“The Crown Princess?” Whit whispered.
“Same one.” Salas nodded slowly. “The family has made a private jet available to us for the trip to Vermont and would like to provide ground transportation on both ends by way of their security detail. They’re waiting downstairs now.”
Whit paced behind her desk. She muttered something to herself and shook her head, and there was a second where it seemed like she’d refuse. But then she reached into her closet and pulled out a pair of running shoes. “All right. I need to change. Forward me everything I need to know about the patient.” She motioned to Salas’s belly. “You’re naming this kid Whitney.”
“My husband is sold on a family name, but I’ll see what he has to say.” She glanced between us. “I’ve already told your medical assistant to rearrange your day and there’s a retrieval kit on its way up if it isn’t waiting for us already. Like I said, I’ll owe you one.”
Whit pulled Salas into a quick hug before heading for the door. “Hazlette,” she called over her shoulder. Her tone was all business. Not that I’d expect anything else. “Get the kit and meet me downstairs in five minutes.”
We boardedthe small private jet, empty save for the crew and the two men making up the security detail. They’d stationed themselves in a pair of seats at the back and cued up something to watch on a tablet.
Whit settled into a foursome of seats with a shiny wood table anchored between them and she set the ice chest beside her. The subtext was clear. I was allowed to sit with her, but not beside her. Got it.
“I understand the ground rules.” I motioned to the table. “I have no intention of crossing any lines.”
“That’s all very good to know,” she said. “Since I’m working very hard at doing the same.”
I leaned back and folded my arms over my chest. “You say this like there’s any question that you’d ever do anything other than follow rules.”
A shy smile brightened her face. “You might be surprised.”
“Then surprise me.”
She stared down at her hands for a moment and I wanted to touch her more than anything. Just hold her hand and promise all over again that we’d figure this out, even if I didn’t know what I was doing.
“There was a teacher in sixth grade who required a parent’s signature on an assignment every week. If we didn’t get it signed, we had lunch detention.” She made a face that saidsuch bullshit. “My grandmother had some issues with authority. She had zero interest in putting her name on anything official, ever, so I’d signed my own papers all along. I helped a few other people out when they forgot.”
“Hold on a second.” I held up a hand. “Little MissI Won’t Fuck You Until You’re Not My Residentran a middle school forgery ring? What’s next, you’re going to tell me you managed a back alley chop shop too? Is that why you’re a transplant surgeon? You’ve been fencing high-value items since before the training wheels came off?”
“I never had training wheels.”
“Of course you didn’t. Did you cut your own umbilical cord too?”
She rolled her hazel eyes. I had to grip the armrests to keep myself from throwing myself at her. “I handle the problems presented to me. That’s all.”
“And sometimes you bend the rules.”
“More than you might think, Hazlette, but only when the rules have enough flexibility to bend without breaking.” She tapped her index finger on the table between us. She removed her ring, the thin gold one with the little blue stone, and threaded it onto her necklace. Probably so she didn’t misplace it going into surgery. “Now, talk me through this procedure. Who does what and when do they do it, which instruments are we using, and what are we looking for when we get in there?”
While the pilot and flight attendants prepared the jet for takeoff, I went over our portion of the retrieval with Whit. She asked a lot of questions. Pushed for more specificity on everything. Made me start over twice.
When we were up in the air and she was satisfied with my understanding of the work, she spent the first ten minutes of this quick flight—less than an hour door to door—scanning the recipient and donor charts on her tablet, occasionally narrating some of the evidence she found noteworthy or quizzing me on the implications of the donor’s history.
Once that was done, she alternated between responding to emails and staring out the window. She was doing an excellentjob of directing her attention to anything but me and I didn’t blame her. This was the first time we’d been alone since everything that’d happened over the weekend, and the end was so close I could barely stand it. I was jumping out of my skin, and if I knew anything about the panic she’d shown in her office, I knew it was the same for her.
Which brought me to a question I’d had on my mind for weeks. “Can I ask why the ethics initiative is so important to you? Beyond the obvious need for these standards, why is it so personal that these rules can’t bend?”
She didn’t meet my gaze as she closed her tablet and clasped her hands. A shadow passed over her face and her expression tightened like something inside her had tugged and twisted the softness from her features.
After a quiet moment, she said, “My first year in Boston, there was a resident who wasn’t particularly strong, but she worked hard and developed from each rotation. She wasn’t interested in transplant, but she asked me to mentor her. I didn’t have much capacity at the time, especially not for someone who needed help selecting a specialty, and I encouraged her to find someone with a broader understanding of the surgical wing and everyone in it. But she kept coming back to me, asking to meet for coffee or talk more about transplant and my fellowship experiences.” Whit blew out a breath. “I’ve never liked turning away women in surgery. It’s so hard to find a mentor who understands the challenges and doesn’t immediately suggest you go into derm or OB if you express any concerns with the demands or the workload. God forbid you take issue with attendings who think residency should be played like the Hunger Games. So, I kept meeting with her.”
I didn’t love the direction this was going.
“Her third year was really rough. She struggled. Word got around that she wasn’t meeting expectations and”—Whitdropped her head back against the seat, another huge breath gusting out of her—“it seemed that there were a few attendings who took that as an invitation to run her through the gauntlet. Every time we met, I saw less and less of her. It was like she was becoming a ghost right in front of me. I told her about all the horrible, sadistic attendings I’d met along the way. The ones who didn’t teach, who screamed, who threw instruments, who degraded and humiliated. Told her she could get through it. We all got through it. She would too.”
Really didn’t love the direction of this.
Whit pursed her lips, shook her head. After a pause, she said, “She ended her life before finishing the year.”
