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“Did you press your button?” Tonight’s nurse is middle-aged. Somewhat cross. Her hot pink scrubs are two or three sizes too small. That woman is trying way too hard.
“Yeah. She’s acting a little strange.”
It’s not the feet pedaling this time. There’s something else going on. Hot Pink leans over my baby’s crib, and I catch a strong whiff of Listerine. She’s not a smoker, is she? There’s no way a hospital like Children’s would allow a peds nurse to take regular cigarette breaks. I’m just being paranoid.
“It’s her legs,” I say. “She’s been bending them like that for the past five minutes or so.”
Hot Pink glances at the monitor. Natalie’s oxygen levels are around 86. Not great, but not terrible. I’ve seen worse.
“Let me check her temperature.”
I move out of the way so the nurse can do her thing. She frowns at the thermometer. 103.9. It’s creeping up again.
“Is she going to be ok?” I ask.
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
It’s not the encouraging sort of response I was hoping for.
By midnight, I’ve got two nurses standing over Natalie’s bedside. There’s Hot Pink and now the charge nurse, a skinny twenty-something who’s far too perky for this hour of the night.
“I think we better call the doctor in,” says Skinny as she flits from one side of Natalie’s crib to the other.
“What’s going on?” I ask. It’s a simple question, really. One someone should have answered nearly an hour ago.
Skinny is all smiles and all movement. “I’ll have the doctor come in and have a little chat with you.” She reaches out and turns up my daughter’s oxygen flow before flitting out the room.
Hot Pink doesn’t move. I think just watching the bouncy charge nurse has left us both exhausted.
I should text Jake. He might still be awake, and even if he isn’t, he’d want to know what’s going on. The problem is I don’t know what’s going on. Natalie’s legs are pulling towards her each time she lets out her breath, but it’s not that weird seizure thing she was doing earlier. Her color’s gray, and her O2 levels have dropped another three points since I first pushed that red call button.
Something’s wrong. I just don’t know what.
The nurse leads the doctor in. It’s not Bhakta or any of the other specialists, just the PICU doc. They change them by the week. Something like seven days straight living and sleeping at the hospital, then four weeks off. I don’t know. Sounds kind of cush if you ask me.
This week, Natalie’s doctor is short, bald, and remarkably nondescript. I could pass him in the cafeteria tomorrow morning and forget I ever met him.
“What’s going on?” he asks sleepily. He’s not grumpy, but you can tell his brain still hasn’t decided if it’s time to fully engage or not.
Skinny chatters away like she’s just downed two quad shot caramel macchiatos. It’s a little more techno-babble than I’m used to, but I understand that the tugging in my daughter’s legs has got everyone concerned.
“What’s her O2 at?” the doctor asks as he checks the dial himself.
More medical-speak, and then he tells Skinny to give Natalie a steroid treatment early and leaves. He completely ignores Hot Pink and me.
“So what’s going on?” I ask.
Hot Pink’s not making attempts to be anyone’s BFF tonight. “It’s her lungs. She’s working too hard.”
“What does that mean?” Too hard? What is she trying to say?
Hot Pink isn’t meeting my eyes. I can smell the Listerine on her breath from here, but right now I don’t care if she smokes cigarettes or shoots heroine in the staff bathroom. I just want her to tell me what she knows. Will my daughter be ok? Do we need to give her new medicine?
“It means that if your daughter continues having problems breathing like this, she’ll probably have to go back on the ventilator.”