A Curve in the Road (Page 33)

It’s driving me mad that I can’t do anything to help, and I don’t understand what’s happening to me.

Is this real? Am I dreaming again?

Or am I dead?

A gurney bursts through the doors to the OR.

Corinne says to whoever is pushing it, “She passed out. She’s unconscious.”

I’m not unconscious! I hear everything you’re saying!

I’m still listening to what’s going on above me . . . the resident is focused . . . alarms are still screaming . . .

I’m as limp as a rag doll, but I feel every movement, every hand on my body as they lift me onto the gurney, extend the wheels, and roll me out of the OR. My heart thunders in my chest. I want to tell them what’s going on—that I’m still here—but I can’t. I’m trapped inside this physical shell that won’t move.

One of my colleagues—Jack Bradley, an ER doc—helps push the gurney somewhere. I don’t know where they’re taking me.

“She collapsed in the middle of a surgery?” he asks with disbelief.

“Yes,” Corinne replies. “She just passed out without any warning. Went down like a ton of bricks.”

“Did she complain of chest pains or anything beforehand?”

“No, but she said her eyes were dry. She was squeezing them open and shut as if she was having trouble seeing.”

The gurney swings around and comes to a halt. All I can do is lie there like a corpse while they place an oxygen mask over my face and wrap a blood pressure cuff around my arm.

“All right—stat glucometer, and let’s get a twelve-lead EKG, put her on O2, and get her on a heart monitor. We’ll need a full lab panel and a pregnancy test. Abbie, can you hear me? It’s me, Jack.”

He lifts my eyelids and shines a penlight at my pupils.

Inside my head, I’m screaming and shouting, desperate for someone to hear me and understand that I’m conscious! I fight for the strength to move—please, just a finger or toe—but it’s no use.

And I don’t need a pregnancy test, for Christ’s sake! I had a hysterectomy, not to mention the fact that I haven’t been sexually active in months.

Then something happens. I manage to push through the physical resistance. My hand is limp, but I can lift my wrist, then my fingers. My plea for help finally escapes my lips, though it comes out as a low, weak, pathetic-sounding moan.

“She’s waking up,” Corinne says.

My eyes flutter open, and the first thing I see is Jack leaning over me. He’s a young ER doc, known for his passion for surfing. “Can you hear me, Abbie?”

I nod my head and take in a deep breath as my muscles begin to work again. I lift both hands, wiggle my fingers, and try to sit up.

Jack eases me back down, which is just as well because I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. All I want to do is go to sleep.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks.

I know the routine, so I answer everything he’s about to ask me. “Yes, you’re Jack Bradley, and my name is Abbie MacIntyre.” I swallow heavily and fight for the strength to continue. My voice is weak, and I can’t speak very fast. “It’s Monday morning, and I just collapsed in the OR. But I’m okay now.”

“Let me be the judge of that. Can you tell me if you had any symptoms beforehand? Dizziness? Chest pains? Corinne said you were blinking, as if you were having trouble focusing. You said your eyes were dry?”

I lay my open palm on my forehead. “Yes, but that wasn’t the real problem. I felt sleepy, and I was trying to stay awake. I’ve been sleeping a lot lately, taking frequent naps in the day. I have an appointment to see my doctor about it this afternoon. But I’m not pregnant. I had a hysterectomy years ago.”

“Okay. Good to know. How long has this been going on?” Jack asks.

I try to think. “Since my accident, I guess. I thought the fatigue was stress related, but lately I’ve been having some strange dreams that are more like hallucinations, and this is the second time I’ve passed out—although I didn’t actually pass out just now. I was completely conscious and awake. I could hear everything that was going on around me. I just couldn’t move my body or open my eyes or speak. It was total paralysis.”

“Okay . . .” Jack stalls for a few seconds while he mulls over everything. “And this started happening after your accident?”

“Yes.”

He turns to one of the other nurses. “Let’s get someone down here from neuro. Tell them who the patient is, that it’s Dr. MacIntyre.”

“Really . . . ,” I say, “I don’t want any special treatment . . .”

The nurse goes to a phone to make the call, and Jack touches my arm. “You’re not on anything, are you? Any medications? Alcohol? Illicit drugs? I need to know.”

I shake my head.

“Then tell me more about how you felt in the seconds just before you collapsed. Describe the experience to me.”

I pause. “Okay, but first, can you tell me what’s going on with the gallbladder patient? Is he okay?”

“We’ll check on that for you.” Jack makes eye contact with another nurse, who leaves the room.

I take a deep breath and think back to how I felt just before I collapsed.

“I was tired,” I tell him, “but that’s nothing new. Like I said, I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. But then I felt a tingling sensation in my head. I thought it would pass and that I was going to make it through the rest of the surgery, but then the patient’s blood pressure dropped, and alarms started going off. I felt a rush of adrenaline, and that’s when my knees gave out, and I couldn’t hold on to the instruments. My whole body just wilted. It was like all my limbs turned to spaghetti, and that’s why I fell. But like I said, I was conscious the whole time. I was fully aware of everything that was happening in the room. I could hear the resident and the anesthetist taking over, and then I felt myself being lifted onto the gurney. I heard Corinne tell you that I was blinking a lot and that I said my eyes were dry.”

Jack frowns at me. “Was it like . . . an out-of-body experience?”

Of all the doctors I know, only Jack would ask that question.

“No, I was very much inside my body, and my eyes were closed, so I couldn’t actually see anything, and yet I could see it in my mind. It was like I was trapped, and I wanted to break free from the paralysis, but I couldn’t.”

He nods at me. “You say your knees buckled when you felt the panic from the alarms going off?”

“Yes.”

A nurse returns with news about my patient in the OR. “Everything’s fine,” she says. “They’re just closing up now.”

“Thank God.”

Jack glances toward the door to the trauma room and pats my arm. “I’ll be right back. Just stay put, okay?”

Even though I have plenty to do in the hospital and another surgery scheduled in an hour, I don’t put up a fight because all I want to do is sleep. As soon as Jack is gone, I close my eyes and fall into a fitful slumber in which I dream that I’m skiing fast down a snow-covered mountain, unable to slow down because it’s too steep. I’m terrified I’m going to plummet to my death.

Then suddenly I’m being chased by a mugger in a city neighborhood. I dash into an alley, search for a place to hide, but there’s nowhere to conceal myself, so I just keep running, leaping over bags of garbage . . .

Someone touches my shoulder and shakes me hard. I wake with a gasp.

The head of neurology is standing over me, watching me intently. I’m surprised to see him, and I worry that I might have been moaning or talking in my sleep, none of which is terribly professional.

At least this time, I know I was dreaming. I have no illusions that I was actually skiing down a snowy mountain or running from a thief who wanted to hurt me.

I try to sit up, but I feel weak and groggy. “Dr. Tremblay . . . how long was I out?”

“About ten minutes,” he tells me. “How are you feeling now?”

“Rotten,” I reply, leaning up on my elbows. Then I decide it would be best to rest my head on the pillow before adding, “And exhausted. Like my body is made of lead. I’m just so tired.”

He ponders that and nods with understanding. “Dr. Bradley told me what happened. He described your symptoms to me, but I’d like to hear it from you. Can you tell me everything you remember, leading up to the moment you collapsed? And anything else you think is relevant about your health.”

“Of course.” I explain my fainting episode again and the level of awareness I had, along with the strange dreams I’ve had at home over the past few weeks. And my car accident.

Dr. Tremblay listens attentively.

I also mention that I’ve put on a few pounds.

When I’m finished telling him everything, he asks, “Are you aware that you were dreaming just now?”

“Yes. Was I moaning? Or tossing and turning?”

“No, but your eyelids were fluttering. You’ve been in a state of REM since the moment I entered the room.”

He raises an eyebrow, and I understand why he’s telling me this—because we both know it’s not normal to enter the REM phase so quickly after drifting off. It should take anywhere from eighty to a hundred minutes.