" The nurse read them again. This time, I wrote them down. Then I spent a minute studying them. She was afebrile, I noted. That was good. Her heart rated was 96, a high number I had no idea how to interpret. Her blood pressure was 152 over 84, another highish set of numbers that told me nothing. Her respiratory rate was 26 - also high, and vaguely disquieting. Her O2 sat - the oxygen content of her blood - was 92 percent: low, and in the context of that high respiratory rate not a good sign. The nurse was still looking at me. "I hear she's a whiner," I said hopefully. The nurse shrugged. "She asked me to call you. "

― Terrence Holt , Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories