"Holly Lisle - Sympathy for the Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

drug out of the cart. She injected it into the IV, wrote down the time
she’d given the drug and the amount she gave on a paper towel,
and watched for any change in that thin green line.
She said, “Your daughter called to tell me she and your two
grandchildren would be stopping by this evening. You have a very
nice family. They love you very much.”
The ventilator hissed, the IVs dripped and beeped, and Mrs.
Paulley’s cardiac rhythm got worse. Dayne put the blood pressure
cuff on automatic and set it to do a check every minute, then
lowered the head of the bed until it was flat.
“Stacy,” she yelled, “get the nursing supervisor and the
respiratory therapist up here stat, and change Dr. Batskold’s page
to stat, too. She’s going to code on me!”
Mary Deiner ran into the room. She was one of the other three
RNs in the unit; her patients were bad, too, but the ICU nurses
helped with each other’s codes. “What do you want me to do?”
“Defibrillate when we need it. Push drugs. I’ll do CPR.”
Mary nodded, and warmed up the defibrillator. The high-pitched
whine of that machine joined the rest of the machine noises in the
cramped room.
Stacy came in and grabbed the code log. “Should I start it now?”
Dayne was running in a second bolus dose of the cardiac drug.
“Not yet. She still has a viable rhythm.” She shook her head.
“No—go ahead and write these down.” She handed the ward
secretary the paper towel with the blood pressure and the two
boluses of cardiac drugs noted, as well as the changes in the
titration of the IV drips.
The blood pressure monitor showed that Mrs. Paulley’s pressure
had dropped. Her heart was failing fast in spite of everything Dayne
tried.
“Increase the dose on her Nipride for me, Mary.” The machine
that ran the blood pressure medicine was closer to Mary than to
Dayne.
Dayne studied the monitor. The wide, slashing Vs of the irregular
ventricular beats still ran across the screen in clumps. Then all the
normal beats vanished. The monitor showed nothing but a broad
band of up-and-down slashes—its alarm went off at the desk with a
scream. The blood pressure monitor alarmed at the same instant.
The old woman’s heart was no longer moving blood through her
lungs into her brain or other vital organs. She had no blood pressure
and no pulse.
“Shock her,” Dayne said to Mary. “Start at a hundred joules.” That
was a low amount of electricity, but the old woman was nothing but
bones.
The supervisor and the respiratory therapist ran in as Mary
pulled Mrs. Paulley’s gown up and put the cold metal paddles on her
chest. “Clear!” Mary yelled, and everyone stood away from the bed.
There was a whump as the paddles discharged their electricity,
then Dayne felt for a pulse at the woman’s neck while she watched
the monitor. The line that crawled across the screen was ragged