Code White

It’s less like I wake up and more like I start moving. My mind is a static screen when I get dressed, feed the cat, and leave. We’re in deep winter now, and I don’t notice the fresh coat of powder until I get behind the wheel and can’t see shit. I’m awake and becoming later by the minute as I swipe snow off the windshield in the early morning darkness.

    There’s a uniquely still silence that I can only find on winter mornings. Most things are asleep. Nocturnal creatures are laying down to rest and the diurnal ones have yet to wake. Everything could be dead and it would sound the same.

    I realize I’ve been standing still for at least a few minutes, staring into the dark. I finish wiping off the snow and get in my car.

    The ER is packed enough that Sarah doesn’t have the time to berate me while I receive report. Her coiled curls are bound tight at the back of her neck as she bustles here and there. The night nurses tell me that what we’ve got is mostly car accidents—the overnight snow reduced visibility and a lot of people ended up ramming their cars into trees, telephone poles, deer, and the like. That’s alright with me. Traumas are more pleasant than the rest; this is one of their first times at the hospital and they haven’t been here long enough to hate you.

    Breakroom coffee for breakfast. One of our newer nurses made it and didn’t realize you have to triple layer the coffee filters, or the grounds will leak right through, so it’s a little textured. I start with six patients and end up with eight by lunch. Triage, treat, get a bed, call it up, repeat.

    When I deduce that none of my patients are likely to die in the next thirty minutes, I leave the floor and pick up two sandwiches from the cafeteria. In the elevator I tuck them under my arm and press seven.

    “Hey Jen,” the secretary says brightly as I come onto the floor. His forced friendliness has grated on me for months and even more so now, but I give him a tight-lipped smile because occasionally, I need a favor from him.

    She’s sleeping when I walk in. Blinds are shut and she’s turned away, curled up on her side. I set the sandwiches down quietly and sink into the recliner. It’s on the wrong side—her back is to me. But if I move the chair she’ll wake, and right now I feel like I could never stand up again. The sandwiches are in those loud, obnoxious plastic box containers so I leave them be. I listen to the occasional beeps, alarms, footsteps, and voices from the hallway. I listen to her breathe.

    “Code White, Room 402.” I hear on the loudspeaker. “Code White, Room 402.”

    The codes in our hospital are announced by an employee who some of the older ER nurses morbidly nicknamed Lady Death. If you hear her on the loudspeaker, it’s not for anything good. Code Whites were a tricky one: they translated to a Change in Status. It could mean someone is having a seizure, stroke, or other kind of unforeseen episode. It could also mean that while the patient is currently alive, they won’t be for much longer.

    “Code Blue, Room 402. Code Blue, Room 402.”

    The second one, then.

    My work phone vibrates, and I know it’s Sarah saying get back here, so I get up before slipping the device out of my pocket. It’s been forty-five minutes. I leave the sandwiches and head back downstairs.

    Shift passes in a blur. I think I yell at a lab tech and snap at a nurse. I think Sarah yells at me, but those are the interactions I remember least. Seven o’clock arrives: I give report to the night nurses and I go back to the seventh floor.

    This time she’s on her back, head turned to the side and red hair splayed out like a sleeping princess. I reach over and brush my fingers over the synthetic strands. I’m about to collapse in the recliner when I spot a small white square on the cushion, standing out in the dark. I snatch it up and find, scrawled in black pen: wake me up this time, jerk.

    I sink silently into the chair. Time passes and the dark sky grows darker. Tucked in the warm shadows of her room, I transform her note into a tiny paper crane; I leave it in her open palm.

    The night has waited for me. When I walk out to my car the wind greets me with teeth, biting my cheeks and stinging my eyes, and I like it.

    I am off work the next day. I clean the kitchen, throw out the half-eaten microwave dinner I left on the counter. I vacuum the carpets and do laundry. I take the cat into the bathtub with me: she’s twelve now, always a fierce little thing but sometimes the pain of aging stops her from cleaning herself. She nips at me as I stroke the suds in.

    “Hush now,” I tell her. When I’m done, she runs out of the bathroom. I find her glaring at me from a corner of the couch and, childishly, I stick my tongue out at her.

    After I finish the laundry, I straighten up various bills and bits of mail that had been left in a pile on the kitchen table. Credit card statement, junk mail, some decently useful coupons—

    I recognize it the moment my fingers brush the edge and I freeze.

    I couldn’t remember where I had put it down. The day I brought it home had been a mess of nausea swirling in my gut and sharp, shaking fury. I had decided not to wonder where it had gone. Maybe I hadn’t brought it home at all, maybe it wasn’t even real.

    But here it was, hiding like a predator in tall grass. I tighten my grip and pull it out from under the mail. The brochure is designed with green and white and nestled in the corner is their logo, a tree. I know what their angle is and I find it repulsive. Everything about it is a mockery.

    I can’t breathe, so I let it flutter to the ground and stumble to my room. I rip the duvet off the bed, startling the cat who had been napping near the headboard. She hisses and runs away. She’s smart, I think. Knows me for what I am. The sheets are next, the pillows. The mattress is stripped bare and I’m still not done. I turn back into the living room and the cat is there again on the couch, tail swishing angrily, and suddenly I’m red-faced, ashamed before her. I need to leave before I burn it all down.

    All it takes is a phone call. You guys need any help today?

    The scrubs are still dryer-warm when I put them on.

    Three o’clock arrives with ease. I would have said the day was going well, all things considered, but then Sarah finds me and shoves me into the breakroom.

    “What,” I say. Sarah crosses her arms and just. Looks. With that condescending glare of hers.

    “You can’t bitch cause I’m late, I wasn’t even supposed to be here—"

    “You shouldn’t be here,” Sarah says.

    Her response is so unexpected that a laugh escapes me. “What? Sarah, you need all the help you can get.”

    She purses her lips, and I don’t like where this is going.

    “Jen,” She says, “you should be on the seventh floor. With your wife.”

    My lips, of their own accord, form a soft O before my blood starts to boil.

    “No.” I laugh again, and this time it’s laced with bitterness. “If you want to chew me out for being late? Fine. For not transporting fast enough? Fine. For not smiling enough while I keep people from giving up the ghost before they make it upstairs? That’s fine, too. But you do not get to pull me away from my patients to give me a lecture about my personal life.”

    “Jennifer—“

    “—don’t Jennifer me—“

    “—I can’t stand by and watch you do this!”

    “Do what? Say it, you obviously want to.”

    “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

    “Okay, I’m not listening to this—” I’m halfway out the door when I hear it on the loudspeaker. Lady Death herself in smooth, dulcet tones.

    “Code White, Room 713.”

    No.

    “Code White, Room 713.”

    I don’t remember running, but then I’m in the elevator punching seven. My breaths come long and fast through my nose, and my lips are clamped shut. I can’t speak to save my life.

    No, no, no.

    There’s a crowd outside her room that I shove past.

    She’s lying on the bed, eyes open, in a similar position that I left her last night except this time there’s five nurses, two techs, and a doctor crowded around her bed. She spots me in an instant.

    “Oh! Hi, darling. You working today?” She smiles widely. Her eyes are the same beautiful baby blue.

    “I, uh.” I look to the nurses for some kind of sign, but they’re smiling too. My mouth is dry. My heart is still racing. “Are you. Um.”

    “Am I okay? I’m great. Just stood up too fast.” She pats my hand where it is shaking against the railing. Her nurses nod in confirmation.

    “Bedpan for now, okay honey?” One of the nurses says. “No more keeling over on the way to the john.” The crowd begins to file out, moment of crisis apparently over.

    Before I know it, I’m slowly sinking into a crouch, hanging my arms and chin over the railing of the bed. My wife turns on her side to face me with a smug little smile.

    “Hi,” she whispers.

    “Hi,” my voice breaks, chin trembling. “Hi, Kels.”

    “Didn’t know you were working today.”

    “Yeah. Um.”

    “Picked up a shift?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Hm.”

    Kelsi props herself up on one elbow and fishes something out from underneath her pillow. “Thanks for this.” My paper crane, a little smushed on the sides, is held delicately in her fingers. “Would have preferred to see you, though.” She curls up again, eyeing me with a playful smile that I know hides an undercurrent of hurt.

    “I remember a time I had to call my tech just to kick you out of my room to get some real sleep,” she says. “And now you’re picking up shifts to keep you downstairs?”

    My throat closes. I take her hand and press her fingers to my lips.

    “Is it the money?” Her voice is smaller now. “I’ve been wanting to call the insurance—”

    “—money’s fine,” I say. “This is me. All me.”

    Kelsi lets the railing down. She tugs on the collar of my scrubs until I topple into bed next to her, and next thing I know my face is pressed into the crook of her neck and her slender hand is reaching under my shirt, rubbing up and down my back.

    “Just your everyday avoidance tactics, then,” she says, soothing.

    I nod into her shoulder.

    Time passes. At some point, my phone buzzes, and Sarah informs me that she’s given my patients back to the other nurses on the floor and I am not to return “if I know what’s good for me.”

    We lay together for long enough that I know if I open my eyes, the skies will be dark.

    “Because I am the nice one in our partnership,” Kelsi starts boldly, and I smile into her skin. “I will not force you to talk about it today.” Then she is pushing on my shoulder, so I prop myself on my elbows to see her face. In her tired eyes, there is so much, and it makes my gut churn, hurt for every minute I spent downstairs instead of here.

     “But because I love you,” She cups my cheek with one hand. “We are going to talk tomorrow. About everything. I will not let you live the rest of your life with regret.”

    “This isn’t—” I choke out. It isn’t fair. “You shouldn’t be taking care of me, Kels. God, I—”

    “Mm-mm.” Kelsi glues my lips together with the pad of her thumb. “We take care of each other. That’s what we do.”

    I find Sarah at the end of the night.

    “I’m scheduled tomorrow,” I blurt out before she can get a word in.

    “Yes,” she replies, eyes narrowing.

    “Can I…not be?”

    And to my surprise she smiles. “Yes.”

    She calls my name as I’m walking out the door. “Don’t wear your uniform. Makes it easier to remember why you’re there.” And I realize I know nothing about Sarah. Not really.

    I don’t linger when I walk outside. The wind is as empty and unfeeling as always, but this time it doesn’t call to me. I gaze into the dark and my face is not there.

    At home, the cat is waiting by the front door. She brushes against me and maybe this is an apology for before, so I grab a few treats and throw them down for her. We’ll be okay. We both have tempers; Kelsi had always been the mediator, endlessly amused that my biggest enemy of all her friends and family was her little Miss Persephone.

    I take my shoes off and make my way to the living room. It’s still there on the ground, as innocent as it had ever been. I swipe up the brochure and take it with me to the couch, where I end up sitting on the floor and leaning against the furniture. Persephone pads over and sits beside me.

    “Just you and me, huh?” I scratch behind her ears. “In a little while, it’ll just be you and me.” The words fall out like lead. They’re emptiness; they’re everything. But I can’t turn my back any longer.

    “We’ll take care of each other,” I say, eventually. “But first, we’re gonna take care of her.”

    I open the brochure, only sparing a glance at the cover title that’s been haunting me for days.

    Hospice Care: First Steps.

Alexandria Ficarro is a senior in neuroscience who lives in Nashville with her roommate and two cats. After graduating, she hopes to pursue a career as a physician assistant. Her experience working in hospitals helped inspire the conception of “Code White.”

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