Thanks to the patient's distinctive sideways posture, Kraft recognized him at once. Just before the two procedures, the man had been sitting in the examination room, asking whether there was any hope of treatment.
He tried to force out a few words between short, rapid gasps. Though he endured the pain and used all his strength, his breath was still faint as a thread, and he could barely form the words properly.
Kraft hurried to his side and listened closely to make out what he was saying. But what reached his ears wasn't a description of his symptoms. It was words like "the Church" and "cemetery."
"I need you to tell me what happened and how you feel right now!" the bewildered doctor shouted into his ear, trying to pull him out of his incoherent state.
"Not the public cemetery."
Now he finally understood. Half amused and half exasperated, Kraft asked the young man who had helped him over to lend a hand. Together, they moved the patient onto the bed and propped him up, hoping to calm the man who had started asking about his final resting place far too soon.
"Who are you?" The young man seemed too concerned to be a mere passerby. They must have known each other.
"This is my father. He suddenly became like this on the way here." The young man looked anxiously at the doctor, momentarily at a loss for words. He pressed his hand to his chest and mimed what he had seen. It seemed the patient had suddenly developed chest pain while walking, and had been brought back not long after they set out.
Damn it, I'm not an emergency doctor.
He urgently recalled the patient's posture when they'd first met. He'd been leaning protectively to the right, and he