Chapter 10 #3
“I’ve got some paperwork to work on in the morning, so I have to leave first thing.
” Kahana said he had rounds in the morning, so he had planned to leave earlier, too.
“Good. That way, I don’t have to get out of a warm bed with you still in it.
I hate that more than you know. You look so warm and cozy that I simply want to go back to bed with you and forget the day. ”
“I know that feeling. When I get called out in the middle of the night, I feel the same way. Being a doctor had never been so hard before you came along in my life.” They decided to watch some television before heading to bed.
They didn’t watch any shows that they had to watch, but they did enjoy the occasional show when they turned it on.
For all the channels they had, they didn’t watch all that much.
“I have to get to bed. I’m exhausted tonight.
Dinner was good, and I’m still full from it. ”
“I know what you mean. I feel the same way, but not a stuffed kind of full. Just full because I ate well. I think that made more sense in my head.” He told her that he understood what she meant.
“Good. I can always depend on you to know what I’m trying to say.
It’s so nice to have you around all the time. ”
As they headed up to bed, his cell phone rang.
It was the hospital, and since he wasn’t on call, he told the service to call the doctor on duty.
She told him how she had tried, but he wasn’t answering, and it was an emergency.
Pissed off a little, Kahana got dressed again and made his way in to see what was going on.
If it were a delivery, he was going to be all right with that, but nothing else.
When you’re on call, you’d better answer the phone, damn it.
“Doctor Hathaway, I’m sorry that you had to be bothered, but we tried to call the doctor on duty several times without any luck.
I know we have the right number as we’ve had to call it before.
” He didn’t take it out on the staff and told them that he was all right.
“Mrs. Sheppard came in with chest pains. We’ve run an EKG on her, and it doesn’t show anything.
But she wanted a doctor to tell her that instead of us nursing staff. ”
“I’ll take care of it.” He went into the cubicle and saw that the woman was hooked up to the monitors and was doing fine.
She was eating a cheeseburger while sitting in the bed.
He asked her how she was feeling. “You look good. I’m to understand that the nurses said that your monitor showed that you’re not having a heart attack.
However, if that’s the way you eat all the time, it’s no small wonder that you have chest pains.
It might be just heartburn you’re having. ”
“I want tests done that show that I’m all right.” He told her that he’d do that, but her insurance might not pay for extensive testing since nothing was showing up so far. “I don’t care. I’d rather be safe than sorry. You run the tests and let me decide if I’m having heart trouble or not.”
“I can do that. First of all, you’ll have to wait a few hours because you’ve something on your stomach right now.
” That wasn’t true, but he’d been told that she does this sort of thing all the time when there was nothing wrong.
He’d heard that she was lonely and that was why she’d make her way into the emergency room about three times a month.
“I can run blood tests on you to see what I can find in the meantime.”
“All right. You do it all.” He would, too, just to make his point.
He’d taken care of this particular woman before and knew that she could be a pain in the ass if he didn’t find anything wrong with her.
“If my insurance doesn’t pay it, I’ll have words with them, too.
I don’t like this feeling of having chest pains. ”
“As I said, I’ll run what I can right now and see what we can find.
Your EKG or electrocardiogram shows me, and we’ll go from there.
So far, it looks good, too.” She asked him why she was having such pains then.
“I don’t know, but I can look into what I can find.
As I said, it might be a really bad case of heartburn or GERDS.
Gastroesophageal reflux disease can feel pretty bad, I’ve been told. ”
“You run the tests, and I’ll deal with it until then.
Unless you can give me a little something to tide me over.
I hurt like the dickens.” He said that he’d give her something small for the pain, but it couldn’t be too much since he was going to be running tests on her.
“I understand. You just give me what you can, and I’ll feel better for it. ”
“Do you have your gallbladder?” She told him that she did, and no one had asked her that before.
“Never? Well, we can run some tests to see if that’s it.
I’m not saying that it is, but we can have a look to see if it’s inflamed or not.
If it’s bad enough, and again, I’m not saying it is, we’ll be able to remove it, and that will solve your issues.
They can do the surgery in the morning, and you’ll be better than you have in a long time. ”
“Then I hope that’s it. I would like to feel better than I have in a good long while.
” He went out of her room and stopped at the nurses’ station.
After ordering some labs and a C-scan of her belly, he made sure that she had something for pain.
He wouldn’t give her much; she was a little bitty thing, but he’d make sure that she wasn’t in too much pain when they did the tests on her.
At a quarter to midnight, he knew that she was going to have to have her gallbladder removed.
It was quite inflamed and tender to the touch.
Setting up her surgery time made him feel good that he’d been able to find it.
Mrs. Sheppard was happy as well. Now she could get on with living her life, she told him without pain.
He hoped that this would do the trick. He felt sorry for the older woman.
After talking to her again about the surgery and how it was going to be performed, he made his way to the doctors’ lounge.
He was going to catch a few winks before morning when the surgery was going to happen.
He’d be there when she came out, but her care would be that of the surgeons.
He was never so happy to hand over a patient as he was this one.
She was nice and everything, but she’d been looked over too much.
He was hoping that she’d find that she felt so good that she’d not have to come to the hospital again.
On his way home at nine in the morning, he decided to stop and get some bagels. Debra could have one that was sugar-free, so he got two of them to join her. As soon as he was home, he remembered that she had things to do this morning and had left before he got home.
Disappointed, he ate his bagel in the kitchen and wished that he had a less constraining job than being a doctor.
Then he remembered the look on Mrs. Sheppards face when she left for surgery, and he decided he had the best job of all.
He was a good doctor, he told himself, and would continue to be from now on.