IRVINE, Calif. _ The call wasn't unusual for a doctor to receive at 10:30 on a Saturday night _ woman, mid-60s, heart attack. She had a 90 percent blockage of an artery.
But what Dr. Huy Nguyen heard through the phone ... that was the unusual part, the amazing part, the no-way-this-could-be-happening part. Nguyen had been watching TV in his Irvine home, his three kids in bed.
The patient's name, the emergency room doctor tried to explain, was Sha-something, difficult to pronounce, Middle Eastern.
"He was butchering her name," Nguyen said.
That's when Nguyen heard the patient's voice in the background. It was Feb. 27, a night he will be talking about for as long as he is talking.
"Tell him I'm Mrs. Shah-Rais," the patient said.
"I literally got chills when I heard her name," Nguyen said.
He got to Hoag Hospital Irvine as fast as he could. He thinks it took eight minutes.
"When I heard her voice, everything came back to me," Nguyen said. "All those emotions came to my mind."
