“Palliative and comfort care?” Lillian asked, equally aware this was a path most parents wouldn’t take.
“No. They wanted everything done. They spent the last year touring every medical center and every crystal waving magic shaman in the country. Nothing worked, and they came back this week. She was in bad shape, and they remembered me.” Clarissa closed her eyes.
Lillian took her hand. “What did they say?”
“That I killed their daughter. I didn’t push hard enough for a timely consult.”
“You know it’s grief and denial. You said she had six months of Lyme disease treatment before you saw her the first time. You got her a very speedy consult for months of symptoms.”
“They told me they were going to sue me.”
“I get that they’re out of their minds with grief, but it sounds like they have a long list of people to sue. They should start with those quacks who gave them months of fake Lyme disease treatments. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I DO blame myself. I do.”
“We always do. It’s part of being a doctor. We don’t let go of our sins, real or imagined.”
“What sin do you have? You just pulled some crazy rheum diagnosis out of thin air this month. Everything I touch seems to go badly. The October baby died and came back to life while I was calling time of death. Then the acreta baby on Veteran’s Day. They’re calling me ‘The Black Cloud.’”
“Everyone is the black cloud at one time or another.” Time to confess her own sin that had decided to stare her in her face today. “When I was an intern, I got called down to a C-section.”
“Down?” C-sections were typically performed on the same floor as the NICU. Down meant not in the OB OR and not one floor up in surgery.
“Yeah, an ER doctor had performed a C-section in an ambulance. On another ER doctor.”
Clarissa covered her mouth, “I did hear about this.”
“Yeah, it was horrible, and I was the only pediatrician with two dying babies. The ER was out of its depth, and it was on my shoulders until more help arrived. Only one of the babies made it.”
“Twins?”
“Yes. I intubated the boy twin while Dr. Yates intubated the girl… then I had to make a choice. I picked the girl. I started lines on her first.”
“You had to… girls survive more often.”
“Does that sound comforting? I abandoned the boy because her chances were better? I let Daniel Steadman’s first-born son die?”
“There wasn’t anything you could have done.”
“Which was my defense. I had to present at ER, Peds, and OB morbidity and mortality conferences. I had to meet with hospital Risk Management, the Sentinel event committee, and the hospital board—which included Daniel Steadman. I spent the rest of my intern year justifying a judgment call I made in the hardest ten minutes of my medical career and got my every action dissected second by second over and over again.”
“None of this was your fault. You're a grunt. And the situation sounded crazy.”
“He’s still dead, even if it’s not my fault. It doesn’t make me feel better or lessen the burden I carry. It’ll be three years tomorrow.”
“How did you go on?” Clarissa asked, seeing where Lillian was going with this.
“You put one foot in front of the other. You try not to let it consume you. You learn to live with what you cannot control. The choices I made. The things I had to do… it was what needed to be done.”
She paused for a long second, listening to her own words, so similar to what Sean had said.
Even today, she was seized by the desire to tell him about it. Tell Sean Gene Murphy, the man who had been her lover and friend. Let him in again, be part of her good and bad, the dark spots and the sunshine.
She shook her head. Sean was later because Clarissa needed her now. Clarissa needed to refill her sunshine, and if Lillian didn’t have any of her own, she knew where to find the sunshine. "How about this? I have a patient. I know her family through the free clinic. She gave birth to the cutest Puerto Rican baby. Why don't we go look at her baby, and I'll take you out to lunch afterward?"
"Skip lecture and the reheated turkey? You must be feeling rebellious.” Clarissa was able to almost smile.
"Oh, absolutely. Chinese or Korean food?The usual Thanksgiving tradition for people whose parents were horrible at making turkey, like mine. "
