Page 49 of Come Back to Me

“Oh, shit…” he whispers and backs up.

I push past him and see my friend.

My best friend since eighth grade is lying on the floor with pill bottles and an empty fifth of vodka next to him. He’s not breathing and his skin is a sickly gray.

“No,” I whisper. “No, Teddy. No…” I rush over to him and shake him to see if he’ll respond.

He doesn’t. I check for a pulse and find none.

On instinct, I do the only thing I can and start CPR on him.

Somewhere in the background, I hear Ben calling 911. A few minutes later, sirens scream through the air and then, sometime later—how long I’m not sure because my sense of time is currently warped—the room fills with bodies.

I hear people calling my name, my brother trying to pull me back so my coworkers—Teddy’s coworkers—can try to help save him.

“No!” I yell. “He needs me. I’m not stopping! C’mon, buddy, wake up for me,” I pant as I continue pounding on his chest.

It’s not until a few seconds later, when Fitz’s voice breaks through the others with his hand on my shoulder, that I can calm down.

“C’mon, Jack. Let us work. You’ve been doing compressions too long, and he needs fresh arms.”

I stare up at him for a few seconds and then let Ben pull me back and make room for the C shift crew to work on Teddy.

ANNIE

I pick up the squad phone when it rings. “First City ER, this is Annie. Go ahead.”

“Annie, it’s Fitz, from Station Three. We are bringing in a twenty-nine-year-old full arrest, appears to be a multi-drug overdose and alcohol ingestion. It’s… it’s Teddy,” he says, soberly.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?” I ask, sure I’ve heard him wrong.

“It’s Teddy. It’s not good. Jack is here. He’s not doing well. He… he found him. And get Sadie out of the ER; she can’t be there when we arrive. I’ll explain later. We’re five minutes out.”

I hang up the phone, shocked for a few seconds before the ER nurse in me kicks in. I call our Nurse Manager on the phone, give her a quick update and tell her I’m sending Sadie back to her and ask her to get Sadie out of the department.

Sadie’s confused as to why she must go see our manager, but I don’t have time to coddle her right now.

I grab our ER doctor and several nurses, as well as our paramedic, and give everyone a brief update. We head into Room One. Still hoping this is all a misunderstanding, we wait in silence.

Several minutes later, the sirens wail through the stale air as the squad pulls into the ambulance bay. I stand in the doorway of Room One and wait for them. There’s an eerie quiet as they wheel the cot in with Teddy on it. Fitz is on top of the cart next to Teddy’s body, trying to pump life into his chest.

The only sound is the intermittent whooshing noise as a paramedic at Teddy’s head pushes air into the breathing tubecoming out of Teddy’s mouth, trying to deliver oxygen to his lungs.

My heart drops when I see Jack, followed closely by Ben, racing into the ER behind them. Fear and panic are written all over Jack’s beautiful face. He doesn’t even look at me, just watches the scene unfold, never taking his eyes off Teddy.

I wave the medics into Room One. Once we get Teddy moved over to our ER cot, controlled chaos erupts in the room.

We take over CPR, manually breathing for Teddy, and give him everything we’ve got to try to bring him back to us. The paramedics thought to bring the pill bottles from the scene, and we try to give medications to reverse the effects.

It doesn’t work.

Jack watches from the corner, squatting down and holding one hand over his forehead, the other gripping a fistful of his own hair. He rocks intermittently.

I’m so worried about him, but Ben is by his side and the best thing I can do for Jack right now is to help Teddy.

At some point, Emily arrives, Trina by her side, and they join Jack and Ben over in the corner. Emily looks absolutely stunned, blinking slowly, her facial expression flat. She stands unnaturally still.

We work on Teddy for thirty-seven minutes. We pump on his chest, artificially breathe for him, and shock his heart. Even when we push medications into his system to try to make his heart respond, nothing works. Combined with the twenty-five minutes the paramedics tried to bring him back before they arrived in the ER, Teddy has failed to respond to rescue efforts for over an hour.

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