“Don’t worry. I’m going to fix her right up,” Harrison says in a soothing voice. And then, even though he knows he shouldn’t, he looks him dead in the eyes and adds the words he couldn’t finish earlier: “I promise.”
Apparently, it’s enough, because Gabriel reaches out with his stumpy fingers and grabs the Dum-Dum from the arm of the chair, unwrapping it in one quick motion and popping it in his mouth.
Noah wanted grape.
The memory hits Harrison like a line drive he didn’t see coming. The way Noah spied his pocketful of suckers and secreted the purple out when he thought Harrison was distracted in talking to his mom. Not till after your surgery, buddy, Harrison said chidingly, plucking it from his hand. And now, as Harrison eyes Gabriel, the head of the lollipop creating a perfect ball under the skin of his right cheek, he thinks: Noah never got his lollipop. Noah will never get another lollipop.
He scrubs the morbid thought from his mind, steps out of the room and gives the orders to Sheila, the nurse assigned to Whitney. She has the consent form all ready to go, and Harrison signs it so she can take it in to the patient. “Oh, and Sheila?” he says. “See if there’s someone we can call for the kid.”
“Not my husband!” the woman yells from behind the curtain. “Do not call him.”
Sheila raises an eyebrow and purses her lips. “Yes, we’ve been trying her sister, who apparently works at the movie theater and gets off in an hour. Haven’t got a hold of her yet, though.”
He lowers his voice. “What’s with the husband?”
“Separated, according to her,” she whispers. “In the middle of some kind of custody battle.”
He nods. “Send him down to the ped ward. Get him set up with some video games. That’ll keep him until the sister gets here.”
“Will do,” she says.
He pokes his head back in the room. “Gabriel—you a Need for Speed guy? Minecraft?”
The boy’s eyes get big.
“He loves Minecraft,” Whitney says. “Don’t you, buddy?” And then mouths, Thank you.
When Sheila slips into the room, Harrison calls up to the OR, relaying all the information needed in a steady, calm manner. Then he goes to the doctors’ lounge and directly into the bathroom, which is thankfully empty. He puts a hand on either side of the sink and stares into the mirror.
Gabriel’s plea echoes in his head: Don’t you kill my mom. Don’t you kill my mom. Don’t you kill my mom. Heart thumping, he turns on the faucet and splashes water on his forehead, his cheeks, and then lifts his head, watching the liquid drip off his skin, beading up on his beard.
Then he leans to his right, grabs the trash can beneath the sink and throws up.
* * *
The first time Harrison lost a patient was two weeks into his residency. A car accident. An eighty-one-year-old woman, short of breath, was brought into the ER. She checked out OK and the attending said to keep an eye on her, to call out if he needed anything. Harrison sat at the side of her portable cot. The woman started talking about her husband, how he’d be worried she wasn’t back in time for dinner. Harrison held her hand, assured her that her husband had been called. “I don’t feel good,” she said, then closed her eyes. Her head rolled back.
There’s a look people get right before they die. Pale, yes. Weak. But it’s something else. Intangible. A knowing. Harrison didn’t have the experience to recognize it then, he just knew something wasn’t right. He shouted for help. The attending came over, called a code, started chest compressions. Harrison looked on, helpless.
Time of death, 18:32.
Every doctor has their first death story, and every one handles it differently. Harrison was in shock. Everything was moving too slowly and too fast all at once. He stood in the corner, watching the nurses efficiently disconnect the IV, scribble notes in charts, pull the sheet over her face. He knew they were doing their jobs, but had this distinct feeling that he was waiting for something more, though he couldn’t possibly think what that might be. The tolling of a bell? A reverent moment of silence? An acknowledgment of the life that was here and then—quick as a breath blowing out a candle flame—was gone.
The chief resident appeared, and Harrison thought for a second, This must be it. What I’ve been waiting for. The chief looked at the attending. “Salisbury steak in the cafeteria.” He slapped the doorframe. “You ready for dinner?”
There’s no class in medical school, no tips for dealing with death, mortality, grief. So you look to your elders and you learn, not how to detach, but that you must. Numb yourself. Some doctors pray, find consolation in believing that something or someone else is in control. Some drink. Some yell at their kids. Over time, Harrison found his comfort in the randomness of death. The fact that he can do everything exactly right, exactly as he’s been trained, but it’s not always enough. People die. And he can’t save everybody.
But then, Noah.
And he learned there’s a difference between people dying under your care and people dying because of your care. And the difference is as wide as an ocean. And he’s not entirely sure he knows how to swim.
Chapter 6
I shuffle into the kitchen, my eyes swollen and bloodshot, my body weak and sore. I pour a cup of cold coffee from the pot Harrison made before he left, and then dig through the pockets of the jeans I wore yesterday for the number Dr. Okafor’s nurse gave us for the reproductive endocrinologist. The first available appointment they have is nearly two and a half weeks out. I take it, hang up, and the too-tight corset that’s been constricting my lungs, my heart, for the past five days loosens ever so slightly.
Gripping my mug, I wander aimlessly through the house, though my legs know exactly where I’m headed, taking me upstairs to the bedroom full of unpacked boxes. It’s masochistic, this ritual I’ve adopted after each miscarriage, but I’m compelled to do it—that is, if I can find what I’m looking for. There are at least four boxes labeled Misc. where, while packing, I threw all the things taking up space on our shelves and in our drawers that didn’t seem to have a specific home.
I sit on the floor, digging through box after box, sifting through old medical journals, photograph albums, random items I found while out and about in Philadelphia and brought home over the years—the pink child’s mitten, a rusty hubcap, an old house key—but I don’t find it. The desperation begins rising up my chest like a wave picking up steam as it pushes toward shore. What if it’s gone? What if it got lost somewhere in the move or didn’t make it into a box or it got accidentally tossed in the trash? But then finally there it is, in the third box, the knitted corner peeking out from beneath an old game of Boggle.