Or to be more accurate: the respirator was breathing for him. The respirator was an air pump with a thick plastic tube going into a mask that covered half his face. The respirator hissed and clicked and sucked, hissed and clicked and sucked, at regular intervals. Meanwhile the heart frequency wrote its monotonous message on a monitor next to the respirator, accompanied by a mechanical beep, also at regular intervals.I was sitting next to the operating table on a high stool, wearing a protective lab coat, plastic gloves, a hairnet, and a mask. Most of Johannes’s body was covered with green surgical sheets, with only his head, neck, shoulders and arms visible. His skin had a yellowish tone. From beneath the covers snaked various tubes containing different-colored fluids, attached to different machines. There was another tube running between a needle inserted into the back of one hand and a drip behind the headboard.I ignored the instructions I’d been given, took off the plastic gloves and placed one hand cautiously on the green sheet above the left side of his chest.
