Chapter Six – Before He Lost Consciousness
While they waited, the nurse found herself remembering the last conversation she had had with him.
It had happened less than an hour before he became unresponsive.
He was still sitting near the window then.
The doctor had briefly left the suite to take a call.
The nurse was checking equipment.
The man watched her.
“You don’t like this arrangement.”
She did not look up.
“What arrangement?”
“Being here.”
“I’m working.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
She glanced at him.
His eyes were tired but alert.
“You should be in a proper medical setting.”
“I’ve been told.”
“And?”
“And I dislike hospitals.”
“So does almost everyone in them.”
He smiled faintly.
“Very comforting.”
She returned to the equipment.
After a pause, he said, “My father died in one.”
The nurse stopped.
It was the first personal thing he had told her.
She looked back.
He stared toward the city.
“I was seventeen. Everything smelled like disinfectant and burnt coffee. Every person who came through the door had a new expression they were trying to hide.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged.
Not dismissively.
Defensively.
“I know it’s irrational.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
“No?”
“Fear doesn’t need to be rational to be real.”
Something changed in his face.
It was a small thing.
The guarded expression loosened.
“That’s almost kind.”
“Don’t become attached to it.”
He laughed.
The sound surprised her.
It was low and brief, but genuine.
For one moment the room seemed less clinical.
Then his smile faded.
“What would you do?”
“If?”
“If you were me.”
The nurse frowned.
“I’m not you.”
“I know.”
“That makes the question dangerous.”
“Still.”
She considered.
“I would want to know what was actually wrong before deciding where I wanted to be treated.”
He watched her.
“That is exactly what I asked him.”
“The doctor?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He said the same thing three different ways.”
She understood the implication.
No clear answer.
He looked at the IV.
“Do you trust this?”
The nurse followed his gaze.
“At the moment, I have no reason not to.”
He smiled faintly.
“That sounds less reassuring than you think.”
She almost replied.
Then the doctor returned.
The conversation ended.
Now, kneeling beside him after his collapse, the nurse remembered every word.
Do you trust this?
She looked at the IV bag.
Her throat tightened.
Perhaps he had noticed something before anyone else.
Not technically.
Intuitively.
He had known his body felt wrong.
And because the doctor carried authority, everyone had treated that feeling as anxiety rather than information.
Including her.
The realisation hurt.
She leaned slightly closer to the unconscious man.
“I’m sorry.”
The doctor heard.
“For what?”
She did not look up.
“For not listening soon enough.”
The doctor’s expression shifted.
“You did listen.”
“Eventually.”
“That matters.”
She looked at him.
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
His answer carried more emotion than she expected.
Perhaps he was speaking to himself too.
The approaching siren grew louder.
The nurse felt the strange urge to take the unconscious man’s hand.
She did not.
Professional boundaries mattered, especially now.
Instead she adjusted the blanket beneath his shoulder and spoke his name again.
There was no response.
Yet she kept talking.
“Help is here.”
The doctor watched her.
“You care about him.”
The nurse’s hands stopped.
She looked up.
“That is my job.”
“No.”
The doctor’s voice was quiet.
“That is not what I meant.”
The nurse looked back at the unconscious man.
Her answer took a long time.
“I don’t know him well enough to care the way you mean.”
The doctor nodded.
Perhaps accepting the denial.
Perhaps not.
The nurse continued more quietly.
“But I think he deserved to be believed.”
Outside the suite, the lift bell sounded.
Help had arrived.
