A Bad Night · Second Shift · Pulse Beat
The ward changes without warning, and on the night of the fourteenth, it did. At one in the morning a man in bed three began to gasp. Fatima was at his side before the alarm sounded. His lips were…
The ward changes without warning, and on the night of the fourteenth, it did.
At one in the morning a man in bed three began to gasp. Fatima was at his side before the alarm sounded. His lips were blue, his skin cold, his pulse a thready flutter. She called the on-call doctor, ran for oxygen, set up the drip with hands that did not shake. "Stay with me, Mr Rao," she kept saying. "Stay with me."
The doctor, a junior, arrived pale. "What is it?" he said.
And Fatima, who had read about it a thousand times, who had walked through it in her head on the train, heard herself say, "Pulmonary embolism. His leg was swollen this afternoon. I flagged it. Start heparin and call the registrar."
It was correct. They saved him, barely. At four in the morning, in the sluice room, with her hands in cold water, she began to shake uncontrollably, and sat down on the floor with her back against the wall, and wept.