Page 15 of Wesley

Chapter Six

Wesley

Surgery for Marisol was extremely tense. She had two seizures almost back to back, and it was a race against the clock to release the pressure on her brain and keep the damage to a minimum. Cliff and I discussed her chances of a full recovery while he was finishing up. He was pretty sure due to the location and extensive bleeding that she was going to wake up with some deficiencies. It was going to take a very long time for her to recover from this, and there was a good chance, she might never be the little girl that she once was.

“Do you want me to talk to her mother?”

“No,” He sighed. “I think it would probably be better to wait until the girl wakes up. Once she does, I’ll be able to tell her more. I’d hate to give her false hope, or dash any that she might have.”

“Alright, sounds like a plan,” I replied.

We were finishing up with one of the nurses popped her head into the OR, “Doctor Young, you have a patient in the ED.”

“Critical?” I asked.

“Doesn’t sound like it. Donna said it sounds like flu symptoms.”

“Alright, thanks. We are finishing up here. Let them know I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“I will, Doctor Young.” She looked back over her shoulder as if someone was talking to her and then turned her attention to Cliff, “Doctor Michaels, you have a call holding, it’s Doctor Abrahams.”

“Ask him to give me two minutes. I need to take that call.” He turned to me, “Can you possibly let the girl's mother know that we’re done and now it’s a waiting game? I’ll find her and talk to her once her daughter is in a room. That is a call about a patient with a rapidly growing tumor on his brain stem.”

“Sure, I’ll stop in the waiting room on my way down to the ED.” We finished cleaning up, and instead of going to see Charlotte, I sidetracked into the recovery room. A nurse was typing on the computer beside her bed. Marisol looked so tiny and fragile lying there with the big white bandage around her head. I checked her pupils and tickled the bottom of her feet. She responded properly to those simple tests, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

As I walked out of recovery, the OR receptionist called my name, “Doctor Young, you have a second patient down in the ED.”

“Okay, let them know I’ll be right down.” I waved to her and went to the waiting room.

Charlotte was a mixture of weary and anxious. Her face pale, her eyes wide, and her movements jerky. I gave her the info I had and explained that Marisol would have another doctor from now on. Color me surprised when Charlotte wanted to know why I wouldn’t be her daughter’s doctor. I guess despite the way we originally met, she had decided that she trusted me with the care of her daughter.

I didn’t tell Charlotte this, but as I hit the stairs to get down to the main floor quickly, I thought over another reason I didn’t want Marisol as my patient. There was something about Charlotte that appealed to a deeper part of me. Maybe it was the fact that she was alone, and my empathy was responding to that. Quite possibly, it was because I found myself intrigued by her. I wasn’t sure why, but I had to admit that I was. Now, I needed to make sure that I didn’t cross the doctor-patient line further.

Down in the emergency room, I put thoughts of Marisol and Charlotte on the back burner and dealt with the two patients. One did have the flu, the other needed a cast on his leg after a failed skateboarding trick. I assisted with an obstetrics patient for a few minutes and was then called up to the pediatrics unit for a consult on a juvenile I’d dealt with when I first arrived earlier today.

I was walking down the hallway and glanced through one of the doors. I came to a halt and backed up two steps to see Charlotte pacing at the end of the bed. I wandered into the room, “Hey, how is she?”

Charlotte jumped at my voice, “Doctor Young,” She glanced at her daughter then back to me, “She hasn’t woken up yet.”

“She might not wake up until tomorrow,” I told her. “Right now, rest is the most important thing for her. Her brain will recover best while it’s sleeping. If she is trying to process sights, sounds, thoughts, she might overwork it, and right now we need her to rest.”

“I need you to be honest with me, Doctor Young. I don’t care how bad it is, but what am I going to be dealing with after she wakes up? Will she still know me? Will she be able to talk, walk, play? I’m totally freaking out right now.”

I sighed, “I wish I could tell you exactly what she’ll be dealing with, but I can’t, Charlotte. She hit the frontal lobe of her brain, that part handles so many things concerning memory and personality.”

“Personality? You mean she might act like a different person?”

“She could, yes.”

Her gaze went to her daughter, and her mouth hung open slightly. Her voice so soft that had I not been so focused on her; I might not have heard her. “But I don’t want her to be different, she was perfect before.”

I couldn’t hold myself back, I took her by the shoulders, “Charlotte, Marisol is still going to be your perfect little girl, she just might be perfect in a different way now.”

She began to blink rapidly, and I saw the tears crowding her eyes. I stopped being a doctor for a few minutes and instead became her friend as I pulled her to my chest. Charlotte curled her hands against my chest, fisting my shirt as she buried her face and cried.

I held her tightly, rubbing one hand up and down her spine, while the other cupped the back of her head. She fit so perfectly against me, and I’d never felt the urge to protect someone like I did her just then. What was it about her that made me want to forget she was the mother of a patient? What made me feel the need to hold her while she cried, or protect her against any further sadness? I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what I was feeling, I only knew that the feelings were different, and not in a bad way.

After she calmed, she started to push away. I regretfully let her go and stepped back, glancing at the door to make sure no one was there watching.

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