Doctor with a Heart

I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.  Dr. Artest, a specialist in emergency radiology, was droning on, but I was catching only little snippets, “…these little horns protruding from the pelvis,” he was saying, “…very rare manifestation of Fong’s syndrome…”

Dr. Artest and I were halfway through the daily morning readout that the faculty radiologist conducted with the on-call resident to be sure no mistakes had been made with the previous night’s cases.  He was trying to be a good guy and teach me something, but I had been up nearly all night and was too tired to concentrate.  I just wanted it to be over so I could go home and get some sleep.

It had been a difficult night.  First it was the barium swallow study on the eighty-nine year old inpatient, who kept spewing the stuff back out onto my shoes.  Then came the cervical spine x-rays on the woman who was hit by a car; the examination had to be reshot three times because the student tech couldn’t get the positioning right.  Then a hopeless medical intern wanted to know what I thought about some phantom opacity that only she could see on a chest x-ray.  On the way out, she commented on what a cushy life we radiologists had and audibly questioned herself on where she had gone wrong?  That boiled my blood!  When I finally did get a chance to lie down for a couple of minutes under the cramped eaves of the old hospital, I was fuming.  Stupid bitch! How dare she?  I should have called her on what she’d said when I had the chance.

I was in mid-yawn when I heard from behind me, “Way to go Andy.  Nice job last night.”  

It was one of the emergency room residents passing through the reading room.  He was out the door before I had a chance to respond.

“What was that about?” Dr. Artest asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I said.  “I helped him with a trauma, but really, it was just routine.  A few broken bones.  No internal organ injury.”

“Hmmm,” Artest mumbled.  Uninterested, he already had moved along to the next case.

I was walking out the emergency room door, heading for my car, thinking about how good bed would feel when I first lay my head down.  One of the medical interns, John Hampton, slid up beside me. 

“You’re very special, Andy.  You’re a doctor with a heart.” 

He gave me a couple solid claps on the shoulder, then peeled off towards the other end of the lot.  I knew John from around the hospital.  We’d never talked much.  Why was he complimenting me now?

I woke about five in the afternoon, dressed in surgical scrubs, grabbed dinner and was back in the hospital by seven that evening for my overnight shift.  It seemed like I’d never left.  I was just settling down in front of the lightboxes in the radiology reading room when one of the emergency room nurses poked her head in.  She was one of the pretty ones.  I had noticed her in the ER during my frequent forays to discuss a case with one of the emergency physicians.  In fact, I had been trying to think of a reason to talk with her, maybe get to know her and ask her out.  Now here she was, apparently looking for me.

She shifted her feet in the doorway, appearing a little uneasy.  The blue surgical scrubs she wore matched my own but hung a lot more pleasingly on her tall, lithe figure.  She had that Boston Irish look.  Her long black hair contrasted brightly with her pale skin and soft blue eyes. 

“You’re Dr. Rocheman, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Andy,” I responded.  “Can I help you?” I was trying to sound professional but still be smooth enough that I could engage her in conversation once whatever clinical case she had come to discuss was taken care of.  Hopefully, the ER wasn’t so busy that she’d have to run right off.

“No…it’s not that,” she said.  She glanced down shyly.  Her slim nose twitched a little, and her mouth curved into a slight smile.  “I heard about what you did last night, and I just wanted to meet you.  Not every doctor would have done it.  I mean…you know.  Some doctors are just so uncaring.  They’re just interested in what they can get out of being a doctor.  Not you, though.  You know, we…I mean the nurses in the ER…we’re calling you ‘the doctor with a heart’.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I wasn’t about to say so to this object of my dreams.  Instead, I softly demurred, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s fair.  Really, I think anyone would have done the same if they had the opportunity.”

I was hoping she’d tell me a bit more about whatever noble act it was that I was being credited.  My mind raced.  Had I made an especially difficult diagnosis last night?  Been especially helpful to one of the ER staff?  Maybe I had done something wonderful and just didn’t appreciate the importance others would attach to it.

“Humane…and humble too,” she said teasingly.  Her hair shimmered in the dim overhead light as she gently shook her head.  “You definitely are an anomaly in this place.  I’m going to have to get to know you.  I’m Lorna.”  She reached out and took my hand.

“That would be my pleasure,” I replied, feeling awkward at the cliché but failing to come up with anything better.  “Maybe we could have coffee…or something.”

“Yes...or something,” she smiled, as she turned and headed back for the emergency room. 

Well, this certainly was a mystery!  Apparently a happy one.  Why not just take advantage of my good fortune and not worry about it?  I’ll eventually figure it out. 

The next evening we met for coffee near midnight.  The emergency room was busy enough that we only had a half hour together, but that was enough for me to know that I was on to something good.  She was attractive, flirty…hot!  Late night coffee together became our routine.  At the end of the week, leaving the hospital one morning, it seemed natural when we both went to my car.  Neither of us spoke as I drove to my place, but Lorna slid across the bench seat of my old Ford until our thighs touched, and she caressed the inner surface of my arm in invitation. 

Later, exhausted by our lovemaking and the previous night’s burden of trauma and disease, just before she passed into sleep, Lorna said teasingly, “You’re an amazing man, Andrew Rocheman.  You save lives and you’re so sweet, too.  I know you don’t want to talk about what you did, but I want you to know that I think you’re wonderful.” 

The next thing I heard was gentle snoring.  I would have to keep us off the topic of what I had come to think of as “the incident”…at least until I found out what was going on.  It was bothering me that I wasn’t being straight with Lorna, but I was in awfully deep to just come clean now.

The following Sunday morning, my older brother Harry called.  Lorna was on shift in the ER and I was being lazy, drinking coffee and reading the Globe.  Harry and I didn’t see each other all that often, despite the fact that he lived just up the hill from the hospital.  When we did get together, we mostly talked about medicine.  He was a family physician in town.

“Hey, it’s Harry.”  I knew who it was.  Listening to Harry was like listening to my own voice.  “How have you been?” he asked.

“Great!  Things have been going great for me.  Work’s good now that I’m off night call.  I’m seeing someone new.  Lorna.  I’d really like you to meet her,” I offered.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Harry said.  “Things have been slow down at the office, just the usual sniffles and zits, so I think I can get away one evening. 

“That would be great,” I responded.

“You know, something weird happened to me a week or so ago,” Harry said.  “I was heading down the hill to get some dinner.  Just as I passed by the circle out in front of the hospital, one of the winos that are always sitting out there – you know the ones I mean…”

“Oh, yeah.  Someone really ought to do something about those bums sitting out there.  Having them right in front of the hospital like that kind of discourages the carriage trade,” I said jokingly.

“Sure…sure, but I’m going somewhere with this,” Harry continued.  “As I’m cutting across the circle, one of the bums just keels over in front of me.  I had to do some fancy stepping to avoid falling over him.”

“Must happen all the time.  You go out there about midnight and they’re all laid out on the pavement sleeping off a snootful,” I offered.

I sensed an uncomfortable hesitation on the line, as though Harry was getting a little annoyed at my interrupting his story. 

“So anyways,” he said, “I’m about to keep walking when I hear a shout behind me.  One of the drunks is cursing at me, saying I killed the guy.  Normally, I would have kept going, but there was something odd about the way he was lying, so I went back to check if he was all right.  It took a minute, but I saw he wasn’t breathing…and he didn’t have a pulse.”

“No!  Did you call for help?” I asked.

“Yeah…right.”  I could almost see his sneer.  “The other bums would have been a lot of help.  No, I gave him CPR on the spot.  What luck for this guy that he picks a moment when a doctor is walking by to arrest...because…you know…I got him going again.  I couldn’t believe it.  One of his booze buddies helped me carry him into the emergency room.  I called the next day, and they told me he was going to make it.  Amazing...huh?”

“Absolutely amazing,” I agreed.  “Did the folks in the emergency room say anything to you?  You know, when you brought him in?”

“Yeah, they asked who I was.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Yeah, as I was leaving…it was kind of nice.  One of the nurses yelled out to me.  She said I was a doctor with a heart.”