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The cardiology department of Wing City Hospital was, needless to say, state of the art. A hospital that was financially supported by the illustrious likes of Bruce Wayne, and founded by the less notable but equally prolific Horatio Castle could certainly afford the best. In short, that meant that any patient being admitted with a heart attack, out of hospital arrest, of attack of unstable angina was gifted the very best level of care free of charge. The gold standard, so to speak, which included a comfortable and closely monitored bed on the Cardiac Care Unit.

Second only to Intensive Care, with its enviable staff to patient ratio, patients on Cardiac Care were guaranteed no less than one nurse to every two patients. That is to say that no patient was ever our of eye- or -ear shot for more than a few minutes at a time.

Patients admitted with heart attacks were taken straight to the cardiac cath-labs, were they underwent x-ray guided stenting and, if their condition was serious enough, were escalated to a full coronary artery bypass graft. The idea that any patient who had recently received a stent would be left alone was laughable, given their high likelihood of suffering an arrhythmia and subsequent arrest. Their rhythm was constantly monitored on the main CCU computer, and the slightest irregularity sounded as a blaring klaxon to the nurse in charge. The level of arrhythmia associated with a man being throttled to death was not something easily missed at the best of times, but the irritable nature of cardiac monitoring (which tended to show a deathly rhythm when a patient was doing something as harmless as brushing their teeth) would have triggered at the first frantic struggle.