Read Online Host by Robin Cook - Free Book Online Page B

no, no!” But she didn’t. She wanted to runaway but she didn’t. Lynn considered herself a modern woman, aware of current-day female opportunity, and she had “taken the ball and run with it,” acing high school, college, and medical school. Her approach was to work as hard as she could, and when she confronted problems or obstacles, which she most certainly had experienced, her reaction was just to strive that much harder. But here was perhaps one of the biggest challenges of her life. Here the man with whom she had come to believe she might share her life was possibly brain dead, and there was nothing she could do.
    “Hey,” Charles said suddenly. “You know what? This is a perfect teaching case to demonstrate doll’s eye movement as a test for brain stem function with comatose patients. Have you ever seen it?”
    “No,” Lynn forced herself to say. Nor did she think she wanted to see it with Carl as the subject, since it would only make his status that much more real, but she didn’t think she could refuse without possibly betraying that she was there under false pretenses.
    “Then let me show you,” Charles said. “But I need your help. You hold his eyes open while I rotate his head.”
    As if touching something forbidden, Lynn used the thumb and the first finger of her left hand to elevate gingerly Carl’s upper lids. She stared down into blankness of his mildly dilated pupils. It gave her an eerie feeling, as if she were violating his personhood. Silently she shouted for him to wake up, to smile, and to talk and say that this whole episode was a sham and a joke. But there was no reaction, just his rhythmical breathing.
    “Okay, good,” Charles said. He bent over Carl’s chest and put his hands on either side of his head. He first rotated Carl’s head toward Lynn and then back toward himself. “There, did you see it?”
    “What am I seeing?” Lynn asked in a hesitant voice. It was all she could do to keep from recoiling and running from the room.
    “Notice that when I rotate the head, the eyes move in the opposite direction.” Charles rotated Carl’s head again.
    It was now easy for Lynn to see that Carl’s eyes did rotate as Charles had described, blankly staring upward as his head went to the side.
    “It’s a vestibulo-ocular reflex,” Charles said in a didactic-medical monotone that was all too familiar to Lynn. “It means that the brain stem and the involved cranial nerves are operating as they should. If the patient is malingering, acting as if unconscious, something you will see on occasion in the ER, the eyes move in the direction of the rotation. If the brain stem is not functioning, then the eyes don’t move at all. Rather dramatic, wouldn’t you say? I could also show you the same phenomena using caloric stimulation, meaning putting cold water into his ears. Would you like to see that as well?”
    “This is quite enough,” Lynn said. She pulled her hand back, allowing Carl’s eyelids to close slowly. She had to get away. To where, she didn’t know. As a member of the hospital community and soon to be a doctor, she felt a responsibility in Carl’s disaster above and beyond her recommending Dr. Weaver and the Mason-Dixon Medical Center.
    “I have all the paraphernalia available,” Charles said. “It will only take a second to get it. It’s no imposition whatsoever.”
    “Thank you,” Lynn said, backing up from the bed. “I appreciate your taking the time to show me what you have, but I have to go. I’m sorry.”
    “That’s quite all right,” Charles said. He stared at Lynn and furrowed his brows. It was obvious he was confused about her behavior. “If any of the other members of your preceptor group would care to see this classic doll’s eye movement, I’d be happy to show it to them.”
    “Thank you,” Lynn said. “I’ll let the others know.”
    Lynn fled out of the ICU. Once in the hall, she stopped and took a few deep breaths. It was somehow comforting to