Marriage (Part 2)

The orderlies took her to the surgery as James started to scrub up. Peter kept looking at him with a sense of awe that how is it possible that he seems so confident about Naomi could actually live after the surgery. Peter was the best, but even he had his doubts.

They were well past two hours in the surgery now. Everything was going stable. Naomi was given mild sedatives, so she wouldn’t feel a lot of pain, just enough to not let her sleep. James was sitting right beside her, trying to talk to her. The heart monitor was stable and Peter thought the surgery was going pretty good. Now was the time to inject the alcohol in the heart and as soon as Peter let in the first mm, Naomi literally jumped out of her bed screaming in pain. James knew this was going to happen so he tried to calm her down.

She was strapped down to the bed, James right besides her holding her hand. Peter took the next chance; he tried it again praying that she would be able to take it. Just as the alcohol touched her cardiac muscles, her BP went from stable to really high. Peter still somehow pushed the syringe a little further. BP paced to almost a dangerous level, he immediately withdrew the syringe.  

“Nurse, get ready to stitch her up” he said deciding there wasn’t much to be done now.

On the other side of the bed Naomi opened her eyes which James noticed were moist but he figured it might be from the pain she just went through. He took her hand and slowly lifted it to his lips and silently kissed her like he was saying he is there, he was still there. 

Suddenly a small, clear tear rolled down her eye and exactly the same moment the heart monitor started buzzing loudly and at a smaller interval.

Peter was amazed to see how that happened. It was as if her heart just gave up. It just stopped working. He brought in the defibrillator and ordered the nurse to charge it to a 100 V.

“CLEAR!!” he screamed and brought down the paddles to her chest. Nothing happened.

“Charge it to 200V”, he said and almost simultaneously nurse did exactly that.

“CLEAR!!” her body trembled but still nothing. 

Peter began pumping her heart manually. He kept applying pressure on the heart to make it work again but nothing was happening, he was almost giving up hope.

On the other side of the bed, James was much more shocked. He looked at Naomi’s face and Peter’s face then again Naomi’s trying to figure what was happening.

Just as Peter gave up on pumping, James jumped in and started pumping himself. Peter just stood there, doing nothing but watching a husband desperately trying to save his wife. He saw the whole institution of marriage in those few seconds. He didn’t call the time of death; he just stood there and waited.

On the other hand, it had been a few minutes since James had been pumping. He monitor gave a little beep and showed a slight peak every time James applied pressure but that was just because of the pumping. He was long gone by now.

“Let her go James, she is gone. Let me call it.” Peter finally said.

“NO!!” he almost screamed and suddenly lowered his voice almost apologetically.

“She isn’t dead. She can’t be dead. I can’t be the one to let her go, I can’t be the one to let her die.” He started crying.

“Here, let me do it” and Peter took the body from James and started pumping.

He locked eyes in James eyes as he watched Peter formally pumped each little heartbeat into his wife’s body. After pumping a few times, Peter finally let go.

James started crying. Peter looked at the watch and loudly said, “Time of death 0200 hrs” and walked out of the OR.

He sat on the nearest bench, engrossed in his own thoughts. He saw the perfect marriage. 

His own marriage was in the ruins but he somehow understood what he had been doing wrong. He saw his wife as someone he was made to spend his life with, not as someone who was his life partner. He suddenly stood up, changed and ran to the car.

He drove as fast as he could, which was not usually the case as he tried his best to reach the house as late as possible. He carefully sneaked in his house while his wife was still asleep. He changed and got under the covers and probably after five years wrapped his arm around his wife and lent a small kiss on her neck, laid his head on the pillow and went to finally a happy sleep.