Shock

Many a time while picking a book for leisure read, say during flight, people would find one which appears to be less serious. Preferably not related to work.

Me too. Even though I'm in the middle of reading Glass Jaw: A Manifesto for Defending Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal, somehow I cannot resist putting away this book from my luggage for my short conference trip this weekend. Instead, I brought with me a novel not yet started: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult.

As the story unfolded, I realized that's about a labour and delivery ward with an emotional - a very emotional one, I might add - epic of childbirth. After a few pages, I had a hunch (and it later proved to be pretty accurate) that it would remind me of recent stories in my hospital. As my eyes adjusted to the lighting in the air cabin, I tried to see what the mother see: the saddest story of leaving the labour ward without the baby she went in to have. There are few things scarier than those three letters CPR in a labour and delivery ward. My heart tightened. Every page I turned, I registered a little jolt of electric shock.

Page after page. Jolt by jolt. More than enough to keep my pulse throbbing in my eardrums.