Stethoscope

I wasn't sleeping very well when my master picked me up from the table.
"Time to work ..." he grumbled, and put me in his white coat.
Yes, I am his stethoscope.
I knew my master when he was a third year medical student. It was, I dare say, not a romantic story at all. I came with a hundred of my brothers and was essentially picked up by random. My master was a typical student: hard working, well shaved, always properly dressed, but not very well off.
He graduated two years ago. We struggled through the year of houseman and he ended up as a physician trainee.

It wasn’t long before we saw another admission from the Emergency Department: a 60-year-old woman who came with her son. She was completely well until this evening, when she noticed some clumsiness of her right arm as well as slurring of speech. I had a close look when my master tested her. The weakness was there but rather mild. My master tried the reflexes with the tendon hammer from the ward, and scratch the feet of the patient with the key living in the pocket besides me.

Thank god, I do not have to live with this smelly piece of metal.

My master suddenly pick me out from the white coat. I stretched my exhausted neck and searched for the apex. The heart beat of this woman was very fast. Yes, it was irregular. I conveyed the message to my master.

“I imagine so …” he murmured. Oh, he had already looked at the ECG before waking me up. Fast atrial fibrillation of course. I felt myself useless. After all the work I did not help this woman in any way.

My master was not aware of my feeling. He squeezed me back to the white coat and furiously wrote down nursing orders and other management.

The night passed very quickly. We had several more admissions of GI bleeding, chronic lung and heart failure. I was keen to help but no, I didn’t think I scored in any of them. Why on earth should I attend all these cases ?

(... to be continued.)