December
I was halfway through my third year when I realized I might have a chance to be named chief resident. The selection wouldn’t be made for another few months, but I knew the last two and a half years of intense study were paying off. Instead of hiding at every conference, I found myself answering questions, even making suggestions. “Why, you’re no stupider than the rest of us,” Frank had said to me recently.
What made it easy was that I loved what I was doing. I loved seeing patients and I loved doing surgery. In the operating room I was becoming more comfortable. Besides having done a total hip, I had removed a torn cartilage through an arthroscope, and had released a carpal tunnel. I had rodded a femur, plated a tibia, and wired an ulna.
It was heady stuff, and I was proud of what I had achieved. But to be appointed chief resident I would have to do more than just survive the next few months. I would have to shine.
Patti went into labor with our third child, Patrick, three weeks before Christmas. She started feeling contractions one morning around six, just as I was leaving for work. She asked me to wait five minutes, then five more.
Finally, after a particularly strong contraction, she said, “I think it’s time. We’d better go to the hospital now.”
I paged Dr. Satterfield and told him Patti was having her baby. He told me I could take the whole day off. “Let me know if it’s a boy or a girl,” he said.
I bundled up the kids, took them out to the car, and got them in their car seats. Then I went back inside and helped Patti. We dropped the kids at Alice Chapin’s and headed to Methodist Hospital. By seven, when she was admitted to the OB floor, Patti’s contractions were four minutes apart and getting stronger. By eight she was fully dilated.
“You don’t waste any time, do you?” said the nurse who wheeled her into the delivery room.
Five minutes later Bill Chapin and Frank Wales, holding surgical masks over their faces, showed up. They had been waiting to start a case down in the OR when Alice Chapin called Bill and told him Patti was in labor. They came to say hi.
“Mike,” Bill said. “How ya doin’? How’d that tibial plateau fracture go yesterday?” Then, almost as an afterthought, he looked at Patti who was by then up in stirrups. “Oh, hi, Patti,” he said. “You’re doing fine. Just keep pushing.”
Patti was well into her labor pains and couldn’t care less that two of her husband’s friends were watching her deliver. Patrick was born a few minutes later.
“Angry-looking little critter, isn’t he?” Frank asked as he watched Patrick scream and squirm.
“Well, it’s been fun,” Bill said, after the baby had been cleaned and suctioned. “We gotta go. Duty calls.” He turned to Kenny Billings, Patti’s obstetrician, who was delivering the placenta. “Nice job, Kenny,” he said. “Now don’t forget the lidocaine when you sew her up.”
Patti pushed herself up on her elbows. “Will you two get out of here?”
Frank looked at Bill. “I reckon she means us.” He shook his head sadly. “It must be the drugs talking.”
As they turned to go, Bill said, “Don’t worry, Patti, we’ll be by later this morning with coffee and donuts—hopefully in time for Jeopardy.”
“I can hardly wait.”
During the next two days there was a steady stream of residents in and out of Patti’s room. The nurses found it difficult to enforce the visitation rules since almost every visitor was a doctor. Patti told me at one time there were four doctors, two of their wives, the mother of one of Patti’s college roommates, a nurse, and Patrick in her room at the same time. She took it all in stride. She would grab Patrick from the arms of one of the residents, throw a blanket over her chest, and “plug him in,” as she called breast-feeding.
She came home on Saturday. There were so many flowers that we filled the backseat of the car with them. When we got home, Sue Manning, who had come over to watch Eileen and Mary Kate, helped me bring in the flowers. Then she kissed Patti. “Gotta run,” she said. “I’ll be back this afternoon.” She gave me a peck on the cheek and told me Patti needed peace and quiet. “Peace,” she repeated, staring intently at me. “And quiet.”
What was that supposed to mean? Did she think I was going to attack Patti that afternoon?
“I thought I’d give you at least ’til tomorrow,” I said to Patti later, when I told her of Sue’s warning.
“It would be your last act on this earth,” Patti said.
“Fine. Have it your way. You’ll come crawling to me in a day or two.”
She held her hands low across her abdomen. “Don’t make me laugh,” she pleaded.
On Monday I tried to get home as early as I could. I came in the back door about six and hung my coat on the back of a chair.
“How are you, hon?” I asked as Patti turned from the sink.
“I am so glad you’re home,” she said, drying her hands and giving me a hug.
“Me, too.” We stood there holding each other, her head against my chest. “Where are the kids?” I asked.
“Playing in the basement.”
I started to pull away, to call them.
“Don’t,” she said, still clinging to me. “Just let me stay here for a minute before they come up.”
I laid my head on hers and stroked her hair. “Long day?” I asked.
“Long life,” she said with a laugh. “When do I become the rich doctor’s wife lounging at country clubs, getting my nails done, and having maids make my bed?”
“Any day now.”
“Yeah, right.”
Just then Eileen came into the kitchen. “Daddy’s home!” she shouted. Mary Kate pounded up the stairs and the two of them ran over and hugged my leg. I bent down, kissed them both, tickled them in the armpit, and said I was glad to be home because I hadn’t spanked a kid in two days.
“Where’s the baby?” I said to Pat who had been wedged aside by the two little girls.
“He’s asleep in the crib.”
“Let’s go see your brother,” I told the girls.
“Yay! Yay!” they said, clapping their hands. He was their favorite toy. They liked to poke and prod and pull at him like he was one of their Barbies.
“You stay away from that baby,” Patti said. “If you wake him, I’ll murder all of you. The poor thing needs his rest.”
The poor thing needs his rest—and this from a woman who had just given birth to her third baby in three years, a woman who had defied her parents to marry a guy with no money, a guy who then tore her away from home, moved her four hundred miles away, and then left her alone for days at a time.
Patti was at the sink again, her back to me. I watched as she wiped away a wisp of hair with the back of her hand. Overcome with a sudden feeling of tenderness, I came up behind her and put my arms around her.
She could tell by the way I held her something was wrong. “What’s the matter?” she asked, trying to turn around and face me.
But I held her tighter and bent my head down closer to hers. “I’m what’s the matter,” I whispered in her ear, “and you’re what’s not.”
“What are you talking about?” She wiggled free and turned to face me.
I smiled sheepishly and held out my arms to her. “I was just thinking that for a guy who works a hundred hours a week at two different jobs and who has a wife, three kids, and no money, I’m a pretty lucky guy.”