Scrubbing in took a few minutes, but as soon as everyone was inside the double doors, they got to work on Meg.
“Her fever was hovering around 100, but spiked to 104.8. The febrile seizure lasted for about forty-five seconds before stopping. Fortunately, the side rails were up on her bed so she didn’t fall to the ground. She does look to have bitten her tongue pretty badly, though,” Paulie was trying to maintain his physician’s objectivity, but he wasn’t doing a great job of it. This little girl had been through so much already. It was breaking his heart to watch her suffer any longer.
Dr. Andrews had retrieved a bulb syringe and started trying to extract the blood pooling in Meg’s mouth from her self-inflicted bite wound. He looked on the verge of tears himself.
“Her temperature is back to 100.3 now. I’ll have to reset her I.V. She yanked it out during the episode,” Evan said to the room. He carefully began pulling the tape off his sister’s arm and with expert movements cleaned the site with gauze and rubbing alcohol, sterilizing it. An angry purplish-blue color quickly formed where the I.V. had been pulled partially out of place. Her face was pale except for the trickle of blood that had slipped down from the corner of her mouth. This was all nearly too much for Evan. His blue mask was doing a poor job collecting the tears he cried.
Everyone’s nerves were shot. They all loved Meg in their own way and were so scared for her. She was always so spunky and energetic; she could get a room full of people moving faster than anyone. She was bossy and controlling with the strength of spirit to back it all up. Watching her lie on that white-sheeted gurney small, frail and broken was pushing everyone to the brink of hopelessness.
“Let’s brainstorm,” Margo said to everyone. “What do we know?”
“Good idea, Margo. We need to run this like we would any patient’s diagnosis,” Theo brightened a little at the idea of doing something productive.
“Right, I’ll scribe,” Paulie said walking to the whiteboard in the corner of the room and grabbing a dry erase marker.
“Um, no offense Paulie, but I couldn’t read your writing when you were my professor,” Margo gently teased as she held her hand out for the marker. Paulie grinned sheepishly and passed it over.
“Okay, we know she’s been unconscious for,” Margo paused to look up at the wall clock, “nineteen hours after collapsing during a run.”
“Her lab work indicates an increase in white blood cells—which usually means infection,” Evan supposed.
“Her red blood cell count was low indicating possible anemia,” Paulie added.
“Well, the anemia could have caused the headache and fainting,” Theo thought, “A bleeding ulcer could cause the anemia and high white blood count,” he offered.
“But we already performed a sonogram looking at all her internal organs, and there was no sign of bleeding,” Paulie added with a sigh.
“Maybe we missed something,” said Theo.
“We’re missing something, that’s for sure. But what?” Margo stared at the notes she had written in black ink on the board. “There was the fever and seizure too,” she continued.
“Infection could cause the fever,” Paulie said.
“Right, but that takes us back to the question, what is causing the infection? We started her on the antibiotics how long ago?” Margo asked.
Evan looked at his chart. “We began a full scope antibiotic intravenously at 11:18 last night. So she’s been on them for twelve hours,” he concluded.
“That should have been enough time for us to see improvement. Instead, she seems to be getting worse. That fever is scary,” Paulie said.
“A regular human being experiencing high fevers for days on end will suffer brain damage,” Alik said, as though reading from a book. This was the first he said during the entire discussion. Not having the scientific background his younger brother and mother had left him feeling inadequate. But Alik’s memory was unmatched, and he was racking his brain trying to remember anything he’d ever read that could be of help to the conversation right now. So, his mind raced back to an afternoon at the ranch when he was bored enough to read an entire stack of his mom’s scientific magazines.
“Right, Alik. I’m just hoping we can figure this out before too much time passes,” Theo said.
“There’s another option,” Creed said softly. He was staring at Meg and thinking about how beautiful she looked, even in her current condition.
“What was that, Creed?” Alik asked.
This time, Creed cleared the emotion from his throat before speaking, “I said there’s another option we haven’t discussed.”
“What option?” Cole asked skeptically.
“A whole group of specialists are out there who may be able to help her,” he said letting the words sink into the room.
“What kind of ‘specialists’?” Theo asked.
“Scientists who focus solely on metahumans,” Creed said cryptically.