Birthday Miracle

Birthday Miracle 


Vijay Gopichandran


Disclaimer: This blog is a deviation from what I usually write. This is an attempt at a fictional short story.


“Sister, where is the gauze bin?” yelled Arumugam from the bedside. He was precariously standing with his hands in sterile gloves held up so that it doesn’t soil his 2000 rupees Arrow shirt. He was wearing a flimsy face mask, which did very little to shield the foul smell emanating from the foot ulcer that he was dressing that morning. Fine drops of sweat were oozing down from his forehead which now had wrinkled up with anger lines. He was irritated to note that he had meticulously packed everything required for this elaborate foot dressing, except extra gauze pieces.


“These young house-surgeons are so inefficient. They don’t even know how to prepare for a dressing. In our times…..” started Kamala sister as she indignantly walked with a gauze bin towards Arumugam. “Doctor, you have been in this ward for more than 2 months. Don’t you know that this patient will require extra gauze?”


Arumugam detested Kamala sister. She was the matriarch of the ward, always ordering people around and always angry with him. He mumbled to himself, “There goes Queen Kamala. I just wish I hadn’t forgotten to bring the gauze bin. Now I have to hear the full sermon”. But surprisingly Kamala sister kept it short and walked away after giving him the bin. Arumugam immersed himself into the dressing once again.


After the dressing was over, he had to go sit in front of the desktop computer and pull out all the lab results of patients in the surgery ward and pin them to the appropriate case sheets. It was already 8 AM and rounds will be starting very soon. Today was Thursday and the Chief of the unit will be coming for rounds. Arumugam removed his gloves and went to the washbasin. He tossed the soiled gloves into the yellow bin and opened the tap. He felt the cold water running on his hands and relaxed instantly. The handwashing ritual was something he really enjoyed because for those two minutes nobody would bother him. It was his private moments of blissful solitude in the maze of general surgery postings. He looked up to see himself in the mirror. It was his birthday today and he was wearing the new shirt that Selvi had gifted him at 12 AM that morning. All his friends had brought the cake to his room, banged his door to wake him up and cut the cake. Arumugam had pretended to be sleeping and woken up by surprise, but he was sitting inside the room waiting all the time. Quickly snapping out of his reverie, he moved to the desktop computer to pull out the lab reports.


The desktop computer must have been as old as Charles Babbage himself! It was the oldest computer in the building. All house surgeons avoided this computer like the plague because all that it knew to do was to get hanged and stuck at crucial times. They would all run down to the adjacent OPD building and pull out the results in the computers kept there. Those computers were relatively new, from the times when Bill Gates was a boy! But today Arumugam had no time to run to the OPD building. With a lot of trepidation, he walked to the computer, lifted off the thick green shroud from its top and switched on the power. As he sat there on the wooden chair in front of it, waiting for it to fire up, he was becoming restless. He took out his pocket notebook and went through the list of patients whose results he needed to pull out. As he pulled out the notebook a small slip of paper dropped out. It was an OP slip, the small slip of paper that is handed to the patients with the OP room number and registration seal. Yesterday at the end of the busy OP, the professor had written the name of a patient, their OP number and asked Arumugam to order a blood test, Serum Vitamin B 12 assay for them. He had completely forgotten. As soon as he saw the slip, he was relieved, he would order the test now before anything. Otherwise, he would have to pull the sorry face to the professor during rounds.


Full five minutes had passed but the poor old computer was still struggling to fire up. Arumugam looked at this watch. It was 10 minutes past 8. Rounds will start by 8.30 sharp. He started tapping his feet in tension. Kamala sister yelled from the nursing station. “Doctor, stop tapping your feet. The noise is irritating”. Arumugam felt like pouncing on her and silencing her once and for all. But he kept his patience and was looking anxiously on the computer screen. The computer fired up at that very moment. The computer was making a loud buzzing noise, which proved that it was alive. He logged in to the laboratory user interface.


He clicked on ‘order investigations’ and waited. The wait seemed like a year. But then the order window slowly popped up. He entered the name and OP number from the slip of paper. He clicked on the drop-down menu for the investigation. Where is Vitamin B12? He was desperately searching for it and realized that the tests are in alphabetical order. At that precise moment of his realization, the mouse hanged. “Oh shit!”, Arumugam swore and searched for the down arrow key on the keyboard. To his absolute dismay, he found that the down arrow key was missing. There was just a small white plastic knob where once the down arrow key must have been present. He pressed at the knob as though his whole life depended on it, but nothing happened. The key was completely dysfunctional. He was now really drowning in truckloads of what he had just sworn about. He sat there staring at the formidable list of tests and he was only at C Reactive Protein – only at C., He had to move down to V!


Arumugam looked at his watch, it was 8.26. The whole team will be here in a few minutes. Not only had he not ordered the Vitamin B12 for the professor’s special patient, but he had not yet pulled out the results for the rounds. He felt like storming out of the ward and calling in sick. But then, this is the last week of his posting and he had no leaves left. If he stormed out today, his posting would be extended. He completely resigned to his fate and sat there in front of the computer with his head hanged low. What a fantastic birthday he thought to himself. In absolute frustration, he banged the keyboard. All of a sudden, the cursor on the drop-down list started scrolling down on its own. He looked with absolute bliss and peeped down on the keyboard and saw that while banging the keyboard he had hit the whitish knob in the place of the erstwhile down arrow key. It was pressed down and was working now. He quickly looked up and saw that the list had moved down to S…. Serum Creatinine…Yes, in a few more scrolls it will reach V. He sat there watching anxiously and as it reached V, he again banged on the knob and it released. The cursor landed exactly on Vitamin B 12. Praying sincerely he gently pressed the enter key. Lo and Behold, a new window popped up “You have ordered Vitamin B 12 assay for your patient. Do you confirm?”. With a broad bright smile on his face and a jubilant cry, Arumugam hit enter and the Vitamin B 12 test was ordered. It was 8.30 and the first year postgraduate trainee who walked into the ward came and stood behind Arumugam, put his hands on his shoulder and said, “Happy Birthday dude! I thought you would come late after your midnight party and pulled out all the lab results for you from the OPD. Here take it” and handed over the results. It was indeed a Birthday Miracle.