Saving Meghan(19)
Zach found social media a necessary evil—a way to keep in touch with friends and family who would call more often if they did not get updates on his life in some other way. It was not like Zach was avoiding people, but everyone, every single person in his life, was a reminder of Will, and all of it hurt. Going to his parents’ retirement home in Florida was like visiting a shrine to their grandson. Framed photographs of Will were displayed proudly on walls and mantels throughout the beachfront condo.
There were two days each year that Zach dreaded more than any others: the day Will was born, and the day that he died. The rest of the time, Zach lived with a nagging ache. He lived like someone who had lost a limb but continued to feel a phantom sensation.
For any parent, the loss of a child was the loneliest, most desolate journey of their lives. Zach knew this all too well. He had been to grief counseling, group therapy, and even tried hypnosis to lessen his pain. He knew he should not run from the reminders of his son, but embrace them, speak his boy’s name proudly and often.
“Let his memory be a blessing,” a rabbi whose son Zach had treated for mumps told him once.
But Zach could not bring himself to be that person. He existed perpetually in a gray zone, where every day was a struggle for happiness, where guilt grew like bacteria in a petri dish. To make amends, Zach had dedicated himself to finding a cure for the disease that had claimed his son, while doing his best to ensure quality years for those living with the condition.
This was his hope for Meghan Gerard. He was anxious to get to the hospital because pathology should have the results from her blood work and genetic testing. He was confident those results would confirm his belief that she had mito. He wished he could have done an EMG on her, a measurement of electrical muscle response to nerve stimulation, or a muscle biopsy, but the girl’s needle phobia forced him to rely on less-invasive diagnostic tests.
He had brought up the idea of conscious sedation—a combination of medicines to help with relaxation and anxiety, but Meghan was not ready to go there yet.
“These medications will help you to relax,” Zach had said to a teary-eyed Meghan as they discussed the more invasive procedures in-depth. “We routinely sedate kids for large laceration repairs or putting back dislocated shoulders and the sedation works wonders on patients who are as anxious about their injuries as you are about needles.”
“But they’re not me,” Meghan answered defiantly. “And I don’t care if it works for them, it won’t work for me. So there’s no way I’m going to let you stick me with that damn sword. No. Way.”
Zach had sighed aloud, regretting having shown Meghan the Bergstr?m needle, wishing the mother had warned him ahead of time about her daughter’s fear.
The nurse who took Meghan’s blood sample said she had one of the most intense needle phobias she’d ever seen, poor girl.
“Touch-and-go, hitting the vein,” the nurse had relayed to Zach. “If the mother hadn’t been with her, I couldn’t have drawn a smiley face on that arm, let alone gotten four vials of blood.”
Zach didn’t need another proof point to tell him getting a muscle biopsy done on Meghan Gerard (consciously sedated or not) was going to be a protracted battle. The mother seemed burdened with guilt, and even implied responsibility for the daughter’s needle phobia, and for this reason would not push Meghan to step beyond her comfort zone. Not yet anyway.
After arriving at the rear parking lot of White Memorial at a quarter to seven, early enough to secure a choice spot near the staff entrance of the main building, Zach took an elevator to the third floor. He said hello to several nurses and orderlies as he made his way to the conference room at the end of the hall. A group of young doctors was already gathered, seated around the table, sipping coffees and reviewing charts in preparation for the handoff from night shift to day shift.
This month, it was Zach’s turn to serve as attending pediatrician, which meant supervising a group of eight residents and interns. He enjoyed the responsibilities of teaching. It kept him sharp. Mostly, though, he relished the looks of delight and satisfaction he could produce on the faces of this coterie of fledgling doctors simply by imparting clinical insights he had acquired over the years.
Back in his day as an intern, Zach had learned to record all his patient encounters. By the time he had finished his residency four years later, he had amassed a catalog of well over a thousand, all neatly written on three-by-five index cards and classified in diagnostic groups to serve as future reference.
It took extra time, which was in short supply given his near-seventy-hour work schedule, but the discipline was well worth it. Zach had turned himself into something of an expert researcher, which came in handy these days as he devoted most of his spare time to deciphering the secret code of a silent killer.
This morning, like all other sessions of morning report, the group reviewed admissions from the previous night. Zach oversaw his audience of young doctors, a third of them unkempt and sleepy-eyed from their ministrations to patients who had been admitted in the late-night and way-too-early-morning hours.
They discussed patient status and reviewed vitals. Zach took in all the details with practiced efficiency. He was treading on familiar ground, and for a moment at least, Meghan Gerard and the potential for yet another case of mitochondrial disease slipped into the far recesses of his mind to make room for matters more closely at hand.
When it came time for Mary Sayre, a bright third-year intern, to give her debrief, Zach could tell by the tenseness in her face that she had something significant to report. “We got the results of the tests that you requested on the Sperling baby,” Dr. Sayre said.