I stayed, even though I’d have much preferred to run away, screaming. I stayed with my father as they cut open his trousers and shirt, as they fixed needles and catheters to him, as they talked to him but actually looked at him less and less. The classic, robotic triage you’d find in any casualty department on a Friday night: drunks with injuries from broken glass; battered women; lonely little grandmothers; ironic, cynical police officers; the odd distraught relative, propelled this way and that like a lost pinball, surrounded by cynicism and frenzied activity. In the midst of it all lay my father on a thin turquoise sheet and a hard stretcher, apologizing to every doctor or nurse who examined him: “Sorry for the inconvenience. You must have more important things to do.” As if a heart attack were just an embarrassing mishap.

Once they left us alone in the green-tiled room for a while. What if he died now? How was I supposed to stop him?

He gave me a labored smile. His face seemed so foreign. His features had aged on the way from home to the hospital. He took my hand. I placed my other hand on top of his and he put his other one on mine—a stack of four hands—while his pulse lurched up and down, and his heartbeat scratched a jagged electric landscape on the monitor. I didn’t know at the time that we were already saying our last goodbyes.

NOW THE SAME beeping, red LED mountains decorate Henri’s screen as they did my father’s. Signs that he is alive. Signals from his desperately battling heart. A heart monitor, a breathing monitor, a blood pressure gauge, a pulse gauge, an oxygen density sensor, a lung machine, a pulmonary bypass that makes a soggy, chugging sound like a ship’s engine, an electroencephalogram. The CT scans of his fractured skull are projected onto the wall.

“Should he stop breathing spontaneously before we remove the tracheal cannula from his throat, you can go and get yourself a coffee, Tomlin.”

“And you can behave yourself.”

Dr. Saul raises his eyebrows. “Let’s get started,” he says.

Sam

I join two doctors in the lift. One of them presses three, the other five. I’m not brave enough to push past them and press two. It’s embarrassing, but I really can’t do it. Scott would say that I’m one of those people who deliberately walk the wrong way to avoid hurting the feelings of the person I asked for directions. He’s right.

“Going to the veg compartment?” Floor Three asks Floor Five cheerfully.

“Yeah. I’ve got one with about as much brain activity as a can of beans.”

“Are we still playing squash this evening?”

“Sure. Eight o’clock.”