The case of the missing heartbeat

Most of my company’s ships used to have a long stay in Kolkata for loading cargo and carrying out the maintenance and other repairs before sailing overseas. On one of the ships where I was the chief engineer, a few days before the vessel’s departure from Kolkata, a routine medical check-up of the officers and crew was carried out.

During one such check-up, the medical officer appointed by the company got worried when he found that while recording my pulse rate, there was a missing heartbeat. He inquired if I had this case of skipping a heartbeat before also. I couldn’t give him any explanation because I never counted my heartbeats as it was in the doctor’s domain.

He smiled at my reply, but there were some signs of worries on his face. But the doctor’s professional experience must have guided him to advise a thorough medical check-up in a hospital. On his recommendation, I signed off the ship and was admitted to a hospital for tests and kept under medical observation.

During my hospitalisation, my second engineer was asked to hold the fort, till I was declared medically fit to sail on the ship which was scheduled to depart for a voyage to the US shortly. At the hospital, test after test was conducted and reports were awaited. To further complicate the matters, permission to carry my wife for voyage came through for which I had applied earlier. My wife was to come from Amritsar by train for which reservation, in anticipation of permission, was made in advance. I had to ring up my wife to get the reservations cancelled, as there was no certainty about my being medically fit.

But as the situation unfolded, the availability of a chief engineer as my reliever at such a short notice, posed a problem. The medical officer who was to give me fitness certificate, however, gave the hope that as all my medical tests had given normal reports so far, I was most likely to rejoin my ship in about a week.

My head-office at Mumbai was informed and our ship’s departure was delayed and some more cargo was loaded for another port on the same route. When it was clarified that my heartbeat was not actually missing, it was just a feeble one, my fitness to sail was confirmed.

My Kolkata office helped in getting my wife flown from Amritsar well in time to join my ship before departure. When my ship left Kolkata and was transiting through Hooghly river, as the Ganga river is called in this region before reaching Sand-heads where it merges with the open sea, my wife wondered how a chief engineer’s missing heartbeat could delay even a ship. The joke was carried and repeated quite a few times during the next few weeks in the long voyage. In fact, my wife started taking my pulse count every day, probably worrying, not about my missing heartbeat, but more about the ship being returned back to the last port of call.