For a brief moment of utter panic, Raj tried to think of something to say. Realizing there was no way out, he told the truth. “It’s an emergency. Mr. Lucas is having an emergency.”

Without saying anything, Dr. Krishna pushed by Raj and dashed into the room. Coming to the bedside, he saw David Lucas’s beginning cyanosis. Out of the corner of his eye he saw from the monitor the heart was beating relatively normally. It was then that he realized the patient was not breathing. He did not see any fasciculation, because they had already stopped.

“Get the emergency cart!” Dr. Krishna yelled. He yanked out the nasogastric tube and threw it to the side. Grabbing the bed control, he began to lower the head. Seeing Raj glued to his spot, he again yelled for him to get the crash cart. They were going to have to resuscitate.

Raj recovered from his paralysis but not his terror. He raced from the room and ran headlong down the corridor toward the nurses’ station, where the emergency cart was stored. As he ran he tried to think of what he should do. He couldn’t think of anything other than to help. The surgeon had gotten a good look at him, and if he just disappeared, he’d surely be implicated.

Reaching the central station, Raj blurted out to the two nurses sitting at the desk that there was a code in room 304. Without stopping, Raj threw open the door to the storeroom where the crash cart was kept, grabbed it, backed out with it in tow, and then raced back down to David Lucas’s room, making an enormous racket in the process. When he got there, the lights had been turned up. Dr. Krishna was doing mouth-to-mouth, and to Raj’s added horror, Mr. Lucas didn’t look so bad; his cyanosis had faded to a large extent.

“Ambu bag!” Dr. Krishna shouted. One of the floor nurses who’d raced after Raj grabbed it from the cart and tossed it to the doctor. Dr. Krishna repositioned the patient’s head, applied the bag, and began respiring the victim. Now the chest was moving even better than it was with the mouth-to-mouth. “Oxygen!” Dr. Krishna barked. The other floor nurse got the cylinder over to the head of the bed, and between Dr. Krishna’s compressions, she connected it to the breathing bag. Within seconds Mr. Lucas’s color improved dramatically; it was now actually pink.

As these activities progressed, Raj had an opportunity to appreciate just what kind of disaster he was in. He didn’t even know for certain whether it would be better if the patient died or was saved. Nor did he know if it would be better for him to slink away or stay, and the uncertainty kept him riveted in place.