Enemy Compassion

It was nine o’clock at night. The exercise room had the odor of antiseptic cleaners mixed with hopeful ambitions and glum disappointment. It was empty except for a dark-haired woman running slowly on the treadmill in a t-shirt and sweatpants. She had buzz-cut hair and her t-shirt was stained with sweat. As she ran, she repeatedly visualized the steps needed to strip, clean, and reassemble a Sig Sauer P239 pistol. Her memory had been playing tricks on her lately and there were some skills that she thought were just too important to forget.

Her breathing started to get ragged and the color drained from her face. She needed to keep running so she began to play a mental game: she would run four more strides and then decide if she could continue, and then another four strides, and then another four strides. She played variants on this game before, in life-and-death situations, and it had proven its effectiveness. She considered getting back in shape to be a life-and-death proposition for her now.

But even the game had limits. Waves of nausea began to wash over her. If she were outdoors, she would have just puked and kept running, but she didn’t want to get stuck cleaning the hospital treadmill. Instead, she hopped off, doubled over, and grabbed her side. “Shit, shit, shit! I hate this.”

As she was bent over a tall, balding man wearing a doctor’s coat came into the room, paused by the door, and then walked slowly towards her. “Samantha, what are you doing? You already had your P.T. for the day. You should be in bed now.”

Samantha looked up at the middle-aged man with a pained expression on her face. “Do you know what an Iron Man competition is, Doc? In a single day, you have to swim two and a half miles, then bike for over a hundred miles, and finally, run a full marathon. Last year I could have competed in an Iron Man and been one of the top finishers. Look at me now. I can’t even run four minutes on a fucking treadmill. I’m pathetic.”

The doctor shook his head. “That was before your injury. Considering you have only been in the rehab wing for three weeks, I am surprised that you have the strength to walk to the exercise room, much less run on a treadmill for five minutes.”

Just then Samantha’s heartbeat started to roar in her ears, the doctor’s voice faded into the distance, and the room began to shrink. She knew that she was close to fainting, so she quickly lay down on the floor and propped her bare feet up on the side of the treadmill. “How much longer will I have these fainting spells, Doc?”

“Let’s see if it’s the same as last time,” the doctor said as he came over to examine Samantha. He peered into her eyes, took her pulse, and then repeatedly pressed a finger against the top of her foot. “Are you still feeling faint when you’re just walking around, or is it only when you’ve been exercising?”

Samantha tried to remember the last couple of days. “It can happen anytime. I think that eating may trigger it sometimes. The last two days I had an attack right after lunch. The food here is lousy, but not bad enough to do that.”

“Well, it’s most likely another problem caused by the blood loss from your injury. According to your chart, when you first arrived at the emergency room there was so much blood loss that you had some hypoxic brain injury, your heart was in distress, and your kidneys were shutting down. Based on your medical history and the symptoms you’re presenting, I think you may have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.”