Angels on the Night Shift Read online

  What readers are saying about Robert Lesslie’s previous books

  Angels and Heroes

  “I am not one who likes to read, but when I started I could not put this book down…It made me realize that there are still good people on earth. I am a full-time police officer and a volunteer firefighter/EMS. I can’t wait to pass this book on to others in my field.”

  Gary

  “What stories are held in this book—people who just go the whole way to be a help and sacrifice their lives! I am not much of a reader of nonfiction like this…but I fell in love with this book.”

  —GiveawayGal.blogspot.com

  Angels on Call

  “These stories…are written with passion and love. Dr. Lesslie writes with clarity and enthusiasm. His stories will make you cry and laugh and will keep you on the edge of your seat.”

  —ReaderViews.com

  “As an assistant principal…I have reflected on my own life’s work with adolescent students as I read each account…I am writing to share how very much I enjoyed your book, especially the inspiring scriptural references accompanying each story.”

  Don

  “Thank you for the…amazingly awesome books you have written. As a Christian pursuing a career in medicine, I find them really inspiring. I had tears in my eyes many times, especially in Angels on Call. I love, love, love these books!”

  Alina

  “The book was an inspiration during a difficult time in our lives…Your humility and humanity jumped out at me. I truly believe God works through us and that there are angels among us.”

  Chuck

  Angels in the ER

  “The most inspiring and relatable book I have read throughout my college career in nursing school…I often feel that my small contributions of extra time with patients or a simple smile have no impact on anyone’s life. I was inspired by your book and appreciated the Bible verses throughout.”

  Katie

  “I am a busy working mother but managed to read the entire book in less than three days. The way you described the people and the situations was brilliant…You see things in a very special way and have made me see… thank you.”

  Jamie

  “Just read your book Angels in the ER and loved it. Couldn’t put it down. Very well written. Excited to see another one is on the way! God bless you.”

  Bill

  “Having spent ten years as a coordinator for our emergency department, I was very intrigued to read your stories…You have a very eloquent way of relating things that most people will never experience, but probably should…Your kindness, care, and compassion shine through.”

  Alicia

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

  Cover by Left Coast Design, Portland, Oregon

  Cover photo © Erproductions Ltd. / Blend Images / Getty Images

  All the incidents described in this book are based on the author’s real-life experiences. Where individuals may be identifiable, they have granted the author and the publisher the right to use their names, stories, and/or facts of their lives in all manners, including composite or altered representations. In all other cases, names, circumstances, descriptions, and details have been changed to render individuals unidentifiable.

  ANGELS ON THE NIGHT SHIFT

  Copyright © 2012 by Robert D. Lesslie, MD

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lesslie, Robert D.

  Angels on the night shift / Robert D. Lesslie.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-7369-4842-5 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-0-7369-4843-2 (eBook)

  1. Hospitals—Emergency services—Popular works. 2. Emergency medical personnel—Popular works.

  I. Title.

  RA975.5.E5L478 2012

  362.18—dc23

  2011051985

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  To the memory of my mother, Harriet Denton Lesslie. She believed in her son.

  Proverbs 31:28-31

  Contents

  Endorsements

  1: It Begins

  2: Grace Under Fire

  3: Sins of the Fathers

  4: The Other Side

  5: No Más

  6: When Angels Cry

  7: The Witching Hour

  8: Out of Death Comes Life

  9: Hoodooed

  10: Lost

  11: Get Off My Bus

  12: Ambushed

  13: Dangerous Assumptions

  14: Caught in the Web

  15: Facing the Darkness

  16: A Hard Lesson

  17: Busted

  18: With a Little Help from My Friends

  19: No Explanation Necessary

  20: Revelation

  21: Redemption

  22: Phoenix Rising

  Notes

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Each of us will one day fall short and fail—with our friends, our family, our work, or with ourselves.

  Some of us will find forgiveness. Fewer still will find redemption. It is a precious and costly gift.

  If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, and He died on a cross at a point in time in history, then, for all history past and all history future it is relevant because that is the very focal point for forgiveness and redemption.

  JOSH MCDOWELL (1939– )

  1

  It Begins

  Tuesday, 7:14 a.m. “Dr. Lesslie, I need you in cardiac!”

  Amy Connors and I looked over to the triage doorway and the fast-approaching wheelchair. Lori Davidson was behind it, a look of concern on her face as she turned down the hallway toward the cardiac room. The middle-aged man in the chair looked into my eyes, his face pale and fearful. He was leaning forward and tightly gripping the armrests.

  “Chest pain,” Lori called back over her shoulder.

  I had been sitting behind the counter of the nurses’ station, talking with Amy, our unit secretary. Her son Jackson was fast becoming a football star at one of our area high schools.

  “I’ll call for the lab,” she said, reaching for her phone. “And I’ll send Jeff in with the EKG machine. Anything else?”

  I was already around the corner of the counter, following Lori and her patient.

  “That should be okay for now,” I answered her. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

  Lori was helping her patient onto the stretcher as I walked in. He glanced over at me and nodded his head.

  “This is Ernest Shays, Dr. Lesslie,” she told me, reaching behind her for the heart-monitor electrodes on the crash cart. “He started having some chest pain about an hour ago and drove himself to the ER. History of hypertension but no diabetes or heart disease.”

  She pressed the adhesive electrodes onto his chest, checked the monitor for good contact, then reached for some nasal prongs and plastic tubing.

  “O2?” she asked, looking up at me.

  Ernest seemed a little short of breath, and I nodded to her. “Three liters a minute.” His color wasn’t good, and he kept a hand pressed against his sternal area. “And let’s get a
line started.”

  I was about to ask for his blood pressure, when Lori said, “88 over 60 in triage. I’ll check it again now.”

  The door opened and Jeff Ryan walked in. He was the nurse assigned to cardiac this morning, and he went quickly over to where Lori stood.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  She handed him the oxygen setup and said, “If you’ll get this going, I’ll work on his IV. And we need to repeat his blood pressure.”

  I stepped to the other side of the stretcher and began asking Mr. Shays about his chest pain. Glancing over at the counter behind him, I noticed his short-sleeved shirt, tossed there by Lori. An open pack of Marlboros had partly slipped out of the breast pocket.

  “I was fine when I got up this morning, Doctor,” he was telling me. “Getting ready to go to work, when all of a sudden my chest started hurting. Never had anything like it in my life. It was terrible. Sharp pain, like I was tearing apart. Right here,” he said, pointing to his breastbone. “After a couple of minutes, it seemed to ease off. But I felt weak, and knew I needed to get to the hospital.”

  Lori was behind me, getting a bag of normal saline from one of the shelves on the wall. I heard the sound of glass hitting the counter and jerked my head around. Two glass vials had fallen, apparently as she’d been sliding the bag toward her. She picked up one, which was cracked open and empty. The other one was empty as well. She held up the first one to the light and studied the label.

  I noticed a puzzled look on her face and asked, “What is it?”

  “It’s Vistaril,” she answered. “But I don’t know what it’s doing up here. Why would—”

  “70 over 50,” Jeff called out with an edge in his voice.

  I turned back to the stretcher and said to Lori, “Let’s get that line going.”

  She tossed the vials into a nearby trash can, grabbed her IV supplies, and quickly turned to Mr. Shays.

  “I’m right here.”

  One of our techs hurried into the room, pushing our EKG machine.

  “Can I get in there and get this done?” she asked, looking over at Jeff.

  “Yeah,” he answered, checking the patient’s BP again.

  He inflated the cuff and slowly released it, listening carefully.

  “Still 70 over 50.”

  “Are you having any pain now?” I asked Ernest.

  “No pain, Doctor. I just feel weak, and a little light-headed.”

  “Do you want this wide open?” Lori asked me, having started the IV and now adjusting the flow rate.”

  “And my legs are gettin’ numb,” Shays added, looking up at me.

  I looked over at the monitor. His heart rate was in the 80s and regular. Then I glanced down at the EKG that was printing and just starting to be spit out from the machine. It looked normal, with no evidence of any acute injury.

  “I can barely feel them,” Ernest said again, rubbing the tops of his thighs.

  He was remaining calm, which was more than I could say about myself. He was in trouble and I was beginning to fear the worst.

  “We need a portable chest X-ray stat,” I directed Jeff, looking over at him and seeing his worried brow furrowed. He was feeling for a femoral pulse and nodded his head. “Faint, but I can feel it,” he told me. “And I’ll get Amy on that X-ray,” he added, stepping toward the doorway.

  “Wide open on those fluids,” I told Lori. “And we need to get lab in here now. The routine stuff, but we’re going to need to type and cross for some blood too.”

  She glanced at me, a question in her eyes.

  “Is it my heart, Dr. Lesslie?” Ernest asked me. “Am I going to die?”

  I stopped what I was doing and looked down into Mr. Shays’s eyes. He was afraid, and I needed to be honest with him. If I was right, it wasn’t his heart, but he was in real trouble.

  “Ernest—” I began, but was interrupted by the appearance of the portable X-ray machine in the doorway. The radiology tech was deftly guiding the cumbersome motorized equipment to the edge of the stretcher.

  “Ready for this?” she asked, already beginning to swing the arm and tube over Mr. Shays’s chest.

  “Yeah,” I answered, stepping back out of her way. “We need that as fast as you can.”

  The chest X-ray would probably give me my diagnosis, and I still needed to answer Ernest’s question. But that would have to wait.

  “I’m going to step out into the hallway,” I told him, patting his arm. “When she’s finished, I’ll be back in.”

  As I opened the door to leave, I was met by Amy Connors.

  “Mr. Shays’s wife and son just got here,” she told me. “They’re out in the waiting room and want to know if they can come back.”

  I closed the door behind me and we stepped into the triage hallway.

  “Let them know we’re getting a few things done, but they can come back in a couple of minutes,” I said. “Give me a chance to look at that X-ray and then I can let them know more about what’s going on.”

  A few minutes later, standing in front of the view box, I had my answer. Ernest Shays’s chest X-ray was clearly abnormal, with a markedly widened mediastinum. This was the central part of his chest, which contained his heart, but also his major blood vessel—the aorta. It was enlarged, much bigger than it should be. The tearing feeling he had experienced was this big vessel ripping apart—dissecting. Like the rings of an onion, the inner lining was separating from the outside of the vessel, and the ripping was making its way through his chest and down into his abdomen, shearing off any blood vessels in its way. That’s why his legs were getting numb. The arteries that supplied those limbs were no longer carrying blood to them.

  His blood pressure had responded to the IV fluids we were giving him, providing a narrow but closing window to save his life. And his pain had gotten better after the initial dissection had started, after the ripping had begun its work. After that initial tearing sensation, most patients seemed to have a lessening of their pain. But that was a false sense of improvement. Things were going to get worse.

  As I walked back to cardiac, I glanced over at Amy.

  “Get me the thoracic surgeon on call,” I said. “Tell him I need him right now. And you can let Mr. Shays’s family come back. I want to talk with them.”

  Jeff was standing at the head of the stretcher, adjusting Ernest’s IV tubing.

  “Pressure’s up to 90 over 60,” he told me. And he says he’s starting to feel his legs again. Do we need to do anything else?”

  Prompted by the comment, Ernest moved his legs from side to side, patting his thighs. “I’m feeling better, Doctor,” he said hopefully. His face was still pale, and the fear remained in his eyes. “What did you find out from the X-ray?”

  The door opened and Amy ushered in a middle-aged woman and a young man who looked to be in his twenties, Mr. Shays’s wife and son. They immediately stepped over to his side, his wife caressing his damp forehead and gently grasping his hand.

  Then anxiously she looked up into my face.

  “I’m Ernest’s wife,” she nervously told me. “And this is our son, Julius. Please tell us what’s wrong with him. Is he going to be okay?”

  I could see she was trying mightily to maintain her composure, but her lips were trembling as she said this. She could see how pale he was, and feel the clammy coolness of his brow beneath her hand.

  Taking a deep breath, I began to explain what was causing Ernest’s chest pain. His aorta was dissecting, and if he was going to live, it had to be repaired—and quickly. That “window” was now counted in moments, not hours.

  “Is he going to—” Mrs. Shays began, interrupted by the door of cardiac bursting open.

  Jason Evans, one of our thoracic surgeons, rushed into the room, dressed in surgical scrubs and still wearing a sweat-stained surgeon’s cap. He must have just come out of the operating room.

  “Robert,” he stated with unusual animation. “I looked at the chest X-ray hanging on the view box.
If that’s his,” nodding at Ernest Shays, “we need to get him to the OR right now.”

  “It’s his,” I confirmed. “And we’ve called the OR supervisor and let her know what’s coming.”

  “Have you crossed him for some blood?” he asked, stepping over to the side of the stretcher and putting his hand on Ernest’s shoulder.

  “Eight units,” Jeff told him.

  “Good,” Jason nodded. “But we’re going to need more.”

  He quickly introduced himself to Ernest and then to his wife and son. As quickly as he could, he explained what needed to be done, and then he was gone.

  The room erupted with activity. A nurse from the OR hurried in, while Lori helped Jeff make the necessary preparations to get our patient over to surgery. Another lab tech came in with several units of cross-matched blood. And all the while, Ernest lay on his stretcher, calmly holding his wife’s hand and curiously surveying the hectic activity surrounding him.

  Then he was wheeled out into the hallway toward the OR, and he was gone.

  I stood in the middle of the now strangely silent and almost empty room, the floor littered with bits of cardiac monitor strips and discarded wrappers and pieces of equipment.

  Mrs. Shays and her son stood next to me, staring at the floor and not knowing what to say or what to do.

  Without raising her eyes, Mrs. Shays quietly whispered, “Dr. Lesslie, is Ernest going to live? Will we see him again?”

  I looked at her and then over at her son.

  “Dr. Evans is a good surgeon,” I told her. “Your husband is in good hands.”

  Her head remained bowed for a few more seconds. Then she looked up and in a calm voice said, “He’s in the Lord’s hands.”

  I looked more closely at this woman. Her face now radiated peace and a sure knowledge of what she had just said.

  “Yes, he’s in the Lord’s hands,” I repeated.

  2

  Grace Under Fire

  6:55 p.m. Elizabeth Kennick walked through the ambulance entrance, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. She was the 7p to 7a doctor—my relief. As usual, her long blonde hair, light-blue eyes, and warm, self-assured smile caused most of the male heads in the department to turn in her direction.