Chapter Eight
Eight
The restaurant was so dark as Asma stepped inside that her eyes didn’t have time to adjust before she bumped into a table. She apologized to the diners as the water in the goblet closest to her sloshed about, then turned and nearly knocked over a waiter balancing four plates of salad. Asma breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the private room in the back of the restaurant.
One of the unexpected annoyances of living with Maryam and Hassan was being badgered into joining their social engagements. Asma’s father and Iman never seemed to mind when she turned down invitations to family functions—in fact, it happened so often that they usually didn’t even bother asking her to join them in the first place. But Maryam had memorized Asma’s work schedule and seemed to be planning a spate of events around Asma’s availability. After years of tagging along with her big sisters, Maryam seemed to relish this new role as the one setting the social agenda.
As much as she might have preferred to spend her one night off in her pajamas, streaming something mindless featuring twenty-somethings on an island, Asma couldn’t refuse Maryam’s latest invitation. It was Hassan’s thirtieth birthday and Maryam had gathered a group of his college friends for dinner at a trendy new seafood restaurant in downtown San Jose. And much to Asma’s dismay, Maryam had made a specific point of not inviting her in-laws to the dinner.
“Aunty will complain that the food is bland, and the girls will put all our business up on Instagram,” she’d said.
But Asma wished for the company of Qureishis when she arrived and saw that the only spot left was at the head of the table—right next to Maryam’s friend Zahra, whose mendhi and wedding Asma had recently missed. Zahra’s eyes narrowed when she saw Asma.
“Oh, hey, Asma!” Zahra said, a fake, strained smile on her face. “So nice to see you. Glad you’re not too busy to join us tonight.”
“I told you she was pissed,” Maryam said to Asma as she took her seat.
Zahra looked at Maryam. “You told her?”
“Was I not supposed to?” Maryam said. “I thought that’s why you kept complaining about it to me.”
“Can I get a drink?” Asma flagged down a waitress, semi-wishing she drank alcohol so she could have something to get her through dinner—she didn’t understand the strange dynamics of Maryam’s friendships. It was going to be a long night.
From there, the conversation devolved as it does in a group of married couples, especially when most have small children.
“I can’t potty-train soon enough. I am so tired of washing someone else’s butt.”
“Kids are so disgusting! I found the toddler drinking out of the lota yesterday.”
Appetizers hadn’t even been served yet and Asma had already lost her appetite. What was it about being a parent that suddenly made it okay to discuss bowel movements at the dinner table?
“Sorry, Asma, I know this conversation is no fun for you,” said one of Maryam’s friends with a sympathetic look. What was her name? Asma had met the woman a number of times over the years at Maryam’s house—well past the time that she should have learned her name. It would be too awkward for her to ask for it now.
“Don’t worry about her, she’s used to being the only single one,” said Maryam.
“You never really get used to it,” Asma joked.
“Oh! That’s so sad,” said What’s-her-name. “Don’t worry, InshAllah you’ll find someone.”
“InshAllah,” Asma said, solemnly raising her hands up in prayer, aware that the women at the table viewed her search for a husband with almost the same gravity as one would a sick person looking for a bone marrow donor.
“You should really get out more,” Zahra said. “Maybe don’t turn down invitations where you can actually meet people.”
“She’s a doctor.” It was Hassan, from the other side of the table, who came to Asma’s defense. “She didn’t miss your wedding because she was sitting at home watching TV.”
“I know why you haven’t found someone,” said another one of Maryam’s friends. “Men are intimidated by strong, independent women.”
The women around the table murmured in assent.
“Looks like all you strong, independent ladies managed to find the last of the good ones,” said Asma, smiling so brightly that no one caught her dig.
“MashAllah, we really are blessed.” Zahra spoke with a level of gratefulness found only in a woman recently married.
Thankfully, by the time the entrées arrived the conversation had moved off the subjects of children and Asma’s single status. Unfortunately, it was on to another topic that gave Asma indigestion.
Farooq.
“I totally remember him from Cal. We used to play Street Fighter together.”
“We met when we were on the board of the MSA. Really cool guy.”
“We went snowboarding in Tahoe over winter break one year. He was really impressive on those double black diamonds.”
Asma wanted to roll her eyes as the men at the table jostled for position close to Farooq, each with a more elaborate false memory. None of these men had been friends with Farooq during the short time he’d been a student at Berkeley. Not to mention, Farooq wasn’t into video games, had never served on the board of the MSA, and had messed up his knee so badly playing soccer in high school that his doctor had forbidden him from snowboarding. She was amazed how his success had suddenly given everyone a license to rewrite history.
And now everyone wanted a piece of him. Especially for marriage.
“He would be so great with my cousin. She’s just a little bit shorter than him, and they both have nice smiles.”
“My mom is so bummed, he would’ve been perfect for my sister. His family is from our family’s village, but she just started talking to this other guy.”
“I would have loved to set him up with my niece. But she lives in Doha and long distance is so hard.”
Asma couldn’t believe the inane reasons proffered for why Farooq would be a good match. And that everyone at the table seemed to have forgotten that she was single. Asma knew that their failure to see her as a prospect for Farooq wasn’t rooted in malice. It was pure neglect. Men became more desirable as they aged—women, not so much. Career and income stability were seen as good qualities in men, but for women they were a liability—evidence not of competence or success but of a “strong, independent” woman whom no one wanted for the men in their lives.
“My sister-in-law Lubna has made Farooq her project,” Maryam said. “My mother-in-law just met his mother at a party and they got on really well. And our families would be a good match.”
Asma nearly choked on her drink at Maryam’s words. Asma could barely contain her indignation, although Maryam had no knowledge of their history. Suddenly Farooq was considered an ideal match, and the only thing that had changed was that now he had money.
Before she could say anything, however, Asma felt a sharp pain in her back, as though she had been stabbed. It was only when the waitress squealed, “Ohmygod!” that Asma realized what had happened. The waitress had knocked over a mug of coffee, a stream of it landing on Asma’s back and scalding her. It was an opportune—if painful—excuse for escape. Asma waved off Maryam, who was furiously mopping the coffee off Asma’s shirt, and excused herself to go home.
—
Since the beginning of her residency, Asma had learned that there were two kinds of patients in the emergency room: one-offs and repeat customers. The one-offs tended to be on the extreme ends of the spectrum—either having the most severe trauma or the most minor ailments. Car accidents or vertigo. Random allergic reactions. Heart attacks. Children with small objects stuck up their noses.
The doctors addressed these various crises, bandaged people up, and sent them on their way—the goal was to never again see the person in the ER. Asma sometimes wondered about how things turned out for some of the patients she saw, especially those with particularly memorable emergencies. Like the valedictorian suffering from a panic attack on graduation day or the civics teacher who had a pencil stabbed through his hand during the Pledge of Allegiance. She’d never forget the couple on their honeymoon whose sexual experimentation resulted in inflammation in some very sensitive places.
Then there were the repeat customers. People whose problems were neither as urgent nor as minor as the one-offs, familiar faces that showed up again and again with issues of varying seriousness. And it seemed Mr. Shepard had become a repeat customer.
It was a lingering fever this time. Asma recognized him immediately when he was admitted, noting with a certain amount of pride that the suture job she’d done on his split chin had healed up with a rather insignificant scar, all things considered.
“Dr. Ibrahim,” he said, when she pulled back the curtain of the exam room. He turned to another elderly man, who was sitting in the chair by his bed. “Henry, this is the doctor I was telling you about.”
Mr. Shepard’s friend, an old man with big Coke-bottle glasses held together with tape, peered at Asma. “Oh, the Indian doctor.”
“She’s Pakistani.” Mr. Shepard corrected Henry with a wag of his finger. “American. She was born here.”
Henry waved his hand like he couldn’t be bothered with the details. “I saw the Chinese doctor. Funny guy, always with the jokes.”
“You must be talking about my colleague Dr. Wong,” said Asma with a smile.
“Never been to China. Always wanted to go,” said Henry. “I’ve been to India, though. Gloria and I went to see the Taj Mahal in 1984. Beautiful, just beautiful.”
“I told you. She’s not Indian,” Mr. Shepard said, glancing at Asma apologetically. Asma shook her head to indicate she wasn’t bothered. It wasn’t the worst comment she’d heard from someone in the ER—and at least he hadn’t questioned her competence. Not like the handful of patients she’d had over the course of her residency who had demanded that they been seen by a “real” doctor.
“I hear you have a fever?” Asma took a seat on the stool opposite his bed and looked at Mr. Shepard with concern.
“I’m fine, was just feeling a little short of breath. They said I was running a temperature, so they brought me here,” said Mr. Shepard. “I probably got whatever it is from Henry.”
“You’ve been sick too, Henry?” Asma asked, turning to the other man. “Is that why you came in to see Dr. Wong?”
“We’ve all been sick,” he replied. “There’s a bug going around Green Meadows. People keep passing it back and forth.”
“And is that how you broke your glasses?” Asma asked, motioning to the tape holding them together. “From a fall?”
“That was nothing,” Henry replied. “I got up too fast.” He waved his hand, as if it were the last thing Asma should be concerned about. But Asma had worked in the ER long enough to know never to ignore an alarm bell going off in her head, and there was one ringing now.
“Weren’t there nurses at Green Meadows to help you get up when you were sick?” Asma asked. A fall was a serious concern at Henry’s age, and a nursing home should’ve known better than to let a geriatric patient with a fever get out of bed unaccompanied. But Henry only huffed.
“Once upon a time,” he replied. “But not anymore. It’s no real bother, though. I can get up on my own.” He exchanged a loaded look with Mr. Shepard.
“Staffing shortages?” Asma asked, trying to prod for more information.
“New owners,” Mr. Shepard replied. “They claim we’re fully staffed. And maybe they’re right. But the guy I used to share a room with got some pretty nasty bedsores from not being turned enough.”
Asma examined Mr. Shepard, ordered some labs and a chest X-ray, and went to find Jackson. Luckily, she didn’t have far to look. Her friend was at the nurse’s station, raiding a box of donuts.
“Jackson,” she said, and he nearly leapt half a foot into the air, as if he’d been caught raiding the pharmacy of its painkillers.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he replied, a hand on his chest. “I thought you were one of the nurses. They get so territorial about their baked goods.”
“You know that patient that you reported on in our meeting a few weeks back, the one who presented with a fever and stomach pains? The one whose family lives on the East Coast?” She followed him into the doctors’ lounge, where he dropped onto one of the sofas.
“How on earth do you remember that?” Jackson asked, but Asma only gave a little shrug.
“What nursing home did he live in?” Asma asked.
“I don’t remember,” Jackson replied. “Some of us don’t have savant-like recall of minor details, Asma.”
“Can you look it up?”
“I have like fifteen minutes tops until Mrs. McKinney’s labs come in,” he complained.
“Jackson,” Asma replied, “look it up or I’ll narc you out to the nurses for stealing their sugar.”
Jackson gave a long sigh and then took a seat at one of the nearby computers. He typed with one hand, eating his donut with the other.
“Green Meadows Care Center,” he said after a moment, spinning around triumphantly on his stool. “Happy now?”
“Oh God, I have two other patients who live there presenting with similar symptoms. You treated one of them for an injury from a fall,” Asma said. She glanced up when the lounge door opened and Dr. Saucedo appeared. She nodded at Asma, who motioned for her to come over.
“It could be a common virus,” Jackson said. “Nursing homes can be like petri dishes when something gets in.”
“I don’t think so,” Asma said. “We haven’t seen any of these symptoms in the general public. Whatever it is, it’s confined to residents of Green Meadows.”
“What’s going on?” Dr. Saucedo asked.
“We have a cluster of nursing home residents coming in with similar symptoms over the past month or so,” Asma replied. “Stomach pains, fever, shortness of breath.”
“And nobody at the facility has taken any notice?” Dr. Saucedo asked.
“The residents claim they’ve cut down on the nursing staff since the place was sold,” Asma replied. “It’s possible that they’re too short-staffed to realize that there’s a problem.” Dr. Saucedo nodded, and thought for a second.
“Bacterial pneumonia?” Dr. Saucedo asked.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Asma replied. “Maybe Legionnaires’?”
“That’s a sound theory, if it’s localized to one facility,” Dr. Saucedo replied. “How would you confirm?”
“A simple urine sample should do the trick,” Asma said with a snap of her fingers. She felt a thrill as all the pieces came together, a medical puzzle solved.
“Legionnaires’ disease?” Jackson asked, slumping down in his seat. “Damn, Asma. How would you even think to diagnose that?”
“Taking the bird’s-eye view,” said Dr. Saucedo, nodding with approval as a nurse came in, summoning Jackson with Mrs. McKinney’s labs. “It’s good work, Asma,” she said, when Jackson had left and the two of them were alone. “Exactly the kind of instincts we’re looking for here. I know you’re planning on relocating to Sacramento after residency, but I just want to reiterate one more time how much I’d like you to stay.”
“Thank you, Dr. Saucedo,” Asma said, swelling with pride. She thought about the past few weeks. She felt completely in her element—in spite of her current living arrangement with Maryam. It was a relief, in some ways, to have Iman and her father two hours away by car. To not have to be the responsible one in the house—figuring out what they were going to eat for dinner, administering her father’s medication, and making sure that they weren’t spending money they didn’t have on things they didn’t need. And, most importantly, to not constantly be reminded of how her father had veered her life off course, especially after crossing paths with Farooq once more. “To be honest, I’m not set on the move to Sacramento,” Asma said, surprising herself with the decision she felt herself making in that moment. “If a position does open up here in the next few months, I would love to be considered for it.”