Oxygen (15 page)

“I can’t do this case, Will. I can’t do this.” I slide my arms away from Toby as Will brings the anesthesia mask gently up over his nose and mouth, calmly telling Sam to begin turning the dial on the anesthetic gas, telling Elaine to get ready to start the IV. Everyone is focused on Toby as he begins the slow slide into sleep. I turn and leave the room before I have to know any more.

I sit on the edge
of rumpled bed coverings and grip the sides of the mattress. What will I say to Phil Scoble when he hears, to Noonan and Will and Jim Dahl—each of whom have just watched my professional competence splinter?

Below the call room window an ambulance is wailing up the street to our emergency room. Already, hearing the siren, nurses and doctors will be organizing to rush this patient into the treatment room, pull the curtains clattering across their metal rod in a facade of decorum as shirts are ripped open and pant legs split so that wounds can be exposed and sutured, abdomens can be percussed and siphoned of fluids, and bare chests can be slathered with conductive jelly before electrical paddles are discharged over quivering hearts. We are righteous in our mission to challenge the limits of life, scratching every last breath from flesh. It is our job to rage against the dying of the light. To hesitate for an instant—to question if perhaps the grasping hand is not reaching for more time on earth but rather for glimpsed paradise—is truly to move from being a doctor to being God.

Will Hanover will be able to finish my shift for me, tired as he must be. He is unquestioningly responsible—probably even relishes this chance to flaunt his devotion to work. In a few hours Sandy will be here to start Friday’s coverage, followed by the nearly interchangeable slew of anesthesiologists rolling through the coming days and months and decades. In a few years, this will become amusing gossip, the anesthesiologist who froze with fear in the middle of an induction, and I will have blurred into an anonymous memory of someone who can no longer imperil patients with unpredictable panic.

I change into blue jeans and a T-shirt. Now, as I go down the elevator to the basement garage, I can blend with the faceless throng of hospital employees and visitors.

It almost seems odd to see my car still parked in my usual space, yesterday’s morning coffee remnants still wet in the bottom of the cup. At the first intersection I hesitate about which way to turn the steering wheel. Where does one go to run away from a life? I weave and drop through the deserted streets toward the waterfront. At the end of the pier, I pull into the empty lot next to a green tendril of public park that stretches up the coastline beneath the massive silos of a grain terminal.

Toby is probably recovering in his mother’s lap right now—I am sure Will took excellent care of him. Better than I was capable of giving. Deserting Toby in the operating room was not any random act of fate, as might have occurred with Jolene. No lawyers or mediators will be needed to judge this.

Twelve years I trained for the work I do. Seven years more I have coaxed fact and experience into talent and skill. I’ve learned how to make the few waking moments I spend with my patients feel personal and reassuring. I have discovered how to sense my patients’ rise and fall in consciousness and pain beneath their chemical sleep and mechanized breaths. I have earned my rank among First Lutheran’s staff. I matter here. That can’t dissolve in one mistake.

Someone raps on my window, startling me. A security guard points to the reserved parking signs. I begin backing out of the space and someone shouts, “Hey,” and bangs on the trunk—two women push jogging strollers just behind my car. I jerk to a stop as they pass, and wait for my pulse to slow down before starting out again. The guard glares at me until I leave the lot.

Cresting the hills above the lake, the glare off sun-glittered water stings my eyes and I raise my arm to shield them. I pass beneath the mansions of Denny-Blaine and Madison Park and wind west again, toward the city. Now the streets stretch along vacant sidewalks and the dust-colored blocks of subsidized apartments—buildings born of thrifty bureaucracies, fortresses of poverty. At the intersection of Beacon and Sixteenth I turn left and park opposite a dark green bungalow.

Bobbie Jansen’s windows are still shuttered against the night. Black metal railings brace the sloping, shadowed porch. Someone, maybe Bobbie, has started a vegetable garden along the side yard—early tomatoes and beans crawl up skeletal frames. There is a single narrow window under the peaked eaves with a colored-glass unicorn dangling inside the lower panes. The shade is pulled down. Like a waking dream this house replaces the inventions of my guilt. Now, when I stare at the dark, unable to sleep, I will know this place.

A screen door slams and I jump to start my ignition; two men stand outside the neighboring house. Their voices pitch and rise in some quarrel before one slams his fist against the siding and stamps down the plank steps. The other slips back inside. He peers out of a front room window at me before shutting it and dropping the blinds.

I still sense someone watching me, a face behind a curtained window or cracked door—or perhaps my own conscience. Then I turn back to look at Bobbie Jansen’s house, and she is standing on her front porch, a straw bag and summer jacket over her arm. She is looking right at me. As I drive away I see her in my rearview mirror following me with her eyes, looking as if she has been waiting for me to find her.

Exhaustion finally
overcomes my resistance and I drive home. All I can think about is sleep. There’s already a message from the hospital—Frank Hopper wants me to call him as soon as possible. I’d expected the call to come from Phil. I should have guessed that a professional lapse as dramatic as I’d displayed last night would rocket right up to the hospital’s CEO.

Frank is on another line when I call him back, and I wait on hold trying to invent a reasonable explanation for why I’d walked out on a patient in the midst of an emergency.

“Marie,” he answers at last. “Thank you for calling back so promptly. I spoke with Dr. Noonan this morning.” He pauses, as if to let me preempt him with my own justification. After a silence he continues, “Well, we’ve been discussing the case you had together last night. The baby. He’s concerned about you.”

I sit on the floor next to the phone and listen, wishing I’d had the courage to call him first, waiting for him to say what I can’t.

“Marie? Are you on the line?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Listen, this is a difficult subject, I know. But we’re all aware here of what you’re going through. The strain must be terrific…it would undermine anyone’s composure. We want to help you get through this. I’m not calling to take your job away—you’ve been a valued member of our staff for a long time and we’re backing you. But I think it would be in everyone’s best interest—in
your
best interest—to take a leave of absence for a bit. Don’t you think that’s a sensible thing to consider?”

I fold into a knot, lift my chin to keep my voice collected. “Yes, Frank. It’s a sensible thing to consider.”

“All of us reach points in our lives, in our careers, when some time off could help us maintain perspective. I think it takes a lot of professional integrity to address that, out in the open. Don’t worry about this affecting your standing with us—your job will be here for you.
We’re
here for you. And, Marie, if you’re interested in seeking some professional input—you know, some counseling—the hospital can arrange for that.”

“How much time away are you thinking of?”

“Well, let’s see how things stand once this suit is behind us. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of months at the most. We’ve already got a locum anesthesiologist lined up, so the workload will be manageable for the rest of your team.”

I want to ask him how he can pretend to so much empathy when he has just cut our legal defense in half. I choke on the words, stumbling over the dawning awareness that, of course, he couldn’t have hired another anesthesiologist overnight. That must have taken weeks.

“Erin’s buzzing me about a JCAHO meeting I’m late for. We’ll be in touch about your return date—don’t hesitate to call me anytime. My door is always open here.”

My bedroom is quiet and dim. The blinds are still drawn against the sun; the comforter still billows over the empty space in my bed where I last lay, a day ago. I drop my clothes to the floor, slip into the soft nest of sheets and struggle at the boundaries of consciousness, begging sleep to drag me into a temporary peace.

The phone is ringing again. I’ve unplugged my bedroom extension but the noise radiates across my kitchen wall and through the pillow I’ve wrapped around my head. Four rings and then a pause, in which I know my most cheerful and self-confident voice, eternally imperturbable, is telling the caller to leave a message.

It’s dusk outside now; I must have slept all day. The street noises are picking up with the flirtatious laughter of college students opening the bars on a Friday evening. The ringing starts again and I fumble down the hallway into my kitchen to pull the cord out of the wall. Outside my living room the towers of downtown are glittering shadow boxes—squares and rectangles are illuminated as cleaning crews replace secretaries.

And there is Joe. Staring up at my living room from the street corner, waiting for my lights to go on. Waiting for me to finally pick up the phone. I coil my fingers around the braided cords of the slatted blinds and lower them to the floor. But fifteen minutes later when I hear him at my front door I unlock it.

“Hi.” He stands with his hands tucked into the fraying pockets of his old blue jean jacket. He is exactly what I need right now, though I would have denied that a minute ago.

“How’d you get into my building?”

“I still have your key. Karen called me after you left this morning—she was worried. The baby’s fine. He went home early this afternoon.” He lifts his shoulders slightly and says, “So, should I come in?”

I reach out and take his hand and lead him inside. We walk to the sofa, he sits and draws me down against him, my back curved against his chest, his arms wrapped across my abdomen. I sink into him and remember his solid weight, the comfortable arc of his neck along the back of my head.

“Marie.” He hugs me closer as he pulls words together, his breath so soft through my hair. “This…this little girl’s death has been terrible for you. Harder than the malpractice suit. But it’s eclipsing everything else in your life. It’s overshadowing all the care you’ve given a thousand patients before her death. It’s jeopardizing all the patients you’ll take care of in the years ahead.” He rocks me, quietly and rhythmically; his beard lightly brushes my ear. He waits for a response, but I have none.

“This time will pass. This lawsuit will come to an end at some point. None of the OR staff hold you responsible—the nurses and techs think the world of you, you know that. The hospital is behind you. You’ve got a great legal team. And you have a life ahead of you filled with work I know you love—work you do superbly.”

I stare into the darkening room, lit only by wedges of city light gleaming between the blinds. Familiar paintings and sculptures take on odd shapes in the gloom.

“There’s something I haven’t told you yet,” I say at last. “No one knows about it yet. The hospital is cutting me out of their defense. Donnelly isn’t representing me anymore.”

Joe stops rocking me and we both sit still, locked together as if we shared equally the weight of this news. After a moment he says, “What did Donnelly tell you?”

“As little as he could get away with. He never should have represented both of us, probably. But if the hospital can prove I caused her death, they come out blameless.”

Joe seems to grow heavier against me. His hands beneath my hands are dry and rough from sport and sun. I trace the hard, sleek curves of his nails and the winged bones of his clasped fingers—so fragile and so strong. I imagine myself small, a bird, crawling into the refuge of these cupped palms.

In the streets the hoarse calls and hearty cursing of an older crowd has displaced the rollicking college crew—men who drink to forget life rather than enhance it. I get up from the sofa and raise the blinds; a checkerboard of lit windows brightens the room like candle glow. I walk to the kitchen and pull a bottle of wine from the rack and bring it to the living room with two glasses and a corkscrew. Joe twists the spiral down into the cork and pulls it free, then pours the glasses full.

I haven’t eaten all day and the first half glass feels potent and soothing. It makes me understand why people drink too much. Joe sits opposite me now, backlit by the skyline. He narrows his eyes for a moment as if considering his words. “Have you ever figured out, more or less, why we stopped seeing each other?”

My pulse gives a small jump. “We still see each other.”

“All right. Are you telling me I shouldn’t go there?”

“No,” I say, fighting an urge to fend this off. “I don’t know. Is that always something you can analyze? Sometimes love just finds its own way, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? Maybe.” He swirls the wine in his glass and stares into it as if it held some hidden message. “Maybe. Or maybe neither of us could trust that much friendship to a lover. Maybe we both suffer from the same fault there. We do keep our secrets, don’t we, Marie.”

Tears collect in my eyes as he says this. All the pain of these last weeks, and now this is what threatens to make me cry. And even though I can’t answer him, I don’t want him to leave. I am worn out by it all—by the mediation, by the betrayal, by the lonely bearing of my remorse.

The wine begins to loosen me. I want it to take me further. I want it to sweep time and strain away. Joe hardly seems affected by it at all, and pours us each another glass. I reach out for his hands, even if I can’t meet his eyes.

“Stay with me tonight, Joe. I want you to stay with me. Just to sleep. I can’t…I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”

He hesitates for the barest instant, then brings his hand to my face and traces the outline of my cheek with his finger, the soft and the rough paired. He rises and leads me into my bedroom. The bed is rumpled from my day’s sleep, and he lifts the covers, lofts them up to float down, smoothed and waiting. He takes off his jeans and unbuttons his shirt. I turn out the light and let my bathrobe slip from my shoulders to the floor, then slide beneath the sheet.

When I close my eyes the room spins and I have to open them again. I’ve had too much to drink. As Joe lies down next to me, I turn toward the wall and he wraps his arms around my waist. The long muscle of his thigh cradles my hip; his shoulder rises above me like a guardian. Each breath he takes presses his chest close against my back.

I’m not aware I’m crying until my tongue tastes the salt, and then I curl against the waves of tears, shudder as they overtake me like some physical being of flesh and bone. Joe strokes my hair from my temple and murmurs, “Shhh, shhh,” his mouth so close to me his voice is inside my mind. He holds me until I’m quiet, and we breathe in a slow and deep union.

Tears of grief are unique. They contain chemicals that aren’t found in the more mundane droplets of moisture that bathe the eyes, as if our tears wash us free of some noxious cause of sorrow. And tonight, after crying until I am empty, I have a rare glimpse of my own interior landscape—wounds piled like tiny skeletons into the reef of conscious adult life. I am aground amid my conquered traumas, stranded as a consequence of my achievements.

Joe tightens his grasp around me, or perhaps he is asleep and dreaming of his own struggles. Late in the night—the clock reads 3:30—he is tossing restlessly, hot and sweating. He throws the covers off and gets up to go to the bathroom. When I wake again at dawn, my head throbs and I have an acrid taste in my mouth from too much wine. He’s no longer beside me.

Out my window the summer sun is buried behind dense clouds; they fold upon one another all the way out to the rim of the mountains. I climb out of bed and walk into the living room expecting to find Joe brewing espresso and reading the morning paper—or at least to find a note. But his jacket is gone.