The War at Sacred Heart

Jeff Sharon

Short Story #2

March 19, 2009

The War at Sacred Heart

A small drip ran down the inside of Abbey Berlin’s cheek, and into the

back of her mouth. Choking, her breath and saliva sprayed in a fine mist that

condensed in the corners of her glacial blue lips. The painful examination

light hanged overhead and lit under her eyelids, giving a hot red tinge to her
already hellish sedative-induced dreams. Abbey had arrived at Sacred Heart

Hospital just days before her 18th birthday, and along with her age and

admission, the clip board hanging at the end of her bed noted her symptoms

as: “Severe abdominal pains – difficulty breathing - possible complications

with advanced pregnancy including Eclampsia”, but now her condition had

unexpectedly and drastically deteriorated. Her skin was sickly and yellow,

and her once lush black hair resembled wooden ash. Her throat had swelled

and red and raw sores filled the inside of her mouth. She had been slated for

a medical induced delivery before her rapid decline, though now neither

mother nor child were fit for the operation. Because she had been unable to

eat, today, Abbey was being fitted with a nasogastric feeding tube in hopes

she could regain enough strength to save them both.

As the nurse held Abbey’s head in place, the head physician began to

slide the thick plastic into the swelled tightoral cavity of his patient. His

massive hands shook as he worked the tube into the esophagus and

towardthe stomach. As the passage opened inside of her, Abbey gagged,

pushing bile through and around the plastic working itself past her throat,

and into her mouth. In an inescapable gasp for air she breathed the digestive

fluid, where it settled and burned like battery acid deep in the pit of her

lungs. Tears streamed from her still closed eyes, and pooled below, soaking

her pillow. Her limbs began to escape the sedative and she jolted

uncontrollably under the grip of the nurse. The physician pushed the tube

further, his hands shaking now not from nervousness, but from anger. He had
lost patients before, too many, but not this one, not these ones. The

physician tried harder to get the tube in place as Abbey thrashed both

unaware and uncontrollably. She choked and gagged once more, this time

causing raw red blood to ooze into her airway.

“Doctor, you’re hurting her. You have to take it out!” The nurse said,

turning Abbey’s head away from the tube that the physician still clamped in

his hands and held halfway down Abbey’s esophagus.

The staccato beeps monitoring Abbey’s pulse staggered and dropped,

replaced by the piercing shrill of a flat-line. The physician shrunk at the

noise, and pulled the plastic out of the patient. He threw aside Abbey’s gown,

exposing her bare chest and pregnant belly. He placed the icy end of his

stethoscope first above her heart, double checking the machine’s reading.

Hearing only the gurgle of the fluid trapped inside of her lungs, he moved the

instrument onto her stomach confirming what he could not admit. In a

moment he placed his hands on the breastbone of his patient and pounded

two furious shotgun compressions that forced the liquid inside of Abbey’s

lungs to project from her mouth and onto the soiled scrubs of his nurse. For a

brief second he thought that this would be enough to jump start the patients

breathing; however the flat line buzz played in his ears like a secret that

everyone knew. He pressed his mouth to hers, forcing the hot air from his

lungs into her own. For four minutes, the physician went back and forth from

Abbey’s mouth to her chest, each time his compressions getting a little

weaker, his breath blowing a little less full. He stepped away from the
patient, glancing at the wrist watch he had laid on the end table before the

procedure. His nurse stood silent beside Abbey’s head, running her fingers

through the patient’s hair, unable to look up from the ghostly woman. Again

the physician placed the stethoscope on Abbey’s chest. This time he heard

nothing but his own trembling hand relayed through the instrument. Abbey’s

baby made no sound at the stethoscope, and the silence cried in the doctor’s

ear.

“Call it.” The nurse whispered.

The doctor gazed helplessly and guiltily at his patient, and placed his

hands again on Abbey’s chest, prepared to try CPR again, before letting out a

groan and stepping back.

“Doctor…”

“Damn it - just give it a minute…” he said, picking up his wristwatch

and placing it over his hand. As he clasped it around his wrist he glanced at

the time. Through his teeth he hissed “April 24, 1998- 6:37P.M.-Abbey Berlin-

Dead,” and with a quick turn, stepped through the door leaving his nurse

alone with his two dead patients.

“Doctor Woodridge,” called a small voice from an opened door across

the hall. “Doctor Woodridge, you need to take a look at this.”

The voice was that of Darlene Adorno, a stocky, middle aged woman

whose graying hair and worried eyes made her look closer to sixty than forty-

four.
 “Nurse, I…” Doctor Woodridge paused and breathed deep, exhausted

from the ordeal that began to set like mortar in his mind. “Darlene, I need a

moment by myself.”

Abbey’s case was officially one of a pregnancy complication, but to

Doctor Woodridge there was something more. Why would Eclampsia, a

disease of the liver and kidneys, have such an effect on her eating? Or for

that matter, why had her mouth and throat swelled so much? There was

something unusual about these symptoms that burned in the Doctors mind.

Benedict Woodridge had seen death. If pressed hard enough, he would

even say he has caused it, or at the very least, allowed it to happen. Three

decades ago, he had been stationed as a medic on the Tan Son Nhut Air Base

in the Republic of Vietnam. Here he had cared for his injured and dying

American friends and Vietnamese allies. The airport was known to those

stationed there as “Hell’s Layover,” because it was the main entrance to an

American serviceman’s tour and the last stop a KIA would make before being

boxed and shipped home. Doctor Woodridge himself garnered many

nicknames. Some called him Saint Benedict when he was able to save a

soldier. Others called him Charon when he leniently administered morphine

to the mortally wounded. He himself preferred to be called only by his official

title of Air Force Base Surgeon General. He felt that he should be able to

maintain a level of professionalism, even in the midst of a war. The less

personal he got with his patients, he thought, the easier it would be to forget

their faces after they passed, or were thrown back into duty.
 Only it wasn’t easy. By 1974 the Vietcong were pushing further south

and threatening to attack his base. In an apparent act of genius or fear,

Woodridge along with the rest of those on the base were withdrawn from

duty and evacuated, just months before the enemy pushed to take the

stronghold. Back in America, Benedict took a position at Sacred Heart, a

Detroit inner city hospital that saw as many gunshot wounds as the air base

had back in Vietnam.

“Doctor, I really think you should…”

“Damn it, Darlene, do you know any other doctors who just lost two

patients in one procedure?” Doctor Woodridge said with a quiet breath. He

was prone to anger, and usually Darlene’s high pitched voice alone was

enough to make his blood burn, although today his mind was elsewhere.

Both Darlene and Benedict had originally been EMDs living life beat by

blood stained beat in the hospital’s emergency room. In their advancing

ages, however, they had chosen to escape the fanatic pace of the ER and

instead move to the fourth floor Intensive Care Unit, which in most cases,

was a patient’s first stop after the emergency room if their injuries or

condition were life threatening, or their last stop if they were life ending. Now

instead of saving lives, the two doctors were charged with keeping them.

“Ugh, okay, okay.” Doctor Woodridge moaned, remembering his

Hippocratic Oath and glancing down at his wristwatch. He had worn the

watch ever since he served as Surgeon General. It was a Stainless Steele

rotary which was standard Air Force issue for the time. Despite the
“Stainless” guarantee, he noticed small rust spots where the ancient blood of

his friends had dried and eaten away the steele plating.

Doctor Woodridge walked into room 441 and through a cloud of sweet

rancid air; the unusual yet familiar stink of the sick and dying mixed with a

canned floral air freshener, with a hint of uric acid from a filled catheter bag

for flavor. Room 441 was a double suite with two of everything. In two rolling

beds isolated with two sterile plastic curtains, lay side by side two near

identical patients. Neither of the women in the beds had come to the hospital

through the ER, yet here they lay under the care of Sacred Heart’s ICU, and

nobody was really sure why.

“The one on the right, Bev, she came in about a week ago with viral

bronchitis,” Darlene explained, pulling back the curtain that surrounded the

patient. “It wasn’t even that bad, really. We gave her an acetaminophen for

the fever and put her on an IV for fluids. We asked her to stay for only a

night, just standardprocedure, but by the next morning her throat had nearly

swelled shut with abscesses and her lungs have needed drained twice.”

Doctor Woodridge stepped past the patient to the sink at the opposite

end of the room. As he did before seeing any patient, he rinsed his hands,

running his watch under the water as well. The doctor was not interested in

seeing this patient, though. The shock of losing his earlier patients was only

amplified by the non-chalant, business as usual attitude he was expected to

portray. Just like the war, he thought. Friends, patients, humans, dead and

discarded like bad milk. Maybe treating a bronchitis case wasn’t so bad, he
thought. Maybe he should just retire at a family practice where bronchitis

would be considered an “emergency”. While his mind coiled round itself,

Doctor Woodridge used his fingernails to scrape a small flake of rust from his

watch and down the drain. He often found himself cleaning his timepiece in

times of stress, which was always in abundance. With a decisive snap the

doctor replaced his latex gloves and stepped to his patient.

“Alright, let’s take a look at you,” he said with a sigh and placed his

watch on top of a personal humidifier used to help the patient’s bronchitis.

Bev lay with disheveled, sweat soaked hair and deep, plum colored

depressions under her eyes. As she opened her mouth Doctor Woodridge

inserted a flat wooden tongue depressor in order to view the back of her

throat.

“Now say-” he cut off before the sound came out. Breathing in and

coughing on the putrid wheezing breath of his patient, through his bio-mask

even, was enough to tell him that the infection was far more severe than

bronchitis. He stepped back to regain his composure, while Darlene held a

glass with tap water to fill the humidifier.

“Like I said,” Darlene interjected. “And she is only getting worse.”

“Okay, let’s try this again,” the Doctor said, stepping beside the

patients head.

As Bev opened her mouth, the Doctor was able to hold his breath and

look inside his patient. Inside he say a pool of thick yellow mucus, behind
which a dozen large and small puss filled abscesses lined the back of her

throat.

“I’ve never seen bronchitis so severe.” He said to Darlene.

“Do you think she is suffering pneumonia?” Darlene said speculatively.

“It’s possible, but even that wouldn’t explain this. You said she has only

been here a week?”

“Yes, Doctor, but it only stayed routine for a moment. She declined so

sharply.”

This, along with his previous patient’s rapid decline gave Doctor

Woodridge a sinister, dreadful feeling in his very guts. He had seen this

before. These symptoms . . . this timeframe . . .

“Darlene, get me swab, we are going to need a culture test” the Doctor

said as he shined a small light into his patient’s mouth. He noticed the

abscesses were not only located in her throat proper, but were located

mostly on her saliva gland, while smaller sores lined the inside of her cheeks.

“Your swab, Doctor.” Darlene said, handing him the oversized cotton Q-

tip which he removed from the sterile package.

Doctor Woodridge gently rubbed the largest sore, which immediately

burst, draining white fluffy puss into the mouth of his patient. He removed

the swab and handed it to Darlene, who ran it over a plastic Petri dish which

she sealed in a sterile bag. The Doctor stood moments before Bev

succumbed to a coughing fit, spraying the smelly ooze all over and causing
the other sores to open, leaving her choking and unable to breathe through

her painful throat.

“Get her to ER!” Doctor Woodridge shouted. He did not have any of his

operating equipment and could do nothing more for the patient. Darlene

kicked the locks from under the bed and rushed the patient down the hall

while the Doctor paged to the first floor unit and told them to ready an anti-

inflammatory and a low pressure vacuum tube.

Through all of this, the other patient in the room, who remained hidden

behind the separating curtain, remained quiet and still. Doctor Woodridge,

too aware of the stillness, the Doctor pushed aside the curtain to see a blue

and bloated figure lying with a leg awkwardly off of the bed. Already knowing

her fate, the doctor paged for the liftman to remove the body. Doctor

Woodridge examined the deceased patient, the body only hours removed

from life. He examined her board, which stated she was initially admitted for

a surgery to remove a blood clot, and had been recovering in room 441 the

day that Bev had joined her. She had had no previous infection, yet she

showed the same symptoms as Bev, only a day before. Doctor Woodridge

replaced his gloves and picked up another wooden depressor. He used this to

pry his patient’s clenched jaws and examine her throat. Like Bev and Abbey

she had suffered lesions in her mouth and a thick yellow slime covered the

entirety. There was no evidence of her choking, however as the sores

remained intact and began to harden now that the patient had died. Instead,

Doctor Woodridge suspected, she had died of an acute loss of oxygen. As her
throat swelled and her breathing shallowed, she received less and less

oxygen to her brain. She had effectively drowned. Before she was removed,

the Doctor obtained another throat culture and paged Darlene in ER.

“The removed the fluid from Bev’s throat but the swelling is persistent,

even with medication.” Darlene updated the Doctor. “I’m not sure, but she

may not make it if we are unable to fit her with a respirator.”

Doctor Woodridge remained silent for a moment before telling Darlene

of the other patient’s fate.

“Doctor, these weren’t the only patients with these symptoms,”

Darlene said apprehensively. “The Admissions office is stating that they have

transferred 31 previously admitted patients with what they are calling

various stages of Bronchitis or Pneumonia to isolated rooms. None of these

patients were initially admitted with symptoms of either disease. Doctor,

what is going on? This hospital is not equipped to cure a plague.”

Doctor Woodridge felt the strange heaviness in his guts that he had felt

earlier at the first signs of the symptoms in his patients.

“We will have the culture results tomorrow, until then keep the patients

hydrated…” Doctor Woodridge trailed off as he glanced at his watch which

sat atop the still running humidifier. Suddenly he knew the cause.

“…With IV fluids only, no water. I don’t care how much the patients

throat hurts, do not give any of them water!” With a hurried click, the Doctor

hung up the page phone and ran to unplug the humidifier. At this point,

however, the disease was here. Their only hope was containment.
 “Doctor, I don’t think we are dealing with a normal virus, are we”

Darlene said, reappearing in room 441 beside Doctor Woodridge.

“I know. But I think I know what we are dealing with,” The Doctor said,

placing his watch over his wrist and glancing at its pale metal face, the

specks of rust polka dotting the band. “… and I think it’s my fault.”

“What do you mean, Doctor? How could this be your fault?” Darlene

asked, knowing Doctor Woodridge always did everything he could to save a

patient. Never the opposite.

“I’ve had this watch since the war,” he said, never taking his eyes off

the two hands which pointed at the nine and the seven. “It has seen the

time of war, the time of death. It has seen blood and bile and bullets and I

brought them all here.”

“You brought what with you? Doctor? What we’re dealing with is a

virus, not a war!” Darlene felt exasperated that the Doctor was seemingly

slipping away into memory at a time of such a crisis.

“I brought that too. In the blood, in the rust. It survived, it must have.”

“Doctor, please, we have to focus. You need to tell me what’s going

on.”

“I know these symptoms. It’s not Pneumonia or Bronchitis, the culture

swab will prove that.” Doctor Woodridge began to explain to Darlene. “No, I

have seen this disease and it is much worse.”

It had been over two decades since the doctor had treated a faceless

soldier who had come back from duty with an unnamable disease. He had
complained of the same swelling and suffered the same rapid decline that

the Doctors patients faced today. Without any real knowledge of the disease

(the Doctor assumed it was an odd strain of Vietnamese Pneumonia) and

little equipment, he gave the patient some penicillin and isolated him for

observation. Before dusk, the patient lay dead in the ward, his lips and

mouth blue from an apparent lack of oxygen. Doctor Woodridge had seen so

many bodies by then, however, that he was not surprised to see his patient

in this condition. It wasn’t until he was back at home that the Doctor began

to read reports of veterans suffering from Melioidosis, an Asian water borne

virus with the strange capability of either an incredibly long incubation

period or a rapid and fatal onset.

“The disease is from the War,” he continued “and now it’s come home

with me to continue the fight.”

“But, how?” Darlene stood dumbfounded.

“My watch,” the Doctor said “It must have been carried in the rust.”

Darlene had seen the Doctor wash his watch in the hospital sinks

before, he did it before every procedure.

“If it got into the water . . .” Darlene stumbled.

“Then I’m afraid our time is running out.” Doctor Woodridge said,

finally looking up from his watch with tears in his eyes and a tightening in his

throat.