Women-in-code-blue2

"You'll be intubated a little while longer."

A little while. Day nine, if anyone's counting. I've stopped counting for real — the number just surfaces in my head each morning when the shift changes. The first week, I probably did panic. Not anymore. The body gets used to everything, even things it shouldn't have the right to get used to.

They finally took the collar off three days ago — I can turn my head now, and it feels like a luxury I never knew to appreciate before. The world's a little wider now: not just the ceiling and the IV drip, but the window off to the side, and the monitor, which I've learned to read better than some of the junior nurses.

The nasogastric tube is its own story. It runs through the nose down into the stomach, and every few hours something colorless and unbearably lukewarm gets poured through it. The feeling of having something foreign permanently lodged in your nasal passage — turns out you can get used to that too. That's the worst part of all this — not the pain, but the getting used to it. The way the body adapts even to absurdity.

I stopped noticing the catheter a while ago entirely. The first days — shame, mortification, wanting to sink through the bed. Now it's just one more tube among a dozen others. Dignity is the first thing they take from you in the ICU, and they take it without a fight.

The ventilator breathes for me steadily. I've synced to its rhythm now — I don't fight it the way I did at first, when every machine-forced breath felt foreign, imposed. Now it's almost a metronome I exist beneath.

The doctor checks the readings, flips through the chart.

"Day nine," she tells the nurse, stating it plainly, with no inflection whatsoever. "We'll try weaning tomorrow if the blood gases come back normal."

I blink twice. Not because I'm particularly hopeful. It's just a reflex now — the answer to any sentence directed my way. I've learned to ration hope too, somehow.

Eve must like this, I think. The pristine white suit, practically a hazmat coverall, hood pulled up over her head — why, I never did figure out. Maybe she likes being in control of everything, even her own appearance in this room, where there's essentially nothing left to control except the numbers on a screen. Doesn't matter, anyway.

She leaves. I lie here. Waiting for them to come for the procedures. Massage, cleaning, changing the tubes — kidding, they're just plastic.

The cast on my arm is still there. It itches somewhere deep, somewhere I can't reach, and that's probably the only sensation all day that belongs to me personally, not to the equipment.

So what happened to me?

Oh, the day was wonderful! Perfect weather, perfect park, carousels, swings, my beautiful white ball gown, music somewhere in the distance, laughter…

Except that's nonsense. The reality is entirely different.

An intersection. Rain, though I'd rather remember sun. Someone ran the red light — a detail I was told afterward, once there was nothing left for me to change. Impact from the side, right where I was sitting. Glass. A sound I still hear sometimes in half-sleep — not a scream, not a crash, but some strange, short "crack," after which came silence.

A stretcher. I was battered, filthy, an ordinary horror. The dress turned out to be entirely unsuited to that particular scenario. And so was I — a shattered collarbone, a fractured radius, a lung contusion, and somewhere in the paperwork the word "unstable," which didn't only refer to my spine.

They put a neck collar on me, a cast, bandages, an oxygen mask. I remember it in fragments: bright light, hands that weren't mine, voices talking fast and not to me — numbers, drug names, injury coordinates.

They even cleaned me up, changed my clothes… You won't believe it — I'm wearing a hospital gown. And, of course, a surgical cap. I'd become practically a princess. The princess of intubation.

But that wasn't right away. The room was bigger, and I wasn't alone. Off to the side, I caught a glimpse — there was another patient to my left. Intubated. Collar, nasogastric tube, tubing everywhere… She kept trying to reach for the tubes.

They'd put glasses and black headphones on her. She was conscious — and that, it seemed, was exactly why: to shield her a little from this place, from the sounds of the ICU, from the sights better left unseen in full.

The nurses showed her an "OK" sign — two fingers, slowly, as if making sure she understood. She gave a faint nod back, as much as the collar allowed.

Of course, they intubated me too. I didn't wake up for a long while. Surgeries, procedures, medication — I simply slept for four days while the world went on without me.

Waking up wasn't like it looks in the movies — no sharp gasp, no "where am I." First, just a sound. Distant, muffled, a rhythmic beeping I hadn't yet recognized as my own heartbeat. Then, light — blurred, too bright even through closed eyelids. The body didn't feel like mine: heavy, foreign, like I'd put it on in the wrong size.

The strangest part wasn't panic, but a dull, slow confusion. My brain tried to piece together some kind of picture: where I was, what had happened, how much time had passed. I wasn't thinking about the park and the carousels then — I made that version up later, once I needed some way to answer the question "what happened." In those first minutes after waking, there was only emptiness and machines around me, no story yet to tell myself.

The tube in my throat made itself known first — by the fact that breathing on my own wasn't possible, though I wanted to. The machine kept doing it for me, stubbornly, mechanically, and somehow that made things a little calmer: at least something in this situation was working without a hitch.

Well, let's continue.

That's who I was. And what now?

The attempts were pointless. Even now I can't breathe on my own. And you've probably already guessed what comes next. Jane already told me.

Right, Jane! Who is she? A doctor, a bitch, obsessed with shiny blue scrubs. And also wears a hood. Just like Eve.

She came in that morning, glanced at the numbers, nodded to herself, and said something to the nurse about a "spontaneous breathing trial." Sounds almost athletic, like they're prepping me for a race instead of the plain question: can I survive a few minutes without the machine.

They switched the ventilator to a different mode — the one where it no longer breathes for me, just backs me up. In theory, I'm supposed to breathe on my own. In practice — within a minute my chest started rising faster than it should, some kind of panic, on its own, without my say-so. The saturation on the monitor started crawling down — 94, 91, 88 — numbers I've learned to read better than any textbook.

"Not tolerating it," Jane said, looking not at me but at the screen.

Not tolerating it. Talking about me like I'm a battery that drained faster than the projected runtime. They switched the ventilator back, and air started entering my lungs again without my participation — relief and humiliation in the same breath.

This was the third attempt this week. Every time the same: a few minutes of illusion that the body still remembers how to live on its own, then the falling numbers, and someone else's voice stating the fact in my place.

"Respiratory muscles are weakened," Jane explained to someone over her shoulder, as though I weren't lying half a meter away, hearing every word. "With this kind of injury, it's expected."

Expected. A convenient word. It absolves everyone of responsibility, including my own body.

Then she finally looked at me. Directly, no screen between us.

"Third failed attempt," she said, in a slightly different tone now, almost human. "There's no point keeping the tube through the mouth any longer — the risk of damaging the larynx grows with every day. We'll do a tracheostomy. An opening directly into the trachea, in the neck. Breathing through it will be easier, and eventually we might be able to wean you off the machine for good."

An opening in the neck. Said so casually, as if we were talking about replacing a battery, not a hole in my throat that would stay with me for who knows how long.

I blink twice. Not because I agree. Just because it's long since stopped being a question of agreement.

"Tomorrow morning," Jane added, closing the chart. "The OR is already confirmed."

Tomorrow. One more date I'll remember not by my own choosing.

An upgrade, right? I've already been fully rebuilt into a vegetative princess. Updated specs: an opening in the neck instead of a tube in the mouth, a hose attached directly to the trachea, and a voice that officially no longer exists — even once the wound heals, speaking won't come right away.

Sounds like I'm in a coma. Probably look like it too. But no — consciousness is fully intact, no discount, and that's exactly the worst part of the upgrade. Seeing everything. Hearing everything. Understanding every word said about me, not to me.

Of course, I woke up. The anesthesia wore off slowly, heavily, with that same feeling of a foreign body as after the coma — except this time a new piece was added to the installation: on my neck, just below where the collar used to be, a tube now protrudes, wrapped in gauze, and every breath now comes not through the mouth, but from there.

The first thing I felt wasn't pain. Silence in my throat, where the thick tube used to sit, stretching everything from the inside. Now there's just… nothing. A strange relief, one I'm almost ashamed to feel.

They took the cast off my arm last week — the bone, they said, had healed enough. I can move my arms almost freely now: bend my elbows, lift both of them, touch my own face, even pull the blanket up when I'm cold. A trivial thing for anyone else; for me, the first feeling that my body is even partly mine again.

The collar's long gone, my neck is free — aside from the tracheostomy tube, wrapped in gauze, and the feeding tube in my nose, neither of which has gone anywhere. A corrugated hose connects me to the ventilator, and any sharp movement of the neck is still discouraged — they warn me every time, as if I don't understand the cost of carelessness myself.

My legs, though — a whole different story. Not paralysis, they say, but a consequence of prolonged bed rest and the injury to my thoracic spine. The muscles atrophied faster than I thought was even possible: three weeks without movement, and legs that used to carry me up stairs two at a time can now barely register a touch, let alone hold any weight.

So instead of teaching me to walk, they're first teaching me to operate a wheelchair. Electric, with a joystick under my right hand — the same hand that finally listens. Attached to its side is a smaller ventilator, portable, far more modest than the one standing in my room, but the same in essence: it breathes for me, just mobile now.

Jane described the first trip into the hallway as a "test drive" — a phrase that made me wince silently, as much as the tube in my neck allowed. The nurse hooked up the portable unit, checked the connections three separate times, as though I were carrying not a breathing device but a ticking bomb. To some extent, that's not far off.

The joystick is obedient, responding to the slightest twitch of a finger. The chair moves smoothly, almost silently, and for a few seconds a strange feeling appears — almost freedom. The first independent movement in weeks, even if "independent" here only means the direction, not the ability to move at all.

The machine behind me hisses quietly in its own rhythm, faithful to its mechanical habit — inhale, exhale, inhale. It travels with me everywhere now, an invisible companion, without which any trip down the hallway would end far sooner, and far worse.

The hallway ends at a window. I turn the chair, stop. Beyond the glass — an ordinary street, ordinary people walking somewhere about their business, with no idea how much it takes just to get from the room to the window. None of them thinking about saturation levels, or the battery charge on the ventilator, or the small oxygen tank clipped to the side of the chair — one more passenger on this trip, without which there's nowhere to go.

Jane says that in a few months, maybe, they'll be able to wean me off the machine entirely. "Maybe" — one more word from her vocabulary that promises nothing, but doesn't take the hope away completely either. I'll learn to walk again too — also, she says, maybe, though slowly, and not the way I used to.

I don't know if I believe her. But there isn't much of a choice — just this hallway, this window, and the machine behind me, still breathing for me, while I learn to do everything else myself.

"I understand you. But this is the only right option. You've been here more than a week, and your saturation is still unstable."

She already understood. She's holding on. Not crying yet, but I already know... Trauma, infection. She needs to be put under.

It was hard for her to speak — she didn't even have enough breath for words, but she always tried.

"Medically induced coma..." she breathed out, as if that word alone took her last strength.

I understood her fear. The constant machines around the bed, the catheters, the monotonous beeping of the monitors, the hiss of oxygen — all of it was frightening. Some people got used to it in a few days, some never did. Ela belonged to the second kind.

"I know it's scary. But it's necessary, Ela."

She closed her eyes, and I saw her eyelashes tremble.

"Will you stay?" she whispered, almost without a voice.

"Always," I squeezed her cold hand. "I promise."

I carefully took off her glasses — even that was hard for her, her hands trembling, her fingers not obeying. I folded the arms and set them on the nightstand, right where she'd find them the moment she woke up.

Then I turned to her hair — long, curly, now scattered a little messily across the pillow, tousled from days spent in bed. I gently combed through each curl with my fingers, working out the tangles, and braided it all into one long, full braid — tight enough not to come loose during the procedure, but the unruly curls still escaped it here and there, giving the braid a slightly chaotic, living look. I told myself I was doing it for practicality — so the nurses would find it easier to turn her head, to reposition her. But the truth was simpler: I didn't want anyone else touching her hair while she slept.

"There," I whispered, fastening the end of the braid with a band. "Now it's comfortable."

Ela didn't answer — her eyes were already half-closed, her consciousness drifting somewhere between sleep and reality from the sedative they'd just given her.

I checked the monitor readings once more, straightened the blanket, and headed for the door — time to prepare. But at the threshold I looked back.

Ela was holding her phone above her face with trembling hands, reading something on the screen — slowly, as if every word cost her effort. The last minutes before the machines would take even this from her.

I went back to the bed with the surgical cap — bulky, meant to hide her whole braid underneath. I carefully pulled it on, tucking in the stray curls, adjusting it so it wouldn't press on her ears.

Ela looked at me with open eyes — the sedative hadn't fully taken her yet, and in that gaze there was something especially honest, defenseless.

I took a damp wipe and gently cleaned away the remains of yesterday's makeup — smudged mascara under her eyes, traces of eyeliner. She'd probably read a lot, and cried a lot too.

"There, better," I said quietly, more to myself.

I adjusted the oxygen mask on her face, checked that the tubing lay flat, not pressing into her skin. Then — the stiff yellow-and-blue orthopedic collar around her neck, fastened to keep her head safely positioned during intubation. I fastened the velcro straps on both sides, not too tight.

Even like this — in the cap, with a mask over half her face, held rigid by the collar, surrounded by wires and tubes — she was beautiful. Especially now, when she wasn't trying to hide anything.

"Shall we begin?"

Jess. I hadn't even noticed her come into the room. She's standing by the door, holding a tablet to her chest.

Is she really sad? A thick blue protective coverall, a tight mask, safety goggles... She scared me.

Though I'm wearing practically the same suit. So I must have scared Ela too. That's why she was crying...

"Ann, you can go. We'll finish up. The specialists will be here soon. Though you already know all this."

"Can I stay?"

"Ela needs a little rest. And sleep. And you need to touch up your powder... there's a small smudge on your cheek. Then room 68 — Hanna needs help. In about two hours you can go check room 72. Ela will rest here."

I understood. I'm practically having a breakdown. Ela is still looking at me. I go.

In the mirror I already understood everything myself. My makeup was terribly smeared too. I'd been crying. Sobbing... and hadn't even noticed.

And I'm still crying. She'll become a coma patient... Maybe she'll stay hooked up to machines forever... Or wake up — and forget everything... Everything! Including me!

I don't remember how long I cried. Time to work. Fix my hair, my makeup. Hanna needs help. Hood... safety goggles. Room 68.

A practically standard room, machines, tubes. The standard noise. Hanna already noticed me. Her eyes show she's glad to see me. I'll try too.

Four days she's been intubated now. Tubing, a nasogastric tube, sensors, catheters. I don't understand why they put a surgical cap on her. Does she like it? I don't, much.

I straightened her collar. Same thing — trauma, infection. But she never cried. Only smiled, as much as that was possible.

She always watched what I was changing, cleaning. She saw the urine bag and glanced away, embarrassed. Completely understandable.

I talk to her. She can't answer, of course. I adore her — she's sweet, kind... Before intubation she was always making funny faces with her lips. Laughing. Now she's holding on. And I have to as well.

I cleaned the breathing tube. It was unpleasant for her, but she understood. New urine bag, medication. Time for her to sleep. I added a dose of sedative to the IV drip, slowly, watching the numbers on the monitor gradually settle along with her.

"Sleep," I whispered. "I'm here."

Her eyelids trembled one last time and stilled. The machine breathed for her, steady, monotonous — inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. I carefully put a thick white sleep mask over her eyes, shielding her from the light — so that even asleep, there'd be a little darkness beside her. I stood there another minute, watching her chest rise and fall under the thin hospital gown.

Now I can't see her face at all. But she probably likes it that way.

I remember Ela. Time to go to 72. I'm already late. Though Jess knew it would turn out this way.

Another identical room. Only the lighting here is colder, bluish — Jess likes it that way, says it's more stable, more precise. She's sitting in a chair by the bed. And on the bed — Ela.

The breathing tube carefully inserted into the trachea, a holder-clamp secured at the corner of her mouth so it wouldn't shift. Connected to the ventilator — thick ribbed hoses stretching from the tube to the machine standing beside the bed.

Inhale, pause, exhale, inhale again. A mechanical rhythm now breathing for her. Ela's chest rises and falls exactly on beat, without a single stumble, without a single pause from anxiety or pain. The monitors show stable numbers — saturation finally holding at 96, pulse evened out.

Medically induced coma. Now she's simply asleep — deeply, completely, feeling neither the tube in her throat nor the needles in her veins.

The room fills with an even hum: the hiss of the ventilator, the beep of the monitor, the quiet drone of the infusion pump. Sounds that will soon become the familiar background for the next few days — maybe weeks.

Jess had even changed her clothes. A new gown, a deeper blue. I wanted to do that myself, but...

"I'll finish up. You can go home and rest. The night's just beginning, so you'll have plenty of free time."

"I could..."

"No, you couldn't. Go. Home."

Fine, boss. I've never said it to her face, but she really is the boss.

Sleep, sister... I'll come tomorrow. I promise.

Morning. Alarm at six, as always. I lay there a few more minutes, staring at the ceiling.

Yesterday. The breakdown. Tears in the mirror, smeared makeup, Jess, who saw everything and said nothing about it directly. Embarrassing. Unprofessional.

Not again.

I got up, made coffee, watching it drip into the cup — slow, mechanical, like a ventilator. Thought about Ela just once. Briefly. And stopped myself.

Today will be different. No tears, no shaking hands. Just work. Just a shift.

I braided my hair into two pigtails, put on a shirt and a leather skirt, lined my eyes lightly — plain, ordinary, like before any workday. Looked in the mirror.

"Today you're composed," I told my reflection. "Today you're a professional."

The reflection wasn't entirely convinced.

At work — a white coat over my clothes, as always. Sat down at my desk, finished yesterday's reports, the ones I hadn't gotten to. My hands knew what to do on their own — columns, signatures, times. My head was nearly empty, and that was good.

Finished. Checked the clock. Time.

Took off the coat, reached for the coverall — the same white, thick one — and started putting it on, layer by layer. Hood. Mask. Goggles.

Jess was already waiting for me in the hallway. She always knows everything. And it annoys me.

A new suit, purple, even showing a bit of her hair — that happens rarely. Very rarely. I think two years ago there was a suit like that. Has something changed?

"Hope you rested. Room 68. You'll see Ela later, they're running procedures right now."

"Is she doing alright?"

"Yes."

That's just how Jess is. Direct and brief. That annoys me too.

Hanna had already been awake a while. They'd taken off her sleep mask, her cap. Changed her gown. Her hair looked straighter, neater. She's always beautiful.

Checked the monitor. Saturation 97, pulse 82, blood pressure normal. Better than yesterday.

Cleaned the breathing tube, checked the fixation — not shifted. Changed the dressing at the catheter site, checked the skin around it — no redness. New urine bag, logged the volume in the chart.

The IV bag was nearly empty. Hung a new one, cross-checked the dosage against the orders. Checked the nasogastric tube — patent, properly secured.

Raised the head of the bed a few degrees. The ventilator adjusted, hissed a little differently. The sensors updated the readings on the screen. Everything within normal range.

Logged the numbers in the journal. Straightened the blanket. Next check — in two hours.

Room 72. I'm genuinely scared to walk in there. But I have to be a professional.

The usual noise. Machines. And Ela. She's become incredibly beautiful. Long curly red hair, the collar, the pajamas with big buttons, the nasogastric tube... the holder. An intubated beauty. I suppose that's just what the procedures do.

Medications refilled, urine bag changed. The breathing tube — clean. The only thing — I added two more sensors to her forehead. She's a coma patient; that data will really matter.

And what else can I even do here?

Stupid question. You have to talk to her. As much as that's possible at all.

Pulled the chair closer to the bed. Took her hand — warm, that's good already.

"It's me. I came, like I promised."

The machine breathed for her steadily, no response, not the slightest flicker of an eyelid. Of course. Medically induced coma. I knew that. And still I waited for some kind of reaction — even just a tremor in her fingers.

"Hanna's doing better today. Her saturation evened out. You'll be there soon too."

My voice sounded calm. Even. The way a professional's should.

Checked the sensors on her forehead — holding well, good contact. Looked at the monitor: numbers stable, no sharp spikes.

"I'll read to you a little. If you can hear — good. If not, the room will just be quieter."

I picked up the phone from the nightstand — the same one Ela had held above her face with trembling hands yesterday. Screen locked. I didn't know the password.

But there's a finger.

Carefully lifted her hand, pressed her index finger to the sensor. The screen lit up and unlocked.

For a second I hesitated — I knew this was wrong. But I was already looking.

Browser history. The last things she'd searched: "how long does a medical coma last," "tracheostomy consequences," "can you talk after a tracheostomy," "coma and memory loss."

Dozens of tabs. Dozens of articles, forums, other people's illness stories. She'd been trying to understand what awaited her. Alone. At night, while lying here — and I thought she was just scrolling through her feed to distract herself.

I closed the screen. Put the phone back on the nightstand, exactly where it had lain.

"Sorry," I said quietly. I don't know who I meant it for — her or myself.

That's my own phone ringing now. Jess, of course. Room 75. Fine.

I haven't visited Isabelle in almost three days.

"Rest up, you red-headed pain in the ass."

She usually liked that. Maybe that's exactly why she'll wake up.

Jess is already in the room. Isabelle has finally woken up. Finally. Fully covered by the blanket, but you can see — she's still hooked up. Nasogastric tube, tracheostomy. Under the blanket, of course, plenty of sensors, catheters — none of it needs to be on display.

Almost a month she was in a coma.

Isabelle's wearing big white headphones. Maybe she asked for them herself. Or maybe she just doesn't need to hear all of this.

Jess straightened the blanket, gently, almost tenderly.

"Ela's going to need a tracheostomy too," she said, not right away. "She's not going to like it."

I stayed quiet.

Isabelle was breathing on her own. Quietly, calmly, without a single machine — just headphones on her ears and a faint smile in her sleep.

"It'll be alright, Ann," Jess finally looked at me. "You just have to wait."

A week passed like one long shift. The same procedures, the same tubes, the same rhythm — clean, change, log, repeat. My hands moved on their own, without any input from my head.

Ela — no change. The same numbers on the monitor, the same breath in her place. Hanna — much the same, plus or minus a degree of saturation, plus or minus a minute of physical therapy.

The days blurred into one. I stopped counting them.

Exactly a week later, everything changed.

Hanna was extubated. She's breathing — hard, of course, every breath still an effort, but on her own. An oxygen mask on her face now. The collar still needed, keeping her head still. She whispered something — weak, hoarse, almost no voice at all — and smiled that same funny smile. First time in a week I heard her voice, not just saw her look at me.

Ela got her tracheostomy. They finally took off the collar — now the tube comes straight out of her neck, below her throat.

The same sensors, the same tubes. She's lying there, covered by a beautiful, soft blanket, and over it — a long white ribbed hose stretching to the machine. Like the one thread still connecting her to this world.

I stood there a long time, looking at that hose. At the way it moved, barely visible, in time with her breathing.

Ela woke up.

I saw it the moment I walked in — eyes open, staring at the ceiling, blinking slowly, still heavy, still clouded from the drugs gradually leaving her system.

Her hair — straight, sleek. That was me: I straightened every curl, strand by strand, while she slept. Slow, careful, so as not to disturb the sensors on her forehead. I don't know why I did it that way — maybe I wanted to see her different, before she could see herself.

"Ela."

She turned her head toward my voice. Slowly. Her gaze settled on me — blurry, uncertain. I remembered the glasses.

Found them in the nightstand drawer — someone must have moved them along with her other things during the transfer. Carefully put them on her face, adjusted the arms behind her ears.

Her gaze sharpened at once. Now she could really see me.

Sensors on her forehead, tubes — nasogastric, tracheostomy, catheters under the blanket. All the same as a week ago, only now she felt all of it.

Her body wouldn't obey. Weeks of stillness, atrophied muscles — even her fingers barely moved under the blanket. Only her face was still alive.

Her lips twisted. She tried to say something — and couldn't. Just air, a quiet hiss from the tracheostomy instead of a voice.

Her eyes suddenly turned angry. Genuinely angry — the way I'd never seen her before.

"I know," I carefully took her hand, defenseless, almost motionless. "I know it's uncomfortable. It's temporary."

Her lips twisted again — a grimace now, unmistakably, almost crying without tears, because she had nothing left to cry with.

Displeased. Very displeased. And, it seemed, more frightened than she'd ever been.

That's understandable.

For nearly three weeks she'd been a houseplant. Unreally beautiful, but a houseplant. Tubes, hoses, needles... and practically paralyzed. Of course, it will come back. Just not yet.

Shiny pajamas, big buttons. I undid the braid, combed out every curl with my fingers, let the curls fall freely onto her shoulders and chest — the way she always wore it, when she wasn't in a hurry to be anywhere.

I showed her the photo — the phone, the screen, her own face from a few minutes ago. She didn't like it. Of course not. The same sensors on her forehead, the tracheostomy, the nasogastric tube. Definitely not what she wanted to see.

Her lips twisted again — the same grimace. But this time without anger. Just sadness. Just exhaustion.

She'll recover. I know that for certain — the body, the muscles, the voice, all of it will come back, step by step, week by week.

For now — I'll just stay close.

I promised, after all.

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