Chapter 5 fourth quarter

Rayan Badan was in his late fifties, but he had only been a nurse for ten short years.When he was in his mid-twenties, he and his wife came to the United States from India to seek a new life for themselves.Over the years in the U.S., he worked off-and-on odd jobs, including as a salesperson in chain stores selling women's shoes and men's clothing.Although the job didn't suit his personality, it was a job he'd done in his native Calcutta, and it was something he was fairly skilled at.A small man with a melancholy look and a bit introverted personality, but due to professional needs, he has to force a smile to please customers.His cleanliness, sincerity, and quick wit were his virtues.He insists on going to work every day, never absent, and has no complaints about getting off work late or going to work early.Therefore, before quitting the salesman job, he valued his job very much, and planned to keep doing it to make himself relatively stable.He spent six years at Macy's Herald Square chain and more than five years at Nordstrom Retail.

His wife also supplemented the family income by teaching piano to others.So they spent more than a decade of the happier years together in a small apartment in Haight.For them, the biggest regret is that Chatterjee has not been able to bear children.Finally, when they were thirty-five, her stomach showed signs of pregnancy.She thought that God had eyes, and a miracle happened.But it was later learned that what was growing in her womb was not a baby at all, but a tumor. After Chatterjee's death, Rayan never had a smile on his face.As a result, he lost his job as a salesman and barely survived.During the months of caring for his sick wife, he finally discovered that he actually enjoyed nursing.For the next four years, he spent almost all of his savings, enrolling full-time in a nursing school.He later earned his RN certification from St. Mary's Hospital and found a full-time nursing job at Portola Hospital.

He is still so heartless, simple and honest, and he can't learn the sophistication and tactful philosophy of life.The doctors and administrators of the hospital also like him because of this.That's why his odd-hour bosses are willing to keep him on the long-term.But he has few friends, even among his fellow nurses.Now he struck me as more brooding and moody than he had been as a salesman.Back then he would at least try to put on a smile to make people feel amiable.Still, he did a pretty good job of nursing.With the passage of time, he began to respect others invisibly, and actively distanced himself from the crowd. Coupled with his unpredictable behavior, group after group of partners who worked with him felt that there was something wrong with him , it seems that there is some kind of ominous omen in him.

At this moment, he was standing beside James Rector's hospital bed.After checking that the connections of all the monitoring equipment are intact and confirming that there is no problem, he gently pulled up the blanket and covered the old man again, and turned his head to look behind him.On the other side of the ward, Dr. Kenson and his partner nurse Luo are adjusting the infusion rate of the intravenous infusion for Mr. Markham who just came out of the operating room. Layan looked back down at Lykert in the hospital bed, where he had been on life support for weeks.Although his condition has stabilized a little recently, who knows how long this stable condition can last?Looking at this ashen-faced old man, as usual, he couldn't help but doubt the miraculous curative effect of those so-called modern medicines.The memory is alive again in his mind: In the final days of his wife Chatterjee's life, they kept her alive on life support and anesthesia, which is said to keep her from suffering.But after all these years, he would rather believe that the practice was needlessly cruel to both him and his wife.For him, it was just an illusory hope; but for his wife, it artificially violated the natural law of birth, old age, sickness and death.

He believes in helping patients and alleviating their pain.After all, that is what Chatterjee has been doing since he was gone.But the practice of unnecessarily prolonging a patient's life is what's troubling him now.He has endured this obsession throughout his days working in the intensive care unit. He kept his eyes on Rector's face again, and then looked up at Dr. Kenson and Nurse Luo, who were busy treating another who seemed to have at least suffered permanent brain trauma and came back to life Patients with little hope. Ridiculous, he thought, this is ridiculous. He shook his head regretfully, let out a long sigh, and walked towards the next hospital bed.

Malachy Rose stopped at the door of the intensive care unit, and looked around the ward for the last time, reconfirming that everything was normal.The intensive care unit is a large circular room with seven separate beds for critically ill patients.Like any other day of the year, the beds inside are full of patients right now.Five, or possibly all, of the seven patients will not walk out of this ward alive.Ross knew that the results weren't due to a lack of expertise or medical costs.In fact, the cost factor had become the overriding deciding factor in his life in the previous few years.He is the Medical Director and Chief Financial Officer of Parnassus Health Group.His job is to keep costs under control and provide patients with the right treatment—what he defines as the minimum necessary to avoid malpractice lawsuits.For him, it is almost impossible to achieve the best of both worlds in actual work.

Ross knew that Parnassus Health was entering another period of crisis, at least in the short term.Occupying a bed here today is his colleague and chief executive of the hospital, Tim Markham.He was hit by a car while jogging in the morning.Markham runs his morning runs with an almost religious fervor, trying to keep himself alive and healthy at an age when he is famous but not young.Rose thought it was a real mockery of fate, but he himself had been indifferent to the mockery of fate many years ago. The monitoring instruments beeped regularly, and other machines hummed.The windows on the four walls of the ward were covered with white parasols, blocking the soft spring sunshine.Markham is lying on the first bed on the left with his entire body bound to it.He has been here for three hours.To be honest, it was a miracle that he could survive for such a long time with such a serious injury.Ross walked toward Markham's hospital bed, but stopped before taking a step.Yes, he was a surgeon, but he hadn't been on the operating table in ten years.There is still half of the liquid left in the infusion bag, but the infusion bag that the patient will use next should also be hung on the hook of the infusion stand next to the hospital bed, of course he knows this routine.He had to make everything look like it was where it was, as if it hadn't been touched by anyone else.

Really exhausted, he raised his hands and rubbed his face, only then noticed his hands, and looked down at them.His mother often said that he had the hands of a surgeon.He felt his face burn, but his hands told him he wasn't sweating. He took a deep breath, turned around and retreated, closed the door of the intensive care unit and went to the hall.There were three or four patients waiting to be admitted to the intensive care unit in the lobby, either fresh from surgery or just out of the emergency room.They lay on their respective wheeled metal stretchers, attached to monitoring equipment and infusion equipment.They've been sent here to wait for an empty bed since Markham was admitted to the ICU.As it stands now, as soon as there are vacant beds inside, these patients are sent to the intensive care unit for theoretically "better" intensive care.Eric Kenson, the doctor in charge of the intensive care unit this morning, was standing by a bed in the hall giving orders to a male nurse.Ross didn't want to talk to Dr. Kenson at all, so he avoided it from a distance, detoured through the hall from the other side, and took the convenient passage to the special waiting room next to the intensive care unit without distraction.The same is for patients, but the biggest difference between this place and other places in the hospital is to make people feel happy.The waiting room of this intensive care unit is furnished with comfortable sofas and chairs, pleasing decorations, stylish wallpaper, windows with shutters and a carpeted floor to prevent excessive movement of people.It was set up this way because most of the relatives of patients waiting here received bad news that left them devastated.The original architectural design clearly took this into account, trying to make the environment here to mediate the emotions of those unfortunate relatives of patients.For the design and decoration of the waiting room, Ross thinks it has little effect.

In his view, this is just another waste of money. At the door of the waiting room, he looked in.While nothing satisfies him, at least for now Brendan Driscoll is out of here.That way, he wouldn't have to suffer from Brendan's overreactions and his accusations.Driscoll was Markham's executive assistant, but at times it felt like he was Parnassus' true chief executive.He yelled at everyone, even Ross, as if he really was the CEO.As soon as Driscoll heard that Markham had an accident, he immediately came to the hospital from Embarcadero's office building and stayed by Markham's side.He'd done it to Ross here.Well, thank God, he's not here now.Driscoll ended up in the intensive care unit, no one knew why, maybe it was just because he wanted to go in and thought he could.But his approach angered Dr. Kenson.In a rage, Dr. Kenson kicked Driscoll out of the waiting room, regardless of who he was.

But whether or not Driscoll can do that, he's going to be a sticking point for Rose, as is Markham's wife, Kara Markham.Now, she was sitting at one end of the floppy sofa, looking a little dazed.She looked up at Rose with her eyelids up, her lips clenched, her face sad and hostile.With her like this, the shape of her mouth looks like a deep scar.But in an instant, the pain and hatred written on her face disappeared, and she couldn't see any expression, just as calm as the surface of a lake after the ripples. "He's fine," Rose said, and then, quickly added, "It's the same as before."

She didn't respond to Rose's words, not even a slight nod of the head. He stood there without moving, but his eyes returned to her.She still sat motionless, with her legs crossed, her side turned to Rose.Suddenly, she stared straight at Ross, as if she had only just realized his presence. "If it's still like that, it's not okay. It means he's going to die the same as before. It's okay! If he dies..." Rose stepped into the waiting room and interrupted her with a mechanical hand. "He won't die." "Hope it turns out to be what you want it to be, Malachy." "We don't need to discuss this. I heard everything you said, and you're right, there are some troubles, but it's not a critical moment. We'll talk frankly about what to do for Tim when he's out of this situation." Some revision surgery to restore the bone, as in thousands of other cases we've dealt with." "It's completely different from those." The corner of his mouth moved disdainfully, revealing a tacit smile.She was dead wrong, but she didn't know it yet.Rose did not nod in agreement with Carla's words just now, but replied firmly in an unquestionable tone: "Don't deceive yourself, it's all the same." He stared at her condescendingly, searching for her eyes. Any hint of compromise that might have been revealed in the . But Carla avoided his gaze, rocking her head from side to side like a rattle, giving her final answer to the question. "He can't do a repositioning right now, that would just tear him to shreds. If he dies, I won't..." Rose was confused by her words, wondering whether she meant that she would not commit suicide and live alone-she threatened her husband with suicide the last time Markham was leaving her-or It means that even if her husband performs body repositioning and correction surgery after he regains consciousness, she will not agree. "Kara," Rose's tone softened, "don't..." But she couldn't listen to Ross at all.Before he could finish speaking, she suddenly stood up from the sofa and looked directly at Ross, the face that was calm as a mirror just now became stern. "I don't want to talk to you anymore. Do you understand? Not just here, maybe forever, I don't want to talk to you anymore. Until I know what's going on with Tim, there's nothing more to say. Sorry, I Gotta call my kids now." She got up and walked out of the waiting room, walking past Ross without even glancing at him. Ross sank into a leather armchair, stretched out and lay on his back, gripping the armrests on either side of the chair with both hands, trying to stop the shaking of his surgeon's hands and trying to control his inner anger. . Rose first heard the alarm sound of the monitoring equipment, and then the green alarm light at the door of the intensive care unit flashed, which lasted for about twenty minutes.The alarms of various monitoring instruments rang together, and the situation felt like a commotion in the crowd in the downtown area, which could be heard clearly even in the hall.However, as suddenly as the alarm sounded, all the operation and noise of the monitors were now stopped abruptly. Then, suddenly, Tim Markham died. Ross got up from his chair and went to wait outside the door of the intensive care unit.When Dr. Kenson came out of the ward, his handsome face was tense and full of sorrow.He met Rose's gaze for a moment, then looked away and lowered his eyes. "I don't know what happened," Kenson said, "I thought we could have gotten him out of danger, but..." The last words were so soft that only he could hear them.Then Kenson shook his head helplessly, and it was obvious that such a result made him feel frustrated and depressed by failure. If Kenson was looking to him for some kind of sympathy and understanding, Rose figured, he was looking in the wrong person.In fact, Rose felt an urge to say something malicious or even accusatory to him, but he finally resisted it.Rose thought that this opportunity would come sooner or later.For years, Kenson has been at odds with Ross, questioning his medical and business decisions, flagrantly disobeying his instructions, and joining other medical staff in resisting his policies.Now Kenson happened to be here, in charge of Markham's treatment in the intensive care unit, but he failed.In Rose's view, he is asking for trouble, but it is not a deliberate arrangement and trick of fate.After the initial shock of the tragedy had passed, Rose thought he would make the most of the opportunity to clean up Kenson if he could, but he would have to bide his time. Now, Rose has work to do, and he has to be there in person.He didn't wait for Kenson to return to the hall again and give him the cause of death analysis of where the problem was-this is undoubtedly justified, and the tone makes people feel that he has figured out the cause of death now.Ross is not in the mood to mourn the dead and shake hands with the relatives of the deceased, but he knows that he will be in the hospital for the next few hours.Thinking of this, Ross took the elevator to leave the floor where the intensive care unit was located, went directly to the underground parking lot, got into his Lexus sedan, and called his secretary Joanne on his mobile phone. "Tim didn't make it through," he cut short. "I'll be there in ten minutes."