– Cardiac arrest! Urgently prepare a defibrillator! – the anesthesiologist quickly and clearly commanded, having heard a sharp squeak of a heart monitor that was very unpleasant to the ear and noticed a straight line on it that spoke only about one thing – about the complete absence of cardiac activity in the patient. Clinical death. We must act extremely quickly. Only seven minutes left while the brain is still alive. In the cold time until twelve. Clock is ticking…
But just now everything was just fine. The whole strangeness of what was happening was that the patient barely had time to perform standard premedication, intubate, connect a ventilator and give a mask anesthesia with nitrous oxide for a minute. Judging by the reaction of the pupils to the light, the patient sank into sleep completely and steadily. However, surgeons failed to make even a small incision on the operating field on the patient’s abdomen, limited by snow-white diapers and thickly lubricated with iodonate solution.
…Clock is ticking. At that moment, the surgeons instantly moved away from the operating table, giving the man lying on it into the hands of a team of anesthesiologists. In a matter of seconds, everything was prepared, flat electrodes of an already charged defibrillator were applied to the open chest and a medium-strength discharge was given, then a second slightly more powerful, then a third…
…Lying on the table in the operating room of the surgical department of the city clinical hospital, Nikolai Sergeyevich Gromov mentally prepared to endure an appendectomy, that is, the removal of his unexpectedly inflamed appendix. Such a nuisance happened to him for the first time, nothing like this had ever been done to him before, he had never in his life, a former internist with decent experience, gone under the surgeon’s knife. Of course, in the old years, when he was still a student of the medical faculty of the medical institute, in practice he assisted colleagues more than once in operations, but to cut himself…
However, life gave the doctor a little surprise. The other day, he unexpectedly had a severe stomach ache, according to the classic symptoms, he was able to diagnose himself, and without waiting for the development of peritonitis, he immediately called an ambulance, and eventually ended up in the surgical department. No matter what you say, and even though Nikolai Sergeyevich was going to be under anesthesia during the operation, it’s still the strongest stress for the human body in any case. Even if you prick your finger or scratch something, and then the whole body immediately begins to fight against it, turns on all its mechanisms to restore, so to speak, homeostasis, and then a whole surgical intervention!..
While Nikolai Sergeyevich was thinking about all this, he did not notice how he was absorbed by a soft anesthetic sleep. But through it, as if from somewhere far away, he suddenly heard the barely discernible muffled voices of doctors, who, as it seemed to him, were worried about something. “It looks like something happened there… maybe even to me… After all, it is I who am on the operating table at the moment…", such thoughts instantly flashed through Nikolai Sergeyevich’s mind, apparently not yet completely disconnected by the nitrous oxide supplied through the tube…
Suddenly everything changed dramatically. The voices disappeared altogether, there was an unusual silence, the doctor felt that he was gradually losing touch with sleep, although it seemed that his body was still lying on the operating table. “Strange, maybe the doctors abandoned me and have already left the operating room? But why? Because I’m starting to wake up. It seems to be. Or maybe I died altogether? No, no! Wait, I feel myself, I think. “I think, so I exist,” as the ancient philosopher Rene Descartes said… Look, I even remembered about him, so I’m alive,” Gromov thought. I should have opened my eyes. But could he do it? It was only worth trying, then everything would immediately become clear… Or will it not? “That’s it, stop waiting…", Nikolai Sergeyevich thought decisively and abruptly raised his eyelids.
The first thing that caught his open eyes was a bright white light, and the doctor immediately closed his eyes, not having time to immediately assess the situation. When his eyes got used to it, he could already see the place where he was. There was no operating room in sight. He was somewhere in the open air. A cloudless blue sky looked down at him from above. The Doctor raised his head a little and his gaze finally took in the surrounding space. The narrow clearing in which he was lying was densely surrounded by a pine forest, there was soft green grass under it. Everything looked as usual. But something was missing. Then Nikolai Sergeyevich guessed that he did not feel heat or cold, and most importantly, he was not breathing at all. And the strangest thing is that it does not cause him any discomfort. “So I’m dreaming after all! Well, of course! How ignorant I am! I’m under anesthesia now, surgeons are performing surgery, and I’m just sleeping peacefully on the operating table and dreaming,” he decided after a few seconds of reflection.
