Lisa discovers Curtis’ ventilator is defective and reports the malfunction. As time passes Lisa’s calls to the nurses’ station escalate as Curtis’ condition deteriorates. Ultimately the machine cuts-off Curtis’ supply of oxygen. The only function working on the ventilator is the alarm…

EXCERPT:
It’s been over a minute. That’s a long time to go without breathing. This thing is honking and quacking like it is desperate for somebody to come running. Yea, you and me both, buddy. I keep holding Curtis’ hand and calmly, slowly telling him to look at me, to breathe with me. Well, he isn’t taking his eyes off me and his is gripping my hand. He has that familiar wild-eyed, frantic look on his face. He can’t breathe. I know it, and a state-of-the-art machine is telling us so. It is letting everybody in the world know, as it is designed to do.

One minute, fifteen seconds—he is starting to turn blue. His oxygen saturation drops to the low eighties. I don’t want to see seventy percent. I drop his hand and run to the door, still calmly and slowly telling him to take slow, deep breaths. I open the “never-open-this-door” door, look right at Dr. Beverly Hills at the nurses’ station, and desperately cry out, “He can’t breathe!”

Curtis’ nurse is passing the nurses’ station, on her way to the room next door with her arms full of supplies. Dr. Beverly Hills stands up and looks at her. She never stops moving but says, “I paged Respiratory. Whaddya want me to do?” She disappears into the other patient’s room. Dr. Beverly Hills doesn’t move.

I go back to Curtis. I am not going to let him die while I am bickering with these hateful people. I hold his hand and try to keep him focused. He is panicked, wild-eyed and turning blue. He’s suffocating, and there’s not a damned thing I can do. It’s difficult to describe the range of emotions I’m feeling—helpless to do anything to save him, terrified that he’s going to die any second, furious that nobody is coming to help. I can get a Big Mac at McDonald’s faster than I can get oxygen in a world-class hospital.