THE UNFAIR AFFAIR
PROLOGUE:
There
are two important characters in this story- Tom and Penelope! Their names
appear oddly Hollywood-like by virtue of being changed hastily. The scene is
set somewhere in a trauma centre. It is thus implicated that the two protagonists
are medical folks. Tom is senior to Penelope. Only in this particular night,
the two of them have duties together therein. The storyline requires that the
lady intern be enthusiastic about learning practical work from the also
mentioned surgery first year postgraduate trainee. One such task is the insertion
of a chest tube and that becomes central to all that is going to be written
about.
CHAPTER
1: ARRIVAL OF THE PATIENT
It
is 10 PM when the Patient comes into the thick of things, brought in by four
hustling attendants, one in each corner of his stretcher, where he lay down,
absolutely miserable, somehow holding on to his life. When he is being carried
along to the examination cubicle, he raises his head slightly to look at half a
dozen doctors seated behind one big table and his imploring eyes stop with an
earnest gaze at Penelope as if he comes to know, that very moment, that this
lady will be his savior.
Tom
does not observe any part of this because he has too many things at the back of
his mind at that moment. On the other hand, Penelope becomes spontaneously
aware of some strange feeling growing within her after she has eye contact with
the moribund soul. She looks around at Tom to see if he shares the feeling that
the patient has more chances of living than of dying. Tom merely raises his
eyebrows, not in response to the question that was not put in words, but
because he is wont to do so when words fail him. Penelope only understands that
she has to follow Tom as he moves towards the Patient to examine him.
CHAPTER 2: THE
EXAMINATION OF THE PATIENT
The
Patient was at that moment restless, breathing with great difficulty and he
looked too weak to fight for survival. The double impact by two bulls, one from
front and one from back, to his chest, twelve hours ago caused him to be in
this pitiable condition. Tom was murmuring technical terms to himself. “Absent
breath sounds on the right side of the chest!” “Dull percussion note here”. “Hmmm!
This is blood aspirated out”. “Hemopneumothorax!”. “Chest X ray shows that too!”
He then turned to Penelope, “You need to put in a chest tube in
the right side if this fellow has to breathe to live”.
CHAPTER 3: HOW SHE DOES
IT
Penelope:
“But I have never put one”.
Tom
just rubs his chin and thinks about a smile that he does not execute. He is
positive about getting it done by her. In the next few minutes, he makes
everything ready, all by himself. The kidney tray, the artery forceps, the
needle holder, the suture material, the surgical blade, the local anesthetic,
the betadine swabs, the dressing pads, the adhesive plaster, the scissors, the
32 F chest tube and the water-seal drainage bag with water filled to the
initial level are all in place in double quick time.
Tom:
“So, put it in now”.
Penelope
does not hesitate at any time after that. As Tom kept on describing the steps, she
did each of them as well as it could be done. The skin incision caused no pain to
the Patient. He merely chanted “Allah!” a couple of times and then remained
quietly reassured that “Madam is going to make it all right”.
She
gently dissected the fasciae underneath and Tom could not help but be amazed at
her skill of maintaining such meticulous tissue care. She demonstrated the
musculature of the rib space and then made her way through it till it gave way
in a matter of thirteen long minutes! A gush of blood spurted out as she
punctured the pleura. She expectantly looked at Tom and only saw him vacantly
staring at her hands. Both the gloved hands were totally covered in blood and
along with the pool of blood that was steadily forming, drop by drop,
underneath the dressing table, altogether presented a gory picture. In another
second, when Tom looked at her, she just gravely shook her head intending to
shake him off his thoughts; the ones that were in the back of his mind and had
at that time come to forefront as well. This was because she needed further
directions and Tom had stopped talking. Tom understood the growing rebuke. “Now
put that tube in through the opening, tighten the U suture, close the remaining
defect with mattress sutures, fix the tube, clamp the tube, cut the end,
connect it to the drainage bag with the connector and release the clamp”
It
took Penelope only eight more minutes to complete these eight swift steps! She
remarked “Blood is in the bag. The swing is there. It is functioning well”
CHAPTER 4: AFTER THE
JOB GETS DONE
The
sweat in her forehead was now slowly disappearing to leave a glow which could compare
to that of her eyes that showed such great pleasure at the accomplishment of
the task that Tom could feel equally satisfied about it. One affirmative nod
from him said it all. And at the back of his mind, random noises all changed to
a series of claps in applause.
The Patient reflexly coughed a couple of times to draw the attention of the two. Penelope,
on one hand, was cheering within herself, intoxicated by the joy of success and
Tom, on the other hand, was absorbed “in appreciating every frame of the
dynamic change of expressions in her countenance, the movement of every
fascicle of her facial muscles in creating those emotions, the dance of her
eyebrows in synchrony with that of her eyes” and the whole thing looked very
nice.
CHAPTER 5: LATER ON
At
12 midnight, the inrush of patients had ceased. The half a dozen doctors were
finally all seated together again, behind that big table. Tom took his seat
beside Penelope. He had to muse upon the performance of the day and somehow
convince Penelope to give him a treat for being a helping hand for all the joy
that was an accompaniment with the “first time ever stuff”.
That
singular process was proving much too difficult for him. It was his turn for a
“first time ever stuff”.
CHAPTER 6: HOW HE DOES
NOT DO IT
Tom:
“But I have never before asked you for one”.
Penelope
rubs her chin and thinks of a smile and guffaws loud. In the next few minutes
she is busy in disposing off every request from him for that treat, much unlike
the way he laboured to gather things for her disposal earlier that night.
Penelope:
“Tut! You will not get it from me at any time!”
Interrupted
by hesitations, Tom kept on persevering to meet his end. He is one fellow who
just hates to fail in his missions. Maybe Penelope was fully aware of this fact
that she kept on saying “no” every time to the point of frustrating him to the
end of his tether.
CHAPTER 7: HOW SAYING
“NO” IS DIFFERENT FROM SAYING “YES”
The
unrelenting standpoint of Penelope was not understandable and required
analysis. Tom began to wonder if it was simply for the sake of denial.
Saying
“no” is so much more meaningful than saying “yes”, possibly because it leads on
to so many more questions centering “why?”. The saying of “yes” raises no
further questions. The former is an unfathomable phenomenon. The more you think
of it, the deeper you enter until relevance may be lost of the original
proposition. A “no” is never a simple “no”. Probably, it is preferable just for
the sake of this. It coufounds! It is profound! It elevates the person’s
importance in his or her own eyes. A
“yes” is only routine!
CHAPTER 8: AFTER THE
JOB DOES NOT GET DONE
The
sweat grows in his forehead with the solemn disappointment of having failed
after trying so hard for as many times as to lose count. At 2AM, he gives up
and rises to retire to the Doctor’s room to have a nap. As he leaves, he gives
Penelope a wry smile.
CHAPTER 9: APPEARANCE
OF ROV
The
events of the night set in motion the language processing domain in a hereto
silent observer, Rov, who also happened to be doing duty in the same place. The
usually inarticulate Rov suddenly transforms into his alter ego and begins to
spin a web of words. In two hours, he has written a story about things that he
felt were unjust due to their incompleteness and in doing so, he seeks to
highlight the skewed balance of interactions suffered by Tom as rendered by
fate. He calls it “The Unfair Affair”
