Impuls

* * *

– What the fuck?! – Moss is pissed as hell, and the air around him is electrifying, threatening to turn into a storm. – We looked at his labs this morning and they were clean, did that crap come out in two hours?

– We looked at his head, not his back," Mark corrected him gently. – And we thought the pain was from hitting the pavement.

– There's a sack of shit for half the picture! – Andrew turns around so sharply that the flaps of his robe fly into the air. – How can you not see it?!

Higgins only shrugs his shoulders:

– It's been too little time, Andrew. We haven't even finished the general tests yet, and a new pain has arisen. It's no use blaming the poor orderlies.

– I'll get Neal to pump out the fluid and put in his miracle patches. – Moss signs the papers one by one and almost throws them at Emily, who is standing next to her. – Take this to Ray later. Where the hell did she come from?" The neurologist puts the scans back in the envelope. – Give this to our surgeons. And take care of the patient… – he yells again and storms out of the room before Emily can say okay. Mark follows, not even glancing at Johnson, holding a pile of unstitched files.

The other Doe, in Emily's opinion, needs no preparation: he sits perfectly still and doesn't take his gaze off her. His chart was almost blank-no test results, no allergies, no-whatever, as if they'd forgotten to fill it out, and there was no time to gather a medical history. Especially since he'd already been to some kind of procedure-the nurse sees a couple of cotton lumps glued on with a Band-Aid, a fresh IV line, a fresh bandage on his head, too.

Emily knows: it's just under an hour to surgery, which means we now have to figure out what he's been doing and eating before; and when you consider that this is another memoryless man, the level of difficulty doubles.

Well, at least he can see her.

– Hello," she says. – I'm Emily. I will work with you.

Silence.

– The anesthesia doesn't hurt," she continues. – But first I need to remove all your jewelry, braces, and piercings. If you have lenses or hearing aids, they also need to be removed for the operation. But I'll get them all back to you afterwards, don't worry. – The smile on duty.

Silence.

Emily begins to get nervous: dark green eyes of the young man closely watching her every movement, as if analyzing.

He repeats:

– Are you wearing any of the things I have listed?

And looks expectantly: maybe he will at least reach out to her, or show her his ears, or nod; nervousness is quickly replaced by irritation: let him already do something, as long as he gives signs of life.

Emily scrutinizes his face: barely noticeable wrinkles in the corners of the lips, a scattering of freckles, high cheekbones, circles under his eyes. If you meet him on the street, you think he's a high-school student, lacking only a backpack or a laptop bag. His head is bandaged tightly, so you can't see any hair at all, but one or two strands of red at his ear are dishevelled and tugging ridiculously.

Emily patiently repeats:

– Are you wearing any…

– I can't hear you," the young man says suddenly, licking his dry lips. – I am deaf.

If Emily could, she would shriek in surprise and some ridiculous horror of the situation, but she just smiles and nods; and then takes out a pen and writes the words on the back of the blank form: piercings, braces, rings, hearing aid?

He shakes his head.

Then Emily deduces: put a score on overall pain – and hands him the pen.

7/10, the answer follows.

The next part of the conversation resembles a comic sketch: Emily takes turns drawing a glass of water, coffee, a sandwich, and for some reason a slice of watermelon; then she draws a clock face – and after ten minutes she finds out that the patient had eaten nothing since morning and drank only water an hour ago after another blood sampling.

She points again to her name on the nametag, waits for the nod, and puts on her gloves; four ampoules, apparently brought by Moss, lie on the table, waiting to be filled: the anesthetic enhancer midazolam, the respiratory reflex inhibitor atropine, the stomach-soothing metoclopramide and the anti-allergenic Benadryl. Emily knows this sequence by heart.

The patient's hands are cold and scrunched up; Emily searches for a vein that hasn't been used before giving the injection, and then barely stops the blood spurting out of the blue. There is no doubt that she administered the injection correctly, but the young man shows no emotion – no pain, no panic, nothing. A perfect, absolute emptiness.

Emily writes nothing more, only sits down heavily beside him, feeling the fullness of the day's woolen shawl cover her shoulders. Now she should be saying comforting, soothing words: everything will be all right, our doctors are professionals in their field, and that-that-someone-Neil is just a luminary of modern surgery.

But she won't say.

And he just looks at her with his dark green eyes and speaks a little in a chant, as if addressing someone invisible behind her back:

– And he who knew no sin made him a sacrifice for sin.

Emily is silent: the overcrowded mind does not immediately identify the biblical quote – and afterwards the patient's eyelashes tremble as he leans back on the pillows and closes his eyes, and Johnson puts a pulse oximeter on his finger in fear, but the perfectly even numbers glow green.

He's just asleep – the nuclear mixture of drugs must have had an effect, or he, too, may have had a hard day, or maybe his whole life; Emily gazes into his young but tired face and tries to imagine his life before the hospital: maybe he was a wandering musician, or a secretary, or a simple student; or, like her, a medical student, too.

And then, picturing clear, colorful images, she whispers quietly, a little hesitantly:

– That in sin we may be made righteous before God.

Emily picks up the file again – the rest of the lines need to be filled in, and then she takes everything to the rooms; and soon the patient must be taken away for anesthesia – here her work ends, the operating nurse comes into play.

The glass door swings open and strikes the stopper so loudly that Johnson jumps up – and then owes a sharp edge of paper that cuts his skin.

A disheveled, panting kid in a white overcoat, with his nametag miraculously held in his pocket, stops in front of Emily, trying to lick off a drop of blood.