Chapter Twenty-Nine
Today starts so early that when Raven, Myles, and I head through the hospital door, it’s still dark outside. A few times a month, our schedules align, and we end up on the same rotation, and today is one of those days. We start our early morning doing discharges for patients on the general surgery wing. I jot down drain outputs, follow up on morning labs, and then glance down at imaging recently received for patients undergoing small bowel protocol.
“Hey there, Scarlett. I’m Dr. Oliver.” I grab the patient’s chart. “How are you feeling?”
My voice startles her, and she sits up. “Please tell me I get to go home today.”
“You get to go home today.” I put her chart down and grab my stethoscope to listen to her heart and lungs. “It looks like you had a Sigmoidectomy. And you’ve had a bowel movement?”
“Yesterday, late evening.” I study her labs and then pull down the blanket covering her legs and lift her gown to observe the few laparoscopic incisions on her abdomen.
“Everything looks good. Your blood work is great and you can start on solid foods today, but I’d still like you to take it easy.”
“Will I feel better after this?” Scarlett lays back down on the bed and pulls the blanket up to her chest.
“People have had great outcomes after this surgery.” I smile and pat her knee. “I’m giving you the go-ahead, but before we release you, your physician needs to sign off on the chart. It shouldn’t be long.”
“Thanks, Dr. Oliver,” Scarlett says and waves as I walk out of the room and go to the next patient on the floor.
“Morning huddle is in fifteen minutes,” Dr. Parse says as he passes me in the hallway. “Go up to cardiac rehab and complete sign-outs there first. They’re backed up this morning.”
“Got it.” I take the stairs up a level, and as if they were expecting me, a nurse behind the desk hands me a chart.
“Room eleven, Dr. Oliver.”
I study the chart of the young male. Heart transplant. Noah Anderson. Why do I know that name? I knock once, walk in, and recognition spreads across my face immediately. It’s Keegan’s patient who he implanted a ventricular assist device in earlier this summer.
“Hi, Noah.” He sits up and smiles when he sees me. “I’m Dr. Oliver. It seems like my final exam is the only thing left before you’re discharged.”
“Hey, Dr. Oliver,” Nurse Lex says, giving me a side-eye. She starts checking on the patient.
“Noah,” I say after listening to his new heart and then moving onto his lungs. “I saw you a couple of months ago when you got your VAD. You look like a different person.”
“Are you sure I met you?” he asks, and the nurse raises his bed. Noah leans back. “I think I would have remembered you. You’re kind of hot.”
“Noah.” We all look at the door as his mom walks through, her forehead bunched up in annoyance. “She is your doctor. Show some respect.”
“It’s fine, Mrs. Anderson.” I open Noah’s gown to look at the large incision down his chest. “If Noah’s flirting game is this strong, it must mean he’s feeling better.”
“See, Mom?” he says as Lex comes to his bedside and pulls down the dressing covering the incision. He then looks at me. “You’re kind of young to be a doctor, aren’t you? You can’t be much older than me.”
“Well.” I go back to his chart. “I’m an intern, and before we let you go for good, your attending physician is going to pop in.” The chart confirms what I already suspected—that Keegan did the heart transplant.
“For the next six weeks, Noah, you need to stay within thirty miles of the hospital at all times.” I pull his blanket up to cover him again. “No driving and you’ll have weekly follow-up appointments.”
“Your nurse Lex will get you set with all of the medications you’ll need,” I add. “And go through instructions on when to take what.”
“How’s my favorite patient?” Keegan comes through the door with a big smile and walks to Noah. “You look great.”
“I feel great, Dr. Baldwin.” Keegan sits on the edge of Noah’s bed. “I was about to ask Dr. Oliver out on a date. But my mom keeps getting in the way.”
Keegan glances at me and laughs, and Mrs. Anderson once again scolds her son. “Noah, seriously. That’s enough. Leave this nice doctor alone.” She then looks at me. “I am so sorry, Dr. Oliver. It must be the meds.”
“I almost died. This is the new me.” Noah crosses his arms over his chest.
“I’m just relieved that your heart transplant didn’t affect your eyesight, Noah,” Keegan says, looking at me through the corner of his eye, and my face flushes with heat.
“His vitals and blood work look great,” I say as I hand Keegan the chart. “He’s been up and walking. Lex is going to sit down with him to go over the medications and six-week protocol.”
Keegan flips through the paperwork and then takes out his stethoscope. He listens, and the room falls silent. “That is one strong heart you have, Noah. Do you want to hear it?”
Noah’s chest expands as he holds a breath, but then he nods. Keegan removes the earpiece, places it in Noah’s ears, and lets him hear his new heart. Mrs. Anderson and Noah’s eyes fill with tears. Keegan stands, and Mrs. Anderson rushes toward him, wrapping her arms around him.
“I know this is your job,” she chokes out a sob. “But thank you for everything you’ve done for Noah. There just aren’t enough words.”
“I feel like my embarrassing mom took me out of the running with you,” Noah says. I glance at him, and he winks and then laughs.
“Take care of yourself, Noah. Treat that heart well.” I squeeze his blanket-covered foot and head towards the door, as I’m already late for the resident’s morning meeting. Keegan excuses himself and then steps out of the room with me.
“Hey,” he says. The overhead fluorescent illuminates the blue in his eyes. “Pretty incredible, right?”
“That was a full circle moment.” I squeeze Keegan’s elbow. “One of my first memories of being an intern was talking to Mrs. Anderson about Noah’s condition.”
Keegan follows me into the stairwell, and the heavy metal door slams behind us. The musty scent of old concrete and stale hospital air fills my nostrils. He grabs my wrist as I go to walk down the stairs, bringing me back to his level.
“And the guy has impeccable taste in women.” I go to laugh, but before I can, Keegan presses his lips against mine. One hand cups my face while the other wraps around my back. It’s a short kiss, but our first in such a public setting. My knees feel weak beneath me.
“I’m on-call in the ER all week, but are you free Saturday night?” Keegan says, fiddling with the stethoscope around my neck.”
“I think I am.” I pull at his white lab coat.
“I got two tickets to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at Carnegie Hall,” he says, squeezing my hand. “It’s a date.”
“It’s a date.” I press my lips together, suppressing a smile.
Keegan leans in and quickly kisses me again. “Have a great day, Dr. Oliver.” He squeezes my hand three times.
Keegan walks back through the door leading to the cardiac unit before I have a chance to catch my breath and say anything back to him. I smile and hold a hand on my chest to slow my heart as I head down the stairs.
Most days at the hospital are harder than they aren’t. I spend my time giving bad news to patients, holding the hands of people as they take their last breath, or hugging family members of those who didn’t make it. There have been nights I’ve gone home and soaked my pillow with tears from all I saw on that given day. The bright light in all of it is that I’m experiencing life with those walking a similar path to mine. Raven, Myles, Forest, and Keegan all feel this too.
Some nights, Raven, Myles, and I will sit in the living room, all scrolling through our phones not saying a word to each other because after what we saw that day, there’s nothing left to say. We still choose to be around each other, but the physical presence of someone who knows what this feels like is what makes us all get up the next day and do it again.
“Luna.” The sound of Forest’s voice brings me back to reality. “What’s going on? Do you always walk down the hall with a goofy grin on your face?”
“It’s been a good morning, that’s all.” We stop in the hallway, and Forest adjusts the stethoscope around my neck. The one that Keegan was just playing with.
“I don’t suppose you’re on call tonight?” Forest asks.
“Actually, I am. Why?”
He checks his pager and then walks in the other direction. He looks back at me. “I am too. Let’s try to meet up for coffee or something if it’s slow. I miss you.”
The rest of the day is more uneventful than the morning. We do morning rounds with our Chief Resident, Dr. Parse, and a new attending physician, Dr. Zahra Badawi. I then scrub in for a perforated viscus case. The afternoon is slow, so I have some time to study for the intern exam. At the end of the day, when most are leaving, including Raven and Myles, I greet the night interns, residents, and attendings.
At ten in the evening, Forest comes walking down the hall, with two coffees in hand. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I say as he hands me the cup.
“It’s been slow.” Forest opens a door to one of the on-call rooms.
I take a sip of coffee and then lie down, and Forest lies on the bed next to me. “It’s been like this all day. I got so much studying in.”
Forest turns to his side, and I do the same. “In my head, when you moved here, we’d see each other all the time. But lately, I feel like I’ve barely seen the whites of your eyes.”
“Yeah.” I look down and spread my fingers across the thin blanket beneath me. “It’s an adjustment, this being a doctor thing.”
“I remember it well,” Forest says, squeezing his temples. “Have you talked to Keegan recently?”
“Well,” I begin to say, feeling so wrong that I’m hiding things from my brother. “I mean, of course we talk. Why?”
“He’s been acting kind of strange,” Forest says. “He’s always busy when I want to hang out. And when I ask him if there’s a girl in his life, he gets all weird.”
Breath catches in my throat, and I swallow down the emotion. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Forest rubs his temple. “It’s probably nothing, but I’m very aware that our family is all he has. He and his mom haven’t spoken in a long time.”
Guilt hits me squarely in the chest, and I know I need to be the one to tell him. Regardless of the million reasons I want my relationship with Keegan to stay private, Forest deserves better than this. I’ve been monopolizing Keegan’s time, and I know that he and his mom speak daily, and Forest deserves to know these things too.
“Anyone special in your life, Luna?” Forest sits up on the bed and looks at me. “Did Matt ever ask you out?”
“Well—” I begin to say, but Forest cuts me off.
“Oh there is, isn’t there?” Forest ruffles my hair and laughs. “What happened to getting through your internship year?”
He has handed me an opportunity to come clean and be honest on a silver platter. I sit up too, knowing that this is the perfect time to let Forest know that I’ve fallen for his best friend. I can’t hold off any longer. I love Forest, and he deserves my truth.
“There is something—” Forest holds a finger up to me as his phone vibrates against the bed. He mouths something to me and then rushes out of the room.
A minute passes, and then two. I sit on the bed and glance at my phone and pager, neither of which is trying to get my attention. Then Forest walks through the door, and the minute I see his face, I push off the bed and rush to him.
“Forest, what is it?” I place my hands on his shoulders.
His face crumples before me, and then he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close. His chest heaves against me, and I rub his back.
“What happened?” I ask, pulling away, so I can look at him.
Forest rubs his palms into his eyes. “A patient of mine. Ended up in the Emergency Room tonight.”
I grab Forest’s hand, lead him to the bed, and sit beside him. Forest looks at me and wipes a tear out of the corner of his eye.
“She plays college basketball and has been having episodes of syncope.” Forest puts his head in his hands. “She was referred to me, and I did all the tests, and everything was okay. But then after a few more fainting episodes, she recently came back to see me.”
Forest takes a deep inhale, holds his breath, and then releases. “I ran more tests and discovered that she had long QT intervals. I saw her last week. I told her we were going to continue to follow this closely, and that it was most likely from the anti-depressant she was on.”
Forest glances at his hands, which are now shaking. I take his hand in mine.
“But today, she was on campus, having basketball practice, and collapsed.” He looks at me, his face looks broken. “She went into cardiac arrest. They did everything they could, Luna. But her heart was stopped for too long.”
I grab Forest and pull him to me. I wrap my arms tightly around him and try to take an ounce of his pain from him. I’ve only ever seen Forest cry once in our lives, and it was when our dad was diagnosed with cancer over a decade ago.
“She was twenty,” Forest says into my shoulder. “And all I can do is replay what I should have done when I detected the long QT interval. I should have done something.”
“Forest, you can’t.” I hold his face in my hands. “You ran the tests. You were going to follow up. You can’t go down the path of what-ifs.”
The weight of what we do and the pendulum swing of emotions we experience daily hit me. Some doctors can separate themselves from the patients we see, but that isn’t Forest and it’s not me either.
“I should go to the ER and talk to her family.” Forest wipes his eyes. “I’m sorry, Luna. Was there something you wanted to tell me?”
There was, but he’s at the capacity of what he can hear tonight. I shake my head. “Come find me after, Forest. I’m here for you.”
He nods and then rushes out of the room.