Far From The Madding Crowd

The trolley rattles as it’s wheeled in.

Glass ampoules. Gauze. Syringes laid out like surgical bones. A shallow metal bowl of sugar water sits beside a box of gloves. Everything is quiet except the tick of the clock, which is five minutes slow and always has been.

Unwin is young here. Still learning. His badge still says Attendant. He hasn’t earned the white coat yet.

The patient—boy, maybe twenty—is already on the bed. Tied loosely. He’s been cooperative today.

The doctor nods once. “Two hundred units.”

Unwin doesn’t flinch. But he swallows.

He draws the insulin. Injects into the upper arm. Records it.

Then waits.

The boy begins to sweat after fifteen minutes. Tremors after twenty. The nurse beside him—older, cheerful in that hard-trained way—says, “Here it comes.”

The boy stiffens. Body arched. Mouth open.

Not screaming. Just air.

The seizure passes. Stillness follows.

And then the coma.

It is not peace.

It’s stillness without return.

Unwin checks the pulse. It’s slow. Stable. The chart is updated.

The next shift arrives to wake him—with glucose, with time.

Unwin stays behind to mop.

He doesn’t look at the boy’s face. Only at the damp patch on the sheet.

It smells like vinegar and metal.

The head nurse walks past.

“You’ll get used to it,” she says. “They all come back.”

Unwin nods.

But he watches the patient’s hand.

It twitches once. Then nothing.

He writes that down too.

“17:42. Tremor in left fingers. Unresponsive.”

The note is later crossed out.

“Artefact.”

Unwin doesn’t erase the memory.

He keeps it.

Not because he knows what it means.

But because no one else will.