Chapter 258: Strange Ailments

What is wrong with Molly?

“I’m taking her to the ER. She isn’t ever cuddly like this, not even with me. Molly’s is almost limp like a rag doll. Her breathing is normal, and I can feel her heartbeat is fine, but she didn’t even respond when I pinched her just now,” I told them as I got the door open. “Can you call ahead and let her parents know?”

I had the place in my head only show me any bad energy inside her and anything making her unresponsive. All I saw was the bad energy from a few zits. Mom was already on the phone as she watched me strap Molly into the Maserati. I drove to the hospital as fast as was safe, which was way over the posted speed limits. The Maserati didn’t hug the corners like the Lotus, but it felt more solid. A stretcher was waiting for me as I skidded into the emergency parking area at the children’s hospital. I was right beside her as they took her into the ER. She bypassed everyone that was in the waiting room.

Who took my keys to move my car? Did I even take the keys out of the car?

Mom had given them most of Molly’s information, but I made sure to tell them she was non-verbal and way off the spectrum for Autism.

“You are going to need me with her if she wakes up. As she tried to explain to me once, her mind runs at the speed of the combined processing speed of all machines in one of Giggle’s data centers. In comparison, our brains run at the speed of an adding machine,” I told the doctors and nurses I hadn’t met before. “She doesn’t like anyone touching her. It freaks her out. Tonight, she climbed up in my dad’s lap and went to sleep. We have some sort of bond between us, and she never crawls up into my lap to fall asleep. By the time I picked her up from my dad’s lap, she was almost limp. Her breathing and pulse seem normal for her. My mom will have called her parents by now.”

Great. The hospital must make sure to get the money first.

The woman was trying to enter Molly’s info into the computer while someone else was trying to find medical records for Molly.

“I can do this a lot faster than you,” I told the woman getting the information before I asked if I could do it instead.

Hey. At least I was kind enough to tell the nurse, before pushing her out of the way.

I didn’t give her the option to refuse. While I was nowhere near as fast at typing as Molly, I was many times faster than the woman that was doing it. Not even worrying about her parent’s insurance information, I entered one of my credit cards to guarantee payment. They could deal with the insurance company crap later.

I went over to the tablet the lady was using to try to find records on Molly and, politely, took it from her. I connected the implant in my head to the tablet and my phone. I downloaded Molly’s medical records, including some that the man-in-the-machine must have gotten digitized for his information, into the tablet. A few taps on the device had it all sorted and pushed into the hospital’s digital records system.

“Here,” I told the woman. “You have your money and all of her medical records. Can you tell the people in the room with her to find out what is wrong with her now?”

I should not have been surprised to see a locker in the locker room with my name on it. I knew the combination without even thinking about it. The best part was that I found my name embroidered onto the scrub shirts. I changed, put everything, except phone, in my locker. I put on the matching surgical hair cap and booties I found in the inner pocket of the pants.

No one questioned me being in the room with Molly once they saw my scrubs. Only certain people here have scrubs of their own. Everyone else uses the hospital’s generic ones.

They had stripped her, gotten a catheter in, put an IV in her hand, and someone was taking blood. Once they had all the vials of blood, they started wiring her up to the monitors. The automatic blood pressure cuff was showing her blood pressure, and heart rate met expectations. When they connected the monitors, we saw the same information about her heartrate. Her temperature was average, based on her records. Even her eyes responded as they expected.

“We need a head to toe MRI and CT scan while waiting on her bloodwork. There is no reason she shouldn’t be conscious,” The chief resident, who had taken over for the ER doctor who was going off shift, told me. “Based on her medical history, all of her results are normal for her. There aren’t any marks on her anywhere, no external signs of contusions, her oxygen levels are at ninety-eight percent, heart rate matches her recorded resting heart rate, and her temperature is normal. The only abnormal result from her external examination is that she recently had sex or masturbated with a phallic-shaped object. What concerns me is her not reacting when testing her reflexes. We did a pin test from her feet to her shoulders. We didn’t see any change in her brainwaves or heart rate. I don’t want to find anything abnormal on the scans, but it would help explain her current condition.”

The charge nurse came in, put her arm around my shoulders, and guided me into a room where she closed the door behind us for privacy.

“You have some very nice friends, David,” she told me. “A courier just delivered this to me by name. It gives you access to all locations in the hospital, including secure locations such as the pharmacy and surgical wings. The note inside said to tell you that you knew the code to put into the keypads. Whoever sent this wanted to be sure you could go anywhere they take your girlfriend.”

I hugged her quickly before saying, “Molly isn’t my girlfriend. I don’t even have one, as funny as that sounds, though all my best friends are girls.”

I clipped the badge on just as they were wheeling Molly off to radiology.

The MRI and CT scan took longer than average. One of the techs told me it was because the orders said to add in an additional “dye” between each scan. It allows them to see a lot more details of her organs, brain, and circulation than a single dye would by itself. It was part of their new MRI machine.

“She may be unresponsive, but we still want you to be with her in case she wakes up,” a radiologist told me. “We want to rule everything out, so we must do a spinal tap to check the pressure and spinal fluid. They aren’t pleasant.”

They gave me a big lead apron and placed it in front of her while they used some sort of constant X-Ray machine that let the radiologist get the large needle into her spine. We saw some increased brain activity when they were doing the test, but it went back down when they finished.

“The pressure is inside normal limits. That helps rule out some brain injuries. Our analysis of the spinal fluid will help eliminate some possible diagnosis.”

When we got back to her ER bay, I saw her mom was there talking to the resident. He told her that so far, they had no reason why she was unresponsive. In addition to all the bloodwork and tests they had done, Molly’s urine color and output ruled out dehydration.

I went over to hug Molly’s mom and told her how she had been fine earlier in the day.

“I should have known that something was wrong when she got dressed and then went over to sit in my dad’s lap with her back to his chest. She even pulled his arms around her to hold her to him before falling asleep. Once my dad was starting to eat dinner, she crawled up into his lap, facing him and went back to sleep. I got an odd feeling that something was wrong with her, and as soon as I took her from my dad’s lap, I found her going limp like a rag doll. I put her in my car and got her here as fast as I could,” I told her. “She didn’t eat anything different than normal and was swimming laps before dinner. I didn’t see anything off about her during the day today.”

Her mom told me, and the doctors, “Dolly and her older brother told me that Molly had times where she slept for two or three days. They said one time they stayed with her because they were worried, and I was busy with the babies. If they remembered it correctly, she didn’t change her position in the bed or respond to them anytime they touched her. Normally she would have tried to get away from them and scream. I’ve never seen her do it myself, so I don’t know if she had been sick or not.”

We waited another hour for them to see if anything needed immediate attention, and then they moved her up to ICU. Being after midnight, her mom couldn’t be in there with her, but I could. She signed something that made me a sort of guardian of Molly. It let me make some decisions that didn’t need her parent’s approval. Things like emergency surgery required them to agree first. Before she could head home, the vultures pulled her off toward their lair to get insurance information.

“She won’t go anywhere without me. I’m not letting her out of my sight, even if that means I don’t get any sleep until you or your husband is here with her,” I told her mom.

Molly’s mom hugged me and said, “If she had to pick anyone in the world to by her bedside, it would be you, hands down. I have been beside her bed many times. She ignored me completely. They will need you when she wakes up. You’re the only one that she has ever bonded to as she has with you.”

Some orderlies came to get her prepped and started wheeling her to intensive care for the hospital to keep a very close eye on her condition. When we got there, they tried to tell me that I couldn’t come in with them. It was a restricted area. I waited for the doors to close and then let myself in.

Hi? Good to see you again!

“Looks like I have access to the ICU, too,” I told them as I clipped my hospital ID badge back on my scrub shirt.

One of the ICU nurses came to where I was standing, while they hooked Molly to all of the monitoring equipment to ask, “There is a lot they have to do to get her set up in here. Since they are busy with her, do you mind helping me out with some patients for a while? You seem to dressed to work.”

“Sure”

A car had hit the boy she took me to first. The accident broke his legs, arms, and some ribs. He had come up from surgery two hours ago. While they had given him plenty of pain medicine, he was still uncomfortable. After his sponge bath and having his dressings changed, it was time to change his sheets and then insert a catheter. She explained that they had to take out the one he had in because something the surgeons had to do with his bladder as they checked him over. At his bedside, I helped her gently roll the boy to one side so she could get the sheets off that half of the bed and put clean ones on. We moved him the other way to finish changing the sheets.

Ah! That is how they changed my sheets when I was unconscious.

I felt terrible for the little boy as he told her how he hurt, a lot.

Since he was somewhat awake, I talked to him while she put in the catheter. It didn’t distract him at all. He fought her every effort. Knowing that he needed to have this done, I used the place in my head to block every sensation of her touching him so that she could get it in. When it was done, she injected the rest of his pain medicine into his IV. He was soon asleep. The place in my head had already stopped blocking anything in his brain.

“You might know the next patient. She is a senior on the high school cheerleading squad. Her record notes they were practicing one of the towers with the girls on each other’s shoulders. They do it all the time. One of the girls slipped when getting down. The best as can be determined, the falling girl reflexively pushed off this girl so that she could land safely. The patient was behind the tower when the girl slammed into the patient’s chest. When the girl who fell got up, the patient was unable to move, had problems breathing, and was clearly in distress. From the x-rays, she has multiple areas pushing on her spinal cord,” she told me. “God must be looking over her because you are the only person in the hospital that knows anything about the spinal brace a specialist came in and connected to her back with screws screwed into her vertebrae. They show your friend Paula in the directions on how to set and adjust the brace. It is a miracle of advanced medical research that Paula lived. We are afraid to move her because we worry about knocking the brace out of alignment and severing her spinal cord. She had gotten very ripe since they brought her up here three days ago, after the surgery to attach the brace.”

The girl instantly recognized me before asking when I became a nurse. Lifting her slightly, I looked at the spinal brace. It was close to what Paula had used, but this one was the next generation. Where Paula’s had a grove and notch system that let someone adjust it quickly, it also caused it to get out of alignment with very little pressure. This brace had the same area, but with a magnetic locking mechanism that kept it in place. Only the unique tool would permit the adjusting of each section. Otherwise, it was staying fixed in place.

“Do you have the guide on this brace? I think it is a bit different from Paula’s, so I want to be sure before we move her.”

She pulled up a PDF on her tablet. I found the page talking about the magnetic locks. According to the specifications, it would take three-hundred pounds of force against a joint to cause the magnetic restraint to fail. I showed that to her before she put her tablet away.

I smiled as I told the girl, “Looks like you got the new and improved version of the brace Paula had to keep her spine locked in place. No worries about accidentally knocking it out of alignment. Are you cool with me helping the nurse give you a sponge bath? I will see all of you.”

“You’ve seen all of me a lot of times since you were nine, but you just don’t remember,” she whispered to me.”

Then she spoke a bit above a whisper to ask the nurse if I could bathe her. I had gotten plenty of experience with Paula.

“I’ve no problem with that, honey,” said one of the nurses coming on shift. “He could be the big man himself, but without a medical degree, he isn’t changing your catheter, dear.”

“Gross. I don’t want him doing that anyway,” the girl said. “There are some things I never want to remember him doing for me. That is right near him helping me use a bedpan or wiping my butt.”

After reaching under her to check that I had the brace locked in place, I started washing one side of her back and butt, got her front, pussy, and then the rest of her back. Then I washed her hair, thrice. I’m pretty sure no one had done that for her since before she got here. When I finished, I had the new shift nurse brush the girl’s teeth as I held the girl up on her side, since the girl was able to spit without trouble. The nurse and I got the sheets changed before the nurse told me to step away for the nurse to do what the girl needed done. She had to deal with my back to her as I talked with the girl to distract her. I knew she wasn’t feeling any of it, but seeing it done and not feeling it had to suck.

“It might be dangerous to tie a gown, but can we at least get one snapped at her shoulders and tucked under her? Giving her at least something covering her beside the linens?” I asked.

She tossed me a gown and told me to have at it.

I kissed her forehead when I was done and said, “Well, you smell like a baby now, have minty-fresh breath, and are at least sort of covered up. No matter what I try to do, that gown is still going to let everyone see your naked butt when you walk around. That is probably the most advanced spinal brace in the world. You are in great hands, and I hope to hear you are annoying the hell out of the physical therapists any day now.”

That seems to have raised her spirits a lot. I will check her spinal cord later when things settle back down.

They were down three ICU nurses all week, and the hospital didn’t contract nurses from the nursing pool for the ICU. I didn’t get to sit by Molly’s bed until three in the morning. At least my distracting any conscious patients helped the nurses do things like change bandages. Other times it was gently rolling the child from side to side for them to change the sheets.

Molly’s condition hadn’t changed, and a neurologist came up to check on her around four AM. He had been going over all the scans and couldn’t find a thing wrong. He said she was behaving like she was under anesthesia. When he left, I made it look like I had dozed off.

First off, I checked the girl with spinal injuries. She had partially cut her spinal cord in four locations, but the swelling was hiding it from the doctors. I had the knowledge to fix the cut sections, so I did. The swelling would keep the pressure on her spine right below her collarbone. Nothing was going to change until it went down.