The Orange Paddles

A monitoring room beside an operating theatre in a Boston hospital in the early morning, cool white light and pale green tiles, on a steel trolley a computer eighty-five centimetres tall, a low base in an aluminium frame, its front with a pale grey top strip and a copper-orange plate, both plain, a black field with five rows of round grey lamps, some glowing, a row of toggle switches with alternating orange and cream-white paddles, above it two tall hoods of smoke-grey clear acrylic with blue-grey caps over rows of circuit cards, cables running to a monitor with a green curve, a hand in a green surgical sleeve flipping an orange paddle.