Chapter Eleven

A Change in Paths

What a morning! I had never burned a shaken baby’s abuser, and for the umpteenth time in several short days I questioned my sanity. Had I actually told a family I spoke with their comatose daughter?

I had no time for further deliberation. The serum potassium of a diabetic in the ICU had climbed to the life-threatening range. Following that, I needed to intubate a child whose asthma attack caused him to stop breathing. By the time I had a chance to think about Isabel’s tarot cards, my beeper sprang to life, alerting me to the urgent need of the ICU department chair. I headed down the hall to his office.

* * * *

Murray Sturgeon was a lean, sixty-year-old Jewish man with a crooked nose who looked like he had lost his share of fights with dockworkers. He had a rare awkward smile, more condescending than comforting. He was brilliant and was willing to make or break his attendings according to their intellectual veracity. He intimidated me. I sat across from Murray, separated by an antique leather-topped desk. The rest of the ICU staff made due with cheap, hospital-issued plywood. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves occupied the wall to my left, and to my right were his many diplomas, awards, and laminated newspaper articles detailing his achievements.

Murray had two pictures on his desk facing him at a forty-five degree angle, one of his wife and the other of his son. He had a manila folder opened and was thumbing through its contents. Apparently they represented my career, to date.

“You grew up in Chicago, Paul?” This was phrased as a question although he already knew the answer.

“Yes. What’s this about, Doctor Sturgeon?” We ICU attendings were all on a first – name basis, but I couldn’t address him by “Murray” while looking into those brilliant and unforgiving eyes.

He ignored my question. He and Izzy had a lot in common that way. “You worked your way through medical school as a janitor?”

I preferred “custodian” but didn’t interrupt. I nodded.

“You did your residency at the University of California, San Francisco.” There was more than a touch of respect in his voice. “How did you find your way to the frozen tundra?”

“My wife’s family lives out here. She wanted to be near them as we raised our son. Besides, she was tired of big cities.”

He shook his head apologetically. Murray was the one who pronounced Gabriel deceased following the drowning. Billie’s family still blamed me for the loss of their daughter. We hadn’t spoken in years. As he thumbed through my biographical data, Dr. Sturgeon came across a fact he apparently hadn’t previously known.

“You saved a mother and her infant from a burning car?” He asked this incredulously, even as he stared at the scars upon my right arm.

“That’s in my file?”

“Apparently so.” He read the photocopied news article to himself while I daydreamed about a time long gone. The skin grafts had disguised much of the damage to my arm, and I had regained its full use. The incident happened back during my medical school years in Chicago, right after I met Billie. When he finished he looked up at me with renewed respect.

“Any other acts of heroism I should know about?”

I thought back to when I dove into the bay in search of Billie and Gabriel. Billie and I were cross-country skiing upon the snow-covered ice, with Gabriel in tow. They fell through the fragile ice. I dove in after them. The story did not end in success. “No,” I answered.

“Do you want to tell me what happened this morning?”

I wasn’t sure which incident he was referring to. Did he mean my confession of the visit from the comatose girl or did he mean the assault upon meth mouth? Could he have found out about my confession this quickly?

“Mister Fender was treated by the ER staff for a burn to his neck. He claims you assaulted him.”

Oh, he meant the latter. That was easier to explain.

“I didn’t touch him,” I lied. “He threatened me, and I walked away. When he saw he wasn’t going to intimidate me, he grabbed my magic wand and burned himself. He nearly beat his infant to death. I guess he was trying to distract everyone from that fact.”

“Why didn’t you notify security?”

I told him about the busy morning. When I finished he gave me another apologetic look.

“This is the kind of thing that can end up in lawyers’ hands,” he warned me. He was right, too. Lawyers loved to defend pieces of shit like Justice’s abusers. I guess the deeds of those who sat across from defense lawyers in their plush offices made them feel slightly better about the morally bankrupt lives they had chosen for themselves.

“Larry informs me we’ll need to suspend you until this blows over.”

Larry was our hospital attorney. One of the good guys. I didn’t fight back. I had placed the hospital in a bad position. Child-abusing dickwads and druggies were allowed to burn infants, but I wasn’t allowed to reciprocate.

“How long?” I asked.

“I’ll let you know.”

I excused myself and went back to the ICU. I had a conversation to finish with the Hillingers.

* * * *

I climbed the stairs to the top floor and made a beeline for Amanda’s room. I saw Bob and Marlene sitting at either side of her bed. They faced each other as they held their daughter’s hands. They beckoned me in.

“We’re ready for you to disconnect her ventilator,” Bob spoke to me while gazing into the face of his only child. Marlene nodded wearily in agreement. They both appeared to have aged ten years in the course of the last week. The two were no longer crying and had resigned themselves to this fate. “We don’t want any surgical tubes,” he continued. “We just want her to go in peace.”

Technically I was suspended, but the Hillingers needed me. I gathered a nurse and respiratory therapist and together we disconnected Amanda from life support. The act was not very complicated. We unpeeled the tape from her upper lip and removed her endotracheal tube. The respiratory therapist turned the ventilator’s power button off. That was it. Amanda took a single breath when we extubated her. Then she took another. Then another. They were ineffective, isolated breaths, the very sound of death forcing its acidic fingers into the child’s open mouth. Amanda’s chest rose and fell slightly with each effort, and her oxygen saturation monitor slowly began its descent into the range incompatible with life. She was gone.

I left Bob and Marlene to grieve in peace. I opened the glass partition and left the hospital.