The Painting

 

I was at a fast jog by now, but the beige concrete wall just in front of me seemed hard and unyielding. As the nurse increased the speed and I ran my hardest, I began to feel uneasy. I nodded to the Cardiac Stress Lab nurse, Donna, and she slowed the treadmill down to a jog. I hopped off when it slowed sufficiently.

“The blank wall is a psychological problem.” I said. Dr Hartley nodded in agreement as Donna started to remove the electrodes from my chest. “Ouch!” I looked down at Donna to see her grinning as she held a sticky electrode covered with little hairs, that until a second ago, were firmly planted over my now partially bald sternum. I had refused to let her shave my chest for this run through. The lab was opening in a few days, the first Monday in April, and we were just making sure all our equipment and procedures worked.

“Yes Rob, its just too intimidating running face first into concrete.” Hartley said with a wry grin. “Any ideas?”

“Well a window is definitely out.” We both laughed at that. Our new Cardiac Stress Lab was in the basement of the hospital, just down the hall from X Ray. If we cut a window in the wall, it would open up to the boiler room, and running full tilt into a glowing furnace was even less appealing than sprinting into a slab of concrete.

We had to locate the stress lab there because it was the closest suitable room we could get to the Thallium Scanner in the X Ray Department. We would put the patients on the treadmill, inject the slightly radioactive thallium, then take the patient to the scanner and determine the actual blood flow to various areas of the beating heart. The theory is that a heart at rest can still perfuse effectively, but when you exercise or ‘stress’ the heart, any arterial blockages would be much easier to detect. Of course, while doing all this you have to be careful not to over-stress and kill the patient. We called the procedure a Thallium Scan amongst ourselves, but the hospital administrator liked the term, Nuclear Myocardial Perfusion Study. I think he liked to impress his friends.

“Maybe we can get one of those wall sized posters of a beach or park scene.” I said to Hartley.

“Well it should be a good one, I don’t want anything cheap looking.” Hartley gave me a significant look over his half glasses, immaculate lab coat and custom made silk shirt. Nothing cheap looking for the head of Cardiology Services. I always felt slightly rumpled standing next to him, even though all my clothes matched.“We open to patients on Monday, Rob. Take care of it, will you?”

 

I was still in my running gear as I left the Stress Lab, and nearly bumped into one of the coolest characters on the hospital staff. He was an older fellow in his sixties, but still spry, tall and very thin with white hair, dressed in white painters coveralls. He was the full time painter of the hospital, Percy, a cool old fellow with an absurdly nerdy name. In a place this size, there was always something for him to do, and over the past forty years, Percy had done it with a certain flair. Last year a design consultant had evaluated the hospital for aesthetics, and just about the only thing she thought was good was the color choice and quality of the paint in all the patient areas. All chosen and applied by this tall lanky fellow in the stained white coveralls.

“Hey Rob, where’s your white coat? Or are you planning to jog your way through clinic this morning?”

“Yo Percy. Nah, I was just helping evaluate the new Stress Lab.” Then I had a flash idea. “Come in and take a look at something. I could use your input.”

We both stood beside the now motionless treadmill as I explained the psychological problem with running on it while facing a blank concrete wall. I was hoping he had an idea for a poster, but old Percy surprised me.

“Why don’t I paint a trail leading into a quiet forest on that wall?”

“You actually do murals?”

“Yea Rob, I don’t always just use a roller to slop on paint you know. In my other life, I am an Artiste. Percy laughed as he said that, but I had a feeling he was serious.

“We open next Monday morning, think you can have it ready?”

 

Friday afternoon I found Percy hard at work in the stress lab, outlining his mural and blocking in the colors. I had never seen one done before, and I was a bit anxious at the apparent lack of real progress. To me it looked crude and unfinished, and if it didn’t look perfect, Dr Hartley would be upset, and I didn’t want to be on the top of the Chief of Cardiology’s pissed off list. Percy was calm and cool as he reassured me he would complete it on time.

“It’s all blocked in Doc,” he said with an easy grin, “Now its just putting in the shading and the details, and it will start to look three dimensional. I’m coming in over the weekend, and it will be perfect by Monday morning, I promise.”

 

I came into the Stress Lab early Monday, the day we would test our first patient, to see the finished mural only to find it was still half done and looked amateurish. I became upset staring at it, knowing Dr Hartley would hold me responsible for the poor job. As I stared at the unfinished and crudely blocked in mural I heard Donna enter the lab. She stood beside me and started to cry softly.

“It’s so sad Rob, Percy was such a good man.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t hear Rob? Percy was admitted to ICU Saturday afternoon. Dr Hartley found him passed out on the floor right here. Percy died Saturday night from a massive heart attack.”

I heard the door open again and Dr Hartley entered in his immaculate lab coat and custom shirt. He glanced briefly at the mural and then at me. I was about to explain but Hartley cut me off.

“I know about Percy Rob, I had to pronounce him Saturday. What do you say we leave the mural as is?”

I had no idea that Dr. Hartley was so sentimental, but we just couldn’t bear to cover up the mural Percy had died trying to complete. We all looked at it, a crudely sketched path leading into a forest of flat looking trees, and by some unspoken agreement we all knew we would never cover the mural, nor consider changing it in any way.

Th

ere was a knock on the door, and the transport volunteer brought in our first patient. It was time to work.

 

I hadn’t been back to the Stress Lab in a week, but now it was my turn to work with Hartley and learn how to run a stress test. I had of course learned all the protocols. What to do if a patient complained of chest pain, how to react to certain ECG changes, and I had even rehearsed how to respond if a patient went into cardiac arrest during the procedure.

When I entered the Lab, I noticed that Percy’s mural seemed fuller, more detailed. I wondered at first if it was my imagination; but as I looked closely I saw little details I was sure had not been present before. The tree trunks appeared rounder, I could discern individual leaves in the foliage, and flowers were beginning to sprout along the path. It looked like early spring in a quiet forest.

I heard the door open and Donna entered. She smiled and stood close to me as we gazed at the painting.

“Strange isn’t it Rob? I see little changes in it every day, but have never seen anyone else in here. I’m here after the last patient as housekeeping cleans up, then I lock up at night. Security tells me their videos show no one else entering.”

“No one?”

“No one else comes in or out. I know I should feel a little creeped out about it, but I don’t. I feel good instead.”

As the weeks marched on, Hartley, Donna and I saw the path leading into the forest become almost photographically real. As Spring flowed slowly into Summer, flowers bloomed and died off, grass sprouted along the path and small bushes bloomed. Never did the security cameras show any unauthorized entry into the Stress Lab.

It’s Fall now, and as I look at the mural, I see the leaves turning red and gold, and I wonder what changes winter will bring.