SEPTEMBER 16, 2016, 4:23:59 A.M.
911 operator: "This line is recorded. Where is your emergency?"
Laura: "I'm at Somerville Hospital."
911 operator: "I'm sorry. Where are you?"
Laura: "Somerville Hospital."
911 operator: "OK, what's the emergency?"
Laura: "I'm having an asthma attack. I'm dying."
911 operator: "Whereabouts are you at the hospital?"
Laura: "Emergency room."
911 operator: "OK."
Laura: "I can't get in."
911 operator: "Let me get you into Somerville. You're outside?"
Laura: "Mm-hm."
911 operator: "Are you in the parking lot?"
Laura: "Yeah."
911 operator: "Are you in a vehicle?"
Laura: "No. I'm just outside it."
911 operator: "At the door?"
Laura: "Asthma. Asthma."
911 operator: "Are you at the door?"
Laura: "Yeah."
911 operator: "Yes?"
Laura: "Yes, I'm just at the door. I feel like I'm dying."
* * *
MY NAME IS Peter DeMarco, and I am Laura's husband. And I didn't know any of this.
When I finally arrived at the emergency room that morning, I was told that Laura never made it there. That she collapsed on a street leading to CHA Somerville Hospital, or possibly in a parking lot on the outskirts of the property. No one in the emergency room could tell me the full story, as there had been a shift change at 7 a.m., and everyone who'd treated her was gone. All they knew was that my wife had called 911 just after 4 a.m., before she lost consciousness, but she wasn't able to give her exact location.
It took emergency responders a long time to find her, they told me.
"She was in the last place they looked," someone in the emergency room said.
Some 10 minutes passed between the time Laura called 911 and the time she was found, in cardiac arrest following a devastating asthma attack. Those 10 minutes meant her life.
More ...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2018/11/03/losing-laura/WJrAFwMTYs1zwPfH5nTvGM/story.html?
