PART 21

Clockwork:
The inner workings of something.
The machinery (as springs and a train of gears) that run a clock ; also : a similar mechanism running a mechanical device (as a toy)3: the precision, regularity, or absence of variation associated with a clock or clockwork <a clockwork operation> <the planning went like clockwork>.
idiom: like clockwork
With machinelike regularity and precision; perfectly: The project proceeded like clockwork.

Reflection:
The act of reflecting.
The return of rays of light, heat, or sound.
An image of an object given back in a mirror.
Careful or long consideration.
On reflection after careful consideration or reconsideration.
Discredit or blame: it’s a sad reflection on modern morality.
Maths a transformation of a shape in which right and left, or top and bottom, are reversed.
Etymology: Middle English, alteration of reflexion, from Late Latin reflexion-, reflexio act of bending back, from Latin reflectere.

Day 63 after the accident – Cedars Sinai Hospital – h. 11.02 a.m.

I’m seriously risking to fall asleep when the monitor starts beeping weirdly.
I mean,

Beep, beep, beep

Suddenly becomes

Beep.
….
Beep.
….
Beep.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
….
Beeeeeeeeeeep.

And that’s when I jump.
I was sitting on a chair beside Carmen’s bed and then the monitor starts making these strange sounds and I am not a doctor and I don’t know shit about what those sounds mean exactly but I know that something bad and extremely dangerous is happening to my wife.
I know it because as I get up in panic there’s this medical team entering the room and then doctor Breillard joins them and glances at me.
And then he nods in my direction and a nurse grabs my wrist and tells me.
You have to go out.
And I shake my head no, my eyes transfixed on Carmen.
And the nurse repeats.
Please, leave the room.
And I try to motion towards Carmen but nobody lets me.
And they’re all around her.
And these sounds again, Carmen’s heart, there’s something wrong with Carmen’s heart.
And I hear two words that I really don’t want to hear.
The two words are.
Code blue.
And I do know what code blue means, because I’ve been staying in this hospital for too long.
Code blue means that there is a patient in cardiopulmonary arrest, requiring a team of providers to rush to the specific location and begin immediate resuscitative efforts.
And that’s what they’re doing.
Which means that my wife is risking her life right now.
And they’re trying to bring her back.
And as someone starts pulling me towards the door, against my will, I see the doctors around Carmen touching her hurriedly and clumsily, like she’s some kind of a puppet and not the woman I love more than everything else on the face of Earth.
And I see a defibrillator in someone’s hands.
And I see Carmen’s naked breast and right then my knees start trembling and I can’t offer resistance anymore because I can’t catch my breath.
And they drag me out the room as one of them says.
Charge.
And I hear them try to restore a normal heartbeat by applying an electric shock.