Shane and Carmen: The Novelization
Chapter 27 Into the Wild
Dana started dying at 2:33 p.m. and it only took two minutes. For six days she had been fighting the infection in her blood stream. It was a dirty, hand-to-hand, cell-by-cell, take-no-prisoners street brawl with no rules and no mercy. Dana survived these days on sheer will power, on an athlete's grit and determination, but on the afternoon of the sixth day, five days after entering the hospital, she had nothing left to keep up the fight. She was done. Her exhausted heart stopped, and the monitoring machine started beeping frantically at the ICU nurse's station.
"We have a Code Blue in ICU Room 7, Code Blue in ICU Room 7," a nurse announced calmly but firmly over the PA, and everyone came running. One of the nurses brought the crash cart.
A young doctor named Wyler sprinted into the room, looked briefly at the monitor and lifted Dana's left eyelid to look into her eye. It was unresponsive to light. Her lips were turning purple, and her skin color was turning gray. He grabbed the paddles from the crash cart.
"Ready for de-fib, everyone clear," he said. It was 2:34:44 p.m.
"Clear!" a nurse said, removing the oxygen mask from Dana's face. Dr. Wyler applied the paddles to Dana's chest and shocked her silent, motionless heart.
Nothing.
"Shock again, three hundred joules," the doctor said. "Clear!" He shocked her again.
"She's still in de-fib," the nurse said.
"Any pulse?" Dr. Wyler asked.
The nurse listened through her stethoscope. "No carotid. No radial."
"Continue ventilation and chest compressions," the doctor said. "Give her one mig epi, IV."
"Epi is in," the nurse said, pulling the now-empty hypodermic out of the IV plug. It was 2:35:12.
"Let's shock again," Dr. Wyler said. "Everybody clear."
"Clear!" the nurse told him. He shocked Dana for the third time.
Nothing.
"Three hundred amiodarone, please," the doctor said. He watched the nurse inject the drug into the IV.
"Still no pulse," the nurse said.
"Shock again."
"Charging," the nurse said, watching a dial on the machine. "Clear!"
Wham. Nothing.
"Give her sixty migs lido. Shock again."
Nothing.
"Charging. Clear!" The paddles delivered another shock.
"She's still in de-fib. No pulse."
"One more epi push." He waited while the epinephrine went in.
Nothing.
"She's gone," he said. "I'm calling it. Stop CPR. Time of death, 2:35 p.m., March 12, 2006."
***
Dana's death caught the Friends by surprise. Some of it was garden-variety denial, which we all face in these circumstances. Some of it was due to the fact that they had been lied to. Dana had minimized her condition from the beginning, and some of that false optimism still lingered, even on her final day. Some of it was the simple faith in modern medicine, on the knowledge that Dana was in one of the best hospitals in the country, that she was receiving the best care possible, that she was tough, that she was a fighter. Sure, they all knew by now that she'd had the mastectomies, the tumors were gone, she was receiving chemo. Most people who had come this far survived, and there was no reason to believe Dana wouldn't be one of them. They'd all looked up the survival numbers on the Internet: 85 percent lived five years, 77 percent lived ten or more years, 64 percent lived twenty or more. All the numbers were on Dana's side. You saw cancer survivors everywhere, on TV, in society, down the block. Everyone knew someone who was a cancer survivor. Dana would surely become one of them. One day soon Dana would be on a TV talk show, telling the world about her bout with breast cancer. She'd be wearing a pink ribbon and enthusiastically promoting a women's marathon to raise funds and awareness. She'd be out walking the walks and running the 5ks and 10ks at the head of the pack. She'd look great.
They knew about infections and, intellectually, they knew infections could and did kill people. They just couldn't conceive that an infection might kill their beloved Dana. Not in the middle of this warm, sunny California afternoon.
Lara was in Paris and had an excuse, if a poor one: She was oblivious to Dana's worsening health. But Lara had lost her prerogative to forgiveness, because she had abandoned Dana, had run out on her, unable to take the stress that came with nursing. That Lara lacked the temperament for it, coupled with the fact that Dana was a difficult and abusive patient, didn't seem to matter.
Bette, too, didn't know. She had gone to a ten-day silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery in the Cascades in Washington State. She had been unemployed for nearly a year, and it had begun to weigh on her sense of who she was. Her relationship with Tina had deteriorated until she had metaphorically kicked her out of their bed and out of the house, and except for their shared motherhood of Angelica, out of her life. But between the crushing silence and the attractiveness of a demur, bald-headed Buddhist nun, Bette was going bonkers, and finally could stand it no more. Calling herself a "meditation retreat drop-out," she'd packed her bag and left the retreat -- yelling, screaming and happily yodeling all the way down the hill to the bus stop.
Jenny and Max were on the other side of town with Tim, Jenny's poor ex-husband, who had found someone new and in fact had married her. Her name was Becky, and she felt like a fish out of water. They were having lunch at Pink's on North La Brea, because Jenny said Tim claimed they had the best hot dogs in LA. Tim was contemptuous and dismissive of Max, and he continued to think Jenny was still out of her mind, despite being released from the sharps ward in Illinois months ago. Becky seemed nice and tried to be so, but she was the outsider -- and several months pregnant, although she had not yet begun to show. In only a few minutes Tim and Jenny were at it.
"Hey, Becky," Jenny finally said, "did you know on the night Tim came to say goodbye to me, he gave me a little revenge fuck?"
Becky turned pale, stood up, put her purse strap over her shoulder. "Come on," was all she said. Tim got up and silently followed her out.
Helena was in a meeting with her lawyer -- and her mother. She'd gotten herself into a serious jam, and Mommy was there to bail her out. Helena had been honey-trapped by a woman named Dylan and Dylan's invisible boyfriend, Danny. Between them they'd led Helena into seducing Dylan and then being filmed doing it. Dylan and Danny sued for sexual harassment and asked for millions. But Peggy Peabody suddenly turned up at the settlement conference and exposed the plot for what it was. Dylan and Danny had a long-standing grievance against the Peabody Foundation, having been turned down five times for grants. Trapping Helena was the payback. Peggy told Dylan to go to hell and see you in court, but Helena, heartbroken and humiliated, signed over a check for $350,000 to just make it all go away. She left in tears.
Tina had been seeing a nice guy named Henry, whom she met when their kids were on a play date at a pool. Now she was sleeping with him. Of all the friends, Tina had always been the bisexual one, the one most likely to slip back to "the other side," and so she had. On this day she was having lunch with Henry and several of his friends at a Mexican restaurant. As they talked, it became apparent that not only did Henry's friends believe that Angelica had been adopted by Bette and Tina, so did Henry. Tina became aware that if she had explained Angelica was her biological daughter, fathered by artificial insemination and by a black man they had actually chosen, no less, it would have changed everyone's opinion, and not for the better. She said nothing, but grew increasingly uncomfortable.
