EVERYONE RUSHED OVER. No one knew what to do, but I did. The case seemed simple to me. I knew about Barbara's heart condition, and I thought her brief fainting spell was no problem. But somehow my reassurances didn't work. The concern that my explanations couldn't dispel hurt my feelings. I was the only doctor there, surrounded by laypeople, but they didn't accept my explanations, and rightly so, as it turned out. My diagnosis was obviously wrong. It wasn't Barbara's heart flutter that had temporarily set in, but something profoundly threatening that had taken possession of her. I was at a loss. I recognized these symptoms, the sudden discoloration of the tongue, the rolling of the eyes, but I couldn't remember where I had seen them before. I was paralyzed. Sudden noises came from her, like those heard in movies about exorcism. Everyone looked at me. I had just been acting like an authority figure, and now I was falling apart. I was evil incarnate. The fact that she hadn't taken her medication for some time, or at least that I hadn't noticed, now came back to haunt me. I remained silent. I caught looks of deep mistrust, felt the rejection of the group, Ingrid's malice was palpable. Barbara's breath exuded a smell of bitterness mixed with honey sweetness. During my studies, we had been prepared for such cases countless times, but now I was failing. My gaze wandered to Andrea, who, in my opinion, was best equipped to deal with the medical challenge. She didn't look at me, but was completely focused on Barbara. “He's not a doctor, he's just pretending,” I heard someone say. I didn't dare turn around before Irenaeus, of all people, the awkward Irenaeus, pushed me away, took Barbara's head, shook it wildly, and slowly brought her back to consciousness. It seemed like a miracle cure to all of us, not a slow awakening, but a sudden return to normal. “You did a wonderful job,” she said to me. “I didn't feel a thing.” We pondered the meaning of these words, which didn't really make sense, but Irenaeus knew, from wherever, that patients would say incoherent things for the first ten seconds after this intervention. Irenaeus didn't say another word to me after that, nor did Ingrid. In fact, no one did. Only Barbara remained under the illusion that I had saved her life and hugged me. My gaze fell on the forest behind her, a deer stepped into the clearing, I wanted to get away from here, why had I gotten involved in this emergency drill, how reckless of me to think I could lead this group. It had been one last time, one last rebellion of the doctor in me. I had to change my life.
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