“If you’d taken me in before the Agarwal couple, I would have been in soon,” he smirked, grasping the last slipping shred of control.
She rose to her feet, coming around to his side. “Unbutton your shirt.”
His smirked deepened. She did not react, plugging her stethoscope buds into her ear. When had she grabbed it? He eyed the smooth movement, the practised ease so slick. Shewasa doctor. And she wasn’t hard pressed on getting him to undress because she took the stethoscope to his back, making him push away from the seat. Her hand came to his shoulder and held him steady. Firm for such a soft female.
“Deep breath,” she cued, pressing it. He followed, unable to challenge her on anything.
“Relax.”
She came back in front of him, her eyes commanding, quick, assessing. And his fingers automatically went to his shirt, popping the top two buttons open. He went to the third, but her words stopped him.
“That’s it.”
She was clinical, detached, but so firm in pressing the knob of the stethoscope to his chest, to his ribcage, asking him to breathe in, relax, long breath. He stared in rapt attention as she rolled out a long pole from the corner with her foot. When she unwound the blood pressure cuff from the top, he found himself taking off his cufflink and folding his sleeve up like he had done three times every day since his attack. Rajiv wouldn’t let him be otherwise.
Just as effortlessly, she wrapped the cuff around his bicep.
“You’re not sleeping properly.”
“Did the stethoscope whisper that to you?”
“The dark circles did,” she said. “And the elevated resting heart rate.”
She began pumping the machine. “Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Drink?”
“Occasionally.”
She looked down at him. “Define occasionally.”
“On occasion,” he answered densely to hold his own. She did not take the bait. The cuff deflated with a slow hiss on his skin, and she quickly unwrapped it from around his arm. Without saying anything about the reading, she went back to her chair.
She made notations again on the paper.
140/90
He knew his BP was high. That wasn't new. This reading had been consistent through the last two days. Mornings were lower, evenings pretty much the same.
“Who is your GP?”
“Dr. Rajiv Kashyap.”
“What is he giving you for BP? Have you brought his prescription along?”
“One of the many whispers in there,” he nudged his chin at the reports she had spread out in front of her. A mess.
He was shocked to see how easily she found the prescription in that mess and began reading simultaneously while writing on the paper and talking — “Your blood pressure has been consistently up. The enzyme markers show minor cardiac strain. You are stable…”
He straightened. “That means it’s good. The worst has passed?”
“The premonition to the worst has passed.” The smooth pressure of her pen on paper punctuated the silence that was left behind.
“An angiography is what I would recommend at this point…”
“Anything but that.”
