Could I Have This Dance? (12 page)

Dan hung up the phone and looked at Claire. “Dr. Fowler will be in to help do the case. He always scrubs in with the interns. And he likes to ask questions.”

She thought about rounds. “So I’ve seen.”

“I was just at the OR a few minutes ago. You’ll probably get to do the case right after the neuro boys finish up with their crainy.” Dan squinted to the back corner of the emergency room.

Claire followed his eyes. A man wearing a large bandage around his head stumbled forward toward a stretcher following Beatrice Hayes. The student, Glen Mattingly, appeared to be wrestling with the man, coaxing him forward.

She immediately recognized the wide-based walk, so characteristic of her father. The man’s arms seemed to flail randomly into the sky. Glen ducked and put his arm around the patient’s waist.

Dan tilted his head toward the action. “Why don’t you give ‘em a hand. Looks like they got themselves a winner.”

The last thing Claire felt like doing was lending a helping hand to Bea. She clenched her jaw. “Sure,” she responded, choking back her feelings. “On my way.”

As she approached, Bea pointed at the stretcher and raised her voice. “Okay, Mr. Davis. Get on the stretcher and lie down.”

The man appeared to be shaking his head. His left arm flung forward as he fell onto the stretcher. His hand struck Bea’s buttocks.

Bea’s eyes flared. “Watch it, buster!”

The patient’s speech was slurred. “Sh—sorry.”

Claire stepped forward. “Can I help?”

Bea looked up and groaned. “Just another of Lafayette’s finest.”

Claire put on a pair of gloves and began to unwrap the bloody bandage from the patient’s forehead.

Bea began opening up a sterile suture tray. “The ER resident said he has a long scalp laceration.” She looked at the medical student. “Draw his blood. I want to send off a blood alcohol level.”

The patient’s head continued to bob. His words were slurred, but understandable. “I—I don’t drink.”

Bea rolled her eyes. “And I’m Oprah Winfrey.” She pointed to Glen. “Draw the alcohol level.”

Glen nodded. “Did you see the size of his chart? Looks like this isn’t his first visit.”

“A repeat offender.”

Claire finished taking off the bandage. The deep laceration ran from the middle of his forehead back into his hair.

Glen put a tourniquet around the patient’s upper arm and jabbed a needle into his vein. He deftly drew the blood and put it into a vacuum tube. “The way he looked when he stumbled in here, I’ll bet his alcohol level is way over the legal limit.”

Claire frowned. “Was he driving?”

“No. He slipped and hit his head on the edge of the coffee table.” Bea pursed her lips. “At least that’s his story.” She pushed the patient’s cheek to the left. “Hold still so I can get a better look.”

Mr. Davis’s head continued to weave. He appeared to be keeping time to an unheard song.

Bea shoved his head down onto the stretcher. “Hold still!” She looked at the med student. “Hold him down. I’ll never get this sewn up with him jerking all over the place!”

Glen attempted to hold Mr. Davis’s head. While Bea was prepping the scalp with some iodine solution, the patient’s arm swung wide and knocked the edge of the sterile tray, sending the instruments to the floor with a clatter.

Bea cursed and looked at Claire. “Hold his arms!” She looked at her sterile field, now contaminated by the patient’s arm, and shook her head. “No, better yet,” Bea added, looking at the medical student, “just wrap this guy’s head up like it is. If he won’t cooperate, he can just live with a big ugly scar for all I care.”

Claire watched Bea stomp off in disgust, then turned back toward the patient. There, instead of Mr. Davis, she saw her father. She sighed. “Glen, we can’t just wrap this up. It’s gaping so widely, it’ll take weeks to heal without sutures.”

Glen nodded.

“Go get Josef. I’ll set up another sterile suture tray. Between the three of us, we can get this fixed up.”

Forty-five minutes later, Claire looked up from her work and smiled. The laceration, once jagged edged and oozing, was now closed with a neat row of nylon sutures. Josef and Glen were happier than she was to have the job completed.

Josef rotated his shoulders and groaned. “Man, he may be small, but he’s strong. I could barely keep his hands from jerking free.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.” She looked at her watch. “I need to check with the OR to see if my appendectomy patient is ready.”

Glen looked at Mr. Davis. “Nice job, Dr. McCall.”

“Could you make sure he’s up-to-date on tetanus? And don’t let him leave without being sure someone else is behind the wheel.”

Claire walked away, a knot tightening in her stomach when she passed the ninth cubicle where her appendicitis patient had been. The space, once occupied by her patient and his family, was now empty. Could he have already been taken to surgery?

She jogged toward the elevator. She couldn’t afford to be late to the OR for her first opportunity to do a real case. First impressions with the attendings were too important. Dr. Overby had mentioned that her case would likely follow the craniotomy. Certainly they wouldn’t have finished with that by now.

She took the elevator to the fourth floor and strode through the OR door. Donna Pritchard, an OR nurse, sat behind the main desk alone, intent on the computer screen in front of her. “Have they completed the crainy yet?”

“Oh goodness, yes. They’ve been finished for at least thirty minutes.”

“Have they brought the appendectomy patient up?”

Donna tucked a strand of hair beneath her OR cap. “Check room three. They should be about done by now.”

“Done? That was
my
case.”

Donna shook her head. “You can’t keep Dr. Fowler waiting. He’ll go right ahead if the resident isn’t present.”

Claire grabbed a mask and OR cap and hurried down the hall. There, looking over the scrub sink through the window into room four, she saw Dr. Fowler operating, standing opposite another assistant, who stood with her back to Claire.

Claire squinted in disbelief. It was Bea! She was operating on Claire’s patient!

Slowly, while clenching her teeth behind her mask, Claire pushed the door open. Dr. Fowler looked up. His tone was as sharp as a surgical scalpel. “Dr. McCall, nice of you to join us. If you work up a case in the future, I expect you to be on time. Fortunately for you, Dr. Hayes was kind
enough to step in. Yessiree, and she did a bang-up job of it, too. Her first hot appendix.” He stepped back from the table and pulled off his gown. He looked at Bea. “Put in a subcuticular stitch to close. Do you know how to do that?”

“Sure thing, Dr. Fowler.”

She was kind enough to step in? She stole my first case while I sewed up her patient in the ER!
Claire cleared her throat. “Dr. Fowler,” she began timidly, “I was repairing a scalp laceration in the ER. I didn’t know they’d brought my patient to the OR.”

The attending nodded. “Scalp lacerations can be handled by the med students.”

“Not this one, sir. It took two students just to hold the man down.”

Dr. Fowler grunted. “Nonetheless, Dr. McCall, your primary responsibility was to your appendicitis patient.” He paused. “If you want to be a surgeon, you have to do cases. It’s the only way to learn.” With that, he balled up his disposable gown and slam-dunked it into a large red garbage bag.

Claire felt her cheeks burn. She was thankful for the surgical mask. “Yes, sir,” she responded quietly.

She turned on her heels and stepped back into the main OR hallway, trying not to lose her cool in front of the attending. She slowly unfolded her clenched fists, pulled off her mask, and trudged back to the front desk, shaking her head.

Donna looked up. “He did the case without you, eh?”

“Not exactly,” Claire huffed. “The other intern on the service scrubbed in and did the case that I worked up.”

“Oh.” Donna raised her eyebrows.

Claire sighed. It was one A.M. She had been up since five. She was tired. She was angry. “I’m gonna try and get some sleep.”

“There will be other appendectomies, Dr. McCall. You won’t remember this long.”

“It was going to be my first one.” Claire felt her eyes begin to sting. She couldn’t let herself cry over a lousy missed appendectomy. Not in front of an OR nurse.

Donna pushed her chair back from the desk and locked eyes with Claire. “I’ve been here for fourteen years, and I’ve seen a lot of females in surgery, fighting for a chance to operate in a male-dominated world.” She paused. “And I’ve only seen a few make it through this program.”

“I can make it.”

“But you won’t make it if you pout over every missed appendectomy.”

“I’m not p—” Claire’s denial caught in her throat. She pressed her hand to her upper lip. What could this nurse know about the pressures
Claire felt as a surgical resident? What did she know about being a doctor? “Okay,” she responded. “I’m sure you have an opinion.”

“There are two ways for a woman to make it in surgery residency.” She held up a finger. “Sleep your way to the top.”

Claire’s head snapped back.

“Don’t look at me like you haven’t heard the stories. There are a few powerful men in this program who would love to lay a hand on you. And you have the goods to make it that way.”

“I have no intentions of making it to chief resident by sleeping around.” She turned to leave.

“You haven’t heard the second way.”

“I’m listening.”

“Be a man.”

Claire leaned forward, not speaking.

“There are ten men in your intern group. Beat them by being more of a man than they are.”

Claire sighed.

“Not every woman is cut out for this. I’m sure you heard about Lisa Dunn.”

Claire shook her head. “No.”

Donna raised her eyebrows in surprise. “She was an intern last year. I thought she had what it took. She was brilliant, but after six months, she snapped.”

“She quit?”

“Yes. She got gun-shy, didn’t trust her instincts.”

“Hmm.”

“She was frightened.”

“Frightened? Why?”

“She claimed she was being threatened, but the word around the hospital was that the girl just got paranoid. She worked way too hard, stayed here even on her nights off.”

“As if every other night isn’t enough torture.”

“You’ll do okay, girl. Just be a man.” Donna broke her gaze and pulled her chair back up to the OR desk, signaling the end to the conversation.

Claire nodded and walked away. She didn’t feel like a man.

And, at this moment, she didn’t want to fight like a man.

She plodded numbly toward the emergency room, hoping to find that the med students had taken care of getting Mr. Davis safely home.

Once there, she was greeted by Glen Mattingly, studying a patient record. He shook his head. “I’d never have believed it.”

Claire didn’t feel like guessing. “What?”

Glen handed her a computer printout of Mr. Davis’s labs.

She looked at the alcohol level: “None detected.” Her eyes widened. “Are you sure you didn’t get his blood sample mixed up with someone else?”

“I don’t think so. I gave the blood to the ward clerk myself.”

Cliff, a ward clerk with a large dragon tattoo on his forearm, leaned over the counter. He’d obviously been listening. “And I labeled it with his name sticker and tubed it up to the lab.”

Glen scoffed. “The guy couldn’t even walk straight. He had to be drunk.”

Cliff shook his head. “You guys would learn a thing or two if you just talk to the patient. Paul Davis isn’t a drunk. I’ve seen him in here a hundred times in the past decade that I’ve manned this desk.” He lifted a stack of charts, volumes one through four, all belonging to Paul Davis. “It’s customary for the doctors to review the patient record.”

The med student scoffed. “What’s to review? He fell and hit his head.”

The ward clerk frowned. “Mr. Davis has HD.”

Glen wrinkled his brow. “HD?”

Claire was relieved that he had asked the question, so she wouldn’t have to.

“Huntington’s disease. His old man had it. So did his brother.”

Glen smiled and poked a finger toward Claire. “Everyone teaches a tern.”

Huntington’s disease. Claire remembered hearing about a patient with HD back during her medical school neurology rotation. It was some kind of movement disorder, but she remembered little else. All she knew was that it was rare and that you couldn’t cure it with a scalpel, so she had little interest. “Oh sure,” Claire responded, “HD.”

“His brother Rufus died last year,” Cliff added. “He was in a nursing home, only forty-five. Rufus was always comin’ in here all bruised up or cut from falling down. Huntington’s robbed him of his life.” Cliff pointed at the stack of Mr. Davis’s records. “And now it’s doing the same thing to Paul.”

Claire nodded and made a mental note to look the disease up later. She turned away and surveyed the ER for signs of the O-man. A child was screaming in the first cubicle. A respiratory technician held an oxygen mask over the face of an elderly man in the second cubicle. The patient’s chest was exposed and so thin it reminded Claire of an old birdcage. Another man, apparently asleep, slumped awkwardly on a stretcher in the hall. He snored gently as Claire passed. An ER resident was sewing up a hand laceration in the trauma bay, and an ortho resident was applying a splint in
the cast room. Claire yawned. Then, satisfied that there didn’t seem to be any current action for the trauma intern, she retreated to a call room with an empty bed and collapsed.

Fifteen minutes later, she awakened to the sound of the door. Beatrice stumbled into the dark room and turned on the light.

Claire resisted the urge to scream and feigned sleep. She didn’t want to talk to Beatrice in her present state of mind.

Bea mumbled something about Claire sleeping while she worked, then noisily climbed onto the top bunk and promptly fell asleep, her breathing coming in rhythmic faint whistles, just loud enough to keep Claire from slumber.

In five minutes, Bea’s beeper sounded. Instead of touching the top of the beeper to silence it after one or two shrill tones, she allowed the obnoxious beeping to continue until it stopped on its own. She reached for the phone, a wall-mounted model beside the bed. Claire listened to the onesided conversation. Bea had obviously forgotten to leave orders for pain medication for the appendectomy patient.