A group of flustered, distressed looking people arrived at the hospital reception. Hey looked unkempt, in keeping with the need to drop everything and rush to the hospital at short notice. None of them had combed hair, or clothes that had been pressed. They looked as if they had run across the car park in their eagerness to get inside the building more quickly.
The leader of the group approached the reception desk as soon as the woman there had finished reading the retina of the last of a dozen visitors who had arrived first.
“We’re here to see my husband, Tony Prescott. I got a phone call a few hours ago to inform me that he is expected to die any time now. He’s in the Coronary Care Unit. He’s been in ever since he collapsed last Wednesday.”
“I’ll have to ask you and your friends here to go through an ID check before I allow you through to the CCU.”
“For God’s sake, woman He could be dead before you complete checks like that. We have already been through this with a car park security official.”
“I’m sorry, but hospital regulations are very strict. The Car park man won’t know which ward you were heading for. We do get bogus visitors in hospitals, or we did before ID Cards came into force. I’ll be as quick as I can. How many of you are there?”
“Five of us. I’m Mrs. Prescott. This is his son and daughter, Terry and Natasha. They are fourteen and twelve respectively, so they both have their own ID cards now. The Wilkinsons here are neighbours and good friends to the family.”
“Well, I’ll have to scan you all.”
“OK. OK. Please hurry.”
Mr. Wilkinson spoke to the woman soon to be widowed. “You go first, Linda. You can head up to see Tony while this lady scans the rest of us. I’ll bring everyone else up with me.”
Linda smiled. “Thanks Geoff. That’s very kind of you.”
The receptionist cut in sharply. “I’m afraid I will have to ask you all to wait until you can be escorted up to the CCU together. I’m scanning you together and your files will record that you are travelling through the hospital together. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to split up at this stage. It’s more than my job would be worth.”
Linda resigned herself to the checks. She half expected to miss her husband’s final moments. Finally, the check was completed. The receptionist called for a porter to lead the party to the unit, even though they begged to be allowed to find their own way. When a porter arrived to lead them, the receptionist scanned him to make a record on his file of his duty.
Finally, they moved on, and fortunately, the CCU was not too deep into the large Victorian hospital, and was situated on the ground floor.
Due to being near to death, Tony Prescott had been moved to a side ward where other patients could not see him. He was unconscious or in a coma, or asleep. Linda and her family could not tell which. A doctor stood by watching intensely as Linda held her husband’s hand and whispered words of comfort and love to him. Her children were strong and willed themselves not to weep. Mrs. Wilkinson cried bitterly. Her husband led her away discreetly to give the family some privacy in their grief.
Linda reminisced about their wedding, honeymoon, and the birth of each of the children. The children themselves told their father how much they loved him. The boy told his father that City had won the match at the weekend. He knew how much his father appreciated the game.
Tony Prescott gave no indication of registering any of this. Linda was half dreading the thought that he might already be dead. Suddenly however, the man’s eyes burst open. He glanced round at his wife, and exhaled the last air from his lungs with a gurgling rattle. His eyes closed as if in slow motion. None of the witnesses were in any doubt that he had gone from them now.
The children cried and held each other. Linda threw herself across her husband’s chest and blubbed, but the mysterious silent doctor who clutched her shoulder and pulled her back from the body quickly interrupted her.
“Sorry my dear, but official duty calls.”
The boy looked as the Doctor checked the man’s pulse. “Can you revive him?”
The Doctor looked round at the child. “No. That’s not possible. I’m sorry.”
The Doctor now reached into the man’s pyjama pocket and took out his ID Card. The Doctor placed it into the portable Reading machine that had been hanging round his own neck all along. He fed the card in.”
“What are you doing that for?” Linda asked.
“I am logging the time of death on his ID Card. The card can no longer be used in his name as of his moment, 21.59 hundred hours. The card can be read, but no longer edited or amended. In effect, I have written his death certificate. Now, I must ask you to just allow me to record your own ID’s please. It’ll confirm that you were witnesses to his final moments. Once that is done, you must leave. My deepest condolences to you all.”
The Doctor held up the scanner in one hand and reached out to take Linda’s ID card with the other.
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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