“I need your help.”
“What’s the problem?”
Honey told her. “I wish you would talk to him. He doesn’t speak English, and you speak Indian.”
“Hindi.”
“Whatever. Will you talk to him?”
“Of course.”
Ten minutes later, Paige was talking to Pandit Jawah.
“Aap ki tabyat kaisi hai?”
“Karab hai.”
“Aap jald acha ko hum kardenge.”
“Bhagwan aap ki soney ga.”
“Aap ka ilaj hum jalb shuroo kardenge.”
“Shukria.”
“Dost kiss liay hain?”
Paige took Honey outside in the corridor.
“What did he say?”
“He said he feels terrible. I told him he’s going to get well. He said to tell it to God. I told him we’re going to start treatment immediately. He said he’s grateful.”
“So am I.”
“What are friends for?”
Cholera is a disease that can cause death within twenty-four hours from dehydration, or that can be cured within a few hours.
Five hours after his treatment began, Pandit Jawah was nearly back to normal.
Paige stopped in to see Jimmy Ford.
His face lit up when he saw her. “Hi.” His voice was weak, but he had improved miraculously.
“How are you feeling?” Paige asked.
“Great. Did you hear about the doctor who said to his patient, The best thing you can do is give up smoking, stop drinking, and cut down on your sex life’? The patient said, ‘I don’t deserve the best. What’s the second best?’”
And Paige knew Jimmy Ford was going to get well.
Ken Mallory was getting off duty and was on his way to meet Kat when he heard his name being paged. He hesitated, debating whether or not simply to slip out. His name was paged once more. Reluctantly, he picked up a telephone. “Dr. Mallory.”
“Doctor, could you come to ER Two, please? We have a patient here who—”
“Sorry,” Mallory said, “I just checked out. Find someone else.”
“There’s no one else available who can handle this. It’s a bleeding ulcer, and the patient’s condition is critical. I’m afraid we’re going to lose him if…”
Damn! “All right. I’ll be right there.” I’ll have to call Kat and tell her I’ll be late.
The patient in the emergency room was a man in his sixties. He was semiconscious, ghost-pale, perspiring, and breathing hard, obviously in enormous pain. Mallory took one look at him and said, “Get him into an OR, stat!”
Fifteen minutes later, Mallory had the patient on an operating table. The anesthesiologist was monitoring his blood pressure. “It’s dropping fast.”
“Pump some more blood into him.”
Ken Mallory began the operation, working against time. It took only a moment to cut through the skin, and after that, the layer of fat, the fascia, the muscle, and finally the smooth, transparent peritoneum, the lining of the abdomen. Blood was pouring into the stomach.
“Bovie!” Mallory said. “Get me four units of blood from the blood bank.” He began to cauterize the bleeding vessels.
The operation took four hours, and when it was over, Mallory was exhausted. He looked down at the patient and said, “He’s going to live.”
One of the nurses gave Mallory a warm smile. “It’s a good thing you were here, Dr. Mallory.”
He looked over at her. She was young and pretty and obviously open to an invitation. I’ll get to you later, baby, Mallory thought. He turned to a junior resident, “Close him up and get him into the recovery room. I’ll check on him in the morning.”
Mallory debated whether to telephone Kat, but it was midnight. He sent her two dozen roses.
When Mallory checked in at 6:00 A.M., he stopped by the recovery room to see his new patient.
“He’s awake,” the nurse said.
Mallory walked over to the bed. “I’m Dr. Mallory. How do you feel?”
“When I think of the alternative, I feel fine,” the patient said weakly. “They tell me you saved my life. This was the damnedest thing. I was in the car on my way to a dinner party, and I got this sudden pain and I guess I blacked out. Fortunately, we were only a block away from the hospital, and they brought me to the emergency room here.”
“You were lucky. You lost a lot of blood.”