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Then her voice turned tense, and she started repeating “I know” into the phone. I wondered what was happening, but then the phone call was over. Stevie still didn’t return to the bench. I stood and turned to see her just standing. One hand was being wrung by the other and she looked worried. Something her mother had said had bothered her deeply, and I couldn’t bear to see her that way. I stepped towards her and held out a hand—friends could comfort friends, right?
She jerked like I had brought her back to the present, and I could see some kind of deep vulnerability in her, just for a moment.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said in a low voice.
There was some desperation in her voice, and then she was gone, walking away from me before I could even ask what was wrong. Frustrated at whatever had happened, I turned.
The water seemed mocking now, like the quiet lapping was a laughter in the face of what had happened.
* * *
I drove home in a trance.
When I got home, I could barely remember the drive. Instead, I pulled open the door to my house and strode inside. The place was a mess. I was annoyed, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I realized it was all of it, that the girl I believed I could love was completely off limits, that she held herself back—even from platonic intimacy, that the whole damn world was conspiring against me to be alone, and that there was a little girl in a hospital bed that was counting on me to take a chance and save her life.
Books were taking up every square inch of table space in both my living room and my dining room. If I was honest with myself, it wasn’t just Stevie’s wellbeing I was worried about. I didn’t want her to put too much of herself into saving a girl I was quickly beginning to believe couldn’t be saved. My brain somehow said that if I just protected Stevie from that pain, it would protect me as well.
Frustrated, I started shoving books onto shelves, haphazardly leaving them in horizontal stacks. There would be time to organize it all, time when I wasn’t spending every hour doing research. Time when I wasn’t waiting on a call from a doctor in Seattle.
At that moment, I just needed my space to be mine again, to be clear of medical textbooks.
* * *
I stared at the ceiling wondering when it had all gone so wrong.
I was all ready for bed, laying on my mattress with pajamas on, my teeth brushed, and my alarm set, but I couldn’t sleep. I was tempted to call my father, but I knew it wasn’t him I wanted. I wanted to hear a soft voice telling me that it would all be okay, that there would be another girl, another patient, another day. That couldn’t happen though; I knew it couldn’t. I wasn’t a child, and my mother couldn’t solve all my problems with a kind word and a kiss to my forehead. I placed my hand on my chest, feeling the vital organ that pulsed beneath the flesh.
“You feel that, Addy? That’s your heart.”
“It hurts.”
“That’s because you’re sad. When we’re sad, our hearts feel sad too.”
“How do I make it stop?”
“You never want it to stop, baby; it means you’re alive, and being alive is the most magical thing. Keeping that heart beating is your own, everyday miracle.”
I turned over and stared out of the window.
My sheets felt like a prison, and my mother’s voice echoed in my head like some kind of spell. I wondered what she would think of the enigma that was Stevie Christophers. She’d probably have told me that the girl was perfect for me—she was feisty and guarded and she made me work for her attention. She loved her job, but above all, she cared.
Every intern I'd ever met, including myself, got hung up on patients, and I knew Jasmine was an especially difficult case, but there was something more to Stevie. She didn’t see Jasmine as a problem to be solved, but a human that wanted to be fixed. She was more human than a lot of people I’d met—unlike her father. How was it that two people could look so strikingly similar and be so different? Where she was willing to take a chance, he was a cold man. He didn’t care about anything except the success of his hospital, and it disgusted me. I wondered if he’d been that bad when he’d been on the floor every day, but people said he cared about his patients, that he had perfect bedside manner. It reminded me of a documentary I’d watched about psychopaths, how they could manipulate people into seeing them the way they needed to be seen. The man was a brilliant surgeon, no doubt, but I knew he didn’t have the same humanity in him as his daughter.
They said I was brilliant too. They said I was in the next generation of surgeons like the great Aaron Christophers. I took chances on children like Jasmine, did the risky thing, and more often than not, came out victorious. I knew my hands were insured. I knew that I had saved unsavable lives.
They also said I was an ass. I was blunt and didn’t stand for mistakes in my OR. I could be harsh with my students, and I knew it bugged Jonah that I couldn’t connect with the other heads of department like him. Would I end up like Aaron Christophers?
I placed my hand over my heart and hoped that I could continue to feel my beating heart and retain the humanity that came with it.
* * *
I couldn’t help seeing her at work, of course, and seeing her that Wednesday morning while I stood in Jasmine’s room outlining my new plan, I knew something was wrong.
She stood farther back from me than either Smith or Lehaney. This was unusual, since one of them was almost scared of the patients and the other didn’t want to risk being asked to do something that looked like work. I hadn’t bothered to learn which was which. I could tell that if they didn’t have an attitude change, the two of them wouldn’t last the year.
Stevie looked strained. She kept her eyes locked on Jasmine, and I could tell she was clenching her jaw. If she didn’t relax, I’d have to send her to orthodontics to fix some cracked teeth. She looked better though, like she’d actually gotten some sleep in the recent decade. I knew I’d come off as harsh the day before, but there was usually no subtle way to get people to care about their health.
I re-focused on Kayla and Jasmine. The girl in the bed looked like a ghost, surrounded by soft toys and propped up only by the bed. I could tell she wouldn’t be there in a week if we didn’t do anything.
