A Medical Romance

Chapter One

9th February 2005
10:30 am
“Doc Krish; please come to the ER, stat [this word ‘stat’ means immediately in medical parlance].” – The public addressing system, was paging for Krish. It was an emergency, a hit and run case.

The leading surgeon of the city, Dr. Krishnan Rangarajan, was being called as he was on duty for the day at the St. Estella Hospital. He was doing his routine check-up of patients at the ground floor, when he heard his name on the PA.

He wondered what happened and in his mind started debating at the inefficiency of the staff and started coursing towards the stairs to head to ER on the 2nd floor, ‘A’ block.

His strides were somewhere between a wide step and a half run. He passes through the hallway of white walls, painted green till the middle of the wall from the ground, long drab corridors, with patients waiting for doctors, the relatives in an animated conversation, the nurses brightly walking across, the ward boys trolling or carrying someone across for the CT scan or MRI or just an X-ray.

The air is filled with the humid smell of sulphur, cleaning acids, medicine, tincture, and dry blood. It is little too much for a person who enters for a first time, but for people like Krish this is just another regular day and there is no botheration for all these frivolous things.

He feels his act of saving a life is like playing the role of god, in every way. It brings him immense pleasure in playing the part and that keeps him coming to work everyday, day after day.

He is climbing two steps at a time, gasping for breadth as it had been sometime now, with this kind of exertion. It has been ages, he had settled to his evenly paced walk and has almost become synonymous with it now, among his colleagues.

The door of the ER was ajar and he pushes the door to get in, he does it in a hastily. A guy of twenty years of age struggling for breath with a falling pulse rate, his head, knees, and his arms, has brushes all over, but his right leg has broken and blood is oozing out from the wound. A nurse was nursing his wound on the right leg, he is semi-conscious and moaning in pain, and a surgery is required to get him back on his legs.

Krish gives a close look at the state of the guy and quickly sets to work on his patient. This boy would have perhaps been playing football at the street corner, but now bed ridden at least for the coming months. He has been badly hit by a truck and is now grasping for breadth struggling between life and death.

Death, it has its own ways and fancies. My dad, would have been fine today, if I had saved him? Why did I not save him, what happened? What went wrong?

He looks around at the nurse, who has expertise of more than a decade, is fighting to clam the guy on the table, he looks at and asks, her, “What went wrong? What did you give him? Get the atheistic, stat?

“Doc, the anesthetic, is not in today. He had called in the morning to cancel him appointment on personal grounds.”

Giving the nurse a stern look, he yells at her, “Do you know the situation, god damn, give him a call and ask him here. Why is that you people need to be told what to do? I did not expect this from you, with your experience.

Did you call for another anesthetic or should I have to do that?”

“Yes, doctor. We have sent word for the anesthetic of the Glen Hospital. Doctor Kavya Subramanian is on the way.”

“Whoever, page her again and ask her to buck up.”

Checking the pulse of the patient, he injects a liquid into the IV of the patient and tries to check the pulse and looks at the irregular beating of the heart through the monitor and gives a nod for the surgery of the right leg.

A hushed voice over the phone, “Doctor, are you on the way? The patient’s condition is a little critical.”

“Yeah, I am almost there, which floor is it?”

“It is on the 2nd floor, ‘A’ block, opposite to the car park.”

“Ok, thank you. I will be there.”

Pushing the doors of the ER, she walks in. He turns to see who is it? He is dumb struck; he stands there gapping at her. His mind is winding back in time, memories come flushing, he is collecting his thoughts and his mind is speaking in volumes.


Novel by Kavitha Kumaresan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License