阅读理解
“This is your last chance,” warned Mrs Gillfeather. I broke out in a sweat and my hands started to shake. We both wanted to get to sleep, but before we could, I had to put a cannula(针管) in her arm.
Before becoming a doctor I'd only a vague idea what a cannula was, coming from an hour spent with a plastic arm while at medical school. Once I became a doctor, however, I couldn't seem to get away from them.
For those of you who are lucky enough to have never come into contact with one, they're tiny little tubes that are put into a vein(静脉)so that fluid or medicines can do directly into the blood. That's the theory. Unfortunately, the problem is that for them to work, you have to get them into the vein in the first place. This tends to be trickier than you'd imagine—and it's a job that tends to fall on the junior doctors.
Mrs Gillfeather's veins were particularly elusive that evening. I'd been jabbing the needle in for at least 20 minutes.
“Isn't there someone else who could do this?” she asked, for the fourth time. “Someone who knows what they're doing, perhaps,” she said under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.
Finally, I got it in. Mrs. Gillfeather and I both breathed a sigh of relief
Just as I was about to leave the ward, the nurse called me over, “Max, there's another cannula to do on bed 16.”
