The Night Shift by Dr. Brian Goldman

Author:Dr. Brian Goldman [Goldman, Dr. Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443405690
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

2:44 A.M.

I took a modafinil and headed to my next patient, Alexei, an elderly man who had fainted in a hotel bar a few hours earlier. He was eighty-two and in reasonable condition, with type 2 diabetes his only apparent medical concern. The nurses noted he had been complaining nonstop since being brought in by paramedics that he was fine and just wanted to go home. His blood work showed his blood sugar levels to be slightly elevated but not to any alarming degree. He had a little alcohol in his system but again nothing to warrant concern. Sadly, to me at least, he lived alone and had no immediate family.

To be truthful, this was the last kind of case I wanted to deal with at a quarter to three in the morning as I struggled with fatigue. Unless I discovered something unforeseen, it was more than likely a routine matter that ate up time and energy and offered little in return to get my creative juices flowing, which was what my system needed to re-energize me.

Alexei was about six feet tall and a good thirty or more pounds overweight, most of it parked around his belly. He had a slight Russian accent and a sneering disposition. As soon as I entered his room and introduced myself, he announced he was fine and demanded to be sent home. I told him that before I could release him I needed to make sure he was all right.

“What happened to you tonight?” I asked.

“I fainted. No big anything. Shit happens, eh?”

“Why were you at the hotel?”

“None of your goddamn business,” he said, a slight and cocky grin on his face. I’ve noticed that more patients swear at doctors these days than when I first started in medicine.

“Why are you grinning?” I asked. Some doctors might not have noticed the way he punctuated his response. If they did, they might not have considered it meaningful or something they had a right to comment on. I have studied human behaviour throughout my life and am hypersensitive to the way people speak. I’m especially sensitive to their non-verbal communication; I know it usually reveals more than what they actually say. I also trust my instincts, and in this case they were telling me to probe a bit more deeply into his answer.

“Maybe I was meeting someone.”

“At the bar?”

“Yeah. Why not? I’m old, not dead. Not yet anyway.”

It dawned on me that if he were twenty or more years younger I would likely assume, from his vagueness, that his rendezvous was with a woman. “A lady?” I asked.

“Very good,” he said proudly. And then the story came out. The woman in question was a working girl he’d contacted via the Internet. His plan was to meet her at the bar and then book a room for a few hours. Unfortunately for Alexei, when the young woman saw him at the hotel she refused to go through with the transaction.

“She said I was too old. She was worried I’d die on her if we … you know.

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