Asher
Happiness isn’t a goal one reaches, like climbing the peak of a summit. It’s the tide. Inevitably, the lows rise and the highs
fall.
—My Therapist
Surgeries like the one I just performed with Geoff are the reason I became an OB-GYN. The woman was suffering, and I fixed
it. The operation was pristine. No complications. The anatomy was textbook, with tissue that melted away like butter. Estimated
blood loss was about two red blood cells.
Perfect case.
But I can’t quite glory in it, this proof that I’m a fine surgeon despite what Dr. White might think. Too keyed up.
Jocelyn’s mere proximity is enough to set me on edge, so her sitting at the head of the bed was a tad unsettling. She rips
my emotions open—a cat’s claw across a bag of birdseed.
Feelings are dumb, and they’re spilling out of me in torrents. Rage. Jealousy. Misery. Disbelief. Hurt.
What’s missing? Hope. All hope is extinguished.
She slept with someone else last night.
I enter the men’s locker room with a violent yank on the door, ripping the paper scrub cap off my head at the same time.
Geoff’s sitting on a bench near the lockers, legs outstretched before him, ankles crossed. “I told you she was with someone
else. You didn’t believe me.”
Without a word, I storm past him and arrive at the sinks, washing the latex scent of surgical gloves from my hands. No, I
didn’t believe him. Didn’t think she’d actually do that. Is she trying to kill me?
Geoff stands. “See? Now you know. You really can move on.”
I pull paper towels from the dispenser, then meet his eyes.
He says that like it’s easy. Like moving on is as simple as stepping on an auto walk at the airport.
A man doesn’t simply move on from a woman like Jocelyn Mattox.
I’ll have to untangle her, one thread at a time, and each thread is barbed with the fractured
hopes of the relationship we’ll never have. It’s all entwined hopelessly together, making extraction both time-consuming and
painful.
I’m an idiot for letting her dig this deep, this selfish girl who’s incapable of love.
Geoff’s brown eyes hold mine for no more than four seconds before he glances away and rubs his face. “We still doing the pool
tomorrow?”
I toss the wet paper into the trash. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“Do you think she’ll show?”
“Yes.”
I know Jocelyn. Based on that interaction in the OR just now, she has something on her mind, but whatever it is, however much it bothers her, she’ll never say it. Instead, she’ll come to my house tomorrow and pretend nothing’s wrong. She’ll hide like she always does.
I can’t believe she slept with someone else last night. The gnawing acidy feeling kicks up a frenzy in my stomach, and I yank
the bottle of Tums from my locker. Chalky raspberry this time. Appetizing . . .
There aren’t enough Tums in the world to make this pain go away.
She used me. Compared me to a luxury sports car. Practically ignored my confession of love. Then let another man screw her.
All in the space of five days. That’s how little she respects me?
Someone else was inside her body last night. Did she think about me while she did it?
Ha. Wow. I’ve gone full Alanis Morissette. That’s fun.
But I hate how much it hurts, how jealous I am. I want to break things. I want to go on this date tonight and fuck this girl
so thoroughly that I can’t remember my own name, let alone what Jocelyn’s doing with her body.
But I won’t do that.
Because I’m not an asshole.
Stupid to choose a girl I work with as my first date when she’s so obviously serving as a rebound.
Geoff sighs. “If you get lucky tonight, maybe you won’t care so much.”
“I’m not getting lucky tonight.” I stride toward the exit.
Geoff follows. “You never know.”
“Yes, I do.”
I hate everything. Every. Fucking. Thing.
Before I reach the door, a nurse barges through it. Whoa. “Uh,” I say. “This is the men’s room—”
“I know.” She pauses to catch her breath. “You weren’t answering your pages. Doctor White needs you in the OB OR. Now.”
Hold the phone. Dr. White needs me? What the fuck? Someone’s dying. It’s the only explanation. And now I’m about to have a heart attack.
We rush for the OR, and she fills me in on details along the way. Emergency C-section for non-reassuring fetal heart tones.
Large baby. Difficult delivery. Bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.
“She’s already lost a liter of blood,” she says. “The one thing she said before they put her to sleep was ‘Don’t take my uterus!’
But Doctor White is already talking about a hysterectomy.”
Fuck.
When I scrub in, Dr. White is barely able to keep up with the bleeding. The anesthesiologist is emergently hanging blood products.
The patient is intubated and under general.
“Thanks,” White says, voice calm despite the pool of blood he’s operating in. “Needed a second pair of competent hands for
this one, I think.”
Competent?
I shouldn’t pause on that, given the emergency occurring before my eyes, but this guy doesn’t give compliments. At least,
not to me. Has the world gone wonky?
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Thought placental abruption at first. Then I got in here and saw she ruptured her uterus.” He chuckles darkly. “So much blood
I thought I must have somehow gotten into the goddamn aorta, but nope.”
“We’re at fifteen hundred cc blood loss, Doctors,” a nurse says behind White.
Now that I’m helping, the surgical field is clear enough to visualize the multiple fountains of blood that pour from this flayed uterus. Christ.
“I’m going to take her uterus,” he announces to the entire OR.
Against her consent?
“Hang on,” I say. “We haven’t tried everything yet.” Cesarean hysterectomies aren’t simple surgeries under the best of circumstances.
There’s true risk of morbidity. Mortality.
Plus, the patient wants her uterus.
“Organ is bleeding,” White replies, returning to his usual are-you-an-idiot? voice. “Cure is removal.”
I hold a hand over the field. “Let’s try to get it under control first. Even if we can’t save her uterus, it’ll make the hyst
easier.”
White nods, and we get to work. We try to sew the organ back together with brisk, efficient throws of suture. Both of us attack
it at different angles, tying knots tight enough to make the muscle turn white. It still bleeds, but the fountains slow to
trickles. I snag a particularly helpful bit that closes off one gushing artery.
“Nice move, kid,” White says.
“Two liters, Doctors.”
“Is the hysterectomy kit open?” White demands.
No, it’s working! Can’t he see that? If we take her uterus, we steal her fertility. She’ll wake up to a world of devastation.
I work faster. Clamp, clamp. Knot, knot.
“Just wait.” I start a baseball stitch along the torn pieces. Inside to outside, inside to outside.
“Two point five liters.”
Gradually, it comes back together, and the bleeding diminishes to nothing.
White lets me work, proving to be a phenomenal first assist. When the uterus looks like a uterus again—well, a Halloween-y version of one, anyway—White raises his blue eyes to take me in.
Is that a twinkle I detect behind his eyewear? “Impressive work, Doctor.”
Impressive?
“I didn’t think we’d get it.” He holds his hand out for the needle drivers, throwing a few more sutures so we’ll both sleep
better tonight.
I chuckle, cutting the thread for him. “She wanted to keep her uterus, right? Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Or some
shit like that.”
He barks out a laugh. “Had a case like this before. Long time ago. I took her uterus.” He leans in closer. “She cried to me
for weeks. It was such a headache.”
I nod, unsurprised. Stories like that are why we have terrible reputations now. Look at me, tearing down the system, one patient
at a time.
“I like your style, son,” he says. “Heard you were good in the OR. Nice to see it’s actually true.”
He— He’d heard . . . what now?
“So much is changing around here, but looks like they’re still training doctors the right way.”
Well, perhaps a little more humanely than the old days, but yes. My training was excellent.
“Did you know they’re removing the transcription service?”
I didn’t even know we had a transcription service. Such an antiquated way to chart—dictate over the phone, so someone can
type it out for you? Why would anyone do that? Faster just to type it myself, especially with templates.
I retract tissue so he can close the fascia. His technique is flawless, but I suppose that’s what thirty years of experience
will get you. “I didn’t know,” I say. “Don’t really use it.”
He hums. “Us old guys never learned to type like you young’uns, you know. Why do you think I pushed so hard for them to pay for that Dragon software?”
Omg.
OMG.
Ha.
Of course.
All the puzzle pieces fall together in my mind. This old man with connections and clout doesn’t want to type, so he persuades
some upper-management guy that the hospital needs a speech-driven charting tool. Because he’s old AF. Stuck in his ways. Stubborn.
His eyes glint playfully. “Convinced them they’ll save money this way.”
“Will they?”
He chuckles. “Probably not. But if they make me type my operative notes, I’m retiring, and I know several of the old guard
will do the same. Told them if they want to prevent a mass exodus, they’ll help a fellow out.”
A laugh is all I can manage. Of course admin’s pushing it on us—they want to justify their investment. Here I thought this
Dragon crap was being foisted upon us for nothing, when really, the hospital is begging us to appease those who can’t keep
up with the times. I thought this man believed I was a child-doctor-idiot, but he’s just used to medical hazing.
He would have taken her uterus. I saved it.
Well, hell. I’m not inadequate after all, am I? I’m just young. I’m innovative. I can type seventy words per minute. I save
uteruses.
I do things differently. Nothing wrong with that. Why did it take me so long to understand that? It’s . . . freeing.