The Queen of Hearts(62)
He stared past Zadie, eyes fixed on the horizon.
She stood her ground. “It might even bring you some comfort, Boyd.”
His posture grew uncertain. “I don’t think so.”
“I want to hear what she has to say.”
My head jerked together with Zadie’s and Boyd’s toward the speaker, who had silently come up behind me. Betsy Packard took an elegant step past me, not stopping, and alighted beside Zadie. She reached for her husband’s arm.
“For me,” she said. “Please, Boyd. I’d like to try this.”
His head shook in jowly disbelief. “Why?”
Betsy’s lips trembled, belying her straight-backed poise. “I can’t go on,” she said. “I can’t go on like this, Boyd.” She paused and squeezed her eyes shut. When she spoke again, it was to address Zadie. “I trust you,” she said simply.
Zadie reached for Betsy’s hand.
Boyd withered under the unified female assault, raising his arms in surrender. “Okay,” he said heavily. “Okay, if you want this, Bets.”
“I do.”
For the first time, he aimed his glance toward me. “How about tonight?”
“Tonight’s the Arts Ball,” Zadie and Betsy said in unison.
“Hell,” growled Boyd. “Twenty K for ‘performance’ art and a bunch of fa—men in tights, you’d think I’d remember.”
Betsy addressed me. “We aren’t attending this year, but I’m sure you and Zadie are,” she said, her cultured voice warming me. “How about tomorrow after church?”
I was not a church attender, but in the South this registered as a bizarre personal failing akin to owning four hundred cats or having an unusual sexual fetish. You didn’t bring it up in public. “Thank you,” I rasped.
Boyd pointed a finger at Zadie. “Let’s do next Saturday evening instead,” he decided. “A week from today. You’ll come too?”
“Of course,” she said without hesitation, even though I knew she was spending next weekend downtown on a mini getaway with Drew. She clasped his hand. “Thank you, Boyd.”
He offered a small smile to Zadie, then eyed me again. “Okay. Guess we’ll be hearing what you’ve got to say.”
Chapter Twenty-five
TRY NOT TO WORRY
Autumn, 1999: Louisville, Kentucky
Zadie
Abdominal pain.
All charts in the ER had a chief complaint written across the top, and this was one I felt eager to tackle, having recently attended a lengthy lecture on the topic. People who had completed medical school and a three-or four-year residency in emergency medicine, followed by the successful completion of two rigorous and lengthy exams, one oral, one written—actual board-certified ER doctors—tended to approach the chief complaint of abdominal pain with something less-than-keen excitement. There were plenty of chances for things to go awry.
The chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine was the polar opposite of the fearsome Dr. Markham. Dr. Bernard Elsdon was an energetic, possibly manic beanpole with an odd poof of Einsteinesque hair and a flair for teaching. He resembled an agitated Q-tip, often becoming so overwrought during medical student lectures that he required a change of shirts. He was not exactly a fashion plate—it appeared he owned several identical pairs of shirts and pants—and so when he worked himself into a clothes-changing froth, he could quickly substitute one boring button-down for another. He avoided sport coats, probably because another layer of clothing was not helpful when one was prone to torrential sweating, and simply threw a battered, long white doctor’s coat over his ensemble if he needed to look more polished. Like every other medical student who had not yet had the pleasure of being graded by him, I was enchanted. As with all good teachers, his zeal for his topic was infectious; everyone saw themselves as potential ER doctors during this rotation.
I mentally reviewed the differential diagnosis for abdominal pain as I walked toward this, my very first ER patient of my own. I liked the structure of this rotation: daily seven a.m. lectures with Dr. Elsdon, followed by either a twelve-hour day shift or, if I was finishing the overnight shift, heading home to crash into bed. Each student had two days off each week, which meant despite the mental confusion of switching back and forth between working days and nights, the total number of hours worked in a week was going to be significantly less than on the trauma rotation. I also loved the concept of seeing patients on my own before presenting them to an attending or upper-level resident to review together. The key, I thought smugly, was not to get overwhelmed with the dizzying array of possibilities for what could be wrong, and also to remain calm if all hell was breaking loose. After trauma surgery, how hard could that be?
Concentrating intently, I almost collided with some people flying down the hall, carrying a limp figure. I caught a quick glimpse of a dangling corpse white arm—a man’s arm—as they skidded into one of the trauma rooms, a vivid trail of blood in their wake. Curious, I stood for a moment—where were the EMTs? Were they coming from somewhere else in the hospital?—but then I shook it off. I was here to tackle abdominal pain, not trauma.
I knocked on the door of room 22 and entered. Occupying a metal chair in the corner was a stringy woman of about fifty-five, sitting ramrod straight with her arms crossed in hostile fashion. Perched next to the chair on the exam table sat a massive lady with a face squinched up into a thunderous scowl. Before I could extend a hand and introduce myself, the lady—Mrs. Goodhouse, according to the chart—shifted her ponderous bulk and emitted a room-shaking blast of wrath.