Under the Knife(11)
He pointed at the sink into which he’d just puked.
“Touch of the flu,” he said. “I know, I know.” He waved his hand in the air dismissively. “I’m not supposed to be here. I should be home, in bed. I should at least be wearing a bloody mask. But that wouldn’t exactly instill confidence in the troops now, would it?”
He tipped his perfectly dimpled chin toward the patient’s room. “Can’t have the doctor leading the whole bloody charge looking like he belongs in isolation on the TB ward.”
He pulled a paper towel from the bin above the sink and wiped his mouth. “You see, Rita: we surgeons, when we get sick, we don’t lie in bed, whining like small children. We get the job done.” He grinned, a high-wattage affair that made her cheeks burn fiercely. “Right. Do you know what I’m going to do now, Rita?”
Rita shook her head.
“I’m going to steal an IV—a big one, fourteen-or sixteen-gauge—from the supply room and stick it in my arm.” He pointed to the crook of his elbow (That’s where the antecubital vein is, she remembered. We use it to give IV fluids). “Then I’m going to run a liter of LR into me.”
(LR. Lactated Ringers. A hydration fluid.)
“Maybe two,” he continued. “Surest way to replace fluids and stave off dehydration. Wouldn’t you agree?”
To this, she didn’t have a response.
He slid his hands in his pockets and leaned rakishly against the wall. “Are you interested in surgery, Rita?”
Rita replied indeed she was though she hadn’t completed any surgery courses yet, and had never considered it before. But one of her fellow students had once advised her, in a hushed and conspiratorial tone, to always answer in the affirmative whenever a resident or attending asked if you were interested in their particular medical specialty. It helped your grade.
He nodded. “Do you think you have what it takes? To be a surgeon?”
Rita was a fierce—some who knew her well would even say insane—competitor, and in college had been a nationally ranked cross-country runner for a Division I team. Back in college, puking during and after big races had been no big deal. She figured the same principle applied here.
She said yes.
He sized her up, then nodded. “Brilliant. I’m going to tell you a secret. Do you know what the trick is? To being a surgeon? To being a truly good surgeon?”
She answered she didn’t.
“Never look weak. That’s it.” He gestured toward the door of the patient’s room, through which Dr. Acne and a trickle of others had started to emerge. “If they sense weakness, everything else falls apart.”
Dr. Acne spotted him and began to walk over.
He smiled again at her, dazzlingly. “Never look weak, Rita.”
She couldn’t help herself: She giggled and returned the smile like she was some idiot teenager. The feminist in her looked on, appalled. She never giggled. Particularly for a boy.
“Right, then. Have a good evening, Rita.”
She looked on as he gave a few final instructions to Dr. Acne—something about calling time of death, and death certificates—and then watched him stroll away.
She never found out his name and never saw him again. When she enrolled in her first surgery course, a few months later, he was gone.
But by the time he’d disappeared around a turn in the corridor, she’d decided then and there that she wanted to be a surgeon.
More than anything else she’d ever wanted.
Since then, she’d never looked back.
Never look weak.
With each passing year, for every tough situation Rita had found herself in, her appreciation for this essential truth grew. Never look weak meant maintaining your cool no matter what kind of crazy, dangerous stuff came through the door, since everyone—other doctors, nurses, patients—depended on you to stay calm.
Never look weak.
You couldn’t teach it. You either had it, or you didn’t.
And Rita definitely had it.
Which brought her back to her present predicament, the solution to which boiled down to those three words she’d learned in the middle of that night watching the surgery resident throw his guts up into a sink after trying to bring a patient back from the brink of death.
Never look weak.
Yes. It was that simple.
She was a surgeon.
She needed to get over whatever the hell was going on, to take command and seize the offensive. She hadn’t gotten this far, been this successful, by being weak, or, God forbid, showing weakness to those around her. Ever. Instinct dictated that vulnerability equated to failure.
Never look weak.
She needed to come up with an explanation for her predicament. Something reasonably credible.
Disoriented or not, sick or not, naked or not.
Now.
FINNEY
If Finney were a lesser man, he would have perhaps allowed himself the satisfaction of a smile.
Just a small one, to savor the moment, to anticipate the fulfillment of plans a year in the making, and the rewards promised by the accomplishment, finally, of his goal.
But he was not a lesser man.
Self-congratulatory gestures were beneath him. His thin lips retained the geometric purity of a straight line as he spoke into the small microphone affixed to the collar of his shirt.