Between
the face of his wristwatch and its inset digital counterpart there is lacking
exactly one third of a day, deleted name having set the latter eight
hours ahead to represent her time in relation to his own.
That
the distance between them is not just a geographic and calculable measurement
of physical space, but also temporal, has served repeatedly to abstract him
from all consequence of that influence upon her to which he has felt himself
compelled; if he is drinking the coffee that serves as sole ingredient to his
breakfast in the middle of her afternoon later that same day, there is nothing
that can exist for them both in the present tense. With his now always trailing
eight hours in the wake of her own, her present is always his future, his
present forever her past, and it is his clinging to this fallacy as provides
him remove enough from that future in which she lives, and from which she is
this very second passing.
cog: Begin C.P.R.!
Doctor: Come on! She’ll be fine. Do we
have a pulse?
cog: Come on, let’s ventilate her. Any
pulses?
cog: No femoral pulse.
cog: Any pulses?
cog: Okay, let’s do C.P.R. Come on,
let’s go.
cog (beginning to press down upon the
centre of her chest with both hands): How many compressions?
Doctor: Go on, let’s go, let’s start.
cog: No breath sounds.
cog: Sixty per minute, please. Come on.
cog: Minimal breath sounds.
cog: Ventilation isn’t good.
cog (compressing): One and two and three
and four.
Doctor: Calm down! Calm down!
cog (clapping hands together): Let’s try
some bretyllium.
Doctor: Let’s go, bretyllium.
cog: Getting a pulse?
cog: Bretyllium, five milligrams.
cog: Compressed air. Can we have
compressed air, please.
cog: Can we have the saline, please?
Doctor: Thank you.
cog: All IV push.
cog: She’s not ventilating.
cog: Her pupils are fixed and dilated.
Doctor: Give her some more drugs.
cog: Let’s go.
Doctor: Quiet! Quiet!
cog: Defibrillate her!
Doctor: Let’s go!
cog: We’re losing her. We’re losing her.
Doctor: Go!
cog (applying defibrillator panels to
her body): Everybody stand clear.
cog: Clear.
cog: We’re losing her.
Doctor: One more time, let’s do it.
cog: Quiet!
Doctor: Quiet!
cog: It’s still V. fib.
Doctor (elbowing in to recommence
compressions): Okay, let’s try it. Okay, let’s go.
cog: All right.
cog: Okay, let’s go.
Doctor: Quiet!
Uncovering
his watch beneath the shirtcuff he witnesses the digital minute advance to
15.36, and in so doing experiences the overwhelming sensation of something
dropping down inside his chest, that sudden awareness of his entrails as might
occur in a falling elevator, or a car hitting at speed a sudden dip in the
road, perceiving them now not as one indistinguishable and glutinous damp mass
but rather an aggregate of individual organs encaged within his ribs, his ribs
themselves wrapped tight inside his skin.
Even
these minutes before the telephone begins to ring he knows, and in his own
logic knows too there still remains to him those discrepant and opportune eight
hours in which he might finally assume responsibility, or suffer guilt to such
degree as would affect the outcome.
Doctor: Does anybody have any ideas?
cog: E.E.G.’s flat. E.K.G.’s flat.
Doctor: Okay I’m gonna call it.
cog: Oh I, I don’t know.
cog: I think she’s dead.
Doctor: All right, I’m calling it. What
time do you have?
