HEART'S BEAT

Sometimes, he just needs to sit down and relive the moment. Fifteen minutes is all it takes, just enough to punish himself. It's his penance. It has to be done.

"Art?" His daughter could have been anything. She had a neurosurgeon for a father for goodness sake. She just had to rebel against him. He had paid good money to see her become a doctor but Joana had been lying to him all the while.

"I knew you wouldn't understand. Mum does... Dad, I can't even stand the sight of blood."

"You get used to it, trust me."

"But I'm already in my third year."

"You know what, come home and we'll talk about this."

"I'm already on my way. You can't make me change my mind, dad."

"We'll see about that."

He cut the call and tossed the phone into the seat. How long has Betty been hiding the fact that their daughter was studying art and not medicine in Harvard. He almost stepped out of the car to ask her but he was already running late. He'd have to confront her later. He turned the ignition and drove away.

The usual five minutes commute to work lasted thirty minutes. The universe must have wanted to make a statement that morning. Now, why in the world was he stuck in rush hour traffic at five in the morning. It took him another ten minutes to find a parking spot and all the while, his pager was going off like crazy. The cold wind bit into his skin when he stepped out from the warmth of his car. He zipped up his jacket and walked into the emergency unit.

"Morning Freda. Why did you wake me this early?" He asked the nurse at the station.

"'Cos you are on call?"

"Well..."

"Mrs. Thompson gave us a scare this morning..."

"She's due for surgery tomorrow, right?"

"Yes, but Doctor Barnes is seeing to her at the moment."

"Nice. I am going back home."

"No going home for you, doc." She stood from her chair, "There was a road accident on the campus drive. Paramedics just brought in two kids. The one there," She pointed to a young man, seated in the waiting area. He had his head to the wall and was staring blindly into the ceiling. There was a Band-Aid on his chin."he's doing fine but the girl is being prepped for surgery right now. Doesn't look good. Looks like she's bleeding into her brain. Gotta get in there."

"I was doing just that. Why are all you Stanford nurses so bossy?" He joked as he walked away.

"Don't let them hear you say that." Freda shouted after him.

She was right. The girl didn't look good. When he got there, her blond hair, though dark at its roots was being shaved off. There was a huge gush close to her forehead. Bruises covered her swollen face. Her eyes were taped shut.

"CT shows a huge haematoma in her brain. We are going to have to decompress." Immediately he said that, the ECG started to beep. "Shit!" Her pulse was dropping too fast.

"Get another vein and push some normal saline, please." The ECG continued beeping. "What's taking so long?"

"Looks like all her veins have collapsed." A nurse said.

He glared at the anaesthesiologist who immediately picked a cannula and moved to the patient's left. He dabbed a sterile gauze into the disinfectant. When the cold liquid touched her scalp, she started to flatline. They tried to restart her heart. But after the second try he called her time of death after all, what kind of life will she have if they save it. There was no way she could recover from that massive stroke.

He stepped out of the theatre after washing his hands. Now for the awfullest part of his job, he had to break the bad news to her family. The gentleman was still in the waiting are staring blindly at the white roofing.

"Sir?" He hated what he was about to do.

"Doctor." The young man jumped from the seat and crossed his arms, looking into his face for answers. He found them. "No." It was inaudible. He put a hand on the man's shoulder.

"I'm sorry but..."

He looked to his right when a cold blast of air filled the unit. Someone had just bust into the emergency room. It took him a second to realise that he wasn't imagining Betty coming towards him. Everything slowed down then. He still doesn't recall all the details but he went back to the theatre and stared at the stillness of his daughter. Next thing he knew, he had the defibrillators in his hands, and tears in his eyes. Three nurses had to drag him out of the theatre.

"She's coming home from Harvard, right?" He hoped against hope.

"Ken, no. She was in Stanford." Betty replied.

"What? O God, no..."

Betty held him in his arms but he felt nothing. He still felt nothing when he buried her two weeks later.

Three month ago, Betty left the computer on and went to sleep. She does that often these days. She forgets things. She forgets to clean the house...or herself. She forgets to eat. She forgets to live.

Ken had gone to shut it off. He passed my hands over the trackpad and there she was, alive as ever with a wide smile across her face, her nose wrinkled just like the corner of her blue eyes. Her hair had been dyed and they lit up her eyes so perfectly. She was standing next to an artwork.

The image was captioned, art is my heart's beat. It was Joana's last photo on Facebook.

There was nothing he could do to stop the flood. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He repeated as we wept on the floor, his face buried in his hands.

"Maybe it will help if you talked about it." The resident psychologist at the hospital interrupts his expiation.

"There is nothing you could say." Ken stands from the couch right around the time Freda sets his pager off.

Photo by Redd Angelo on Unsplashed