Doing Harm (19 page)

I lie down on the bed. The kitten dangling from the clothesline regards me from its spot on the wall, its furry outline and the black circles of its punched-out eyes both visible through the orange-hued darkness.

Hang in there, baby!

The urge to rip the fucking thing from the wall almost overpowers me. Gritting my teeth, I roll over; which at first isn’t much better because then I have the insane sense that the smug little bastard is
watching
me. But, eventually, the feeling goes away, and I’m fading off to sleep when the metallic click of the electronic door lock jolts me awake.

The last few weeks have left my nerves as frayed as those of the PTSD-stricken vets I’ve taken care of over at the VA Hospital across town. Adrenaline surging, I’m out of bed in an instant, flipping on the light switch and squinting through the flickering light at the lithe, tall figure darkening the doorframe.

It’s GG.

She slips into the room, the door closing softly behind her.

How does she know the combination to the electronic lock?

Wordlessly, she unhooks her omnipresent smartphone from its hip holster and places it gingerly on the bedstand. She turns to face me, her lips slightly parted; her thick brown hair falls languidly over the right half of her face, partly covering her right eye, but she doesn’t brush it away, which, of course, makes her look really sexy.

She wraps her arms around me and starts kissing my neck.

I don’t resist, but I don’t respond, either. I just stand there, my arms hanging limply at my sides, feeling her soft, warm lips press lightly against my skin.

Oh my God, that feels good.

“GG, I don’t think…”

Her hands steal to the drawstrings of my scrubs, exploring the thick folds of cloth with an urgent dexterity. Her breathing quickens, hot on my neck.

“My wife…”

She’s loosened the drawstrings and is reaching inside my pants. I somehow manage to suppress the groan rising from my throat.

“I have a family…”

And then she whispers in my ear the four words that I don’t want to hear.

And yet want her to say more than anything in the world right now.

“
Nobody has to know.
”

An oddly detached part of my brain—the cautious one again, I reason dimly—realizes with remarkable clarity that I’m disinhibited by sleep deprivation and chronic stress, which is a mental state not unlike being drunk. It tries desperately to pull me back from the brink of this looming chasm by reminding me that nothing good can possibly come of this whole thing.

But something brittle inside me snaps. All of the strain of the past several weeks swirls together in an intoxicating kaleidoscope of images that overwhelms my fragile emotional state and throws reason out the window. The Cefotetan. Mr. Bernard. Mrs. Samuelson. The Safety Committee. The potassium orders. My inability to reach out to Sally. Watching my career evaporate before my eyes.

The attractive med student who now has her hands down my pants.

All at once, this maelstrom of emotions and stress overruns the teetering defenses that have thus far stood between fidelity and GG’s unabashed advances.

I press my body against hers and kiss her hard on the lips. She responds eagerly, and I lose myself in her.

*   *   *

In retrospect, the one thing that surprises me the most about our encounter is how wild she gets. A feral, GG she-id surfaces, replacing the calm, reserved persona I thought I knew so well. I mean, she
really
gets into it, moaning and screaming and passionately calling out my name. She even digs her nails into my back and butt hard enough to draw blood. I’ve never had such rough sex before, but I can’t say it doesn’t turn me on even more, especially after years of pleasant, but overall pretty vanilla, sex with Sally. I wonder, in spite of the relatively soundproof walls of the call room, if her screaming is going to wake the whole hospital.

Both times.

Afterward, lying in the narrow bed together, drawing circles around my belly button with her finger, she coos, “So, do I get that ‘A’ now, or what?”

“Yeah, I think you earned it.” I laugh, a little uneasily.

“What do I have to do for extra credit?”

“I’ll try to come up with some, uh, extra assignments for you.”

“Anything you want. I’ll do anything you want me to.”

Joking around or not, that last line creeps me out—especially since a strange, pouting quality has crept into her voice, almost like a little girl, that I’ve never heard before. It suddenly dawns on me that the naked woman curled around me is not my wife. My stomach does a guilty flip.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks after a few minutes of silence.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“I guess … I guess I just never planned on something like this happening.”

She props herself up on one elbow. “It’s okay, Steve. I’m not looking for anything serious. I like you. And I just want to have a little fun with a guy I like.”

I stare at the ceiling and say nothing.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t want me, Steve. I know you do.”

“That’s not the issue. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. I’m just … very confused.”

She smiles impishly. “Maybe I can straighten things out for you.” She bends down and starts kissing my stomach. Then she methodically starts working her way south.

And, much to my chagrin, and shame, two times becomes three.

CHAPTER 9

Sunday, August 9

I wake with a start. Bright sunlight pours into the room in defiance of the single dirty window and spills across my eyes. I groan and roll over onto my back. The very first thing I see is the kitten on the wall, studying me indifferently from across the room. I groan again.

I hate that cat.

Her smell lingers everywhere: the pillows; the sheets; even on me. But GG is nowhere to be found. Neither are my clothes; and their absence fuels my embarrassment and shame. I stare at the ceiling, the surface as blemished as the face of a teenager, my stomach churning with guilt. I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my life, but nothing has ever come close to this. I’m like a remorseful drunk the night after a wild party, only worse: I’ve broken my wedding vows, violated Sally’s trust, and jeopardized the most important relationship in my life. Plus, unlike a drunk, I remember everything.

And for what?

Cheap sex in a hospital call room.

With a woman who could now, if it ever suited her, if ever she felt spurned, if ever she got pissed off at me, in a heartbeat turn my ass in to University Hospital for sexual harassment.

How could I have done this to Sally?

To Katie and Annabelle
?

I close my eyes. I remember that night several weeks ago, when Sally and I sat in the kitchen, sipping our precious pinot noir by candlelight.

Congratulations, Professor!

I’m so proud of you!

I recall how tranquil Katie and Annabelle appeared that night, asleep, serene in their youthful ignorance, oblivious to all of the bad things going on in the world beyond their room. Then my imagination picks up the ball and runs with it, flash-forwarding to their teenage years, when they’re old enough to first realize what a shitty father they have; and in my mind they stare at me, silent and accusatory; and I can see the sadness, the disappointment, the
resentment
in their eyes.

I pound the bed with my fists.

Fuck!

They can never know about this. None of them.

This
never
happened.

I yank myself out of bed. A brief search of the room reveals my clothes crumpled in a heap in one of the corners. As I’m dressing, GG calls me on my cell to tell me that she’s already in the SICU, checking labs on the only two patients we really need to see this morning: Mrs. Samuelson and the kid from last night with the gunshot wound.

The sound of her voice—cool, detached, clinical—is like a punch in the gut. I feel like I’m going to puke. I don’t know how I’m going to face her this morning.

I don’t know how I’m going to face
anyone
this morning.

But I splash cold water on my face and meet GG in the SICU at Mrs. Samuelson’s bedside. GG is nothing but business as she rattles off Mrs. Samuelson’s blood-test results and current vitals; and as I watch her, I find it hard to reconcile this GG with the uninhibitedly amorous one of a few short hours ago. As for Mrs. Samuelson, well, she’s pretty much status quo—she’s not getting any better, but at least she’s not getting any worse.

When we walk over to the gunshot kid’s cubicle, I realize that we still don’t know his real name. He’s listed in the hospital census as Male X. Last night was a bad night for the end of the alphabet: according to the hospital census, Male X is located right next to another trauma patient named Male Y, and just across the hall from Male Z.

Male X is asleep.

Good.

I’m hungry and tired and consumed by guilt. I feel … dirty. I have an urgent desire to get out of this hospital and home to my family. So my entire purpose in life at this moment, the entire focus of my existence, is to slip in and slip out of Male X’s room without actually having to talk to him.

I press my finger to my lips and motion GG to step back while I move forward to inspect our handiwork. I carefully pull the covers down from the lower half of his body to check the surgical dressings. At one point, he jerks restlessly in his sleep. I freeze, waiting to see what will happen, but he doesn’t wake up, so I carefully finish my exam.

Relieved, I start to move away from the bed.

That’s when he opens his eyes, reaches out, and feebly tugs at the base of my white coat.

I groan inwardly. The motion reminds me of the way Katie pulls at my pant leg when she’s trying to get my attention.

Katie.

I
really
need to get home to my family this morning.

I look at him, and he looks at me. His eyes are a little glazed over from the narcotics and the sedatives, but lucid enough for me to know that he’s probably going to remember our conversation. He’s wearing nasal cannula—clear plastic oxygen tubes that clip underneath the nostrils, beloved by soap operas and TV medical dramas. They hiss gently, like two docile snakes.

I muster my best doctorly smile. “Hi, I’m Dr. Mitchell. You’re okay. You were shot last night, and we had to operate, but everything went well. Your operation’s over now. You’re in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

He says something I can’t hear. I lean over and ask him to repeat it.

He swallows, licks his lips, blinks, and says, “Doc, do I gots the bag?”

Damn.
I guess he hasn’t talked with any of the trauma surgeons. He wants to know if he has a colostomy bag. He does. The trauma team had to give him one because one of the bullets shredded his colon.

I don’t want to be the one to have to tell him. I glance around, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone to whom I can pass responsibility for telling this fourteen-year-old kid that the contents of his intestinal tract now empty into a plastic bag attached to a big, man-made hole in his abdominal wall.

I try to punt. “You really need to talk to the other surgeons.”

He blinks. “Do I gots the bag?”

I glance over my shoulder.
Shit.
Nobody here but us urologists. Where the hell is the trauma-surgery team this morning?

I put my hand on his shoulder, lean over him, and say in a low, even voice, “Yeah, guy, you have the bag. One of the bullets hit your large intestine and ripped it up pretty good. That bag on your belly will keep you from getting sick and give you time to heal.” I’m careful to hold eye contact with him. He deserves that much.

He shakes his head and closes his eyes. He doesn’t cry, exactly; but his entire body shudders once, twice, three times. For several seconds he keeps his eyes squeezed shut, and when he opens them again, they’re glistening with a fine patina of moisture. He turns his head away from me, puts his thumb in his mouth, and fixes his eyes on the wall.

The kid’s reaction stirs in me a need to reassure him that everything’s going to turn out okay. So I tell him that the trauma surgeons will be able to hook his intestines back up the way nature made them once he’s had some time to heal. That he’s lucky he won’t be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. That he’s lucky to be alive.

And I realize, in the telling, that I haven’t been doing enough of this with my patients lately. Of sitting down with them and just being a doctor.

But it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t hear a word of it.

“Yeah, a’ight.” He stares at the wall and sucks his thumb, an urban man-child who, before last night, had a completely intact intestinal tract, two testicles, and no reason to think that that state of affairs would ever change. He couldn’t care less about what I’m saying, his attention no doubt now completely focused on the plastic bag taped to his belly that will start slowly filling up with shit once his intestines start working again.

I take my hand off his shoulder and leave without telling him that he only has one testicle.

Better to wait on that for another time.

GG is waiting for me outside the cubicle. She’s leaning against the wall with an amused expression, arms crossed.

“What was
that
all about?” she asks as she falls in step next to me.

“What do you mean?”

“You. All of that compassion for our teenage friend with the acute lead poisoning. It’s not like you.”

“It just … I don’t know. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“I guess,” she says indifferently.

We head together toward the elevators, my remorse mounting with each step, my brain scrambling to determine an expedient exit strategy from this walk of shame.

“Buy you a cup of coffee?” she asks brightly.

Not the exit strategy I had in mind.

“Ummm … I really need to get home this morning, GG.”