Page 59 of Doctor Bossy

Today, I was just relieved that Becca was alive.

The nurses moved to remove the oxygen mask from her nose and asked, “Can you breathe?”

She nodded and then said, “I think I’m okay now. I just got a little dizzy, that’s all.”

“You passed out,” I told her.

“I did?” she said. “Why?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

She nodded, and then suddenly, she jerked into action, bolting upright in bed.

“Easy,” I said as the nurse steadied her. “Don’t move too quickly. You might pass out again.”

“No, I’m fine,” she insisted, making a frantic motion to get out of the gurney. “I can’t be here. I don’t need any help.”

“Stay,” I ordered.

“I can’t.” And then her eyes came up to meet mine. There was desperation within them, and that was when I finally understood. She didn’t want to get taken in because she couldn’t afford the emergency room visit but was too embarrassed to admit it. The hospital gave a discount to their employees, but she was not technically an employee of the hospital, which meant it would not apply to her.

“I’ll take care of it,” I mouthed so as not to be overheard by other people. She shook her head immediately, but I caught her chin, letting her see the determination on my face.

“I’m not giving you a choice,” I told her.

She must have seen the determination in my face because she swallowed and nodded weakly.

At that point, Dr. Lin arrived and determinedly steered her into the hospital room and began to perform a physical exam. She also ordered some tests, but I suggested a few more to give a more rounded view of what might be going on. I caught Becca shaking her head subtly at me when I did, but I ignored it. Since I was taking care of the bill anyway, I wanted to use this opportunity to give her a full check, so I could know for sure that she was healthy.

While we waited for the results, I sat quietly at the side of the bed, trying to take deep breaths to release the tension that was still in my chest. Becca wasn’t talking. She was simply staring blankly into space and then glancing around the room. There was that trapped look in her eyes again, and it bothered me so much that I got up and walked toward her. I placed my hand over her much smaller one, and she finally glanced at me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She sighed. “It’s nothing. I just don’t like hospitals much.”

“You don’t?” I hadn’t considered that, seeing how closely she worked with them.

“Yeah,” she said. “When I was younger, for a while, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I liked the idea of helping people and saving lives and all that. Plus, the pay wasn’t bad, and the respect you get…That was important to me for a while. I thought it would be great, and I was smart enough to get into med school.”

“Of course you are,” I said because I noticed the way she glanced at me surreptitiously when I said that. As if I was going to deny it, which was ridiculous. Becca was one of the most intelligent people I had ever worked with, and her genetic findings undoubtedly added to my research.

“So why didn’t you go to med school?” I asked, mostly because I wanted her to continue talking. I hoped it would make her forget her trepidation.

She shrugged. “I found out while volunteering during my freshman year that while I wanted to help people, I didn’t like hospitals much. It all seemed so stressful, and the sick people broke my heart. Also, the doctors…they all seemed so calm and clinical about the whole thing—even more so than a lab, ironically. But in a lab, you’re working with chemicals and organisms. These are people, and they were treated so…technically. Like they were just data. And so, after that….” She shook her head. “I just wasn’t sure. And it seemed like a lot of loans to be taken for something I wasn’t entirely sure of.”

That made sense. “For what it’s worth, sometimes, the only way we can stay sane is to dissociate from everything that’s going on.”

“Oh no,” she said immediately, looking stricken. “I wasn’t blaming the doctors or nurses at all. I was just saying—”

“It’s fine,” I said with a gentle smile, knowing she hadn’t meant any insult. “I get it.”

I understood because I had been on both sides of what she was talking about. I was a doctor, but with Heather, I had also been on the other side of the curtain, wondering why everyone just treated my wife’s disease with a casual technicality, as if she wasn’t my whole world, as if they hadn’t just announced that my world was ending. I hated the fact that they didn’t do more, just as much as I hated myself for not doing more. But at the same time, I understood there wasn’t much more they could do. The specialist did his best, and I couldn’t expect him to treat my wife in any special way just because she meant a lot to me. He saw people like her every day, and getting attached to any one of them would be disastrous to his mental health.

It was a treacherous thing to go through, and I didn’t wish that on anyone. I didn’t think I could go through it again. I couldn’t be with a dying woman again.

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