Intensive Care

You are 24, I am 20. I sit on a chair at the foot of your bed. Between us is a bench, and on it, a sheet of paper. Next to that, a pen. Above your head is a monitor showing numbers. Every 15 minutes I write them down. Your pulse and blood pressure are unsteady. Your temperature is high and rising. It’s not possible to remain alive for long when it’s this high. I walk around to your side, ease open each of your eyes, shine my torch into the dark caves of your large black pupils. Back on the chair, I write ‘fixed and dilated’ in the eye column once more.

You look fit, apart from not being able to breathe on your own. A machine does this for you, its bellows airing their robotic soundtrack through the room – pifftt, pifftt – every six seconds, pushing air deep into your lungs, making your chest rise and fall.

In the bed next to yours is an old woman. She’s expected to survive. At her feet sits another nurse, the same age as me. We help each other. Behind us at the nurses’ station, the senior staff watch on, ready to come if the monitors signal alarm.

Your people don’t know yet. Strangers are trying to find them. A doctor comes over to check the monitors and the machine. He tells me this is what happens sometimes with an overdose. The drug’s ability to alter you continues, taking every perception you ever had with it, rolling you on faster and faster, until it burns you out.

I go to the linen trolley and flick through the sheets, find the thinnest one. Lay the worn white cotton over you, its touch light on your skin. I dip a washcloth in cold water, squeeze it out, hold it to your brow until it warms. Rinse it cool again, dab the corners of your closed eyes. Rinse it again, wrap each of your hands in its cool dampness. For your dry mouth, ice chips wrapped in gauze held softly against your lips.

I sit again at your feet and ask you silent questions. What’s happening deep inside you, to your spirit, your soul? When does it leave? Is this just your shell now, or are you still here, body and soul in a soundless struggle?

Finally your heart stops. The doctor disconnects you from the machine. The other nurse and I wash you, chest, arms and legs. We ease you over on your side. I lean you against me, hold you steady while the other nurse sponges your back. Your skin is still hot. She and I talk quietly, sad for the loss, the waste, the parents, the brother, the sister, the lover, the others. We wrap you in a shroud, fasten it with pins. I go to the nurses’ station and ring the orderlies. Then sit at your feet one last time.