Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

the sponge bath.
    “How’s he doing?” asked Ivan Gwadowski.
    “There’s been no change.” Her voice was cool and businesslike. She wished he would leave, would finish his little ceremony of pretending to care, and let her get on with her work. She was perceptive enough to understand that love was but a minor part of why this son was here. He had taken charge because that’s what he was accustomed to doing, and he wouldn’t relinquish control to anyone. Not even Death.
    “Has the doctor been in to see him?”
    “Dr. Cordell comes in every morning.”
    “What does she say about the fact he’s still in a coma?”
    Angela put the washcloth in the basin and straightened to look at him. “I’m not sure what there is to say, Mr. Gwadowski.”
    “How long will he be like this?”
    “As long as you allow him to be.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It would be kinder, don’t you think, to let him go?”
    Ivan Gwadowski stared at her. “Yes, it makes everyone’s life easier, doesn’t it? And it frees up another hospital bed.”
    “That’s not why I said it.”
    “I know how hospitals get paid these days. The patient stays too long, and you eat the costs.”
    “I’m only talking about what’s best for your father.”
    “What’s best is that this hospital does its job.”
    Before she could say anything she regretted, Angela turned and grabbed the washcloth from the basin. Wrung it out with shaking hands.
Don’t argue with him. Just do your job. He’s the kind of man who’ll take it all the way to the top.
    She placed the damp cloth on the patient’s abdomen. Only then did she realize that the old man was not breathing.
    At once Angela felt the neck for a pulse.
    “What is it?” asked the son. “Is he okay?”
    She didn’t answer. Pushing right past him, she ran into the hall. “Code Blue!” she yelled. “Call a Code Blue, Room Five-twenty-one!”
     
    Catherine sprinted out of Nina Peyton’s room and rounded the corner into the next hallway. Personnel had already crowded into Room 521 and spilled out into the corridor, where a group of wide-eyed medical students stood craning their necks to see the action.
    Catherine pushed into the room and called out, over the chaos: “What happened?”
    Angela, Mr. Gwadowski’s nurse, said: “He just stopped breathing! There’s no pulse.”
    Catherine worked her way to the bedside and saw that another nurse had already clapped a mask over the patient’s face and was bagging oxygen into the lungs. An intern had his hands on the chest, and with each bounce against the sternum he squeezed blood from the heart, forcing it through arteries and veins. Feeding the organs, feeding the brain.
    “EKG leads are on!” someone called out.
    Catherine’s gaze flew to the monitor. The tracing showed ventricular fibrillation. The chambers of the heart were no longer contracting. Instead, the individual muscles were quivering, and the heart had turned into a flaccid bag.
    “Paddles charged?” said Catherine.
    “One hundred joules.”
    “Do it!”
    The nurse placed defibrillator paddles on the chest and yelled, “Everyone back!”
    The paddles discharged, sending an electrical jolt through the heart. The man’s torso jerked off the mattress like a cat on a hot griddle.
    “Still in V. fib!”
    “One milligram epinephrine IV, then shock him again at a hundred,” said Catherine.
    The bolus of epinephrine slid through the CVP line.
    “Back!”
    Another shock from the paddles, another jerk of the torso.
    On the monitor, the EKG tracing shot straight up, then collapsed into a trembling line. The last twitches of a fading heart.
    Catherine looked down at her patient and thought: How do I revive this withered pile of bones?
    “You want—to keep—going?” asked the intern, panting as he pumped. A drop of sweat slid in a glistening line down his cheek.
    I didn’t want to code him at all, she thought, and was about to end it when Angela whispered into her ear:
    “The son’s here. He’s watching.”
    Catherine’s gaze shot to Ivan Gwadowski, standing in the doorway. Now she had no choice. Anything less than a full-out effort, and the son would make sure there was hell to pay.
    On the monitor, the line traced the surface of a storm-tossed sea.
    “Let’s do it again,” said Catherine. “Two hundred joules this time. Get some blood sent for STAT lytes!”
    She heard the code cart drawer rattle open. Blood tubes and a syringe appeared.
    “I can’t find