Chapter 5
On Call
That evening, David and I were both on a “thirty-six.” That’s what the interns called the duty shifts – thirty-six hours straight in the ward.
The job was taking care of patients; everything else – sleep, food – came second.
Everyone with half a brain knew that demanding full concentration for thirty-six hours nonstop was unreasonable, even impossible.
But someone had decided that’s how long a shift should be, and nobody dared challenge it – and the seniors found the setup convenient.
We started our shift at six in the evening.
The ward was busy and left us barely a moment to talk, just a word here and a sentence there.
I was dying to tell him about what had happened that morning with Lily; I felt like I would burst if I didn’t.
I longed for the moment we could sit down with a cup of coffee, so that I could finally tell him about seeing her.
Nothing else really mattered. I met David in med school.
We clicked immediately. Naturally, we organized a study group together, and from then on, we were inseparable – devoted to medicine, loyal to each other.
The same went for our shifts: we worked side by side, in perfect sync.
Around nine, we wrapped up the round, each of us finishing on our respective side of the ward, and then we met in the doctors’ room.
“So, Michael – how was Finland?” he asked.
“Nothing like what we experienced together,” I said.
“Hope you didn’t expect too much.”
“Actually, I did. But honestly, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lily while I was there,” I admitted.
“The one who’s getting married?” he asked.
“Yeah – the one who’s getting married. Except she’s not getting married anymore.” I dropped the bomb without warning.
“What??? How do you know?” He looked baffled.
“This morning, I came in late to the ward and ran into her by chance.”
“So, you two are getting married now?” David’s eyes widened, and he grinned.
“Shut up! Listen, I gave her the phone number of the apartment, and she said she’d call in a few days. So don’t you dare disconnect the answering machine like you did when I was abroad.”
I seized the available time we still had and told him every detail of the morning encounter. David listened quietly till I finished, then asked, “So – think there’s something there?”
Before I could answer, a nurse burst into the doctors’ room and cried out, “The patient in room five lost consciousness.” We dropped our coffees and bolted to room five.
The patient was one of those admitted while I’d been away.
As we scrambled, David told me it was Anna Schwartz, around forty, who had come in with a heart attack a few days ago.
Everything had been going fine – he’d even joked with her just before we met.
But now the monitor showed a flat line, shrieking nonstop.
She wasn’t breathing. We had no idea how long it had been going on, and we were shocked that the automatic alarm hadn’t gone off earlier.
“An hour ago, I checked on her – she was awake, she even smiled at me,” David murmured as he quickly scanned the chart at her bedside.
The nurse wheeled the crash cart next to the bed, and we launched into resuscitation, just like we’d been taught.
It didn’t help. Chest compressions, ventilation, drugs into the open vein, then straight into the heart – nothing brought her back.
We knew Anna was gone, yet neither of us could bring ourselves to stop.
The senior on call arrived twenty minutes later and pronounced her dead.
The whole time, a silver helium balloon – probably left by her family – floated above her bed.
I stared at it while the senior filled out the forms. It was my first resuscitation on the ward.
I’d done a few in ER before, but this time the responsibility had been ours.
When it was over, I felt drained, hollowed out.
“She never stood a chance,” the senior said as we left the room, maybe trying to comfort us.
And even though we knew he was right, we both blamed ourselves.
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop feeling this way – guilty and empty.
Maybe I’d feel it forever. The rest of the shift was just as grim.
Another patient, an eighty-nine-year-old woman, died toward dawn.
Her adult grandson and her husband, who was stroking her hand, were there when we declared the official time of death and wrote down the presumed cause.
It was the first time in our careers that we’d had to officially record a death.
Even though it had been a brutal night, I still couldn’t stop thinking about Lily.
I kept circling back to the thought that she only had two years – twenty-four months.
That maybe one day, not far off, maybe even in this very hospital, resuscitation wouldn’t save her, and a senior doctor would come to pronounce her dead.
I thought about her test results too. God, I hoped there was still a chance.
I know that during the resuscitation, I shed tears. David noticed. He was the only one, amid all the chaos, who understood.