As for studying, I knew we would have to hit the books again from time to time. Dr. Kerry would question us about what we did and why we did it every day. We would all go through a performance review every six months and those would count for or against a promotion toward a residency. I promised myself, even before moving to D.C. that I would review every treatment I had witnessed or performed on the day to ensure I had done things properly. If someone else was treating a patient and I was assisting or attending the treatment; I would still review what had been done. I would not leave anything to chance or trust my memory. Too many things can go wrong if you do.
And with those thoughts in mind, I went to prepare my dinner. Once again, I was tired beyond reason. My body had not adjusted to this newly imposed schedule.
Chapter 8
I knew my mother would be up early the next morning. It was her day to go to work. With the different time zones, she would just be getting breakfast ready by the time I return from my morning jog.
“Goodness, Heather. Do you realize I’m not even dressed yet?”
“And good morning to you, too,” I replied, smiling to myself. “I’m only on the phone, Mom. No one is going to see you in your nighty.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But I feel silly anyway.” She stopped talking when I heard my dad whisper something in her other ear. “If you’re calling about your dad, he’s fine. He’s been snoring the night away as usual. Do you want to talk to him?”
“No, Mom, not now. Just give him a kiss for me, okay?”
“Sure will. But what about you, and about finding a roommate, any progress?” Mom rushed to ask.
“I found another intern, a young woman who needed to share a place, too. She’s great, Mom. She’s moving in on Saturday.”
“Did you say she’s also a doctor?”
“Yes. She wants to become a trauma surgeon; you know, the doctors who work in the emergency department of the hospital.”
“But is she the friendly type? That’s what your dad and I worry about.”
“She sure is. She’s going to be a great companion.”
“Where did she live before getting to Washington?”
“Why the third degree, Mom? Trust me, will you? Tiffany will be fine. And to answer your question, she used to live with her parents in D.C. But now she wants her independence.” I paused to listen to my father’s grunt of approval. He had listened to my little spiel.
“Alright then. Sounds like you found the right person to share in the expense. But, as soon as we both have more time, let’s talk about this a little more, okay?”
“Sure, Mom. No problem. Give a hug to Dad. And please, don’t forget to book an appointment for him with Dr. Bernard, okay?”
“Okay, okay, now get going, girl. You don’t want to be late for work. Neither do I.”
When I hung up, I cracked a smile and shook my head. Even two-thousand miles away she still managed to direct my actions.
The day promised to be an interesting one. Dr. Kerry had told us that we would be watching a couple of surgical procedures from the inside of an operating theater. They were both minor interventions, but it would give us an opportunity to meet the chief of surgery and the surgeon who was going to teach us the ropes of surgical procedures.
I must say I was truly looking forward to this. Not only was I going to meet the surgeon who was going to guide my steps in and around an operating theater, I was finally going to get a glimpse into my future.
Standing around an operating room for hours on end required for me to wear comfortable clothes and comfortable shoes. Thanks to my latest shopping spree, I had both. I wore a nice pair of grey slacks and a pink shirt. Admittedly, neither was of the jeans and t-shirt variety but they were comfortable nonetheless. Besides, meeting a mentor for the first time meant making a good first impression. Since the sneakers I had bought were not too bulky or too obvious under a pair of pants, they looked okay. I mean they were not stilettos, but they would have to do.
As soon as I gulped down my breakfast, reviewed my attire in the bedroom mirror and ensured that my hair wasn’t going to be a problem–I had tied it expertly to the nape of my neck–I was satisfied that I looked good and ready to be “examined” by the chief of surgery.
When I arrived at the hospital, I saw Dr. Kerry and half of the team waiting for the stragglers (like me) to come through the main door. I apologized for being late, although I was on time with two minutes to spare, and asked why we were meeting in the foyer.
“Because we’re going to the basement as soon as we’re all here,” Dr. Kerry replied. “In this hospital, like in many facilities in the US, the operating theaters are located in the basement of the building. The reason being mainly because the vacant space in a basement can be put to good use without impinging on the patients’ comfort upstairs.”
“They’re the one paying the bills,” Gerald, Mr. Bragger himself, interposed, “so we have to let them have the rooms with a view.”
“Exactly, Mr. Houston,” Dr. Kerry told him. “And you’ll do well to keep that in mind. If you have a job and a career, it’s thanks to people who count on you to make them better, to heal their wounds, and who pay their bills.”
As soon as everyone had arrived, we took the elevator down three floors. The hallways were lit overhead with these awful fluorescent globes that make you look sick even if you aren’t. The floor was tiled with some sort of poured and waxed granite pebbles. I had only seen similar surfaces on kitchen counters. It’s liquid repellant, detergent safe, and always gleaming under the light. I thought the gurneys must really slide easily on that floor.
Tiffany was walking beside me. She was all smiles for some reason. As usual, she hadn’t said a word since she came in a couple of minutes after I did. Given that we had not reached the surgeon’s lounge, she had time to tell me what was on her mind. She seemed impatient to do so.
“I met him in the parking garage yesterday,” she said almost inaudibly. “He is wonderful.” She was blushing.
“Who is?” I asked quickly as we flattened ourselves against the walls to let some orderlies push a man on a gurney toward the first theater.
“Our resident surgeon. God, Hattie, you should have seen the guy. Just wonderful, I tell you.”
“Did you two talk?” I was getting curious. We resumed our walking down the corridor.
“Just for a bit. You know me. I’m not one to open my mouth in front of strangers.” She threw me a glance. “But I tell you this: I’m never going to be late when we have to follow him on his rounds or go to the operating theater with him. He’s just that good-looking.” With that, we arrived in the lounge.
The older fellow–a man in his fifties, if not older, wearing black-rimmed glasses and an attractive smile slicing a tanned face–stood up and came toward Dr. Kerry, right hand outstretched.
“Kerry,” he said, “Good morning, my dear. Glad you got the troops all assembled.” He threw a glance over Dr. Kerry’s shoulder to look at us. “I see they’ll be on equal footing this year–six men and six women–a perfect team.”
“Yes, Doctor,” Dr. Kerry replied. “And good morning to you as well.” She smiled and then turned to us. “Doctor Clemens, let me introduce you to our newly appointed interns…” By the time she finished going through our names and qualifications, I bet Clemens had forgotten half of us already. I was to be proven wrong later.
I bent down to Tiffany’s ear. “Is that the guy?”
She shook her head just as Dr. Kerry said, “And this is our Chief of Surgery, Dr. Albert Clemens, ladies and gentlemen. Although you might not see him when you perform or assist in a surgical procedure, you should be well aware that Dr. Clemens is aware of every move you make.”
Good or bad, we will have to face the consequences of our actions, I recalled telling Allie before we left New York.
“Yes, Doctors,” Dr. Clemens rejoined, “being a surgeon requires aptitude, skills, knowledge, but most of all, it requires feelings. Always
remember that you are not performing an operation on a corpse, such as you did in your anatomy classes, but the person under your knife is alive until one of us kills that man or that woman. Make absolutely no mistake: you will be faced with a dying patient. You will be faced with a patient who will die no matter what you try; no matter how many times you try reviving him or her. 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.”
Wow, I thought, no wonder this guy is chief of surgery. He’s not going to give you a by-pass when you need a new organ, is he? Straight off the shoulder; we’ll get it!
“Any question?”
I looked down at the floor beneath my feet. I had no question to ask. Frankly, I wouldn’t have dared ask him anything for fear of, at worst, being kicked out on my ass or, at best, meeting his mocking rebuke.
“Okay, Doctors,” Clemens went on, “in a few minutes you will meet your resident surgeon. He, like Dr. Rosalind here, will show you how to behave in an operating theater until you are ready to assist any of our surgeons and then perform an operation yourself. And I warn you, ladies and gentlemen, he might sound like a purring pussycat to you now, but he is not, far from it in fact.” He looked at us–one by one. I felt as if he was dissecting my face and listening to my thoughts through my cranium. God, this guy is giving me the shivers already.
“Okay, enough of the torturing comments for now,” Clemens added, finally cracking a smile. “Let’s have a coffee and maybe a muffin or something to nibble on while we’re waiting for our resident surgeon to make his appearance.
You could have heard the sigh of relief exhaled by all of the interns present in the lounge room.
After getting a coffee from the service counter, as Tiffany and I sat down at a table in the corner of this café-style room, I asked her, “So, what do you think of Dr. Clemens?”
“Gosh, Hattie, he’s worse than I ever thought he would be. He’s not one you’d want to cross. I would melt in shame at his feet if I did something wrong, I am sure.”
“You said it, Tiff. The guy is truly a chief, in every sense of the word. His tomahawk wouldn’t miss my head if and when he decides to throw it at me. But in every regard, I think it’s a good thing.”
“Oh, why’s that?” Tiffany asked raising her eyebrows in surprise.
“It’s a bit like your parents. They put you through hell, as you said, but without them you wouldn’t have made it, right?” Tiffany nodded. “Well, I think with Chief Clemens at the helm there’s very little chance of us failing. We’ve got to make it and make it all the way.”
“Sure, but I don’t know if I can take that sort of pressure again.”
“Listen to me, Tiff. It’s not the same thing. Here you simply have to apply what you’ve learned and if you’re not sure about something, your “Mr. Wonderful” from the parking garage should be able to help you. Or it will be his head on the chopper block.”
“I guess you’re right. No one said it was going to be easy or even enjoyable, except when what you do saves someone’s life.”
“And you and I will save more than one person’s life in our career. Yet, what people remember most in our profession is not the number of people we save; it’s the number of people who die because we cannot do more for them.”
“You’re right, of course. But I studied day and night to “enjoy” my work. I mean I love being a doctor, and I want to be a trauma surgeon more than anything, but I don’t want to keep thinking of what might go wrong. I don’t want to worry all the time. Otherwise, I’ll go absolutely crazy.”
“Me too, Tiff, me too. We’ve got to stay positive.” I paused, taking a sip of my cooling down coffee. “Tell me more about your Mr. Wonderful. How come you talked to him?”
“Oh it’s just that I dropped my keys as I came out of the elevator and he picked them up for me. He has such a gorgeous smile…” Tiff commented dreamily. “Anyway, he said that he saw me with Dr. Kerry while we were making our rounds yesterday and that he would be pleased to take over once we came downstairs to ‘his dungeon’.”
“Is that how he described this place?” I looked around me.
“I guess so. And I think he was right. This is like a dungeon. There is no window anywhere, every wall seems as thick as those of an old castle, and everything is so sound-proofed, I bet you couldn’t hear anyone scream in here, even if you put your ear to the wall.”
Tiff is right, I thought, it certainly look and feel like a dungeon around here.
“But you haven’t said how he looks. He is tall and handsome I suppose.”
“Oh yes. He’s about six feet, dark brown hair, like his eyes. He is muscular and well put together, I tell you. Besides which, his leather jacket and tailored slacks were not el-cheapo stuff out of Walmart, either.”
“Sounds like he’s the antithesis of our Dr. Clemens, in appearance at least,” I remarked.
As the word fell out of my mouth, we heard Dr. Kerry recall us to attention. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Doctors, but”—Tiffany and I turned in our chairs—“I’d like to introduce you to your resident surgeon, Dr. Jeff Aldridge.”
And yes, there he was in the flesh. My heart beat a drum in my chest. I thought I was going to faint from shock. My one-night-stand, my dream lover, my Mr. Drop-Dead-Gorgeous was looking at me looking at him. For a fraction of a second, my eyes averted his gaze. I could have hid under the table.
Chapter 9
Truly, this was too much of a coincidence. For a moment, I wondered if Dr. Aldridge had a twin that still lived somewhere upstate New York. He was staring at me staring at him. For a fraction of a second, I thought he was going to address me directly. My mouth closed slowly as I turned away. Seeing my face–pale as a sheet probably–Tiffany asked, “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen death walk over him.”
“I’m fine, Tiff. It must be drinking cold coffee that doesn’t agree with me.”
Tiffany returned her gaze to look at Jeff. I didn’t.
He was saying, “As Doctor Kerry must have told you earlier, I won’t be working directly with each of you for another month. In the meantime, you’ll have a chance to observe the various procedures our surgeons perform every day in this hospital. Most of the time, you’ll be attending or watching the procedures from the enclosures overlooking each theater. I know you’ve seen a couple of interventions already, so you’re familiar with the two-way sound system in each of the booths. From time to time, when you’re attending one of the procedures I will perform, I will be shouting questions at you. You’ll then have time to answer. These questions will just serve as a little refresher quiz. But don’t worry, I’m not going to give you a hard time or mark your responses. I’ll give you hell afterwards, though!”
Eleven interns broke in loud laughter, while I didn’t even turn my head to him. I was sure he was staring at me again. I felt his eyes on my profile. I knew he recognized me. It’s not like we were wearing masks and gowns. He was probably trying to attract my attention. I didn’t want to succumb to his demanding gaze. In the meantime, I felt as if my world came crashing down around me. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with the man anymore. It had been a delightful interlude; a fantastic night to remember, but nothing more should come out of it, certainly not now, not ever, actually.
When everyone settled down, Dr. Kerry told us that as soon as we finished our coffee we would need to get into the scrub room and change into our surgical gowns. She added that the nurses would help each one of us to slip into the garments and that at no time should we ever touch anything with our hands once they’re washed. “Use your elbows, your hips, knees or even noses if you wish to open or close a door, but do not use your hands. If you do, you’ll have to go over the whole process again. Understood?”
I felt like shouting, “Yes, ma’am!” but said nothing and just nodded in acknowledgement.
It took all of
us a good fifteen minutes to slip into the surgical gowns and slippers. As for the cap, the girls had to wear a paper-like net around their heads. The nurses showed us how to get every strand of hair under the net before they led us to the sinks to wash our hands, wrists and forearms–up to the elbows. Still dripping wet, from that moment on, our hands were not to touch a single thing until the gloves came on. It felt as if I was thoroughly isolated from every speck of dust that might have floated about the place and as if no bug of any sort could ever reach me in this get-up.
We then filed into the operating theater. It was one of the larger ones in Jeff’s “dungeon”. The patient had arrived a few minutes before. The man was talking to Jeff and the nurses as if they were old friends. Maybe they were? When Dr. Kerry closed the door and came to stand beside us, she nodded to Jeff. He was ready to start the procedure. The patient was drifting away into dreamland while the anesthesiologist put a mask over his mouth and nose. This procedure concerned the repair of a torn ligament in the man’s thigh after an accident at work. He apparently slipped and fell against an old panel and sliced his leg muscle and ligaments.
Two-by-two, we were allowed to come close to the table and view the operation in its every detail. Jeff was intent on what he was doing. I remember thinking at the time that a gorilla could have stood across the table from him, it wouldn’t have made one ounce of difference. The amazing thing about viewing an operation on a living, breathing human being, as opposed to a corpse, is that you can see the blood flowing everywhere through the open cavity. There is a constant need for “suction” and “clamps” to stop a hemorrhagic episode that would cost the patient’s life in a matter of seconds.
Destroy (A Standalone Romance Novel) Page 6