The doctor’s mouth tightens.
“It has to be,” he says, like repeating it makes it true.
“It wasn’t,” she says again, and now she finally turns her head toward me for half a second, like she needs an anchor. Her eyes are bright. Not wet. Bright with fury.
“Perhaps you misplaced it,” the doctor says.
Erica’s eyes snap back to the doctor in disbelief.
“Misplaced it?” she says loudly. “You’re telling me you think I lost critical paperwork for my dad?”
“It happens, Ms. Crawford.”
My anger immediately narrows in on the doctor with teeth too big for his mouth, and the look on his face that says Erica is anything other than ruthlessly organized.
But Erica seems to need to handle this on her own. She’s practically seething.
“I didn’t misplace anything,” she says, her voice full of venom. “Ever. And definitely not paperwork that might make the difference in whether my dad lives or dies.”
Dr. Shah lifts his hands slightly, a gesture meant to soothe.
“I understand this is upsetting,” he begins.
“Upsetting?” Erica barks a laugh. It’s not humor. “My dad is bleeding internally.”
I feel the punch to my ribs when she says it.
I didn’t know that part. I don’t know any details yet, not beyond the panic in her voice on the phone and the fact that she’s here again, in a waiting room again, while her father is in the hospital.
My jaw tightens.
Erica’s gaze doesn’t waver.
“I called your office two weeks ago,” she says. “I called because he was exhausted. Because he didn’t have an appetite. Because he looked gray. Because he was sweating at night. And whoever I spoke to told me it was a normal part of recovery. Thatyourelayed the message that it was a normal part of his recovery.”
Dr. Shah’s expression shifts, just a fraction.
“I wasn’t involved in that call,” he says.
“Because you couldn’t be bothered,” she snapped.
“And those symptoms,” the doctor continues, “fatigue, appetite changes—after a major surgery can be expected. I couldn’thave known from that alone that he might have a delayed hemorrhage.”
“No, that’s what the CT scan was for,” Erica says, and her voice dips lower, steadier, like she’s building something brick by brick. “Right? To catch problems you can’t ‘know’ from symptoms.”
“Yes,” he says.
Erica’s hands shake once, and she forces them still.
“And I would have brought him in for one,” she says. “If I’d been told about it.”
“You were,” Dr. Shah says, and now his tone has an edge. The kind of edge people use when they want to end the conversation here and now.
His eyes flick down his nose at Erica. “It is the caregiver’s responsibility to follow up—”
“And it’s the doctor’s responsibility,” Erica cuts in, voice rising, “to tell the caregiver what the follow-ups are. And if you’d bothered to take my call when I phoned your office instead of brushing me off, you might’ve realized thatyounever ordered a CT scan.”
Silence snaps tight between them.
