Lesson 21: Bad news will find you at your worst.
It’s the first week of October and I’m already approaching my burnout point. It hasn’t happened since I moved to Philadelphia, but this week has really pushed me past my surgical threshold. I’ve been moonlighting as many shifts as possible to save some money. And every time I opened up a patient, whether it be a routine hip replacement or a run-of-the-mill ACL tear, some sort of complication was waiting beneath my scalpel. While I love the challenge, my eyes feel like they’re bleeding and my hands are cramping and sore.
I need to sleep. For a day or two. I know I brought this on myself, not resting on Saturdays like I usually do, but I don’t have a single regret. Spending time with those kids makes me remember why I wanted to be a doctor in the first place. It makes me remember why I’m here and who I’m doing this for.
Of course, spending time with Devon is a damn good fringe benefit. There’s something about being with her that takes the edge off, like the feeling you get as you stare out at the sea with the water running over your feet. Devon has that effect on me. She makes things softer—easier to process.
My phone vibrates in my pocket just as I sink into the cushions of the Ektorp I bought last month from the huge Ikea off Delaware Ave. My chest feels empty—stripped of all energy and emotion and I pray to anyone who will listen that my patients are ok and that it’s not the hospital calling again with some new unexpected emergency. I’d have to dig deep. Too deep.
The picture of my mom with Sam on her horse in front of her appears and I accept the Facetime call.
“Oh, J.J. You look exhausted!” She’s yelling and I turn the volume on my phone down. I know better than to explain to her that she can speak in her normal voice. I also know better than to explain to her that she needs to back off the camera. Her forehead takes up half of my screen.
“Yeah, Ma. It’s been a rough week.”
“Did you get my last care package?” she asks excitedly.
I wish the answer to that was no.
“Yes. Thank you so much?—”
“Did you read the article I attached to the box of condoms?”
It was more like a crate of condoms. And the article she’s referencing had to do with the rise of STDs in New York City. And it was dated six years prior.
“Yes. I got the article about New York City from 2019. You know I’m in Philadelphia, right?” I ask. I shut my eyes and wait.
She sighs as if I’m a moron. “J.J. that’s two hours north of you. These things can travel?—”
“Ok, Mom. You’re right. Thanks for the condoms. Is Sam there?”
My mom doesn’t bother to cover the mouthpiece when she yells for my niece and the small beginning of a fatigue migraine crescendos to a full-on pounding skull-splitter. Nothing like a mother’s voice to bring on the cortisol. But then there is a rustling and my mother’s forehead disappears and the heart shaped face of my sister’s perfect offspring comes into view.
“Sammy, are you taking care of Gran?” I ask her and she shakes her head and gives me a look, then smiles off screen at my mother. The wallpaper behind her starts to slide out of view and I see her swaying ponytail as she passes the hutch filled with the white and blue china my grandmother left to my mom. The girl is on a mission, her tongue poking into the side of her cheek. She looks down at me, her eyes wide telling me to wait and then I hear the screen door squeak open and her footsteps on the front porch, the background is all blue sky, like my niece is floating in the clouds.
“Uncle J, she’s acting kinda weird. Her and Mom keep fighting about something called a morgue edge. I dunno,” she tells me, checking over her shoulder.
“A morgue edge?” I repeat. My exhausted brain is trying to process what Sam’s trying to tell me and I can see by the way she’s chewing on her rosy bottom lip that she’s upset about whatever the hell it is. Then it clicks.
“The mortgage,” I say more to myself than to her. I push up from the couch and stand, suddenly feeling nervous.
“Yeah. That’s what I said.” She rolls her deep green eyes at me.
“Sammy, love, can you put Mommy on?”
She nods and lets out an annoyed breath then holds me at her waist so that I’m watching the underside of her chin as she makes her way back into the house, passing light fixtures and door frames that tell me her route. When the onion-light fan appears on screen above her, Sammy looks back down andI make sure to give her my most comforting smile. If I wasn’t worried, I’d feel a little angry at my sister for letting the poor kid hear their arguments. Though knowing Sammy, she’d have figured out a way to hear them no matter how hard they tried to hide it. She’s a stealthy little thing. There’s not much you can keep from her.
“Love you, Uncle J,” Sammy tells me with a grin. “Enjoy the feet.”
I chuckle. “Will do. Love you, kid.”
My sister appears and I lift a brow. “Take me away from little ears,” I instruct, then continue pacing back and forth until I hear a door shut and see my sister look back at the camera.
“What the hell is going on with the mortgage, Jen?”
My sister lets out a breath.
“We weren’t going to tell you. You worry too much. Sammy is so much like you?—”
