“Yeah – the one who’s getting married. Except she’s not getting married anymore.” I dropped the bomb without warning.
“What??? How do you know?” He looked baffled.
“This morning, I came in late to the ward and ran into her by chance.”
“So, you two are getting married now?” David’s eyes widened, and he grinned.
“Shut up! Listen, I gave her the phone number of the apartment, and she said she’d call in a few days. So don’t you dare disconnect the answering machine like you did when I was abroad.”
I seized the available time we still had and told him every detail of the morning encounter. David listened quietly till I finished, then asked, “So – think there’s something there?”
Before I could answer, a nurse burst into the doctors’ room and cried out, “The patient in room five lost consciousness.” We dropped our coffees and bolted to room five.The patient was one of those admitted while I’d been away. As we scrambled, David told me it was Anna Schwartz, around forty, who had come in with a heart attack a few days ago. Everything had been going fine – he’d even joked with her just before we met. But now the monitor showed a flat line, shrieking nonstop. She wasn’t breathing. We had no idea how long it had been going on, and we were shocked that the automatic alarm hadn’t gone off earlier.
“An hour ago, I checked on her – she was awake, she even smiled at me,” David murmured as he quickly scanned the chart at her bedside.
The nurse wheeled the crash cart next to the bed, and we launched into resuscitation, just like we’d been taught. It didn’t help. Chest compressions, ventilation, drugs into the open vein, then straight into the heart – nothing brought her back. We knew Anna was gone, yet neither of us could bring ourselvesto stop.The senior on call arrived twenty minutes later and pronounced her dead.
The whole time, a silver helium balloon – probably left by her family – floated above her bed. I stared at it while the senior filled out the forms.It was my first resuscitation on the ward. I’d done a few in ER before, but this time the responsibility had been ours. When it was over, I felt drained, hollowed out.
“She never stood a chance,” the senior said as we left the room, maybe trying to comfort us. And even though we knew he was right, we both blamed ourselves. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop feeling this way – guilty and empty. Maybe I’d feel it forever.The rest of the shift was just as grim. Another patient, an eighty-nine-year-old woman, died toward dawn. Her adult grandson and her husband, who was stroking her hand, were there when we declared the official time of death and wrote down the presumed cause. It was the first time in our careers that we’d had to officially record a death.Even though it had been a brutal night, I still couldn’t stop thinking about Lily. I kept circling back to the thought that she only had two years – twenty-four months. That maybe one day, not far off, maybe even in this very hospital, resuscitation wouldn’t save her, and a senior doctor would come to pronounce her dead. I thought about her test results too. God, I hoped there was still a chance.
I know that during the resuscitation, I shed tears. David noticed. He was the only one, amid all the chaos, who understood.
Chapter 6
Complementary Colors
After the shift, we rushed home. Normally we’d argue on the way about who got to shower first, but this time I lunged for the answering machine while David slipped into the shower without a word. The red light was blinking – five new messages.Back then, answering machines – called “electronic secretaries” – were rare in private homes. David and I had brought ours back from a summer student rotation at Bellevue Hospital in New York. As odd as it sounds today, owning one definitely boosted our social standing, especially with girls. Of course, it had its downsides too: mothers leaving nagging messages, and no excuse for ignoring them.
The first message was, of course, from David’s mom, complaining as usual that she hadn’t heard from him in two days, while his older brother called twice a day. The second was from my mother, inviting me to dinner, as always.
The next three messages were blank – arriving about a minute apart, all left the night before in a burst. I replayed them over and over, straining to hear something. Nothing. The more I listened, the more frustrated I felt.
“Your mom really misses you,” I told David as he came out of the shower wrapped in an army towel which he’d swiped from his brother.
“Forget it – she calls all the time, leaves messages everywhere. What can you do? A mom’s a mom. And your mom didn’t call? Huh?” he shot back.
“Of course she did,” I rushed to confirm.
“And…?” he pressed, dangling the question.
“I have no idea,” I admitted with a sigh.
“Three calls, no words.”
“Let me try – I’ve got sharper hearing than you.” David fiddled with the machine, playing the tapes again, but nada. He couldn’t pick up a thing either.
“You can erase them. If she really wants, she’ll call again,” I said, resigning myself to a dose of reality.
The phone rang, cutting me off. My breath caught. I asked David to answer, afraid my voice would betray me.
“Hello?” he said, paused, then repeated, “Hello?” When silence answered again, he hung up.
“Probably just a heavy breather,” I smiled.
“Didn’t hear a thing,” he replied – just as the phone rang again.
“Wait! Let me answer!” I yelled, summoning every ounce of courage.
