity was parading across the readout. The sine wave activity was higher than Ken had ever seen in his career. He didn’t think it was possible for activity of this nature to be possible in the human mind.
As Ken continued to hold onto her arms, Henry, accompanied by two security guards burst through the door.
“What’s wrong?” Henry managed between heavy breaths.
“I don’t know,” Ken replied. “Benita just went berserk. Dan and I came rushing in when we heard the crashing of the EKG machine and found her laying her drenched in blood and completely out of control. I tried to hold her down and ended up with this gash and Dan was knocked clean into the wall. Then, without warning, she just settled down and quit. Her brain wave activity is awful high though, more so than I’ve ever seen.”
“Wow! It’s really above normal. What do you think is causing it?”
Benita stirred in her bed and Ken turned to grab her arms again, his entire body tense.
“That’s just it, I don’t know.”
“Anything we can do?” one of the security guards asked.
“She seems more stable now. Can you hang around for a few minutes just to be sure?”
“Sure thing.”
Stepping to the side, the two security guards made room for the doctors to move in closer to Benita and check on her.
“I have a CAT scan scheduled for this afternoon, but I’m not sure what she’ll be like by then. With these episodes, she could be too unstable to move.”
“Maybe you can give her a sedative to keep her calm and get the CAT done while she’s out,” Henry proposed.
“I thought about that, but I don’t want to overdo it. I don’t know exactly why she’s acting the way she is. Could be brain damage, a chemical deficiency, motor control problems, or any number of things. If I do too much, it may end up causing more damage than good.”
Benita moved in her bed and moaned. All five heads in the room moved in perfect harmony to look at Benita. Her body began to tense up. She began to squirm as if someone was holding her down. Her body began to twist and turn and she arched her back several times. Ken’s deep-furrowed brow indicated his depth of concern and his helplessness in helping her. He reached over to grab her arm.
“My God!” Ken blurted. “She feels like a block of ice!”
Henry and Dan both touched her. Their hands retracted as if they’d touched a hot burner.
“What’s going on?” Henry queried. “Her temperature must be below 90º. She’ll die in no time at this rate.”
“Dan,” Henry ordered, “Go get some warm blankets stat! We need to bring her temperature up now. I also need some warm IV bottles connected immediately to warm her internally. We don’t have much time.”
Dan ran around the end of the bed and out the door. The sound of a gurney rolling by briefly filled the room as the door shut behind Dan.
Benita began to swing her arms and kick her feet. The bed covers were pulled from the mattress and kicked onto the floor. Benita’s arms began to move in such a way that it appeared she was trying to swim. Ken, Henry and the security guards tried to hold her down so that she wouldn’t knock herself out of bed. Struggling to do so, all four of them found it very difficult, if not impossible to keep her from moving. Her head continued to shake back and forth in an emphatic “no” movement and she continued to moan and groan as if in pain. Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream pealed forth from her mouth causing all four men to squint their eyes and turn their heads away from the sound as best as they could without letting go of Benita.
Dan came running back into the room just in time to hear Benita beginning to cough. Her cough was not just a cough though. It was a cough that sounded as if her throat were full of thick paste, perhaps filled with pudding, phlegmy, like the bubbling of mud pots in Yellowstone Park. Then she attempted to suck in a breath of air, but was unable to do so. Her diaphragm moved upward in the typical inhalation fashion, but no air entered her body. She looked panicked, her eyes bulging under her eyelids. Still, she tried to throw her arms and legs around, but was hindered by the four-man team holding her down. The thick, gurgling, pasty sound again emerged from her throat. Her exhalations were forced as if she were trying to exhale through a thick pillow. Her face was beginning to turn blue and her heart was on the verge of exploding from the extreme tension and lack of oxygen it was in dire need of.
With blank faces drained of blood, the doctors’ looked at each other, their eyes filled with sorrow and pain as they tried mentally to pull up anything in their vast reservoirs of knowledge that would help them save this dying woman. Nothing came to mind. Again, Benita tried to breath through the pudding-thickened air. Her body arced into the air, her arms and legs became tense, her eyes bulged under her eyelids and her skin looked almost purple. With one final attempt to breath, Benita’s body tried desperately to inhale the oxygen it needed to live. It was not to be. Benita’s eyes burst open as if someone had let go of a spring-loaded window shade. Pure terror filled them as the light of the room reflected off their glassy surface. Staring into space, oblivious to anything around her, Benita’s body suddenly went limp. She appeared to be a marionette whose strings had suddenly been cut. Her breathing stopped. Ken quickly checked her pulse. Zero. He listened for a breath. None. He looked into her eyes. Non-responsive. He felt her skin. Ice. He checked her brain wave activity. Flat line. Unwilling to give up, Ken ordered a crash cart. Within seconds the cart was charged and the paddles in place. Hundreds of joules of electricity coursed through Benita’s body as everyone in the room stepped away from Benita. The jolt of electricity did about as much good as electrifying an old piece of leather. After 40 minutes of constant CPR and electrically induced attempts to restart her heart, it became obvious beyond the shadow of a doubt that Benita was dead.
Ken, Henry, Dan and the security guards looked at each other and then back at Benita. Although none of them knew this woman, they still sensed the lose of a human life. An empty feeling gnawed at their souls as they pondered Benita’s demise. Reaching over and covering her head with the sheet, Ken absent-mindedly stroked his mustache. Deep in thought, Ken was determined more than ever to figure out what had happened to Benita. He would re-check every chart note, every medication and every test that either he or her personal physician had written down over the years. Ken was not going to be beat. His job was to save lives, not lose them. Today the intangible hand of death had beaten him.
All five turned and left the room. Ken called the morgue and was told that two technicians would be up shortly. Dan quietly sat down at his desk while Henry nodded at Ken and turned to go back downstairs to the ER. The elevator doors shut behind the security guards. Ken turned and walked solemnly back to his office. Behind door 505 lay a mystery and a lost human life that needed an explanation.
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