A routine patient transfer

vivianimbriotis | Feb. 16, 2026, 3:26 a.m.

I was working at a small private hospital, just across the road from a large public one. Both hospitals had intensive care units, but as is so often the case in Australia, the public hospital had a the kind of intensive care unit you see on TV, and the private hospital had a very different kind of intensive care unit. It was a lovely place for the post-operative patient to recover. It was not a place to receive the kinds of accursed potions and toxic draughts that, admixed, can give the absolutely moribund a second chance.

When someone needed to go from one hospital to the other, there were three options. The first was to wheel them, in their hospital bed, over the road. This was generally frowned upon. The second was to call an ambulance and have the paramedics transport them all of thirty meters to their destination, which was horribly embarrassing. The third was the tunnel.

The Tunnel ran, underground, between the two hospitals. There was no mobile reception from within; you were absolutely cut off, and if anything went wrong, you were on your own. That was all I knew before the first time I set foot in it.

"Okay, let's go from the top," I said. In the room: me, stethoscoped; the ICU nurse, who as usual was doing all the work; the patient, moribund and in need of accursed potions.

"Our airway is currently an ETT. If it gets dislodged our plan A will be to bag and run to the public. Our plan B will be to place an LMA..." I rambled a little longer - which potions to bring, and by which method to administer them. What mystic devices to attach to her body to open my third eye.

"Okay," I said to one unconscious woman and one slightly exasperated nurse. "Are we good to go?"

The nurse, Michael, began pushing the bed without a word.

The odd relationship between a rotating ICU doctor and an experienced ICU nurse is this: according to a dusty hospital policy, you are in charge - but you are a visitor to their permanent place of work.

"So, uh, how do we get to the tunnel?" I asked.

"Lift," said Michael.

"Right, of course. The lift. And how long is this tunnel?"

"Not sure. A few hundred meters."

I listened to the beeping of the patient's monitors for a few seconds. Reassuring beeps - beeps that meant she was okay. I looked at the monitor, showing waveforms - each a different color, each showing some life-sustaining function of time - red pressures, blue gasseous concentrations, purple potion toxicities. The primary colors of the third eye.

"Well, let's crack on."

We wheeled her into the lift. It was cramped with the three of us. The beeping echoed off the walls. Michael pushed a button I hadn't noticed before, labelled B4. Before what?

I looked down at my phone. Elevators with metal walls form a faraday cage. No signal. From here on out, I was cut off from help. Me and Michael against the world. Was that rising feeling in my stomach fear, or the upwards g-force of our descent? I shifted uncomfortably, bouncing from foot to foot. Michael gazed at the wall, disinterested.

Ding. "Before," an artificial woman's voice said. We had arrived. The metals doors slid open. We were in the tunnel.

The walls were concrete. The ceiling was plain plaster tiling, with halogen lights placed every few meters. Maybe one in three of them worked, and those that did flickered and buzzed. The tunnel curved to the left after a few meters. I had expected it to be straight.

Michael started to push the bed. I jogged awkwardly behind, listening to the beeping. It was eerily silent otherwise. My breath echoed back at me. There was dust suspended in the air like grain in a film photo. The only hues were white, black, grey, and the occasional garish yellow in diagonal stripes, signifying various warning signs. I peered at one as we passed. It was unclear what it was warning me about, but I felt suitably unsafe.

The tunnel zigged and zagged such that we could never see more than a few meters ahead or behind. Once the lift was behind a bend, we were in limbo - dark grey concrete in every direction, the air probably recirculated.

I wasn't sure how long we had walked - maybe a hundred meters? - when I realized that the waveforms on the monitor were all grey. I mentioned this to Michael - "Is this a glitch?" "Color can't come past here," he said. "And flashlights go out." I realized he was holding a candle. He must have brought it from upstairs.

The flickering of the halogen lights worsened the further we went into the tunnel - and then they all went out.

For a moment, we were in complete darkness - then there was a bloom of light ahead of me as Michael, silently, lit his candle with a bic lighter.

We continued on in silence.

And on.

And on.

Eventually, I tried to break the silence, commenting to Michael, "Wow, I'm getting pretty hungry. We've been walking for a while."

"That's what the spare feeds are for."

"What?"

"The spare nasogastric feeds." I looked down at the side of the patient bed, lit in flickering candlelight. There were a pair of grey bags, filled (I knew) with an unflavored slurry of hydrolyzed vegetable starches, whey protein, and soybean oil.

"You're kidding," I said.

"Suit yourself," he replied, not making eye contact.

We walked for a while in silence.

"Michael," I asked at last. "What is the longest--"

I heard a change in the beeping - a falling tone, a pitch not quite right. "Stop. We need to stop. She's desaturating."

"We can't stop now - we'll just have to run." I couldn't see him in the darkness anymore. Where had the candle gone?

"Michael?" I said.

"Run," he said, calmly, "I'll meet you at the lift," and in the darkness I heard his footsteps recede ahead of me. I realized he wasn't pushing the bed. Blindly, I waved my hands in front of me and stumbled forward, grasping, through blind luck, the bedrail.

Through darkness, I pushed - I ran - until -

CRACK. The bedrail shuddered underneath my hands. I'd hit the wall with the bed. I backed up and turned, all the while hearing that descending tone that meant my patient's oxygen tension was falling, falling. The accusing waveforms shone at me in monochrome.

I finished rounding the corner, and there was light. A lift, modern, utilitarian, wide enough for both a bed and an arrest trolly - a real, trusty, Public Hospital lift.

Gasping, sweat dripping from my hairline, I pushed the bed into the lift, and in the newfound glare found a dial on the ventilator and cranked the oxygen to full.

Michael stared at the wall, wearing the same bored expression.

"Close one!" I said.

"Mm," he replied noncommittally.

"Be one," said an artificial woman's voice. I glanced at Michael. I didn't think he would interested in that kind of thing.

We wheeled her into the high-tech, dirty, busy, linoleum-paved, and above all familiar space. The public ICU. A wall of sound greeted us - beeps and dings and alarms - immediate information straight to my cortex. I glanced at a screen mounted on the wall. They were having a reasonably busy night, but no one was that sick.

Michael steered her to an empty bed space - how had he known which one? - and another ICU nurse appeared. She and Michael bent their heads together - "Catheterjusttippedanhourago" and "minusthreefiftyfluidbalanceyesterday" and "persistantnoradrequirement". After this bewildering exchange,

"Well? Don't just stand there, give us a hand!" the public nurse cried. "Can't you see we're busy?"

"Oh, sorry," I said. "My mind was somewhere else."