Saving Meghan(77)

I focused on Dr. Fisher’s voice, used it like a lighthouse beacon to guide me through the fog of fear.

“I’ve got the sample clasped in the forceps between the suture ties. I’m going to take it out now. You won’t feel a thing. Everything is going so well.”

My tears didn’t think it was going well.

Breathe … breathe … breathe …

“She’s terrified,” I heard my dad say, like he couldn’t believe how scared I was.

“Quiet,” my mother growled.

I heard a high-pitched whine followed by a zapping sound, as if my imaginary hornet had flown into a plus-size bug trap.

“That’s just electrocauterization,” Dr. Fisher said, sensing my distress. “It lets me seal off blood vessels that are bleeding. Nothing to worry about. And I’ve put some extra freezing in the fascia. You probably didn’t even realize I used a needle on you, did you?”

I hadn’t.

“All right, Meghan, we’re almost done. But now I’ve got to get the sample with the biopsy needle. There aren’t many nerves in the muscle, so it won’t hurt, but it won’t feel like nothing, either. Okay?”

Jagged energy shook my body.

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound brave while failing miserably. The only saving grace was that I couldn’t see the needle.

“Here it comes.”

A darkly ominous voice spoke up in my head: It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt soooooo much, Meghan. You’re going to scream your head off. Get ready. Get ready to bleed!

I knew the voice wasn’t there, but that’s what you get with irrational fear. I took in breaths like Mom always reminded me to: through my nose, then out my mouth, slowly and deeply.

I braced myself. There was an uncomfortable tugging sensation, like a hand pulling at something that did not want to let go. Pain followed. It was sharp, dull, and burning all at once, an indescribable sensation, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

I cried out.

I cried.

I thought, Thank God, thank God Almighty that I’ll never have to experience that again.





CHAPTER 35





ZACH


Dr. Lucy Abruzzo, head pathologist at White Memorial, put a rush on Meghan Gerard’s biopsy, both to accommodate Zach and to address Knox Singer’s concerns. Singer had made it quite clear he wanted anything pertaining to that particular patient at the top of the “get it done” list. The relentless bombardment from an insatiable media had turned White into a nightly news item, and Knox into a target for relentless criticism. This did not bode well for Zach’s future at the hospital, but he had other, more pressing issues to address.

“It’s the wrong stain,” Dr. Abruzzo said matter-of-factly to Zach. “That’s the issue.”

When Dr. Abruzzo first broke the news over the phone to Zach, he understood what using the wrong stain meant for Meghan, but he felt compelled to see the ruined biopsy sample for himself.

They were alone together in her path lab. Zach had limited experience with Dr. Abruzzo. She was a bit of a mystery around White—an extremely fastidious, committed, dedicated physician who was much better at working with tissue samples and dead people than with the living.

An avid marathoner, Dr. Abruzzo brought the kind of focus it took to train for races to her lab. Everything about her was precise and intense, which was why this mistake was so uncharacteristic, not to mention inopportune.

The lab was a big, open, airy space hidden in the subbasement of White. It was well stocked with the best equipment, including the microscope Zach was looking through. He adjusted the coarse focus to get a clearer picture of the stained sample on the microscope stage.

“It’s a regular H and E stain,” Lucy said, sounding frustrated. “If we’d known we were looking for a specific diagnostic condition, we’d have stained it differently. I’m so sorry, Zach.”

A routine H&E stain on this muscle-tissue biopsy was fine for showing the histological anatomy, the cells, and the nuclei, but that’s not what Zach had requested.

“How did this happen?” Zach produced a copy of the order sheet for the lab test. He thought he’d been extremely clear: he wanted a G?m?ri trichrome stain that looked specifically for ragged red fibers as a marker of mitochondrial disease. The diseased muscle fibers stand out a bright red, making it obvious when the result came back positive.

“I know it’s not done routinely,” continued Zach, “but I specifically ordered it. And now the specimen’s lost, and all we’ve got is this routine everyday stain that doesn’t give me a hint of what may be going on metabolically within the muscle.”

“Data entry error, I suppose,” Lucy said. “It used to be that we’d do all the stains regardless, to cut down on errors like this, but you know how Singer is with his budget. He sucks out more fat than a plastic surgeon. So now, unless it’s for a very specific reason, we do the minimum required, which in this case is a basic H and E stain.”

“But I was specific,” Zach said, trying not to groan. “I filled out the paperwork myself.”

“The lab tech must have entered it wrong,” Lucy explained. “That’s why the old system was better. It cut down on these sorts of errors.”