Chapter 18: Bay Four

I walked to the end of the hall and stopped where the glass wall of bay four began.

My father lay on the gurney with the head raised and a paramedic's tape still on his arm.

He was sixty years old now, and he had gotten thin.

His hair had gone completely white, and his glasses were crooked on his face.

A nurse was fitting the leads to his chest, and the monitor over his head drew its line.

I read the line before I had decided to.

Every resident learns to do it from across a room, and I did it from fifteen feet away, and I did not like what it said.

The ST segments were up in the leads that mattered.

This was a heart attack in progress, and the clock on it had started before he reached the door.

"Dr. Sandvik."

The attending came up beside me, a tired man in his fifties with reading glasses pushed into his hair.

He had read the board too.

"I'm told he's family," he said.

"My father."

"Then you don't touch this. You know the rule."

"I know it," I said. "I wasn't going to."

I had said it flatly, and I was a little surprised to find it true.

I had imagined this moment a hundred ways, and in none of them had I been this calm.

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