26. BLAKE
BLAKE
I hurled the stack of test results across my office, watching the papers scatter like frustrated thoughts. My intern had printed them out, as if seeing the results on actual paper might somehow make them tell a different story. They didn’t.
The harsh glow of my computer screen mocked me as I read through the list again:
Electrolytes: Normal. Glucose levels: Normal. Kidney function: Normal. CBC: Normal. EKG: Normal. Cardiac enzymes: Normal. Chest X-ray: Normal. Urinalysis: Normal. Liver function: Normal. Thyroid panel: Normal. MRI: Normal.
“Not one fucking test tells me why she’s sick.”
Dr. Johnson stood in my doorway, his disapproving gaze fixed on the mess of papers carpeting my floor. He drew in one of his signature condescending breaths—the kind that made me want to remind him that I wasn’t his resident anymore.
“You’re getting too emotional on this one,” he drawled.
My head snapped up. “She’s a family friend.” I started pacing, deliberately stepping on the scattered reports, each crunch under my shoes feeling like another dead end.
“This is why you shouldn’t treat someone you have a close relationship with,” Dr. Johnson chided. “You need to hand her off to someone else.”
“To whom exactly?” I spun to face him, heat rising in my chest. “Immunology? No markers for immune deficiency. Primary care? She’s exhausted those options.
Cardiology’s looking at everything heart-related, but that doesn’t explain the last year of her life.
Which specialty would you have me abandon her to? ”
The words abandon her hung in the air between us.
Because that’s what it would be: abandonment.
I’d seen the defeat in Tessa’s eyes when she told me about every doctor who’d dismissed her symptoms, every specialist who’d sent her away with a clean bill of health and an implied pat on the head.
Every doctor who’d tossed her to someone else when they came up short for answers.
Johnson tapped his fingers against my desk, staring at the screen. “Her presenting symptoms are two fainting spells and cardiac arrest, correct?”
“Most recently. This started a year ago with some kind of flu followed by a viral infection in her chest. A lingering cough.”
He peered at me over his rimmed glasses, his voice taking on that patronizing edge that made my jaw clench. “A cough.”
“And rashes. Hives. Weight loss.” My voice rose with each symptom. “She has circles under her eyes so dark that they look like bruises. It’s like watching the life drain out of her while everyone stands around, saying she’s fine.”
My mentor clicked through screen after screen of test results. The clicks mocked me with each movement of his mouse, and I knew what he was thinking before he even opened his mouth.
“Doctors have been thorough,” he said, finally breaking the oppressive silence.
“Collectively,” I qualified. “One doctor orders one panel, then passes her off to someone else. Collectively, she’s had a lot of tests, but none of them tell us why she’s sick.”
“But it does rule out a lot,” he said, and I could sense where he was going with this too.
Every muscle in my body tensed, not wanting to hear one word of it while he stroked his beard, his expression maddeningly calm.
“The skin issues could be allergies. The cough and nausea, a cold or flu. Fainting spells often stem from dehydration, which can trigger cardiac events. As for fatigue …” He shrugged.
“She’s in her thirties. It comes with the territory. ”
Something inside me snapped. This was my mentor, the brilliant doctor I’d looked up to for years, suggesting that being tired was just part of being in your thirties.
“This is exactly what she’s been through for the past year,” I said, my voice deadly quiet.
“Every doctor dismissing her symptoms while she gets worse. No one taking the time to step back and see the whole picture. You know how medicine works. We’re all in our silos.
The pulmonologist looks at lungs, the cardiologist at hearts, but when something’s cascading through someone’s entire body?—”
“Have they ruled out depression?”
I stopped cold. “Tell me you’re not one of those doctors.”
“And what kind of doctor is that?”
“The kind who, when they can’t find an answer in their precious textbooks, decides to blame the patient.
Make them think they’re being irrational, or old, or just complaining too much.
” I stepped closer, fury making my words sharp.
“Just because we don’t have the answer doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s arrogant to think any of us has all the answers. ”
Johnson’s face tightened. “You asked for a second opinion. I took time out of my day to review her records, and you have the nerve to call me arrogant?” He jabbed a finger at my screen.
“This woman has had more testing in the past year than most patients see in a lifetime. Take it as a win that they didn’t find something terminal. ”
“I won’t?—”
“I’m not finished,” he snapped. “You know what’s arrogant, Dr. Morrison? Thinking you’re smarter than every doctor in this hospital. It’s a quality the board likes least in candidates for chief positions.”
He let that threat hang in the air for a moment before turning on his heel, leaving me alone with the scattered papers and the weight of Tessa’s trust.
I stared at the test results littering my floor, seeing them through new eyes. This is what she’d faced. Dismissal after dismissal while something inside her continued its quiet ravaging. My fists clenched at my sides, anger mixing with a deeper resolve.
I would not let this go. Whatever was destroying Tessa’s body, whatever had slipped past every test and specialist, I would find it. Even if it cost me everything.
But first, I had to break the news to her. After all the needles, the scans, the endless questions she’d endured at this hospital, I had to tell her we were no closer to finding her an answer. Or a solution. The thought of crushing her hope made me physically sick.
“Blake?”
Tessa’s voice—that sweet voice that haunted both my dreams and nightmares—cut through my dark thoughts. I spun to find her in the doorway, and for that one precious moment, suspended in time before she registered the devastation on my face, I cataloged every detail of hers.
Bright, hopeful eyes that still held traces of the vibrant woman I remembered from before all this began.
A smile—God, a genuine smile that made my heart stutter—and the way her body unconsciously leaned toward mine, as if some invisible thread kept trying to pull us closer together.
It was only then that I recalled the text I’d sent her, and I silently cursed myself for not warning her this was bad news.
For letting her walk in here, carrying that beautiful, fragile hope.
If I had, I wouldn’t have had to watch it all crumble. Her lips fell, her shoulders crumpled as if under some invisible weight, and her eyes began to water as she whispered, “Did they find anything?”
The tremor in her voice shattered what was left of my heart.
After seeing that smile on her face, this was harder to tell her than any diagnosis because I was the one that got her hopes up. I made her get back into the fighting ring. And now it was my glove that was about to knock her out.