I wrote the following excerpt about two years ago, when I decided I wanted to write a trashy, popular fiction novel. A lot of the rest of the book has changed, or morphed, mutated or whatever you want to call it, but this chapter has largely stayed the same. I think it sets the tone for the story I want to tell, even though the language is a little clunky and I think it veers a little bit towards the melodramatic. Melodramatic is OK for a story about a burned out Liam Neeson-type that wants to avenge the death of his daughter, though, isn’t it? It can’t very well be subtle. No one’s going to read this first chapter and assume the book is going to be a subtle, nuanced examination of our own mortality, nor should they. They hopefully go: “Cool. A dirty resuscitation. What comes next?” If they do, I have done what I have set out to do, clunky word choices be damned. If they don’t, maybe I need to add more fire.

I’ve also added the scene that came after, which was workshopped in class and where someone might have made a comment that inspired one of the FAQs in the other section. Look. I get that it wouldn’t happen like that because nurses are meticulous in recording how much fluid a patient gets. But unfortunately I don’t think anyone is going to want to read a book where two people argue over whether 250ml of fluid was given over an hour or over an hour and a half. And honestly, if they wanted that kind of action, they could just go to university, get a degree, apply for a job in any one of the many, many fine hospitals in this country, hang said bag of fluid, and then argue with their colleague over the rate in which it was given. For bonus points they could argue over whether potassium should have been added to the bag. It would save me the grief, and they would probably be paid for it, too.

-PC

The curtains were drawn in a three-meter square around the resuscitation bay, with the body lying in the geometric middle. Felix reached behind his neck and undid the tie to the gown before throwing it into the linen skip. The gown was one of the new ones the hospital had gotten during the COVID pandemic, and it was now covered in a slurry of blood and soot.

In theory, everything they did in Resus was as sterile as an operating room. The reality, however—of a chaotic space half the size of an operating theatre, of arms and legs being thrown about, of dozens of people involved and another half-dozen just wanting to rubberneck, of going from not knowing what you needed next to needing it right away—the reality was very different. This was decidedly not surgery.

Not to mention, Felix thought as he took off his bloodstained gloves and flipped them into the yellow biohazard bin before walking over to the sink. Not to mention, the patients getting surgery were completely different. Resus patients came off the street and weren’t washed or prepped. They hadn’t showered and fasted, weren’t scheduled four weeks in advance. They hadn’t told all their friends that they were going in for surgery, weren’t coming in with shaved legs and their best underwear. These patients came in after falling from a roof onto a fence post, or having a heart attack while mowing the lawn, or getting stabbed at the bar over a spilled drink.

Or after being lit on fire. How the hell had this woman gotten lit on fire?

“Was that fucked? That felt fucked.” Amir sidled next to Felix, doffing his own gown.

“I need an ice cream,” Felix said to his most senior registrar. He had known Amir since he was a medical student, smart, curious, with just that little sprinkle of unearned confidence. It was fine in moderation, occasionally too much. In spite of it, Amir had ascended the ranks quickly—from student to intern to registrar to senior registrar—putting in the hours, ticking off assessments and milestones, navigating the personalities, to essentially become Felix’s second-in-command.

Amir said, “You need a shower.”

“These fancy new gowns,” Felix said, “get bought on the COVID credit card, Mister Prime Minister showing the world he had our backs. Splash-proof, virus-proof, bomb-proof, sweat-proof. Now there’s no more COVID and we had a storeroom full of these sauna suits they wanted us to use, and probably wouldn’t expire till the next pandemic hit.”

“Can’t blame that stink on those gowns, boss.”

He looked over to Amir. “It was 8/10 fucked, made me extra glad to see you on today.”

“You know that way I threw in the chest tube?” Amir asks. “Using just your two fingers to slide it between the ribs? You taught me that like ten years ago. On that massive lady that hosed into her chest. It was my first week. To this day, I don’t do them any other way.”

From the sink, Felix looked over at the aftermath of the resuscitation. The monitors at the side of the bed were still on, straight lines displayed in place of the blips of vital signs. Empty packaging and saline bags littered the floor next to long streaks of red where a blood spill had been hastily wiped down with a towel to prevent a slip during the chaos. Metal trolleys were stacked with used sterile fields and pots and trays, antiseptic-soaked squares of gauze, and overflowing sharps bins filled with needles and wires littered the sidelines.

“Is it weird being back?” Amir asked.

One of the cleaners had come between the curtains now. She dragged a mop and yellow bucket on wheels behind her. She barely looked up to the burned body under the sheet in front and to the left of her. She dunked the mop into the bucket in silence before methodically running it across the bloody smears. Textured streaks of currant jelly slowly became diluted puddles of pink, before disappearing from the textured white linoleum completely.

“Like I never left.”