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“TGV infant undergoing arterial switch surgery.”
“How’s the mother doing?” I asked. This was the part that most doctors had the most trouble with. I was no exception. We became so focused on the solution to the problem that we forgot about the people we were dealing with. When babies were involved, this was especially true. We all wanted babies to be born and leave our hospital healthy and happy, but sometimes we lost track of the fact that the babies belonged to somebody who was also one of our patients. In an effort to ensure the baby’s health and wellness, we often neglected to inform the mothers of what was going on and why. And especially the expected outcome.
Arterial switch surgeries had overall good success rates, but that didn’t change the fact that we were performing open heart surgery on an infant, and no procedure has a 100% success rate.
Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe go check on her? I heard she was alone, no father, just a sister who needed to go home for a while.”
She wasn’t my patient, but I always liked to help where I could no matter what the situation. It was also a particularly slow day in the hospital, and I clearly had a soft spot for single mothers. I figured it couldn’t hurt to step into the patient’s room and let her know what was going on, as well as answer any questions she might have had.
I knocked on the door to the room, but there was no answer, so I pulled up the paperwork to see what the general situation was. My heart stopped.
It was Mila’s room. This wasn’t just any baby, this was my baby. Well, not technically, but still, that’s what it felt like. I quickly did the math in my head and realized that she was early.
I opened the door to check on Mila, but saw she was fast asleep. Good. It was for the best that she got all the rest she needed at this point. And it gave me an opportunity to run over to the observation area and see what was going on. It never helped to have too many chefs in the kitchen, but I couldn’t wait to hear an eventual outcome: I needed to know exactly what was going on at all times.
With an urgency I didn’t know I was capable, I flew through the hospital corridors towards the neonatal operating rooms. I grabbed the proper PPE gloves and mask and put them on before entering the room.
“Doctor?” one of the nurses asked.
“Just here to observe,” I said, putting a hand in the air.
I anticipated some resistance but got none. Generally, surgeons were so focused and cool that nothing could interrupt them. Honestly, some of them bordered on sociopathic, though I mean that in the best way. For most people, the pressure of dealing with an infant life would cause them uncontrollable anxiety, but this surgeon remained calm and steady as though he were working on an inanimate object rather than the most delicate of humans, and, to be honest, probably didn’t even notice that I’d entered the room.
It was a situation where I both couldn’t bear to watch or look away. The surgery could last upwards of six hours. I stood there watching the surgeon work like a well-honed machine as the nurses around him responded to his gestures and commands with immediacy and precision. In another context, it might have been quite a show, almost like a dance routine, with how perfectly everybody was in sync with each other.
Now, though, all I could focus on was my baby — Mila’s baby — there on the operating table, so weak and precious, with an IV in her itty bitty arm. The surgeon was preparing to open up her chest and begin the actual operation, and I watched him like a hawk, ready to intervene if I saw him make even an inkling of a mistake.
Yes, I was on the clock and should have been available for other patients, but someone else would cover for me. I would have been worthless as a doctor anyway. For the moment, there was only one patient on my mind — well, technically two of them — and nothing else mattered.
As it turned out, the surgeon was excellent, even by the high standards put in place by Cedars-Sinai. That put me at ease, and after a few minutes I realized that my watching wasn’t helping anything. It was only making me more anxious. My heart was breaking. I walked out and down the hall, back to Mila’s room. She’d made it clear several months ago that she didn’t want to see me anymore, but things had changed since then. In fact, they’d changed radically in just the past few hours. If she woke up and slapped me and told me to leave, I would. But I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case.
I walked in and saw that she was still fast asleep, laying on her side, with the blanket falling off of her bed, exposing her butt to me. It was just like the first couple of times we’d met — I walked in on her and she was in some compromised position. I carefully pulled the blanket back over the bed, covering her and preserving her decency. In a certain context, years from now, maybe I’d tell her about it, and we’d have a laugh, but these moments were too serious, and I couldn’t imagine telling her about it anytime in the near future.
The whiteboard in her room indicated that she’d received a dose of Zolpidem, so she’d be out cold. This was for the best. I pulled a chair up to her bed and held her hand as she slept, and as I did so, the faintest smile appeared across her face. Along with it, I felt a soft squeeze in return on my hand, reassuring me that I was doing the right thing.
I leaned my head back and tried to sleep along with her, though that was difficult in my upright position. If I could, I would have climbed into bed next to her, but space was limited. As it stood, I don’t think I fell into a complete sleep, but my mind drifted into the early stages of rest, and when I opened my eyes again, two hours had passed.
Just as I did so, Mila began to stir. Her eyelids flickered, and I could see the room coming to her in a blur and a half-awake sense of confusion. She stared at me for a moment before asking, “Leo?”
I nodded at her.
“What are you doing here?”
What could I tell her? That it was just a coincidence? I was too rational a person to believe in destiny, but the fact was that if I hadn’t happened to be doing my rounds on that exact day at that exact time, I would have missed her, and our paths might have never crossed again.
She didn’t give me a chance to answer, though.
“Are you my guardian angel?”
Obviously, the drugs were still in her system, but I still liked the sound of it.
“Yeah,” I told her. “For both you and the baby.”
“Her name is Dorothy.”
“Dorothy,” I repeated. “I like it.”
To be fair, I would have liked the sound of anything so long as it was in her voice. It had been forever since I’d last heard it, but it was instantly familiar now that I was hearing it once again.
