He threw the butt into the water-filled ashtray and put this away. With the window open, the smell would disappear by the time he returned from the delivery room.He was tired; it had been a long night. The last operation had finished half an hour before: a teenager who had had his tongue pierced the day before. The pain had awakened him in the middle of the night, and his parents, who didn’t know about the piercing, were terrified. They’d brought the boy in to casualty with his tongue so swollen that it barely fit in his mouth. He was very nervous and refused to open it for a local anaesthetic to be injected with a small syringe before the operation. It wasn’t the first time a thing like that had happened, and Beltrán had learned how to deal with patients unable to conceal their panic when they saw him approach with a needle in his hand. He managed to persuade him and to calm his parents, who were more horrified about the child’s decision to have his tongue pierced than by the consequences of the infection.Carmen, the maternity ward nurse, approached him in the corridor:‘I was coming to get you.
