She’s Not Sorry by Mary Kubica EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Mary Kubica
- Language: English
- Genre: Crime Thrillers
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The first time I see her in the hospital is in the ICU, shortly after she’s come
out of surgery. I stand at the sliding glass door, looking in on her lying on
the hospital bed, hooked up to a central line, an ET tube, an ICP monitor, a
nasogastric tube, more. IV lines run into her veins, pumping her with fluids,
with medicine like diuretics, anticonvulsants and morphine probably. Her
head is wrapped with gauze.
Beneath the gauze, just hours ago, I’ve been
told, pieces of her skull were removed to relieve pressure on the brain.
There isn’t much to see of her face because her eyes are closed and she’s all
gauze and tubes, but what I can see of her is swollen and bruised.
She’s not my patient. Another nurse, Bridget, stands in the room with her,
tending to her, getting her settled, and yet I felt sick to my stomach when I
first saw her lying there on the bed through the glass. I’d heard the mumble
of voices already, the hushed tones whispering of what people say happened
to her, of what brought her here.
I’m assigned to a few other patients today. We have thirty ICU beds at
the hospital. We’re broken down into pods, with ten beds in each and a
nurses’ station at the center of them. The nurse to patient ratio depends on
how critical a patient is. Patients on ventilators or that are critically ill have
a patient to nurse ratio of two to one, but with lower acuity patients, we
might have as many as four. It’s a lot to manage. It means that, despite our
best efforts, errors sometimes get made, like last week when one of the
nurses gave a patient someone else’s morning meds by mistake. She
realized what she’d done right after she did it, told the doctor and
everything was fine, thank God. It doesn’t always work out that way.
Bridget catches a glimpse of me over her shoulder. She stops what she’s
doing and steps out of the room to come stand beside me at the sliding glass
door.
“Hey,” she says as the doors drift closed. “Did you hear?” she asks,
leaning in like she always does to gossip.
“Hear what?” I ask, and my heart kicks it up a notch as if in preparation
for what she’s about to say. I was late to work today. I had a doctor’s
appointment this morning and didn’t get in until noon.
I should have been
here sooner—the appointment was over by nine thirty—but after what
happened, I walked the city for miles, considering taking the whole day and
letting someone else cover for me, even though I only had shift coverage
for a few hours. In the end, I came to work. I had to talk myself into it, but
it was what I needed to do. I needed to act like nothing was wrong because
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