Chapter 3 - The Patient
The boy's name was Adrian Vasquez.
He was six years old. He had been admitted four days ago through the emergency department with a fever of 104 and a cough that his father had described, in his careful English, as sounding like a dog barking. He had been diagnosed with pneumonia in his right lower lobe and started on IV antibiotics and put on two liters of oxygen by nasal cannula.
His father's name was Petty Officer Second Class Luis Vasquez.
He was twenty-four years old. He had been in the Navy for four years and assigned to Naval Base Coronado for three of them, and he had a mother in Phoenix and a sister in Phoenix and a wife who had left him fifteen months ago and gone back to Phoenix and who called every Sunday at six in the evening to talk to Adrian on the phone.
He had not left the hospital since the night Adrian was admitted.
He had slept in the chair beside the bed. He had eaten at the cafeteria and he had drunk too much coffee and he had not showered in two days. He had shaved in the bathroom of the pediatric floor at 05:00 on Sunday morning with a disposable razor he had bought at the gift shop. He had called his command and asked for a family emergency leave and it had been granted for four days and it was going to run out on Thursday and he had not yet figured out what he was going to do about that.
He was, in the corridor, standing outside his son's room with his hands at his sides and his jaw tight and his eyes red. He was not a man who cried in public. He was not a man who was going to cry in a hospital corridor in front of a Navy nurse and a Navy commander. But he was also not a man who could watch his son be discharged from a hospital at one in the afternoon when the last time he had looked at the boy's face, at 03:15 in the morning, the boy had been pale and shivering and the oxygen monitor had been beeping.
He had been the one who had come out into the corridor to find the nurse.
He had been the one who had said, in a voice that was not quite steady, "Ma'am, his monitor is going off again."
He had been the one who had watched Grace Holloway walk into the room and take charge in a way that was not loud and was not dramatic and was the way that good nurses took charge, which was by looking at the monitor and looking at the boy and saying, in a voice that made everyone in the room feel like everything was going to be fine, "Adrian, honey, I am going to put this cool cloth on your forehead and we are going to talk about the dinosaur."
He had been the one who had watched her fix it.
And then he had been the one who had watched her, an hour later, stand in the corridor and tell a commander in the United States Navy that she was not going to prepare his son for discharge. And he had been the one who had watched the commander tear her badge off her scrubs and drop it on the floor.
He was not a man who cried in public.
But at 16:00 that afternoon, when Admiral Wells came out of her office and walked down the corridor to Room 4 and introduced herself to him and said, "Petty Officer Vasquez, I want you to know that your son is not going to be discharged today," he had come very close.
"Ma'am," he said.
"Your son is going to remain on this ward. He is going to be seen by a different attending physician. He is going to remain on his antibiotics and on his oxygen and his vitals are going to be checked every hour. And I am going to personally review his chart every morning until he is discharged. Is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And Petty Officer Vasquez."
"Yes, ma'am."
"The nurse who stood in this corridor this afternoon — Lieutenant Holloway — she is not going to be transferred. She is going to remain on this ward. She is going to remain your son's nurse. And she is going to be back on shift tomorrow morning at 06:00. Is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Wells paused.
"And Petty Officer Vasquez."
"Ma'am."
"Your son is very lucky that Lieutenant Holloway was on duty last night."
May you like
Luis Vasquez looked at her.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "He is. I know he is."
