Life Support

It had been such a long day and he was in such a deep sleep. When the doctor was making his rounds earlier that afternoon, he had longed for a peaceful night of rest. At eleven, he at last ungraciously collapsed onto his side of the bed, his wife thankfully unstirred, and got exactly what he wanted.

Yet, just hours later, a thunderous whirling of helicopters rudely shook him out of his heavy slumber. The doctor groaned and flipped his pillow on top of his head, but the noise still prevailed. Unfortunately, this occurrence was not uncommon. His house was sat just at the base of a rocky mountain: a popular hike from professional free climbers to families with infants. The view of the mountain from their house was stunning, yet it came with the price of frequent awakenings by midnight rescues of a strayed hiker.

As the rescue continued, search lights from the helicopters would temporarily blare through the window and across the bedroom. Now awake, he tossed the bed sheets aside, shuffled across the room, and yanked the curtains shut. To force himself back to sleep, he concentrated on his breathing like his wife had taught him to do, breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for seven. Slowly, the helicopters faded into the distance, and his thoughts became incoherent as he drifted to sleep.

Then the phone rang.

“Christ,” he muttered. He had no sense of how much time had passed since the helicopters, but the sky showed a faint glow of dawn. He answered the phone with the best professional voice he could summon at that ungodly hour.

“Dr. Lawrence  speaking.”

“This is Dr. Mendez calling from the ER, we’ve just received a man in his mid 30s who was found unconscious off of Castle Rock Trail. Colorado Police and Fire found him off-trail at the bottom of a cliff, eight hours after he had gotten separated from his wife.  Medics at the scene assumed him dead, but eventually found a weak pulse. He’s barely breathing, his pupils are dilated, and he’s suffering from blunt force trauma on his right side.”

“I’ll be right in, call the OR to book a room and prep for surgery.”

Dr. Lawrence hung up the phone and pushed himself into an upright position in bed. Now his wife was awake, and looked up at him bleary-eyed.

“D-you have t-go?”

“Yes, darling, I’ll see you in the morning.”

She squinted at the alarm clock, “technically, it is morning.”

Meanwhile, 100 miles north  on a winding road, a young driver turned down the radio and wiped a sweaty palm on her lap, the other hand remained tightly gripped on the steering wheel. “We are going to die tonight,” she said to her friend, who was sat in the passenger seat, but  gave no response to her grave remark. The driver looked over and saw that her friend was passed out, the side of her face squished against the icy window. Ellie turned her concentration back to the perilous road, heavy sheets of snow pounded on the windshield, blocking most of her visibility. It was an eerie sensation. As if she were alone, driving through liminal space and eternal darkness- perhaps never to see the light again. She felt vulnerable against the forces of nature. Occasionally, the car would lose traction and slide off its course: a split second of zero control and infinite terror. The bitter coffee Ellie bought 50 miles back at a desolate gas station remained in the cup holder, untouched and cold; she did not need caffeine to stay alert and awake. Adrenaline was enough.  

Although the drive was hellish, she felt determined to continue on. Her mother had warned her of the malicious weather over the phone yesterday evening, encouraging her to end her weekend trip early and drive home before the weather turned brutal. But like any daughter, Ellie ignored her mother’s urges and enjoyed that last day of their trip until the late afternoon.

As the car was passing over a bridge, it hit an unforgivable sheet of ice and began to slide. In a panic, she slammed on the breaks, the tires screeched, and the car spun. A burning sensation grew in her chest and resonated throughout every inch of her body as she lost control of the vehicle.

“My God!” The friend snapped out of her sleep in the midst of the chaos.

The car kept spinning until, finally, impact. The shocking slam was an indescribable sensation, but there was an instant searing pain in her stomach and a ringing in her ears.

Was she alive, dying? What had they hit? She wanted to look yet she felt paralyzed, her mind was in a disoriented frenzy and her body was in excruciating pain.

She was unable to answer any of her questions as the darkness finally encompassed her.

Meanwhile, Dr. Lawrence spent the rest of the night�"or morning�"performing emergency surgery on the poor hiker. The procedure was a craniotomy, removing a section of the skull to reduce the pressure of the swelling. Although it went without complication, the man was in a coma and would most likely live with permanent brain damage. Seeing cases such as these made Lawrence ache, another human life drastically damaged. Underneath all the bruising and swelling was a bright and fit man�"supposedly a freelance investigative journalist.

He stood outside the door of the patient's room in the ICU about to endure, for him, the most complicated aspect of neurosurgery: talking to the family.

 He opened the door to a haggard woman in her early 30s transfixed upon the patient, who looked up at Dr. Lawrence with a start.
“Hello,” she said.

“Good morning, I’m Dr. Lawrence. You must be the wife of Mr. Harrison?”

“Yes, I’m Mrs. Julia Harrison. What’s wrong with him?”

“Well, first of all, I just wanted to say I apologize for all of the waiting and for all that has happened. I understand it has been a rough night for you. Your husband has suffered from a subdural hematoma, when blood collects under the skull and outside the brain. We’ve temporarily removed a small section of the skull to reduce the pressure and allow the swelling go down. He is currently in a coma on life support...”  She nodded along as the doctor explained, her lips in a pencil-thin line. “For how long do you suppose he’ll be on life support?”

Lawrence let out a deep sigh. “I would give him up to six weeks before considering taking him off, if he is still unresponsive by then.”

“Oh. What happens otherwise?”

“It’s hard to tell this early, but I’m afraid the chances are slim that he will make a full recovery.”  

“I see.” She stated and looked down upon her husband. “There is one detail about Mr. Harrison you must know. He is the younger brother of Governor Rodger Harrison, who will be in here later with his security detail to visit.” Her eyes reminded Dr. Lawrence of those of a shark, they gave a dead stare that emitted no emotion. She was unreadable. Most likely the shock and exhaustion, he assumed.

Footsteps were the first thing Ellie became aware of. They paced around her; some treaded softly, gingerly, others trampled around like elephants. They would touch her hands and arms: a cold and rubbery gloved hand checking a pulse, the soft, warm grasp of her mother's, the coarseness and strength of her father’s. She also listened the rhythmic beeping of monitors, a constant reminder she was alive. Ellie tried wiggling her fingers and toes, but it felt as strenuous as lifting weights. Something was lodged in her throat, but she felt too weak to resist it. Her sleep felt like restless agony. With the medication, the line between reality and dream was blurred. She would hear voices, too. Dreams of nothing but voices would swim in her head for what felt like an eternity. It was brilliant, yet horrifying, the nightmares she conjured up in her sedated state-of-mind.

She finally opened her eyes and began to resist the intubation, it was promptly taken out. Her doctor came in soon after.

“Good evening, Ellie. I’m Dr. Lawrence. How are you feeling?”

“Sore.” That was an understatement. Her voice sounded as if she were a chainsmoker for fifty years. “Who is the patient in the room next to mine?” The question caught him off-guard.

“Your soreness is understandable. And I’m afraid I’m not legally allowed to disclose that information, why do you ask?”

“Can you tell me what happened to them?” Ellie was not even sure why she was asking, yet it felt necessary for some reason.

“The poor man fell off a cliff while he was hiking with his wife.”

“Oh, that’s horrible. Is he still alive?”

“Unfortunately, he passed away this morning.”

“Oh my God.”  Then she remembered.

“Ellie, what’s the matter?” Dr. Lawrence had noticed the color drain from her face.

“I-I  heard something, I thought it must have been a dream but..but.” It was all coming back to her. “Oh my God it was awful!” Ellie began to cry, overwhelmed.

Dr. Lawrence sat at the end of the bed. “Tell me what you heard.”

“But I can barely remember, I don’t even know it was real.” She cried.

“It’s alright, just do the best you can.” She wiped her tears with the bedsheet and told him everything…

Julia Harrison left the hospital as soon as she had finished speaking with her husband’s on-call surgeon. She only returned later that night, where she was to meet Roger Harrison in her husband’s room.

The ICU late at night juxtaposed the atmosphere of the ICU during the daytime. The halls normally bustling with people were now desolate. A few bright hall lights remained on, making it an eerie, ghostly scene of only the sick and dying.

Mrs. Harrison floated down the hall and took note of the patient in the room next to her husband’s: a young woman with a swollen and bruised face, breathing through a ventilator, and lying deadly still in bed. She then curtly nodded to the two security men standing outside the room; Rodger was stood over his younger brother.

“Oh God, I can’t believe you’ve  actually done it,” he whispered, his hands pressed to his cheeks.

“The deed is not done, yet,” she responded. “Tell your people to leave.”

“What do you mean it isn’t done yet?” Rodger asked.

“I mean, he’s still alive.”

“But his incapacitation still buys me time to finish campaigning and win the reelection.” He retorted.

“He’ll say something as soon as he gets out of here. Did you not think of that?” Julia said,

“What do you want to do now? Finish my own brother off? Have you thought of what will happen when�"if�" he recovers?  If he wakes, he will barely be able to talk.” Julia was now growing frustrated with Roger and his cowardice.

“It was my job to silence him from speaking out about you laundering money into the campaign funds. Time and injury won’t stop him from releasing what you’ve  done. And if he speaks out against you, he’ll take me down too. My husband will let everyone know that I pushed him off of that damned cliff.”

“But he’s my brother,” he said with desperation.

“He’s your enemy.”

Dr. Lawrence was speechless. He thanked Ellie for telling the truth and left her room. This information sat heavily in his chest.  Her aloof behavior, her taking her husband off of life support after just 48 hours, he should have known. Julia Harrison did not choose to euthanize her husband, she chose to murder him.