A wave of nausea slammed Mr. Moran, a 55-year-old architect, back in his chair. His heart skipped, fluttered and, for a moment, seemed to stop. Then it pounded back like a jackhammer, beating so hard inside his chest that his lungs could barely draw breath. Mr. Moran felt as if his core were crumbling, but somehow he walked the four blocks from his office to the emergency room. The triage nurse took one look at the sweaty, deathly pale man before her and rushed him to the cardiac unit. Rebecca, the second nurse, slapped on a monitor, then ran to grab me.
"His pressure's barely 90," she said, steering me into the room. "I think he's in V-tach."
While nurses rushed to set up equipment and Mr. Moran struggled to fight back panic, I ignored everyone and everything except the heart monitor. Rebecca was right. Interspersed among normal beats came fast salvos of wide, slurred shapes. They were a clear indication of V-tach, or ventricular tachycardia, a severe form of heart arrhythmia.
