Perfect Poison by M. William Phelps Page B

his clerical work for the night.
    Gilbert, walking toward Marier’s room, stopped by the nurse’s station for a moment.
    â€œJohn, you got a second?”
    â€œShoot, Kristen.”
    â€œCan I leave early?”
    â€œNo,” Wall said. “Absolutely not.”
    They were short on staff as it was. If Gilbert left, Wall would have to go back out on the floor and help the other nurses. It was the same old story with Gilbert lately. All she wanted to do was leave early so she could go see James Perrault.
    At a few minutes before 10:00, Gilbert once again approached Wall, who was himself preparing to go home.
    â€œJohn, I really need to leave early . . . can I go?”
    â€œNo, Kristen. We’re shorthanded. I’m on my way out the door myself, anyway.”
    Gilbert became enraged and stormed off down the hall.
    He can leave early, but I can’t?
    What Gilbert didn’t realize was that Wall wasn’t going home early. He had come in at 2:00; by 10:00 he’d already logged his eight hours.
    After checking in on Marier once more, Wall left. If for some reason Marier had shown any disturbing signs, Wall would have never gone home, he later said.
    Only minutes later, Gilbert walked into Marier’s room and found him to be “lethargic and mumbling incoherently,” she later wrote. She then checked his BSL and said it was at an unprecedented 44. Even for diabetics, this was unheard of. A 44-count is well below the scale many nurses usually see. Plus, Marier had been fine only moments ago when Wall checked him. How could his BSL drop nearly one hundred points in the span of just a few minutes? A person with a 44-count would literally be in a comatose state.
    It was almost impossible.
    Gilbert later said that after she pricked his finger and found his BSL that low, she decided to administer an ampoule of D-50, which is a concentrated, syrupy form of sugar that can be pushed directly into the vein. Nurses give D-50 to diabetics who are in a diabetic coma. It generally perks them right up.
    When Gilbert pumped the D-50 into Marier’s arm, she said he went into “full cardiopulmonary arrest.”
    Another improbability.
    Because of its thick consistency, and the fact that it comes in such a large syringe—one slightly smaller than a tube of caulking—it takes two hands to administer D-50. Even under the most perfect conditions, nurses say, it takes about two minutes, sometimes even longer, to push the entire ampoule into the vein. One needs strong arms. For a nurse to ascertain that a patient had suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest during the push of a syringe of D-50, she would have to be taking his pulse at the same time. The only other way to know would be if the patient had been hooked up to a heart monitor. And because Francis Marier hadn’t had any problems with his heart, he wasn’t on a monitor.
    At 10:17, Gilbert called a code on Marier, and resuscitation efforts began.
    Many later agreed that the only way a person could end up with a BSL of 44, in the short time frame that had occurred in Marier’s case, was if someone had given him an overdose of insulin.

CHAPTER 17
    It wasn’t the throbbing pulse of a fifteen-year-old boy, but after about four minutes of giving Francis Marier CPR, nurses and doctors were able to get his heart beating again on its own. A moment later, one of the nurses heard faint breathing sounds coming from his mouth.
    â€œHe’s alive!”
    After being stabilized, he was transferred to the ICU, where Kathy Rix, Renee Walsh and April Gougeon were waiting for him.
    All three nurses agreed they had never in their lives seen a patient who had a BSL as low as Francis Marier’s.
    â€œI was stunned. Shocked. I had never seen a patient not respond to [one] push of D-50—and certainly if not one, the second one would do it,” Renee Walsh later said.
    Gilbert said that after checking his BSL, and finding it at 44, as