Trapped in Silence My SOS in Morse Code

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When I came back to myself, my husband was pinning another woman down and kissing her like a man gone wild.

The nasal cannula pressed against my nose. I couldn't make a sound.

Their thick, ragged breathing poured into my ears.

Easy, Raymond Delgado murmured. Don't press on Genie's leg. I spent two hours massaging it for her today.

The woman didn't care. "She's a living corpse. You really think she's going to wake up?"

Four years ago there was a terrible car crash, and I became a vegetable.

If Raymond hadn't thrown himself over me, I'd have died on the spot.

"God, this is so annoying. When is she going to die?" the woman asked suddenly.

Raymond stopped what he was doing, adjusted my nasal cannula, and said nothing.

The next day, the neurological rehabilitation specialist made his usual rounds.

He announced it right there:

"I'm sorry. The patient is brain-dead."

Raymond fell apart.

"That's impossible! You quack! My wife was fine last night!"

My best friend, Andrea Winfield, pleaded with the specialist.

"I'm so sorry, Dr. Lambert, the family's just overwhelmed. She's still so young. Please, take another look at her..."

The specialist turned to a young man.

"Jesse Fuller, you just got back from overseas. You assess the patient's condition."

A pair of warm, soft hands took mine and started the muscle-strength test.

This was my last chance.

I gathered every bit of strength I had and touched his palm once.

Then again.

Three short touches, followed by three long ones.

Jesse's hand went rigid.

The patient's hand had moved.

Not a muscle spasm. Not a nerve reflex.

There was a familiar rhythm buried in it.

He'd been in an amateur radio club back in college. He couldn't mistake it.

This was the internationally recognized Morse code.

SOS

......

Just then another large hand knocked his aside and snatched the patient's hand back.

"Dr. Fuller."

Raymond gazed at the woman on the bed with an aching look, his voice trembling slightly.

"My wife has been through so many surgeries since the crash. If she's held on this long, she's the one who's suffered the most."

Jesse turned his head and studied him.

The man took the wet wipe the head nurse handed over and cleaned the patient's hand, the veins standing out sharply beneath the skin.

His body held a wary, defensive stance.

"I don't mean any harm. It's a routine check," Jesse said, all business. "The patient just moved."

You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

Dr. Lambert examined me again.

He announced, the way he always did:

"It's just the pathological reflex of a vegetative patient."

"No, it isn't." Jesse's voice was quiet.

Every eye in the room fell back on him.

The temperature in the room dropped hard.

Andrea suddenly burst into tears.

"Dr. Fuller, please. Stop giving the family this empty, groundless hope..."

She squeezed to the foot of the bed, pressed her palm to the sole of my foot to feel its warmth, then neatly tucked the blanket back in.

That familiar scent slipped into my nose again.

My guess had been right after all.

The woman in my husband's arms last night had smelled exactly like this.

Now that the truth was clear, the pain came late, and it came hard.

The sole of my foot, where Andrea had touched it, began to ache in faint threads.

The phantom pain shot up from my foot to my heart.

I wanted to move my fingertip again.

To tell Dr. Fuller that my beloved best friend of fifteen years and my husband were sleeping together.

But my index finger stayed limp and slack, like all the numb limbs on my body.

Never again under my control.

Dr. Lambert gave Raymond a sympathetic look.

"Family of the patient, I'm going to declare the time of death now."

The head nurse checked her watch calmly, ready to record it.

Raymond Delgado gripped my forearm, his hands shaking.

"Sweetheart... don't go, don't leave me..."

The room was not quiet.

Andrea Winfield had pulled out my nasal cannula.

A hum filled my ears.

My life had started counting down.

On the monitor, my heartbeat dropped fast.

...

...

...

Heart rate falling, blood pressure crashing.

The air thinned and thinned. I couldn't get a breath.

My heart ran like an old computer, slower and slower.

The crying in the room grew louder.

Every face was stricken with grief. They all knew the patient had entered her final moments.

Beep

The heart monitor flattened into a single line.

Jesse Fuller crossed the room in one stride and lunged to the machine.

"How did the monitor come loose?!"

Andrea checked in a panic.

"The leads slipped off."

Jesse looked at her, long and hard.

"Nurse Winfield, this is serious negligence."

Andrea hurried the electrodes back onto my body.

"Dr. Fuller, it really wasn't me."

The head nurse frowned.

"Andrea, you'll stay late and think about what you did."

She adjusted the oxygen saturation back to a proper level.

Fresh oxygen flowed into my nose.

Like a drowning fish, I was back in the water.

"This is nonsense." Dr. Lambert's face had turned. He couldn't hold it anymore.

He was the neurology expert the Delgado family had paid a fortune to bring in for the consult.

One second he'd pronounced the patient dead.

The next, a resident-in-training openly stated the opposite.

"Jesse, mind what you say."

Dr. Lambert lowered his voice.

"This patient was brain-dead four years ago. Her family couldn't accept it, so they've kept her body going ever since."

Only the flat, monotonous tone of the monitor was left in the room.

Jesse said, "A moment ago, the patient was communicating with me."

At that, Raymond's head snapped up, stunned.

"Dr. Fuller, what did you say? My wife is really alive?"

Jesse walked straight to the bed and took the patient's hand again.

The fingertips didn't move.

He waited quietly another minute.

No miracle came.

His expression slowly turned grave.

Could it be...?

Had his judgment been wrong?

But just now, clearly...

Jesse let go, ready to explain the situation to Dr. Lambert.

Just as his fingers were about to withdraw.

My index finger hooked into his palm again.

Warmth poured into my hand, and fingers stiff for years slowly came back to life.

I gave it everything I had.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap...

I sent the Morse code.

She

Jesse jolted, his eyes flying around the room.

Nurse Winfield.

The female attendant.

The head nurse.

He gripped my hand again and tapped a line of Morse code into my palm.

Who is she?

Andrea got there before him, taking out a penlight.

She pried my eyelid open.

In my field of vision: the deep furrows on Dr. Lambert's forehead, the despair in Raymond's eyes, the hypocrisy on Andrea's face.

The penlight burned into two spots of glare across my sight.

I heard her say:

"No visual tracking, no response to sound. Dr. Lambert, Dr. Fuller says the patient moved her finger, but that would be an incidental muscle movement, the kind you see in a vegetative patient."

Dr. Lambert neither agreed nor disagreed.

These tests had been run many times over the past four years.

Raymond covered his face, hiding the pain.

Andrea finished her checks and closed my eyelid.

My world went dark again.

Snap Jesse pinched Andrea's ID badge between two fingers.

His voice carried a rare edge of aggression.

"Nurse Winfield oversteps into making a diagnosis. Why not take the doctor's chair while you're at it?"

"Dr. Fuller, I didn't" Andrea stammered.

My index finger twitched again, twice.

This time, everyone saw it.

"It moved! It moved!" The head nurse was more thrilled than anyone. "Eugenia's finger moved!"

Jesse's voice came out unusually firm.

"The patient has regained partial consciousness. Dr. Lambert, I'm asking you to draw up a completely new treatment plan for her condition."

"Treatment?"

At that, Raymond snapped.

"Dr. Fuller, the crash left my wife with a severe head injury. Dr. Lambert performed two craniotomies on her."

"She seized on the operating table. It was all she could do to pull through."

"If you're going to put her through that same agony again, I'd rather let her rest in peace!"

"Dr. Lambert" Raymond grabbed at his last straw. "I consent to withdrawing treatment!"

He yanked hard enough to twist Dr. Lambert's white coat sideways.

Patients' families from the next room mistook it for a hospital dispute and pulled out their phones to record.

Every eye in the corridor was on them.

Dr. Lambert's tone softened.

"Please, don't be upset. We'll just start with a cranial MRI to assess the extent of the brain damage."

Raymond nodded hard.

This was the rehabilitation ward's first case of a vegetative patient regaining consciousness.

The other families looked at it as though they'd glimpsed hope.

Which was exactly why they were watching the follow-up tests on the patient in Bed 5 so closely.

I heard Dr. Lambert say in a low voice, "Jesse. My office."

The head nurse and a female aide wheeled my bed out of the room together, moving me out.

I left that nightmare of a room behind.

But my body was no easier for it.

I was terrified.

The head nurse tucked a foam pad behind my head.

"Don't be scared. Just think of it as a nap."

The machine hummed and vibrated, and little by little I drifted off.

When I woke again, the nurses were lifting me back onto the transport bed.

The imaging tech handed the report to the head nurse.

She read it through, then turned and made a call.

Were the results bad?

Dread churned in me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The department head's office.

Hilary Lambert took off his white coat.

"You're the star recruit the hospital director brought in."

He jerked the blinds open.

Not far off, workers were fixing the exterior cladding onto the new building for the branch hospital's neurological rehabilitation department.

Jesse gave nothing away. "Yes."

"Back when I was doing my residency, I kept my mouth shut and did whatever my seniors told me to."

Jesse understood. Dr. Lambert was blaming him for stepping out of line.

"Do you know how much Bed 5 has cost after four years in the rehabilitation ward?"

"The out-of-pocket share of the surgeries, the fees to run the machines, the imported drugs, the aide's wagesnone of that's covered by insurance."

"I hear her husband's company's been in trouble lately. He's barely keeping it going."

"If you hadn't rushed to judgment today, for the family it would have been over with. Just one moment's pain."

Just then the internal line rang.

The rush MRI results for Bed 5 were in.

Dr. Lambert opened the computer without hesitation.

Patient: Eugenia Pruitt.

Brainstem structurally intact; partial cerebral cortical function preserved.

Jesse pulled up Eugenia's scans from four years ago.

"Dr. Lambert, the patient is showing signs she could wake up!"

He couldn't hide his excitement as he met Dr. Lambert's kindly face.

"Jesse. I'll get a year knocked off your residency, and have you transferred to the new building."

A genuine temptation.

Something jolted through Jesse's palm.

The image of Eugenia calling for help leapt up in front of him.

The thin knuckles standing out, the back of her hand covered in the pinpricks left by IV needles.

Jesse asked calmly, "What do you need me to do, Dr. Lambert?"

Dr. Lambert smiled, though it never reached his eyes.

"All you have to do is write up a misdiagnosis note. Say you mistook the patient's neurological reflex for a sign of recovery."

He was worried Jesse might hesitate.

So he kept explaining.

Everyone had been a beginner once, he said. A small mistake during your residencypeople understand that.

He clapped a hand to his own chest.

"Don't worry. I'll cover for you."

"Will you?" Jesse straightened up.

Dr. Lambert nodded.

Jesse turned the computer screen around.

On it was the neurological rehabilitation department's internal group chat.

Eugenia's MRI report sat right there in the thread for everyone to see.

Dr. Lambert: Bed 5, Miss Pruitt, is awake.

One after another, people in the chat were quoting the message.

Dr. Lambert's face changed in an instant.

"Jesse, how dare you?"

"Your medical skill is superb, Dr. Lambert. I have a lot to learn from you."

Leaving the office, Jesse wiped the sweat from his forehead.

He'd staked a lot on that hand.

The odds were anyone's guess.

When he became a doctor, he had taken an oath.

"Honor life. Save the dying, heal the injured."

The patient had a fierce will to live. She wanted to live.

He wanted to help her.

The women's restroom in the rehabilitation department.

"I heard Bed 5 has shown real improvement. A genuine medical miracle!"

"Dr. Lambert's incredible. His specialist consultations are going to cost even more now."

Inside a stall, Andrea panicked.

She had no choice but to go talk to Raymond.

The stairwell.

Raymond checked the steps above and below with care.

It was dead quiet, quiet enough that a voice carried its own echo.

"Raymond, if Eugenia wakes up, I'm finished."

Andrea reached out toward him.

"Will she remember what happened that day?"

Smack!

Raymond knocked her hand away.

"Andrea, you've crossed a line."

The color drained from her face.

The corner of Raymond's mouth curved.

"When Genie wakes up, I'll give her the wedding of the century I owe her."

Every time this man in front of her said "Genie," his eyes softened at the edges.

Did he love her?

And yet last night, this same man, so full of "my beloved wife," had had his hands on Andrea's waist.

Right beside Eugenia's hospital bed, he'd done every shameless thing.

After Raymond left, Andrea made a phone call.

"Mrs. Pruitt, Eugenia isn't doing well The attending physician says the immediate family needs to make the final decision."

At the top of the stairs, Jesse looked down.

He'd only just stepped out of the director's office, and here was this sordid little scene.

Eugenia's husband, carrying on with her best friend.

So those tears in the ward had all been crocodile tears.

That prickling ran through his palm again.

Two short, three short, one long.

She

It was the second thing Eugenia had told him in Morse code.

This "she"did she mean Nurse Winfield?

Uneasy, Jesse followed close behind Andrea.

A bag of nutrient fluid finished dripping, and the head nurse took down the IV bag.

Half-conscious, I heard the door to the room push open.

"Genie my baby"

My mother's voice sounded exhausted.

"Careful, Mrs. Pruitt."

Andrea steadied her, and the two of them came slowly into the room.

My mother seized a young doctor's hand, weeping as she spoke.

"My daughter is she about to go?"

Jesse studied her.

"You're the patient's mother? Her condition"

My mother cut him off.

"Doctor, my daughter she's suffered so much!"

At those words, my heart clenched.

I wanted to tell her I was much better, that I wasn't going to die, not for now.

My father said in his hoarse voice, "Maya Pruitt, don't grieve. There isn't much time left. Go see our daughter again."

"Dad! What are you talking about? Genie's still fine!"

Raymond broke into tears.

Hearing it, Jesse thought how complicated human nature really was.

An unfaithful husband who couldn't bear to let his wife die.

I heard a chair creak, and my mother's hand closed over mine.

These hands had once been full and smooth.

They'd combed my hair, dressed me up, cooked for me

Now the knuckles jutted out like knots on a tree.

A thin layer of callus had formed on the pads of her fingers.

After my accident, my mother had given up so much.

"Genie."

She shifted closer, took my hand and drew it downward.

All the way to her belly.

Something struck hard at my heart.

My mother had grown so much thinnerso why was her stomach swelling out?

Mom had I worn her down until she was sick?

My mother smiled.

"Baby, Mommy's carrying your little brother."

"He'll be here to keep your father and me company, so you can go in peace."

Boom!

My mind split open as if struck by something blunt.

A shrill alarm tore through the air above the room.

Blood pressure surging.

Heart rate rocketing from 58 to 142 in an instant.

The life-support monitor shrieked, wild with alarm.