Destroy (A Standalone Romance Novel) (14 page)

“Come now, Dr. Williams,”
she said, falling in step with me as I was walking toward Izzy’s room. “Izzy
will be with us for a week, so we better get our act together and give her and
her parents what they need. If it is difficult for you to accept Jimmy’s death,
can you imagine what Mr. and Mrs. Grundy and Izzy herself are going through
right now?”

Dr. Kerry was right. I
had been thinking of my own grief. I was feeling sorry for myself. And that is
not what a parent or a loved one expects from their doctors.
Shake it off, girl,
I told myself,
the fight is done. You lost. But their fight
has just begun. So you better shape up and get a grip.

I smiled at Dr. Kerry and
nodded. “I know. Thanks for the pep talk. I think I’ll be okay now.”

“Perhaps you won’t be for
awhile
yet,” she countered, “but your support will be
needed in the next week. These parents need you.”

An hour later, we were
back on the fifth floor for our daily powwow–the one we missed having the
previous day. Dr. Kerry was ready to hear each of the battles we fought the day
before. She made comments about the procedures each of us adopted and then my
turn came.

“Dr. Williams, I know
yesterday was difficult for you, and I also know that you would rather forget
about it. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. We all know Jimmy Grundy
died as a result of his injury. Could you explain to us what you would have
liked to do?”

“Well, to tell you the
truth, Dr. Kerry, in hindsight, I couldn’t have done anything differently under
the circumstances. However, what I would have liked to do is slightly different
from what happened. I would have preferred being able to get Jimmy into a room
and take the nail out of his side right there and then. Even if we had reached
a theater in time, we could not have saved him. The time we would have taken to
scrub, to change into our gowns and do all that is required before an operating
procedure, would have been too long. He would have died before we were ready.”

“So, what you’re saying
is that we should have taken him into the emergency room immediately upon
arrival, is that what you mean?”

“Yes, Doctor. Honestly, I
didn’t see why he was not on top of the list. Was there something you noticed
during the triage that I didn’t see?”

“Yes, Dr. Williams, there
was something you noticed, too, but only later. Jimmy Grundy was bleeding out.
The boy had no more blood to give when he arrived. He bled out already.”

“But what about all the
blood that seemed to seep out of him when I looked after him?”

“His liver was full of
the blood resulting from the puncture, but that’s all he had left in him to
give.”

“Do you mean he would
have died anyway?”

“Whatever you would have
done, Dr. Williams, would have amounted to the same result. Jimmy Grundy was
practically dead when he arrived in the lobby. That’s the reason why I didn’t
put him on top of the list.”

That was certainly a
sobering thought. It is true, though. Most of us only see a patient after the
fact. We only see the person after the accident occurred. Often times EMTs
cannot reach the injured parties for quite a while. They could be trapped in a
car, a house, even somewhere not readily accessible. And when help arrives,
it’s too late. Subconsciously, it was perhaps why I didn’t want to work in the
emergency room. Too many times I would fight a losing battle. However, it was
on the schedule. Each intern would spend at least a week in each department of
the hospital. We had no choice. We had to take the good with the bad. It was
unfortunate that I landed in the arms of circumstances with Jimmy dying on me.
I just hoped the week I would have to spend in the ER would be furnished with a
lot more healing than deaths.

The other thing that I
couldn’t readily grasp was Tiffany’s desire to work in the ER. She didn’t look
that tough to me, but I guess it takes all kinds to make a world. Pronouncing
someone’s death at any time is something I could not bear doing again soon.
It’s so definite, final, a point of no return. And Tiffany was looking at doing
it at least once a week. She must have had an incredible stamina, I told
myself.

At lunch that day, we sat
at a large table at the upstairs’ terrace café. It seemed as if we needed to be
together. We needed to comfort each other. It was our first real incident. This
is what we spent all these years with our heads in the books for–we were
doctors now. We had to apply what we learned and heal people. It seemed as if
reality punched every one of us in the face and left us bruised.

We talked about this and
that, avoiding the subjects of our patients’ conditions like the plague. We
came back to the previous day’s events slowly, when we felt more secure or more
relaxed, I suppose. Of course, the subject of Jimmy’s death came back to
everyone’s mind. No one, apart from Jeff and the nursing staff, had seen what
happened in the dungeon. And my companions wanted me to describe what occurred.

I hesitated until Tiffany
told me that it was good to talk about something like that. She was right. I
needed to get it off my chest. After I explained how awful it had been for me
to hold a dying child in my arms, and the fact that Dr. Aldridge literally
pulled me off the floor and led me back upstairs to face Jimmy’s parents, Corey
nodded.
 
 

I was curious to know why
he would nod. He had not lost a patient–not that any of us knew.

“Have you something to
add?” Gerald asked him. “Do you know something we don’t?”

“As a matter of fact I
do, Gerald,” Corey replied. “The reason I nodded is because one of the nurses
that attended to my kids from the bus, told me that she was one of the staff
who took Jimmy to the morgue. She also told me that when she saw Dr. Aldridge
come out to help you, Heather, she recalled something that happened to him not
so long ago.”

“Oh? And what was that?”
I queried; all ears now.

“He lost a boy in his
family, apparently in a car accident. He couldn’t save him either. It was too
late when the kid arrived at the hospital.” Corey paused to look at me. “The
exact same thing as what happened to you.”

I lowered my gaze to my
lap. I felt like an utter fool then.
How
could I have been so selfish?
Not only did I ignore the parents’ feelings
in favor of mine, but I realized that I had totally set aside the fact that in
his ten years at the hospital, Jeff must have seen many deaths and possibly
some of these were of people very close to him. I felt like an eel. Horrible.

It took me several days
to return my mind to normal–not that it would ever be the same now–and to
return to a soothing routine at home. I went back to jogging every morning, and
even encouraged Tiffany to accompany me. I wanted her to get out of the rut she
seemed to have fallen into since she moved in with me.
She would make the perfect little wife to someone someday,
I thought.
She was doing most of the shopping, taking care of the laundry (not that we had
much of it), and was the first to stand in front of the stove on Sunday to get
our meals ready for the week. Therefore, she needed to get out.

On the first day, she
trotted with me to the park and was out of breath already–we hadn’t even gone
through the gate yet!

I didn’t mind. I asked
her to walk with me all around the park once. “Then we go home, okay?”

She nodded and began
walking. The next day we repeated the exercise and we walked a little faster–we
were almost power-walking on the third day–and she enjoyed it. By the end of
the week, Tiffany was trotting with me around the park. I was sure she was
going to be jogging in another week or so. Yet, the best thing about it was the
fact that she felt very good. She seemed to be a lot more energetic. And she
even left the car in the garage after the first week. We were both walking to
work at that point.

In the meantime, all the
interns, as I knew it would happen, were assigned to different department
throughout the hospital. It was not difficult for me to avoid seeing Jeff. In
the first week, I was working with the CT scan guys on the third floor while
Jeff was probably in the dungeon for the better part of each day. C.T. scans
and M.R.I’s are invaluable tools in modern medicine. What could not be detected
twenty years ago, can be readily visible today. Even for a simple fracture of
the shoulder, which used to be only x-rayed and reset surgically, can now be
viewed from all angles before the patient is treated. And often times there
aren’t any need for surgery, whereas in the old days, the doctors would only
discover the “complications” when they opened the patients’ shoulders.

These darn
“complications” we hear so much about in every facets of medicine, are simply
unexpected occurrences that cannot be avoided once a patient begins treatment.
It can be as simple as a side effect from a drug to a severe internal bleeding
during a surgical procedure. Neither are the doctors or the surgeon’s fault.
Yet, most of the time a doctor will blame himself or herself for their lack of
foresight. One might think it’s ridiculous to do so, but I can tell you, I will
be the first to blame myself for any of these “complications”. I have never
been easy on me.

The following week, once Izzy
was discharged, I was assigned to work in the children’s ward. That one was a
hard assignment. Perhaps it’s because I’m a female doctor, but seeing a child
suffer is not something I could take on a day-to-day basis. Pedagogy is not
given to everyone. I am not a pedagogue by any stretch of the imagination.
That’s not to say I couldn’t be a good mother; it’s simply a case of
understanding (or not understanding) what a child needs. You see, most adult
patients can tell you where it hurts and how it hurts. But when it comes to a child,
you rely solely on your ability to communicate with him or her. Of course, you
see and acknowledge the symptoms and treat the disease or injury, but when
there is a lack of pedagogy, you are not giving your little patient the best of
care.

During that week,
thankfully, I was assisting an excellent woman–in every sense of the word. Not
only was she absolutely radiant and gorgeous to look at, she was the real
thing. She knew how to handle children. Dr. Astrid was an artist. I saw her attending
an appendectomy on a little guy who was screaming his head off when he came in.
Dr. Astrid was the only one able to stop him and to rein his emotions in. Not
even his mother was able to calm him down. When he was out of surgery and
resting comfortably, Mark would have eaten out of Dr. Astrid’s hand. She was
his savior, although he had insulted her on a couple of occasions the previous
day.

Chapter
15

The third week’s
assignment was definitely a different experience. Although it consisted mainly
in monitoring cancer patients’ progress (or lack thereof), the feeling of
despair that seemed to overshadow everything we did in the ward was sometimes
intolerable. Most of the patients were staying in the hospital for a few days,
or a week maybe, after an operation that would have removed a tumor from one
organ or another. Others came in for their final visit. Those were all sad and
suffering faces. Looking at them was harder than I ever thought it would be.
Hope had abandoned them. They had closed the lid on Pandora’s Box, but hope had
not remained within it. Their faces reflected a silent expectation. They wanted
to die. I had never seen anyone having such feelings. Perhaps this is where the
euthanasia proponents could be winning their battles. Those men and women want
and need to die. They were prepared to die. Their families were all prepared
for their passing; yet, their suffering was only prolonged for as long as it took
for death to knock on their doors, finally.

Of course, the worst of
them all are the faces of these young people dying from AIDS. That’s the most
horrible and agonizing death one could think of.

During the week, I had to
turn away. I had to get out and go to the garden terrace on the floor. Dr.
Lennox came to join me at a time he saw me at my lowest ebb of despair and
helplessness. He was an older man who probably had seen many of his patients
die from cancer.

“If you are a believer,”
he said, “this is only the threshold to a better life. If you’re not, you soon
become one.”

I turned my face to him.
“Do you believe in God, Doctor?”

“Oh yes. I have to
believe that my failings, my incapacity to cure these patients, is only human.
There is someone or something with blessed hands that can do much better than I
can. I surrender my patients into God’s hands, Dr. Williams. Remember: “
If God decides it’s time for this human
being to leave this earth, there is nothing anyone of us can do. Right or
wrong, the life of that patient is in your hands until God decides otherwise
”.”

“Dr. Slosberg’s words,
aren’t they?”

“Yes, Dr. Williams. In
this hospital, his words are gospel, because he is almost always right.”

“So, he is the god among
us, is he?”

“Absolutely. And for good
reasons. Not only is he right about most things, but he’s honest about his failings.”

“Does he have any?”