Big Data: A Startup Thriller Novel

Chapter 62

         

Helen Hope was just finishing her unexpected shift when the dead lady arrived. She wasn't actually dead, but she was a total mess. Seizures. Throwing up. Foaming at the mouth. It didn't look good. She had come from the police station. Apparently they had taken one look at her and sent her here instead. As the poor woman was rolled past, Helen saw the straps holding her down. Then she recognized her. It was the crazy lady from Mr. Jones's room.

"Helen, can you help with this code gray?" Dr. Fernandez asked, following behind the gurney that carried the crazy lady. The bastard looked so happy and healthy. He must have just gotten to the hospital, probably after a proper night's sleep.

"My shift just ended. I'm exhausted."

"I need your help," he said with a smile.

Shit. Those were the magic words. Who had taught Dr. Fernandez the magic words? She rolled her eyes.

"Fine. I need to get changed."

"You're the best," the doctor shouted as they flew by. "We'll be in the ICU." He turned to a resident and said, "Get me some activated charcoal."

Why couldn't get she have said no? Just this once? She was so tired. She needed more caffeine but couldn't stomach the thought of another cup of coffee. Helen popped a couple of the NoDoz she'd been saving in her pocket for just such an occasion. She thought for a moment. Better to pop a couple more, just in case.

On her way to the ICU, Helen read the patient's vitals on an Ancien tablet. Luna Valencia. Age thirty-one. Brunette. Mexican descent. No known allergies, though it wasn't exactly like anyone could have asked her. She was in bad shape and getting worse. Since arriving at the ICU, she'd already crashed once, and moments after Helen got there, she started crashing again. The cause was still unknown. At this rate, they wouldn't have a chance to find out until the autopsy.

Dr. Fernandez wasn't giving up, though. Good for him. Helen's NoDoz started kicking in, and she started to feel like she was back in her body again. The patient started to flatline. Dr. Fernandez began CPR. Helen looked at the Ancien screen. Once again it was suggesting an injection of epinephrine, but this time, the doctor wasn't even looking at the screen.

Helen didn't think she was needed at this point. All her years of experience told her that she had wasted four perfectly good NoDoz. But the doctor kept going with compressions. A fresh burst of foam gushed from the patient's mouth every time the doctor pushed. He was mumbling to himself.

"Strychnine, arsenic, hydrogen cyanide. Probably not arsenic or hydrogen cyanide—there's no blood. But strychnine's so old school."

One of the residents chimed in, "So Agatha Christie."

"What?"

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Never mind."

The doctor kept thinking. The Ancien screen changed its recommendation. Now it read: Time of death, 7:30 p.m. The alarms were blaring. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The resident, who had been watching the screen intently, looked over at the doctor again.

"Do we call it?" Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Quiet. Shut off that fucking alarm. Nobody say a word."

He kept the chest compressions going. There hadn't been an unassisted heartbeat for over five minutes now. Helen saw something in Dr. Fernandez's face. Something finally clicked. It was over.

"Helen, quick," he yelled between chest compressions. "I need you to go grab the cryokit."

"We're going to freeze her?"

"Just get it. Now. And bring more activated charcoal."

She ran to the equipment room. Cryotherapy was being used more and more as a way to extend life, though Helen had never seen it in action. The hospital had only recently acquired the cryokit. She'd heard they'd tried it out once before. Unsuccessfully. But she'd read about other attempts. She dragged the self-contained machine back to the ICU.

Dr. Fernandez had already set Ms. Valencia up for hypothermic induction. A fancy term for quickly cooling down a body. While still performing CPR, he'd had her stripped naked and placed onto a bed of ice packs. But the body would cool down faster with the intravascular catheter hooked up to the machine Helen had just finished plugging in.

"Quick, time is of the essence," yelled Dr. Fernandez.

"Have you done this before? Treat a dead poison victim with induced hypothermia?"

"Nobody's tried this before. Now come on. We need to hurry."

Ms. Valencia's blood was redirected through the cryokit machine, which cooled it down before returning it to the body. The cryokit simultaneously oxygenated the blood, so as soon as she was hooked up, the doctor no longer needed to continue CPR. Helen remembered an amazing news story about an Italian boy who survived being trapped underwater for forty-two minutes by using a similar blood oxygenation technique.

"The body temperature has reached the target of thirty-three degrees. But it's still falling."

"Careful, if it goes below thirty-two, her blood will start crystallizing, and then she's dead for sure."

"It's at thirty-two now."

"Get rid of the ice packs. Hurry. Take them out now."

It was so weird seeing this body sitting on the table. The woman's lips were blue, and her face was as white as the corpses in the morgue. With the oxygenation, she didn't need to breathe. But still, it was strange to see her not breathing.

"And she'll come back to life after this?" asked Helen.

"Who knows? If we're lucky, this will give her body time to eliminate the toxins. If not, at least I finally got to see this machine in action."