St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,13

making any sound. Melissa glanced up, saw that his head had stopped rolling from side to side.

She moved to the man’s head and tilted it back. No evidence of airway obstruction. She pulled away the oxygen mask and put her ear to his open mouth, but could feel no breath. Her fingers probed his carotid artery. No pulse.

On the cardiac monitor Melissa saw the steep, jagged-toothed pattern of ventricular fibrillation. Copper’s heart muscle was firing chaotically, unable to do its job of pumping blood yet generating some electrical activity still.

The procedure for dealing with a cardiac arrest was as engrained in Melissa as a reflex. She commenced the rescue breaths and chest compressions even as the nurses hurried across with the defibrillator and the syringes of adrenaline. Unable to stimulate a pulse after two cycles of chest compressions, Melissa attached the adhesive defibrillator paddles to the man’s chest and, establishing that nobody was touching him, administered the first shock to his heart.

The pattern on the monitor remained unchanged.

Melissa injected the first shot of adrenaline through the cannula in Copper’s wrist and cued up the defibrillator a second time, sending the shock. Still no response.

The cycle repeated, with the nurses taking turns to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation in between doses of adrenaline and electric shocks. The fibrillation pattern stubbornly refused to change.

Melissa fought down rising panic. She was going to lose him.

It was time to call it. She met the eyes of the nurses working with her and nodded.

Glancing at the clock, her heart like a boulder in her chest, she said: ‘Time of death –’

The plastic curtain flipped open and Fin strode into the cubicle.

‘What have we got?’ His eyes roved over the prone man.

‘Blunt trauma to the sternum in a 21-year-old man,’ said Melissa. ‘Cardiac activity initially, then arrest. Consistent V-fib pattern despite multiple attempts at defibrillation.’

‘How long?’ Fin was in a shirt and tie but no white coat. He yanked his tie off and began rolling up his sleeves.

‘Ten minutes. I’m just calling it –’

‘No,’ said Fin. ‘He’s too young. We’re not letting him go.’ He nodded at one of the nurses. ‘Thoracotomy tray. Gown up, everyone.’

Melissa felt her pulse quicken. She’d never yet witnessed this, still less participated. It was one of the most heroic procedures in all of medicine. As did the others, she slipped on a protective gown, a face mask and plastic goggles to protect her eyes. There was going to be blood.

‘I’ll intubate,’ she said, and Fin gave a nod. While the thoracotomy tray was uncovered and Fin prepared himself, Melissa stood at the head of the bed and used a laryngoscope to expose the unconscious man’s vocal chords, then passed an endotracheal tube deep into his airways.

She moved to his side and watched in awe as Fin made the incision in the footballer’s chest, cutting through layers of taut, tough muscle, then used a rib spreader to prise the chest open. With a saw he rasped though the breastbone, extending the incision further. There, amazingly, was the young man’s heart, enclosed in its thin sac. Fin slipped both hands into the cavity, grasped the heart, and began to massage it rhythmically.

An age passed, although it must have been only a minute or so. A nurse, her fingers on the patient’s neck, said, ‘A pulse.’

Melissa moved over and felt the other side of his throat, disbelieving. Yes, there it was. A weak but regular throb in the carotid.

The young man, Copper, was alive again.

She stared at Fin over the top of her mask. His eyes met hers, the only part of his face that was visible.

There was an enormous grin there, in his eyes.

He said, ‘Time to tidy up.’

The occupants of the cubicle, three nurses and Melissa herself, broke into applause, muted though it was by the latex gloves they were wearing.

Despite the enormous amount of work still to be done, despite all the precautions that would have to be taken to minimise the risk of infection in the footballer’s chest wound, Melissa felt in the pit of her stomach that he was going to be all right. She couldn’t take her eyes off Fin’s face. All her annoyance with him, all her doubts about his opinion of her, had disappeared, at least for now. All she saw was strength, and kindness, and warmth.

And something else, in the way he gazed back at her. Something that once again triggered a deep, dark heat within her lower body and made her genuinely fear that her