Joan Is Okay(5)

How long have you been single? he asked.

All of my life.

No boyfriends ever?

I shook my head.

Fascinating. No crushes in schools? No one-night stands in college?

I said I was busy.

But you weren’t studying all the time.

In fact, I was. I asked if he thought my singleness could have something to do with my personality.

Your personality is fine.

Maybe my looks.

You’re a vision.

I laughed because I knew the kind of women Reese liked: they usually had lashes. He was the vision and handsome enough to have his picture grace three of our hospital brochures for critical care. It has happened before: a family member comes in from the waiting room and flaps one of our blue leaflets around. Is this doctor in? they ask, pointing to the picture, because they want only the best, only this stately face of medicine for their unconscious and sedated loved one.

Don’t take this the wrong way, Reese added, but you’re a catch and you shouldn’t have to look that hard. Any guy would be lucky. Not me, unfortunately, we know each other too well and I’m madly in love with Madeline. But let me know how I can help.



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HERE WAS OUR MOTTO, as it was in any ICU: Are you suffering from ARDS, sir, madam? Because, if so, we can help.

What is ARDS?

Yes, sir, madam, we understand. Too many acronyms, not enough time.

ARDS is acute respiratory distress syndrome or severe inflammation of your lungs.



* * *



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EACH ICU HAD PERSONALITY. The cardiac ICU had its cardiologists, lots of men coming in to talk about electrophysiology and tiny gadgets to put in the heart.

The surgical ICU had its surgeons and anesthesiologists, doctors who wrote the shortest and most indecipherable notes. The notes reminded me of haikus, and because I wasn’t a literary person, I called my time in this unit difficult poetry.

The medical ICU was my favorite. With no specialties and subspecialties, it was just me and my team, meaning that I had full autonomy; I had the floor. The medical ICU saw any number of cases, and the lack of knowing what was ahead, to be in control but completely in the dark, was my jam.

This unit was also home to ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or my all-time favorite machine. Four feet tall, eighty-three pounds, with tubing that could extend out farther from its body and into a person, ECMO lived only at hospitals and was worth the same amount as a luxury sedan. To keep someone alive, the machine bypassed the person’s lungs and heart. Blood was pulled out of the person via a tube and funneled into ECMO to be cleaned, oxygenated, and returned. A person on ECMO could be sedated or awake. A person could walk with her ECMO as if it were a friend to lean on but also drag along. Two weeks on ECMO was average; anything longer, a month or months, was very bad news.

How could human engineers have created ECMO? I wondered. This boxy machine on a cart rarely needed maintenance, while in every public bathroom everywhere, half the automatic faucets didn’t run and the only paper towel dispenser didn’t dispense.

When I saw Madeline later, she was giving me notes for my rotation into medical, and I was telling her that no coincidence to me ECMO sounded similar to Elmo, that lovable red Muppet with the giant flapping mouth. I saw myself as its friend, as friend of ECMO, Tickle Me ECMO.

You need to stop anthropomorphizing, said Madeline.

It’s true that I have thought of putting googly eyes on ECMO or drawing on a face.

As I was telling Madeline about googly eyes, how a set of them can make anything funny, even a blood-pumping machine, I was also eating a bagel with strawberry cream cheese. Suddenly, she leaned over into me, and I thought she had fallen or fainted, but she was trying to give me a hug. Because I wasn’t near a table, it was either drop the bagel or not return the hug. I dropped the bagel, napkin, and the entire paper plate, as Madeline had never been this welcoming before.

If you ever want to talk, she said, mid-hug.

At work, Madeline was a true badass, using only her fingers to teach, no handouts, and she could run a code with impeccable form.

To run a code was to run the death algorithm, a series of chest compressions and adrenaline shots that had a one in four chance of bringing a person back.

To call a code was to stop the death algorithm and to announce three out of four times that the person had died.

Once the hug was over, I picked up the bagel and cleaned the pink smear off the floor.



* * *



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LIKE MACHINES, ATTENDINGS WENT on service or off, two-week intervals at a time. When they were off, you couldn’t get ahold of them, you didn’t know where they were. But when they were on, they were on, reachable at every second of the day, and manning their unit, unless they were asleep.

I hated being off but had two weeks of nothing at the start of October. I’d been texting with Madeline about my dilemma, that after cleaning my apartment and buying groceries, a total of two days were spent, with twelve more empty ones to go.

She asked how I felt then about having kids—that was a great way to fill time, since it was around-the-clock unpaid care.

I said my brother keeps asking me the same thing. My sister-in-law. Reese once or twice. And sometimes people I didn’t really know.

A joke, Madeline clarified, from one childless woman in her thirties to another.