by Barbara Ebel
“Nothing great.” She shrugged.
George put his finger on the sketchpad and lowered it. The picture was a work-in-progress of a country field with cattle and bales of hay. Trees dotted the background and the girl so far had a decent start on perspective and depth.
“Wow!” George proclaimed. “You are more talented than the famous French artist, Claude Monet. His work was what they called impressionistic, but yours is what nature really looks like.” He put his hand on the side of her hair and patted.
Tabitha had vivid amber eyes and rosy cheeks. She gave the new doctor a half-smile while her mother reached over for the pencil and pad and the girl passed them to her.
“Anyway, I’m Dr. Gillespie and this is one of the University medical students, Annabel Tilson. What brought you in today?” He looked at Tabitha more than Mrs. Klondike, but she launched into the reason for the visit.
“We just moved to the Cincinnati area from up north. The timing was terrible because Tabitha was diagnosed and treated for asthma one month ago in the middle of our move. Her pediatrician insisted on our establishing a new doctor as soon as we were able to. He said she needed testing and possibly chronic medications.”
“Did you bring any prior medical records with you?”
“No, but I gave your nurse his name and information so our old doctor could electronically send it.”
“Perfect. So Tabitha did not take a test called spirometry to evaluate her pulmonary function?”
“No, but they did take a chest X-ray.”
“They said my heart looked okay,” Tabitha chimed in.
“Excellent,” Dr. Gillespie said, “because you’ll need that heart someday to break some young man’s heart.”
Margaret furrowed her brow. “Don’t get ahead of things.”
George stuck to the rest of the history and physical, which Annabel could relate to because of her older sister’s history. Since Tabitha was having no symptoms, he decided to wait for the records and the results of spirometry to prescribe her anything in the interim. He wrote orders in the chart and on the electronic medical record and went back to staring at Tabitha.
“Like you, that picture you are in the process of drawing is exquisite. Would you mind very much if I snapped a picture of it with my iPhone?”
Amused, Tabitha grinned and grabbed the pad on the empty chair next to her mother. She opened it to her black and white sketch.
George took his phone from his pocket and stepped close. He clicked a photo and touched her ponytail again. “Thank you so much. I will treasure this, a landscape from a beautiful girl up north, now a resident of Ohio.”
Annabel and George peeled out of the room first and when the Klondikes passed them in the hallway, George stood at the front desk. Annabel held her breath, expecting him to rub his oily hands on Tabitha’s hair again. But he didn’t. He seemed to be transferring information from her chart into his private cell phone.
-----
Annabel monitored the head count in the waiting room and Becky concurred what she thought. Gillespie’s last patient for the day was a no-show. She crossed her fingers that he’d let her go early and not make her sit in the side room twiddling her thumbs or studying.
“He’s in his office,” Becky said. “I’ll rap on the door and tell him the news.” She lowered her voice. “And put in a word to let you go home.”
She came back quickly. “You’re out of here.”
“I owe you.”
“Students are already in debt. Don’t promise something that will take you twenty years to pay back.”
Annabel gathered her things and wished she could say good-night to Stuart, but he was with Dr. Clark and they still had one more patient to be seen. She left and had driven her own car that morning so she had no Uber driver to call. After scrambling into her car, she texted Bob.
“Hey, how’s your day? After all our studying about meningitis, any results back yet on Toby?”
She rapped her fingers on her steering wheel and waited. She’d had Oliver since late Sunday when she and Bob parted, but she didn’t feel the urge to race home. It was earlier than her usual pediatric days.
“Results weren’t ready earlier in the day .. I can recheck soon. Day’s been half-crazy.”
“I’ll pop over. I’m out already. I want to ask your opinion about something. Maybe visit Toby?! I’ll walk Oliver right away after leaving the hospital.”
“Text me when you’re here. I shouldn’t be too late either.”
Annabel closed with a thumbs-up emoji and went about her way. Soon she strolled through the revolving doors and into the hospital lobby and re-texted him.
After a five-minute message silence, Bob spoke up behind her. “You should earn a double grade for taking part in a pediatric office and a hospital rotation at the same time.”
Annabel swung around. “Ha, I’ll need two clinical grades because Dr. Gillespie is probably not too impressed with me. It works both ways, however. I’m not enthralled by his bedside manner.”
“What now?” The students stepped aside from the entrance and took cover behind an artificial tree.
“Since you began your hospital rotation, did you see any of the residents give a rectal exam on a kid?”
Bob glanced down for a second. “Not that I recall.”
“Or use a magnifying glass to examine genitals?”
“Annabel, that sounds quirky.”
“I find it as peculiar to be a spectator watching these things as it probably was for the youth who suffered a finger up his butt.”
“I see your point.”
Annabel sighed. “Just remember, you’ll follow in my footsteps and end up in Gillespie’s office next week.”
“Based on your discomfort, I’m hoping I get to work with Dr. Clark. I have a fifty-fifty chance, since I’ll be with Nell next week.”
“Linnell’s been assigned with you?”
“Yeah, I thought you knew.”
Annabel stared blankly at him. “Maybe you could say something up front that you’d like to shadow Dr. Clark.”
“I could try. However, they may automatically pair us up as a male student to a male doctor and the female with the female, as biased as that sounds.”
“Could be. Dr. Gillespie may, however, prefer a female student with him.” She thought a moment and then shook her head. “But maybe it doesn’t matter what a student’s sex is who’s beside him. It would take a shrink to figure him out.”
“What does Stuart think?”
“He said we only have a few more days in Gillespie’s office. We can’t like every attending or his or her ways of doing things, each and every time. We’ll be out of there before we know it, meaning I should grin and bear his behavior.”
Bob nodded his head slowly. “Good advice, Annabel. There are bigger burdens on our shoulders and you still have not figured out what you’re going to write down on your residency application.” He thought ahead and took a chance with adding one more point. “Not only what type of medicine you want to practice the rest of your life, but also what city you want to train in.”
“That’s a no-brainer. At least I know that, or at least what my first choice would be no matter what I apply for. Because all their programs are excellent.”
Bob kept his excitement to find out subdued. “Oh … your hometown.”
“It’s been productive going to medical school somewhere other than Nashville and home, but for my training, that’s another story. I can only hope that I match at Vanderbilt.”
“Smart. I envy you.”
“No you don’t. Good friends can’t envy each other.”
“I mean I envy you because you had it figured out already.”
“It would be heartwarming to have family around again. Since you’ve met them, you can understand where I’m coming from. My mom and dad, and uncle and aunt, even my stupid sister, are important to me. During the transition, I can even stay at their house … my original grandparents’ house. The
one you visited.”
Bob started to sadden, and it showed on his face. She’d be gone and back to a life filled on a daily basis with love and support. There would be no room for him, perhaps not even enough room for Dustin.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess all of us in medical school will be going our own ways.” Her expression also turned forlorn. “In a way, it will be sad to graduate next year and to fully realize that med school was a stepping stone to more training.
“But what am I saying? Don’t you realize we have another major exam to pass before we proceed? I better stop thinking about Gillespie because we still need to take the Step 2 two-day test of the United States Medical Licensing Exam board or we’re not going ahead with anything.”
“Yes, that test will be our major obstacle to date.” He stared past her to the elevators, to the here and now and Toby Owens. “I’d better get to the lab on the top floor.”
“I’m coming with you.”
-----
Upstairs, a slender woman with a buttoned-up lab coat and round glasses walked to the end of the laboratory counter loaded with machines and faced Bob.
“When med students come up here, they’re waiting for something more important than usual, and results that are hot off my machine. Who are you inquiring about?”
Bob told her with an imploring voice, “Toby Owens. We did a lumbar puncture on him.”
“Ahh. Vital lab work. I’m happy to assist.” She traced back her steps and took but a second. “Just in time. Here you go.” She waved a sheet in the air before handing it over. “Your resident and attending are going to want to know about this one.”
Bob read without watching where he walked and Annabel opened the door. “Says here the normal white blood cell count in cerebrospinal fluid is zero or no more than five WBCs per cubic millimeter of CSF. Toby’s count is two hundred and eighty-two!”
Annabel gasped. “We suspected as much. He has meningitis.”
“Those disease-fighting white blood cells are needed because they’re fighting off whatever the hell bacteria it is. I’ll tell Rick Mares.”
Bob stopped outside the elevator and texted his chief resident. “Toby has a high white blood cell count in his spinal tap results.”
“Meningitis,” Rick responded. “If you see him before me, you can confirm that to him. I need to evaluate the whole report before you leave.”
“Annabel is here. We’ll tell him.”
“Do you still want to see Toby?” Bob asked her.
“Sure. We can both assure him that he’s going to be fine.”
They rode the elevator down to the orthopedics floor and hurried straight to Room 532.
“It was smart thinking that Dr. Mares isolated Toby already,” Bob said. “There may be a risk of spreading whatever infectious disease he may have.” They squirted sanitizer on their hands from the bottle on the cart outside the door and rubbed their hands. Annabel cracked the door open and frowned.
“Toby’s mom is in there and another boy.”
Bob followed Annabel in and first said hello to Toby. “It’s nice to see your mom here as well as another visitor.”
Toby lay still; his neck didn’t budge, and his casted leg lay like a brick on the bed. He grimaced and grasped Bob’s hand, but it was a feeble attempt. The youth was both bored with his hospitalization and very tired from his illness. “You two coming in makes four visitors. Lucky me.”
“This is Toby’s friend Jonathon,” Anne Owens said.
The dark-haired youth continued sitting in the bedside chair, his large sneakers pointed in. “Hi. I go to school with Toby too.”
“Nice to meet you, Jonathon,” Bob said. “Bet you two play basketball together as well.”
“Not lately,” Jonathon lamented.
“Is it all right if I talk freely about Toby’s medical condition?” Bob asked. He walked to the other side of the bed and rested a hand on Toby’s shoulder.
Mrs. Owen stepped between the bed and Jonathon. “Sure. We are all aware that the doctors believe that Toby has meningitis. Do you have an update?”
“The results of his spinal tap do confirm that diagnosis.”
“It figures,” Toby said.
“Why does he have such a headache?” Jonathon wondered aloud.
“Simply put,” Bob said, “with meningitis, there’s an inflammation of the membranes in a person’s brain, which causes swelling. That’s what triggers the symptoms in a patient’s head and neck.”
“Oh,” Jonathon said.
“This is quite insane,” Anne said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Where on earth could my son pick up this infection? All he does is stay home, play basketball, and hang out with Jonathon. We rarely do anything.”
Bob and Annabel couldn’t interrupt as Anne Owens spilled out the thoughts that had been troubling her.
“And why does he have it and none of us do? Toby is a good kid. He never does anything crazy.”
While shaking her head, Mrs. Owens aborted her rant. Jonathon made a little laugh from the sideline and leaned over closer to Toby.
“Except while we were in Florida and you ate that disgusting slug.”
“What?” Anne asked.
Jonathan realized he said something in front of her that he shouldn’t have.
“Toby, what is Jonathan talking about?”
Toby gritted his teeth and shot Jonathon a dirty look. His mother put her hands on her hips and waited. It appeared he had no choice but to divulge what happened.
“We were waiting outside that lunch restaurant on the boardwalk while you and Jonathon’s mom were still shopping. Two local boys, older than us, tried to gross us out by telling us about mudbugs, and then they dared me to eat a slug that was right there on the steps. Mom, it doesn’t matter. It didn’t taste that bad.”
Mrs. Owens eyes grew big and Jonathan added, “But they had to pay Toby six dollars because they lost the bet.”
Anne Owens couldn’t restrain herself. She turned to Toby, as sick as he was, and clunked him on the side of his head. “What the hell’s the matter with you!”
“Ouch. You’re not going to tell Dad, are you?”
“Probably not. He’ll wonder what kind of mothers Mrs. Harmon and I were on vacation … letting you eat slugs!”
CHAPTER 20
George Gillespie stuffed papers into his old-fashioned briefcase and closed the door to his office. He strutted down the hallway, ready to go home.
Becky was the only person left at the front desk, and he made a point of stopping. “Enjoy your evening, Becky.”
“You too, sir.”
After unlocking his car door, he dug his hand in his pocket one more time to make sure he remembered his cell phone. Rest assured, he drove the twenty-minute drive home, looking forward to his wife’s cooking. She always conjured up something decent on Monday night because she counted on the leftovers for him on Tuesday when she always had a meeting.
George’s wife, Marlene, was a busy physician’s wife. George often heard hospital gossip from her because she worked part-time in the administrative offices. The rest of the time, she donated her time heavily to charitable children’s organizations, where most of the money went to the medical care of children at their very hospital for families that couldn’t afford it.
Marlene, in her late forties, was aging very well. She kept a shapely figure and actually stood an inch higher than her shorter husband. Her rosy lipstick was her trademark, which accentuated her full lips and bleached white smile.
In Marlene’s mind, it was a strange marriage, which she had finally come to terms with and had decided to go about with her own life. Which, of course, was comfortable. It was not as if George made a ton of money, but she lived as cozy as other spouses of thriving physicians, and she did enjoy her philanthropic endeavors of helping children.
She often admitted to herself that, when she married him, the writing was on the wall and she had a clear premonition that their sexual rel
ationship did not seem normal. It was one thing to get a sense of how other relationships worked, but she also had her own past history as a foundation. Each and every past relationship she had had with a man was a pleasant, if not awesome sexual experience. It was not only intercourse itself, but the desire for sex had percolated in her male partners. They would make physical advances that were appropriate and she would do the same. Sometimes it turned out to be hot and wild.
Sex was important to her and, yet, she had married someone with a scant libido. At least for her. And it hurt her feelings.
For years, in the beginning, she egged her husband on to engage in sex because he showed no initiative. Then, in the middle years, she stopped practicing her neediness because he was down to no initiative whatsoever. They attended one session with a marriage counselor, during which George proclaimed, “It’s just not enjoyable for me.”
On top of this, he kept handy tubes of lubricant on his nightstand as well as next to his toiletries in the bathroom. The contents would slowly disappear and then the tubes would be replaced. That spoke for itself.
All of this really hurt her feelings, yet she knew enough to not take it personally. He must be gay, she figured, and he was either aware of that fact or he was the last one to realize it. At that point, she thought about throwing in the towel, but her wedding vows were for life and divorce was a terrible concept she didn’t want to try.
Marlene heard the garage door open and her husband came in with his usual restrained personality. She followed him to his front room office. “How was your day?”
George put down his briefcase. “Just like the other three hundred and sixty-four. Parents and kids come and go and I help solve some of their problems. Medical ones.”
George placed his iPhone on the edge of the desk, took off his sport coat, and slipped into the bathroom. Marlene hesitated and decided to go for it … pick up his phone and glance at his recent pictures. Over recent months, she happened to stumble on a dozen pictures of his patients, which she found odd. Interestingly enough, they were sweet photos of kids, and they, or their parents, must have allowed him to snap them. Maybe he was compiling a bulletin board of his happy patients for the waiting room or something like that.