Page 108 of The Plus One
Jude closed his eyes, pulling in a deep breath. He pressed a quick kiss to the paper, then folded it back up and dropped it in his pocket. If Jude was brave, then Indira was indomitable.
He turned back around, walking through the doors with his back straight and head held high.
And was immediately overwhelmed. Bless his heart.
He was ushered to a seat across from three high-level administrators: Dr. Raymond Schwartz, the CEO of GHCO; Dr. Nora Prince, Jude’s direct supervisor; and a man who introduced himself as Dr. Parrish, a board member with a psychiatric background brought in to lead the questioning.
All three of them opened leather portfolios, pulling out expensive-looking pens and turning a few pages in their legal pads.
Hot needles prickled along Jude’s skin as he sat there, staring at the stern-faced group whose decision would dictate the next year of his life.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to work—he’d always loved surgery, always garnered a thrill from it—but he couldn’t heal patients if he continued to harm himself in the process. He was open to alternatives, he just had no idea what that would look like.
“The record states,” Parrish said, opening a second large binder filled with documents, “that Dr. Bailey approached Dr. Prince with a request for evaluation of discharge due to claims of PTSD.”
Jude nodded. “That’s correct.”
“I see,” Parrish said slowly, sizing Jude up. The other two looked at Jude similarly, calculating the best approach to their questioning. Schwartz started clicking his pen. Slowly. Loudly. Each snap of the spring like a lash down Jude’s spinal column.
“Well,” Parrish said, leaning back and opening his arms in front of him. “Please go ahead and share with us your perspective on why you’re here.”
Jude cleared his throat once. Twice. Coughed.Good Lord, Jude, get it together and say some words, please.
“As you know,” Jude finally managed, his voice surprisingly steady. “I’ve been stationed as an emergency physician at a myriad of clinics—Sierra Leone, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine—all of which were—are—experiencing humanitarian crises.”
“Which is the crux of our mission at GHCO,” Dr. Prince said.
“Yes,” Jude agreed. “And so much good is done, and I have the utmost respect for the work that you all do. But pretty early on I struggled with the violence and trauma I was witnessing on a daily basis, the culmination changing me on a fundamental level. I’ve been experiencing tremendous emotional and mental distress. Severe and stressful flashbacks. Emotional outbursts. Confusion. All of these have made me… They’ve affected my ability to perform as a surgeon even in the most controlled of environments.”
Be honest, Jude repeated to himself, forcing the next words out. “I have serious concerns about my ability to help anyone if I’m placed back in a high-stress zone.”
They all scribbled on their notepads, looking bored.
Parrish sighed, resting his elbows on the table as he looked at Jude. “Many of our doctors experience hardships while on assignments. It’s an occupational hazard, if you will, that we try to make all GHCO physicians aware of before they start their service,” he said, tilting his head as he looked at Jude.
“I was twenty-two years old when I signed the scholarship contract with GHCO,” Jude said, voice rising. “I was a child with noconcept of what a humanitarian crisis actually looked like. I was naive and privileged enough to not have a firm grasp on some of the horrors that happen in this world.”
“Regardless, what you’re describing doesn’t sound particularly serious or out of the norm. Not grounds for medical discharge, at least.”
A swell of anger roared in Jude’s ears, his vision going blurry with red. Not serious? Not fucking serious? A chunk of his soul was left in every clinic he’d worked in, rotting and decaying away. Jude would never get that back.
What wasn’t serious about him clawing and fighting his way to rebuild? Raging against every impulse to either numb himself to death or explode from the terror that he was stuck in.
José had warned Jude that they might be harsh or rude through this process, make him prove his invisible illness. But the actual experience of laying his trauma, his pain, out on the table to be analyzed and dismissed was so much worse than he could have imagined.
Jude wanted to walk out. Actually, he wanted to flip the table, break Schwartz’s fucking pen that he kept clicking,thenwalk out.
But Dira was out there waiting for him. And she believed in him. She pushed him and pressed him and annoyed him and loved him with such consistent patience and intensity, Jude was certain anything was possible.
Jude reached into his pocket, dragging his thumb over the fine edge of Indira’s note.
She’d told him he was brave, so brave he would be.
“With all due respect, sir,” Jude said, reaching for his water, hand trembling as he took a sip then set the glass back down. Good. Jude let his hands tremble. If they wanted to see his pain, he’d wear it like a badge of honor. “It’s incredibly serious.”
They looked at him dully.
“I’m a surgeon,” Jude began, gripping the armrests of his chair. “An emergency medicine professional. My training for this profession means I’ve seen the human body in countless broken ways. I’veseen bones shattered, hearts fail, insides ripped to the outsides. I’ve listened to howls of pain and silent pleas. I’ve heard sighs of relief when morphine hits, seen tears of joy when a surgery is completed and someone comes through. I, for a living, put a human body back together again.”
