The Rome Prophecy

80

Louisa hits the panic button and starts CPR on Anna.

In a film or TV show, everything would be okay, but Louisa knows better. Statistically, her chance of saving her is only about fifty-fifty.

She starts with mouth-to-mouth and is already working chest compressions when the crash team and their portable defibrillator arrive.

Louisa steps back. ‘She seemed to have some kind of fit. When I came in, she’d blacked out and wasn’t breathing.’

‘Probably asystolic,’ says a young male doctor. ‘We’ll see what we can do for her.’ He turns to two nurses. ‘Hook up the machine; get me Vasopressin as well.’

Louisa drifts to the rear of the room as they lift Anna back on to the bed and start the fight to save her life.

‘She’s flatlined!’ shouts a nurse.

Anna’s gown is pulled open. Electrodes are stuck above the right and below the left breast. Controlled electric shocks juice into her.

‘Nothing so far.’

Louisa looks down and sees her hands are shaking, something they’ve not done since she was in med school.

She’d give anything right now for a good slug of brandy and a long draw on a cigarette, or maybe something even stronger.

‘Again!’ someone shouts.

Louisa takes a deep breath. It’s an old machine, manually run, not like the AEDs in the main wards.

Defib seldom works first time.

They have to get the shock level right, so they often go in with too low a charge.

The second or third go should do it.

‘Again!’

Bodies scuffle around the bed.

Hands seem to be all over Anna, eyes stuck to monitors recording vital signs.

‘Again!’ They all step back once more and watch in frozen hope.

Then they’re on her again. Devouring information. Checking her heartbeat, her pulse, her eyes.

More CPR.

A long silence.

‘Call it.’

Louisa can’t believe what she’s just heard.

Two words. Said in a depressingly calm tone.

‘Call it.’

A male wrist juts out from the scrum of green scrubs. ‘Time of death: 11.55.35.’

The room starts to sway.

Louisa has to sit before she falls.

She watches the crash team swirl around the bed until they become just a tilting haze.

Anna is dead.