Absence of Faith (3 page)

"The hottest day we've had so far
has only been around 50 degrees and I wasn't sun tanning," Carson
said.

"We're aware of that and we’re
still doing tests. Don't worry you're recovering nicely. You should
be out of here by Saturday."

"It's probably from waking up in
the body bag," Carson said.

Doctor Westwood was silent and
looked down at the chart.

"Strange. I don't remember falling
asleep while driving," Carson added.

"Well, we'll have one of our staff
psychiatrists look in on you if you want. You hit your head pretty
hard."

"No, that's okay. I'll be fine,"
Carson replied. "Why was I in the morgue?"

"I don't know. I wasn't the
attending physician."

"Where's Linda?"

"Your wife? I believe she's on her
way. Now get some rest. I'll see you again tomorrow."

Carson noticed a foul, burnt odor.
He began to smell the sheets, and then he brought his arm up to
nose, and discovered the origin of the smell - it was his own skin.
The skin smelled burnt, foul and rotted, yet his skin was only
damaged to the degree of severe sunburn.
Only burn victims would
have such an odor,
he thought. He was puzzled. He thought about
it for a moment and then drifted into a peaceful sleep staring at
the flickering images of the TV floating above his bed.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, a face
stared down at him.

"Linda!" he said.

"Oh, Carson I thought I lost you. I
was so scared," she said her eyes watering.

"I love you," Carson said weakly
putting his arms around her despite his pain.

"What happened?" Carson
asked.

"You fell asleep, the car went off
the bridge, and I pulled us out," Linda said between
tears.

Her face hardened. "You damn near
killed us! You should have let me drive or we should have stayed at
Sean's if you were that tired!"

"But, I wasn't tired. I was wide
awake and then there was nothing."

"You must have passed out from
exhaustion. From now on I’m driving home from any
parties."

"I guess so..." he said.

"You were DOA, Carson," she said.
"I watched them try to revive you. You were dead."

"DOA? No wonder I can't remember
any of it," he said. "I came back...in the morgue." He shuttered at
the thought.

"It's a good thing that orderly was
there. I would have been pretty damn mad if you left me," Linda
said squeezing his hand and smiling.

"All I remember is holding onto
your hand. I'm still puzzled how I could have fallen asleep. I was
wide-awake and having fun driving on the bridge," he
said.

"You remember holding my
hand?"

"Yeah and I floated towards you,
and grabbed your hand, and together we floated to the
surface."

"You didn’t grab my hand. You were
unconscious the whole time," Linda said. "I remember waking up and
staring at you. You were in a daze. The next thing I know the car
is drifting towards the railing and then it crashed through. I was
thrown forward, and the dashboard seemed to float downward, and my
whole body lifted slightly. I screamed as the car fell and I
remember the seat belt suddenly getting very tight against my
shoulder. The car hit the water, I was thrown forward, and then
everything went black except for the dashboard. There was a
scraping sound and the car came to a stop. I could see a faint
outline of tree branches pushed against the windshield from the
headlights. Then water sprayed into the car from all over. It all
happened in slow motion, and I remember every detail - it was the
most frightening experience of my life!"

"Hello, Doctor Hyll," said Doctor
Matthew Stokes as he passed Carson in the hospital corridor. Stokes
was the prominent chief of staff of the Ocean Village Hospital and
towered at least a foot over Carson. "Good to have you back," he
said as he scratched the side of his round, baldhead.

"Thank you, Doctor Stokes," Carson
said. "Three weeks seems like an eternity. I was beginning to get
into the soaps."

"Well, you take it easy these first
few days. We don't want you back here as a patient," Stokes said
and disappeared down a hallway.

Carson raised his hand slightly in
a sort of half wave and kept walking towards the ER. Within seconds
after arriving, the police radio alarm came to life.

"Here we go!" a nurse yelled. "We
have a white female coming in with head injuries from a car
accident. Age seventy plus. Vitals are iffy."

The double doors slammed opened and
three paramedics hurriedly pushed a stretcher through. Several
nurses rushed towards them along with Carson.

"It's Mrs. Whitehead!" one nurse
screamed. "What's she doing still driving?"

"Her forehead is lacerated. Get me
a saline pack," another nurse said.

"The old woman is delirious. She's
mumbling something," another nurse said. They pushed the stretcher
into the closest empty room. One nurse rubbed her wrist looking for
a suitable vein to plug in an intravenous needle. Another wiped a
large section of blood off the woman's head; another attached
contacts to her chest, which led to an EKG machine.

"We've got cardiac arrest!" the
nurse yelled who had just placed the contacts in place.

"Bag her, now!" Carson
yelled.

"Doctor! We don't have air flow!" A
nurse yelled.

"Grab that tank over there!" Carson
responded. "NOW!"

"Pads! Hurry!" he yelled. "Two
hundred. Charge!"

A nurse handed him the pads, then
spread the conducting jelly on the bases. She set the voltage at
its minimum setting of 200 Joules. He placed the oval units on the
old woman's chest.

"Clear!"

Carson pushed the buttons and the
lifeless body flopped violently on the stretcher.

"Pulse?"

"Nothing." a nurse
replied.

"Charge, 360! Clear!" Carson
yelled.

The body bucked again.

"Still no response," said the nurse
by the EKG monitor.

"Charge! Clear!" Carson yelled
again.

"She's gone! She's gone!" the nurse
said between tears.

"No activity," the EKG nurse said.
"I think we lost her."

"Bullshit! Nurse, help me with
CPR!" Carson said.

He pressed the heel of his hand so
hard onto the woman's frail chest it looked as if he would touch
her spine.

"Nurse, I want an Epinephrine IV
push," Carson ordered.

A nurse hung a second intravenous
bag to the hanger and connected the thin, clear tube.

"Any pulse?" Carson said between
gulps of air. "Any breathing?"

"Nothing."

"Pads! Charge! Clear!" he
yelled.

"Atropine, now!" Carson
ordered.

Twenty minutes passed and Carson
stopped. He gulped air through his small narrow mouth like a hungry
animal, his skin flushed and sweat cascaded down his
temples.

"Are you all right, doctor?" a
nurse asked.

"Yeah," he replied softly. "She was
the first patient I've ever lost and I didn't know it felt this
way."

Carson stared at the old
woman.

"No. No. This is not happening! I'm
not going to let this happen! No. No. Clear! Clear!"

Carson placed the defibrillator
pads on the dead woman again and pushed the buttons. The body
bucked again. The nurse near Carson placed her hand on his arm to
tell him it was not his fault.

Suddenly, the doors swung open and
a large figure appeared.

"Carson! I got here as soon as
possible!" Stokes said rushing towards the table. "Is everything
okay?"

Carson looked up
startled.

"No, we lost her," Carson said, the
volume of his voice trailing off.

"Oh, no," Stokes said.

A nurse slowly pulled a white sheet
over Mrs. Whitehead's face and turned to leave. The others
followed. Carson and Dr. Stokes remained.

"This your first?" Stokes
asked.

"Yeah."

"First one's tough," Stokes
added.

"Does it ever get easier?" Carson
said.

"No, not really, but you tend to
feel less. You know not to get too close because it will destroy
you."

"So we should all be cold,
unfriendly bastards!" Carson shot back.

"No. Just keep it professional and
don't take it personally. You have to learn to accept that these
things are not your doing. There are other forces working
here...forces none of us can control or hope to influence, but we
try anyway...try to beat the odds...save a life, prolong
another."

Suddenly, the beeping of the EKG
machine broke the pall. The screen showed a jagged, moving green
line. Then there was an agonizing, piercing sound.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"She's come back!" Carson
screamed.

"Please! Please! Save me! Oh, the
pain, the pain..." Mrs. Whitehead wailed.

She flailed her arms and kicked her
feet like a wild animal.

"She's hallucinating! Nurse!
Nurse!" Stokes yelled.

Two nurses ran in and took their
stations next to Stokes.

Ten milligrams of Valium IV now!"
Carson said.

The nurse administered the drug
into the intravenous tube connected to the old woman's wrist. Mrs.
Whitehead's wild ranting slowly faded.

"Put her in intensive care," Carson
said.

"This is very peculiar, but not
unheard of," Stokes said.

"You mean her coming back to life?"
Carson asked.

"Yes. The Lord didn't see fit to
take her just yet. It wasn't her time.”

"Yes, that could be true, but I
think we should run some tests on her anyway," Carson
said.

"Of course," Stokes
said.

"I just think there is a reason
other than the Lord's intervention that caused her to come back.
Maybe, she never died. Maybe, her metabolism slowed to a point
where the EKG couldn't detect a heartbeat and we thought we had
lost her," Carson replied.

"You could be right. I'm just
feeling a little pious today. It's been awhile since someone died
in the ER and her dying was a bit unsettling," Stokes
said.

Carson left the ER and went to
check in on his patients. He checked on Mrs. Whitehead periodically
during the day and when he entered her room found the entire room
smelled foul. He leaned over and looked at the old woman - all of
her skin had turned red and some of it had blistered as if the
woman had spent the day at the beach. He pushed the emergency
button and a nurse with short red hair appeared.

"Nurse, have you noticed these
symptoms on Mrs. Whitehead? Her skin looks like it was burned,"
Carson asked.

"No, she didn't have it when we
brought her in. Look at that! It's like she was in the sun all
day," the nurse said picking up the old woman's arm to examine
it.

"What's that smell? It smells like
burned flesh," she said.

"I noticed it, too when I came in.
Have her blood tests come back yet?"

"No."

"Call Stokes. I want him to see
this. Ask him to meet me here in about twenty minutes. I'm going to
the lab. I want to know what's taking so long for her blood tests,"
Carson explained.

"Yes, doctor."

Carson left the hospital and walked
across the street to a small brick building with a glass door.
Painted on the glass in gold letters was "Medical Laboratory." He
pulled on the door and was instantly pulled back into it when it
didn't open. He peered in, but the overhead sun reflecting off the
glass prevented him from seeing anything. He frowned, walked back
to the hospital and checked into the main nursing
station.

"Nurse, why is the medical
laboratory closed?" he asked. "I was just there and the door was
locked."

"Closed? What are you talking
about?" she said, a large frown forming above her tiny oval
glasses. "I just spoke with them. Let me call down there to see
what's going on," she replied. She picked up the phone and
dialed.

"Hello, Jeffrey. Did you leave for
a while and lock the door? Doctor Hyll said he was just there and
the door was locked. He thought you were closed," she
said.

"Closed? We got so much work here
I'll be putting in overtime. Send him down. I'll keep an eye out
for him," Jeffrey explained.

"They're there, doctor," the nurse
said.

"But I was just there and the door
was locked," he said.

The nurse looked at him
incredulously.

"You went across the street, didn't
you?" she said smiling. "That's the old lab. They closed it last
month because it was too small. They use an entire wing now in the
basement. Didn't they tell you?"