Chapter 2 Minor Procedure page 9

If want to be on the staff of a hospital, lad, pretend
you're a fool till you're on it.
—Lloyd Roberts, 1853-1920

September 28, 1998

Breathe—come on, breathe. You know how. For God's sake, breathe!

A silent, dry gulp. The mouth opened, but the chest didn't move. Something's jamming. Something is seizing this engine.

I noticed rapid eye movement. Oxygen level in the blood was depleting rapidly. I'll give it another thirty seconds max before the brain goes blank. That is if the lungs don't burst first—an absurd but interesting possibility.

Then I realized I knew the symptom; I've witnessed it often enough in dying patients. One moment they're fighting with unexpected determination, the next they drift past the point of no return. I began to register in cold blood every minute detail as his body methodically shut itself down with the grace of a medical Three Mile Island.

The head rolled to one side. The oscillograph's amplitude bounced on the screen, leaving a hysterical pinball's amber trace, the raw score sheet of life performed by the monotonous whine of an electronic beeper. Remarkably steady, an unerring beep-beep-beep said that the heart seemed intent on going on, brain or no brain.

Stunned, I sensed my own heart rhythm merging with the thumping of the heart in the dying form below me. Emotional gravity pulled me down to the abyss. I was being sucked into the last throes of this struggle for life. It was not his life oozing away, but my own.

Then colors exploded before my eyes and the rhythmical electronic pulse was replaced by a chaotic ring.