_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [109]
He reached for my eyelids and checked my pupils. Good, he thought. They haven’t dilated.
Bedard and his partner hooked leads to my chest and checked the monitor. The screen displayed what appeared to be chicken scratchings. It told the medical team my heart was in ventricular fibrillation, disorganized electrical patterns causing the organ to quiver instead of pumping normally.
“Stand back,” Bedard ordered as he removed my shirt and placed the defibrillator’s paddles on my chest.
Bedard set the equipment for two hundred joules shock, and the two hundred newtons of electrical energy lifted my body several inches above the sand.
The jolt did nothing.
Bedard set the equipment for a heavier force—three hundred joules shock. Again the electrical energy jolted my body off the ground.
Nothing.
The equipment was reset for a third shock, more energy, 360 joules.
Again my body was jolted into suspension above the sand.
Still nothing.
Bedard looked at the others. “Continue CPR,” he ordered, moving to get an IV needle in one of my arms.
He started heart-stimulant drugs into the bloodstream as fresh oxygen continued to flow into my lungs. The CPR moved the drugs and fresh blood into the heart muscle itself.
While the medics worked feverishly to revive me, life in my home, only one hundred yards away, continued unaware that I had fallen victim to sudden death.
We had moved into the seaside house only four months before, and Jo was still busy decorating. She was painting in the garage when Pat Sullivan, face white, banged on the window.
“Mrs. Barbree,” he called. “Your husband has fallen on the beach.”
Jo’s mind was suddenly numb. She paid little attention to what Pat was saying. All she could think about was that Jay had had a heart attack, just like his brother Larry, just like all of his family. The Barbree curse, she thought.
She started over the dunes overpass; to her left she could see the crowd, the fire department’s rescue vehicle next to the county ambulance.
Jo watched as they loaded me into the ambulance, and she felt someone’s hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take you to the hospital, Mrs. Barbree,” Sergeant Duane Hinkley said.
The medics continued the procedures inside the ambulance to keep my brain and other organs enriched with fresh blood and oxygen as the vehicle, sirens screaming, raced from the beach and down A1A toward the hospital.
“Let’s hit him with the paddles again,” Chris Bedard said.
Bedard kept the defibrillator set at 360 joules, and with everyone clear, he sent another shock of electrical energy through my chest.
They stared at the monitor. A HEARTBEAT! Not perfect, but a heartbeat!
The medics stared at each other. Their lips stretched into economy-size grins. “I don’t know who you are, buddy,” Chris Bedard laughed, “but the sonofabitch didn’t win today. You are one lucky sucker.”
The sonofabitch referred to by Bedard was death, and Ed Clemons said quietly, “Welcome back from the dead, Mister. This is one time we guys won.”
“We’re not outta the woods yet,” Bedard reminded them.
“Nope, but it’s a hell of a start,” Clemons grinned.
They sat quietly for the rest of the ride, tracing the restored heartbeat across the monitor. Each knew if it had not been for the CPR efforts of David Frank, Pat Sullivan, and Debi Hall before their arrival, there was no way they would have won this day.
The odds simply were not with them. Only 25 to 30 percent of “sudden deaths” are brought back with the immediate attention of trained emergency medical technicians. But by the time they reached the Cape Canaveral Hospital, I was fighting back.
My worried wife waited anxiously outside. She turned to Sergeant Hinkley. She had to know. “You think he’s dead?” she asked flatly.
The veteran police officer, who would within months be brought down by a suspect’s bullet and have his own battle to hold onto life, somberly looked into her worried face. “I’ll see what’s going on,” he said.