On Friday night, Kimberly Bender was at her job as a respiratory therapist at Summa Rehab Hospital in Akron, where she has worked for seven years.

Partway through her shift, she became ill. She told the charge nurse that she had a fever and was disoriented. At 8:30 p.m., she headed to her car to drive home to Green.

She didn't make it.

Her husband, Larry, awoke at 3 a.m., worried. She had been expected home about midnight.

He called her cellphone. She didn't answer.

He called the hospital. They said she had become ill and left, and they were hoping he had picked her up.

They said they would send someone to check the parking lot behind the hospital. When they did, they found her lying on the ground.

She had been there from 8:30 p.m. Friday until nearly 4 a.m. Saturday. The low Friday night was 11 degrees.

Bender, 53, was in such bad shape that she was placed on life support, where she stayed for three days.

On Tuesday she was on a ventilator. Her frostbite is so severe that she may lose her fingers.

Her husband is livid.

"Why didn't security check the parking lot periodically?" he said.

Larry Bender also wants to know why a hospital wouldn't examine an employee who had complained about being disoriented.

“It's inexcusable.”

In an emailed statement Tuesday, Summa Rehab Chief Executive Michelle Dudek said the hospital is investigating.

"First and foremost, Summa Health and Summa Rehab Hospital are profoundly concerned about the health and well-being of this valued employee. At this point, we are still investigating this unfortunate situation and, as such, will not have any additional comments to make,” she said.

Bender figures his wife must have been too disoriented to call or text him, because she has done so in the past. When she had a stomach illness a while back, she texted and asked him to pick her up.

Whether she began a text message and couldn't complete it is unclear because her phone could not be found.

“I asked them, 'Why did you let her leave?' ” Bender said. “They didn't give me an answer. ...

“You're a hospital. Stop, check her out and find out what's going on. You don't just send her out and say, 'OK, go home.' ”

Kimberly's heart stopped twice, once after paramedics started to treat her in the parking lot and again in the ER.

Her core temperature had plunged to 64 degrees. Her blood was fed through a machine that very gradually warmed it.

Larry Bender, 59, is a pharmacy tech with Envision, a mail-order pharmacy in Canton. They have a blended family consisting of five children and seven grandchildren.

“Somebody needs to tell this story," he said Tuesday, speaking by phone from his wife's hospital room. “I don't want this to happen to anybody else's spouse."

Bender said he was told by his wife's co-workers that some security shifts at the hospital were discontinued to save costs.

"She loved her job," he said, fighting back tears. "She's been a respiratory therapist for 30 years."

At this point, it's far from certain she'll ever be able to work again.

Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31.