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"I promise, James Sullivan, no matter what happens, our love will come first."
And with that, he drowned me in another kiss, sealing our words forever.
The halls of Chicago General were abnormally quiet, and it rubbed me the wrong way. I suffered from doctor's superstition, like many of my colleagues, so this kind of calmness seemed like a sign that something bad would happen.
I found Mary and Dr. Sandra Brook, the resident on my service this week. They had just admitted Mr. Sora, who'd be our next case.
"Good afternoon, ladies. Mary, how is our patient doing?"
"As good as can be expected for a thirty-year-old who's losing his vision."
I nodded and turned my attention to the resident.
"Doctor Brook, can you present the case, please?"
"Of course," she said without hesitation or stutter, and this made me feel more relaxed. I'd only seen Sandra Brook a couple of times in action, and she was only a second year, but Zach had lots of complimentary words for this one. This must have meant she was good because that moody bastard didn’t like shit. "Talbot Sora, thirty-one years old, stage two cancer presenting an intramedullary tumor. I looked at the pictures, and it's not a big tumor; it seemed very operable to me. I didn’t know why the other doctors..."
Oh, young minds. So eager to get to cut into people, they sometimes forgot the goal: as surgeons, we needed to get in and make sure a targeted problem went away - we fixed it - but as doctors, we needed to give our patients the best care and offer them a solution that, in the end, would prove to give them the best possible outcome over all.
"I know why, because in a situation like this, Doctor Brook, you don't put someone under the knife until all other paths of treatment are exhausted. If it's intramedullary, it means we're confronting a growth on the spine."
"I know."
"And you know how easy it would be to kill a nerve while going in there and jamming a sharp blade around a tumor?" I said and raised my eyebrow.
"Well, yes, but the film shows reduced dimensions."
Ok, teaching time. Shaping newbies was awesome.
"Have you ever been part of a neurological case from diagnosis to operation?"
"No, sir."
"I can tell, and we need to change that. In neuro, we have a few red zones when it comes to tumor extraction, because we work on highly vascularized body parts or where there are nerve knots. For the purpose of eliminating all risks, the proportions need to be recalculated, so usually, a surgeon will not operate until the carcinoma, lump, swelling or whatever you’re targeting is ten percent smaller than the normal operable size."
When I looked at her I was pleased to see that she wrote everything down in a small pocket notebook, frowning at the page like she was trying to force that info into her brain. Maybe Zach was actually right to see something good in this one.
"Got it. Does this make the surgical procedure easier?"
"Nope. It just gives us better visibility."
"This applies to swelling too?"
"Swelling of the brain works differently. The surgeon needs to act in consequence of case. It's an individual process."
She nodded and scribbled some more determined words on her notepad and then looked at me with a neutral look on her face.
"So, no operation? We're not going to open him up at all?" The sadness in her voice was so obvious, Mary and I both chuckled at her eagerness.
"Mr. Sora is not a pork chop, Sandra."
Her shoulders sank.
"I know, I don't mean to be disrespectful."
"You want to spend as much time in the OR as possible, I get it, but try to hide your reaction in front of the patient, please." We wouldn't want anyone to feel like a science experiment. "You worked with Ford for a couple of weeks. Did he keep you on the bench?"
"No, Doctor Sullivan. I just haven't been in the OR with you before, and I was sure his sight condition was operable."
