Grisham was jolted awake by the blaring ringtone of his pager. In the silent duty doctor’s room, the vintage green glow from the pager pierced through the darkness, enabling him to read the time on the clock as he tilted his head. “3 am,” he muttered, declared by the perfectly sliced quarter of the round clock. He asked himself who would call at such an hour, letting out a deep sigh. He muted the pager without checking the screen and plopped his face down on the pillow. His mind soon went to work, narrowing down his list of suspects of the thieves who had stolen his respite to only a handful, his best bet on Nurse Praise. “It must be her,” he said to himself, “It has to be her.”
He flipped the downward-facing pager, feeling a sense of pride in his detective skills as the caller’s name read ‘Nurse Praise – Joy Ward.’ Nearing the end of his internship at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Grisham knew most of the calls from Joy Ward, the hospital’s canny name for the postnatal ward – ward for mothers who had already delivered, were not emergencies. At least ninety percent of the time. Grisham often wondered if they exorcised all their sins in the labour room with all the cursing and were shifted to the ward when nothing remained but joy, and hence perhaps the name.
Hardly anyone ever called in his four months at the department apart from the one in fifty cases of mothers with postpartum fever or because of painful and creamy foul discharges from the caesarean sites, telltale symptoms of surgical wound infections, hallmark of the inexperienced or hasteful surgeon. Nurse Praise, the head nurse of the ward, a lady with as big of a body as her sense of authority, however, was an exception. Grisham was convinced that she did not like the intern doctors, or any doctor for that matter. Whether this hatred stemmed from jealousy, from past incidents the waves of time had washed and permeated into her porous memory, he did not know. But he was also convinced she showed her ill intentions primarily to interns, the budding doctors fresh from the soil, countless sleep-time espionages leaving them weary and tired, nipping ever so slightly at their buds. Grisham knew that pointless late night calls just to wake them up was one of her tactics, to wake whoever’s on night duty for something as trivial as a patient complaining of hiccups or if their water tasted funny. On the contrary, when the interns needed help from her, she would scoff at them, turn and walk away, the hospital floor quaking with her giant steps.
Before Grisham could attend the call, it had stopped. On other days, he would’ve probably called back, but after a particularly busy OPD measuring the bellies of nearly a hundred mothers resembling watermelons, navigating them, probing to find barely audible fetal heart sounds, he was exhausted. He wavered to call back, and if the call was important, he was certain it would come again. He closed his eyes, hoping to get a few more hours in before the morning rounds.
However, for Grisham, sleep never came back. No matter how much he twisted and turned, or if he laid prone or supine, he seemed to be completely cut off from the world of sleep. A roadblock in the shape of a grimacing head nurse stood before him menacingly. The cold breeze flowing in from the window numbed his face, and he wrapped himself up in the funky smelling blanket which had last been washed God-knows-when. It was a particularly cold December night, and the bite of winter was gnawing at his body, the blanket the last stronghold against the permafrost. Outside, there was a bustling commotion, and he could hear people shouting and rushing into the building, in an unusual fervor unseen in the winter nights usually gripped with melancholy. After about thirty minutes of counting sheep, Grisham could not sleep in the cold, so he got up to close the window.
Through the window, he saw an ER doctor and two technicians pushing what seemed to be a crash trolley inside, and another doctor was talking to a nurse, with fear so intense her frightened expressions gave her away to the young doctor watching from four floors above. He wondered if a patient had suffered a heart attack which would’ve explained the trolley, and which though uncommon, was not unusual – he had seen three himself in his eight months of internship, and had given CPR to one. He continued watching the two people talking below, and as he looked closer, Grisham found the nurse to resemble Nurse Praise, her belly indistinguishable from her patients’, and her size 13 neon green clogs which glowed in the dark. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking that it was her. Suddenly he remembered the call. He wondered if it was to inform him of a patient’s critical condition, and he felt a tinge of guilt and remorse for having not called back. He could only pray the trolley was not meant for one of his own patients in Joy Ward. How joyful it would be if so. But what if it was indeed one of his own? Only God knew what his 2nd on-call would say if they found out. It could lead to his suspension, and if the family of the patient found out about this sentinel event, they could even sue him.
Grisham quickly snatched the pager from the bed. He opened it and checked the call logs – there were not one, but five missed calls – all from Nurse Praise. His heart sank – how could he have slept through the other calls? Surely, if he had known he had received more than a single call, he would’ve ran to the ward, right? Grisham felt his heart racing, two beats for every tick of the clock. He wasn’t quite sure if he should head to the ward then, so at least he could get some credit for showing up, or pretend to have slept off.
Anyway, his 2nd on-call also knew how hard he worked that day in the OPD, right? Pondering what to do, he went back to the window, but the two of them were gone. It was then that he heard his door open, followed by a familiar voice.
“I had paged him seven times,” said Nurse Praise.
No, it was five. Check the logs.
“A patient had left him some cake as a token of thanks. We wanted him to have it.”
I’m pretty sure half of it has reached your colon by now.
Grisham listened to them talking, his eyes on the ER technician cutting his scrubs open as his body lay on the bed lifeless, ragdolling as he exposed Grisham’s chest to the brisk cold air. As he placed the metallic leads on his chest, Grisham flinched where he stood as they were ice cold. When the ECG machine showed an unwavering, stubborn flat line, the doctor shouted for the defibrillator. Grisham watched on intently. He’d learned about shockable and unshockable rhythms in medical school, and a flat line – asystole – meant it was unshockable. He wondered if the doctor giving him CPR then ever paid attention in his classes.
Meanwhile, the other technician took Grisham’s left hand and wiped off the islands of clotted black blood in the sea of red dried blood. Haemostasis had already been achieved, not because the large gash in the wrist had been plugged, but simply because there wasn’t any more blood to flow out. As he secured the IV cannula into Grisham’s collapsed vein, fresh blood gushed through his vessels that once carried great rivers, now reduced to small brooks. The chill of the refrigerated blood made Grisham shiver. He wished they’d stop. He wished they’d stop trying and let him sleep in peace. He looked at his face, how peacefully he slept. How he’d yearned for this rest! For this shut-eye. He felt he might’ve achieved dharma there.
He looked towards Nurse Praise, tears streaking down her eyes to meet at her chin and fall on her protruding belly.
“It was after he hadn’t answered my calls for the seventh time that I decided to go check the room.”
How sweet of you, Nurse Praise.
“I saw him just this evening, and he looked so happy. I never believed he would do something like this.”
You’re right, Nurse Praise. I was so happy, wasn’t I?
I just wanted some sleep, that’s all, you see…
As they left the room and reeled his body into Operation Theatre Room 8, Grisham remained in the room. The first slivers of sunlight had begun to creep into the room, forgiving the sins of the day before.
Grisham looked at the clock – 5 am. He picked up his pager and started to prepare for the morning rounds.