Miracle Cure Read Online Free PDF

Fred, Brian Holbrook.” Brian and the older doctor exchanged nods. “As far as Fred knows, she’s never been really sick before this week.”
    Something in Phil’s tone suggested that merely having Dixon as one’s physician carried with it certain health risks. But the man
had
come in to see his patient on a Sunday afternoon, and in Brian’s mind, that negated a certain amount of clinical incompetence.
    “He was treating her with some erythro for an upper-respiratory infection,” Phil went on. “A couple of hours ago her husband called in that she wasn’t looking so good. Her temp’s one-oh-four. Pulse one-forty. She’s got a pretty dense left-lower-lobe pneumonia. BP was one-sixty. Now it’s down to one hundred.”
    “Septic shock?”
    “Probably. But look what she’s doing.”
    Phil indicated the cardiac-monitor screen, which now showed a heart-rhythm pattern Brian was almost certain was sustained ventricular tachycardia. V. tach of this sort was very unstable in most situations, and was often a precursor of full-blown cardiac arrest.
    “I read V. tach,” Brian said.
    “We all agree. She’s been in and out of it since she arrived. Short bursts at first. Now, more prolonged.”
    “Treatment?”
    “We’re working our way through the pharmacy. So far we’ve tried Xylocaine, bretylium, and Pronestyl, and we’re about to give her a hit of digitalis. Nothing’s touched it.”
    “She’s going too fast to guide her out of it with a pacemaker.”
    “Exactly.”
    Brian motioned toward Phil’s stethoscope.
    “May I?”
    Carol Benoit had seen and heard enough.
    “Dr. Gianatasio,” she cut in, “I’m sorry to have to remind you, but Dr. Holbrook has no license to be treating
or touching
our patients.”
    For a few seconds there was no movement in the room, no sound save for the soft gurgle of the oxygen bottle. Then Gianatasio slipped his stethoscope from his neck, rounded the gurney, and handed it to the head nurse.
    “Okay, then, Ms. Benoit,” he said without rancor, “suppose you evaluate this woman and give us
your
considered opinion.”
    Benoit’s face grew pinched and flushed. She pushed the proffered instrument back at Phil and moved away.
    “Suit yourself,” she said. “But I’m holding you responsible for whatever happens.”
    “I’ll take my chances. Brian, if you don’t come up with something we haven’t tried, I’m going to have Sule, here, intubate her and we’ll take a crack at shocking her out of this.”
    Brian took Phil’s Littmann stethoscope and moved to the bedside.
    “Without figuring out the underlying reason she’s
in
that rhythm and doing something about
it,”
he said, “I don’t think zapping her with a lightning bolt would make any difference.”
    “It could be just massive infection in a woman with some preexisting heart disease.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Whatever it is, be quick, Brian. She’s in it again.”
    Brian first scanned Violet Corcoran, head to feet. There was something about her, something that reminded him of a case he had seen somewhere in his training.
Where? What was it?
He felt over her heart, then her neck, then the arterial pulses at her elbow, wrist, and groin. Finally, he slipped the earpieces of Gianatasio’s Littmann into place, and worked the diaphragm side of the stethoscope over her heart, chest, and neck. Next he repeated the exam using the bell side.
    “Sule, go ahead and intubate her,” Phil said. “Then we’ve got to try shocking her. Damn! This is getting out of hand fast.”
    Brian didn’t respond. He was completely immersed in a sound—a sound coming from the front of Violet’s neck. And suddenly, he remembered. To his left, the anesthesiologist had slipped in an endotracheal breathing tube so smoothly that Brian had not even realized she was doing it.
    “We’ll try two hundred joules once, then go right to three-fifty,” Phil ordered.
    “Wait!” Brian said, indicating the spot on Violet’s neck. “Phil, listen