Бесплатный фрагмент - The clinical death

— 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.

This completely plausible version finally calmed Nikolai Sergeyevich. So, what should we do now? If he is asleep, then you just have to go with the flow of the storyline of the dream itself, because it is not always possible to influence what is happening in the corners of your subconscious. Usually, a sleeping person simply remains at the mercy of sleep and is transferred from episode to episode, participating in the dream action proposed by the subconscious, while playing different roles in it, but, as a rule, being aware of himself only by himself.

Nikolai Sergeyevich decided to get up from the ground after all, and he easily succeeded. He found clothes on himself, but not an operating white coat, but a light gray lightweight suit with a jacket and trousers without buttons, some light soft fabric slippers were worn on his feet. The doctor brushed the remnants of the meadow grass from his trousers and jacket with his hand, looked around once more and walked with a confident step in a randomly chosen direction. Since he’s in a dream right now, it doesn’t matter where he goes or what to do. We just need to move forward somewhere.

When he reached the edge of the clearing, he did not stop, but continued his way through the mixed forest. During the movement, he did not hear the sound of his footsteps on the ground, there was no usual crunch of branches under his feet in the forest. Neither the voices of birds nor the buzzing of insects reached him, he did not feel the slightest breeze. Beyond the treetops, the sun was not visible at all in the sky. But this did not surprise Nikolai Sergeyevich at all, because he perfectly understood that he was in a dream, and there, of course, everything is always different. However, he couldn’t help but notice how real this dream seemed. All the surrounding objects were very clearly distinguishable, he could even touch his hand and feel its elasticity, which means its “real” state, and yet it was a dream, not reality, so it was not worth even harboring illusions.

After walking some distance, constantly skirting densely growing trees, he suddenly unexpectedly came out on a good paved road running perpendicular to the direction of his movement. It was necessary to decide whether to continue forward further into the forest, or to follow the road, turning left or right. After a short thought, Nikolai Sergeyevich chose a right turn, and confidently walked along the very middle of the roadway. The road was completely empty and on both sides densely covered with the same mixed forest. It is not known how long our hero walked along this unrealistically straight and level road, but walking (even in a dream) gave him pleasure, because he did not feel tired at all. Nikolai Sergeyevich noticed that the canvas was without road markings, he did not meet a single road sign, not a single bus stop, which traditionally stand on the roadsides in rural areas…

The day remained the same sunny, nothing changed around. The Doctor kept walking, just looking around, studying the area. But then the road suddenly ended, and behind the interrupted asphalt roadbed, the same mixed forest suddenly grew up like a thick wall right in front of him. Out of surprise, Nikolai Sergeevich stopped for a couple of moments, and then decided to take a few steps in the same direction, stepping off the broken asphalt roadbed. However, after walking two meters deep into the forest, he found that there was no forest around anymore. The Doctor suddenly found himself in an abandoned field overgrown with grass, boundless to the horizon, and somewhere in the distance he noticed a certain small gray structure. A few minutes later, after walking through the field, he reached it and only then realized that it was clearly a concrete cube standing on the ground, three meters high, wide and long.

Nikolai Sergeyevich approached this gray cube, walked around it from all sides. It resembled the entrance to a bomb shelter, only without windows and doors. Only concrete walls. Of course, there was nothing special about this “house”, only Gromov did not understand the true purpose of this strange structure. The doctor slowly walked around it again, at the same time, thinking where to go next, but this time it turned out that an open passage had suddenly formed in one of the walls of the cube. Nikolai Sergeyevich was not at all surprised by this fact, since in a dream everything happens by itself and does not require an explanation. Everything that happens is accepted by the dream carrier as a given, as the conditions of the game of uncontrolled levels of the subconscious.

After lingering for some time near the blackening entrance, the doctor considered that this was an invitation for him, and then confidently and without hesitation, as is customary in a dream, he passed through the doorless opening. He took a few steps, but for some reason the inner space of the cube was not limited to the three meters that could be seen from the outside. Suddenly it became completely dark, because the passage to the cube suddenly closed, leaving Nikolai Sergeyevich alone with the unknown, and maybe even in a hopeless trap. But, realizing that all this was just a dream, he did not pay any attention to this fact and firmly decided to continue moving forward as long as possible, because the way back was cut off anyway.

The doctor took a few cautious steps into complete darkness, and after such a long silence of the imaginary world surrounding him, he suddenly heard some noise in the distance, which seemed very, very familiar to him. Well, yes, of course, only the wheels of metro trains rattle on the rail joints in such a peculiar way. Now Dr. Gromov’s desire to keep going forward was already caused by ordinary human curiosity. “What, I somehow ended up in the subway?”, the doctor thought. After walking a little further, he suddenly noticed some light in the distance, it was lights, many small lights. Most likely, it was there that the subway tunnel passed. While Nikolai Sergeyevich, almost in complete darkness by touch, but with unprecedented zeal, was moving forward towards the lights visible in the distance, not being afraid to stumble over something in the dark, stretch out on the concrete floor and get hurt, from time to time he continued to hear the noise made, as it became clear, by passing trains. With every step of his approach to the subway tunnel, the noise increased. At the same time, he still did not feel even a hint of fatigue. However, as it should exist in a dream…