HERB AWOKE WITH A headache. He kept his eyes shut. The brightness was irritating. Did I have too much to drink last night, he wondered. Herb remembered the restaurant though not the wine they ordered, which was odd. He couldn’t remember what time he went to bed either. Guess I did have too much to drink. Oh well, it’s Sunday. He went back to sleep.
He woke again determined to brave the light. Squinting, he saw a white tile ceiling with bare fluorescent bulbs. He turned left and bumped his nose against the chrome side railing of a gurney. A medicine resident he recognized walked by. Her name eluded him. Dressed in scrubs, she was staring at him. Her eyebrows were furrowed. Oh no…this isn’t a dream, is it.
Herb turned the other way and saw Cecilia, Martin, and Allison. He sat up, discovered he was clothed only in a hospital gown, open in the back, and immediately lay down.
“What’s going on?” he cried out.
No one answered. Martin and Allison looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
“What’s happening?” he implored them.
“It’s your turn to tell him,” said Allison to Cecilia. “I did it last time and Martin the time before.”
“Please, Cecilia! What am I doing here?”
Cecilia wearily explained that after dinner, on their way to the car, a Muni bus had nearly hit them. Herb pushed her out of the way then jumped, but not soon enough. As the bus swerved, it delivered a glancing blow that knocked him off balance. He landed on his head and was transiently unconscious. Once he came to, Herb was confused, unable to remember anything that had occurred after dinner. Six hours later in the City Hospital ER, he was asking his family every five minutes where he was and how he got here. After each explanation, he was again surprised to hear the news. Cecilia told him a CT scan of his brain had been done. The ER physician said it was normal.
“Then I can go home.”
His children and wife lunged toward him, yelling “No!” in unison.
Herb touched a cherry-size swelling on the side of his skull that throbbed painfully. He acquiesced.
Since all the ER rooms were filled with more gravely injured patients, Herb spent the night in the hallway. He didn’t complain. He pretended to sleep so he wouldn’t see the passing house staff’s morbid curiosity. Yes, it can happen to us too, he wanted to scream.
In the morning, Jared Hart, sans his retinue of surgical residents and students, came by and carefully examined him.
“No motor deficits,” Hart concluded. “Are you thinking clearly now?”
“More or less,” Herb hedged. To admit otherwise would be beyond mortification. But how he could not be truthful? His mind, not just his reputation, was on the line.
“I still have amnesia for about six hours of last night. Otherwise, my memory seems intact.”
Hart rubbed his chin skeptically.
“I’m not quite playing with a full deck. Maybe it’s stress from the trauma?”
“That’d be par for the course. But if you’re not back to normal in a few days, you need to be seen by a neurologist. OK?”
“Sure,” said Herb, noncommittally.
“I’m serious about that, Herb. I’m not trying to cover my ass. I’m trying to cover yours.”
Cecilia picked him up at the ER entrance. On the ride home, he insisted he was fine.
“I think there’s still time for me to round on the ICU patients.”
She stopped the car and stared at him.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
He began to argue. Seeing her jaw clamped tight, he hesitated.
“Herb, what did the ER doctors say about going back to work?”
“We didn’t talk about it.”
Cecilia and Herb had played chess when they were dating. They had been well-matched. She expected this response. She knew she had him in check and prepared her final move.
“If you had asked them if it was OK for you to go in to work today, what do you honestly think they would have said? ‘Sure, no problem’ or ‘Gee, that doesn’t sound like good idea?’”
“Never mind.”
A compassionate victor, she said, “Isn’t it possible, honey, that your judgment is a bit off right now? Let’s take it one step at a time, OK?”
Cecilia set a hand on his knee and started the car. He looked out the passenger window and worried.
Once home, he called the ICU and was told another pulmonologist had already come in to round with the residents. Herb wanted an update because he indisputably would be at the hospital tomorrow. In addition, he wanted to test his ability to remember details about old patients and search his fund of knowledge for relevant facts when told about the new ones. After hanging up, he couldn’t point to any glaring cognitive deficits. He was also aware he hadn’t second-guessed a single decision made by the back-up attending.
Herb tried to nap that afternoon but couldn’t stop fretting over his mental acuity. He kept multiplying and dividing numbers and recalling names of interns who had rotated through the ICU.
He got up and found Allison studying for a history test. He quizzed her, repeating each question after four minutes to check his own short term memory until she demanded he leave her alone.
Just before dinner, Martin shouted from upstairs, “The bathroom sink’s stopped up.”
Herb found Martin inspecting his face in the mirror, clearly unhappy with what he saw. His adolescent growth spurt was underway and had started with his nose. Herb had heard Cecilia assure him the rest of his face would catch up soon. It appeared he was losing faith in her infallibility, too.
“What are you going to do, Dad?”
It was more an accusation than an inquiry. Herb looked at the sink full of soapy water. His mind went blank. To buy time, he asked Martin what he thought.
“Gee, Dad,” Martin exploded. “Can’t you even fix a clogged sink?”
Afraid the answer was no, he stalled.
“I’m curious about how your mind works, how you’d approach the problem.”
Martin turned away. Herb knew he had compounded his error. Martin most definitely did not want his father to have a clue as to how his mind worked. Herb had to answer the question or suffer a quantum drop in his son’s esteem. He noticed a toilet plunger.
“Let’s try this,” he said, picking it up.
Martin had thought of using the plunger but hadn’t suggested it, fearful it would be a gross sanitary violation. Among other things, his father’s unassailably superior grasp of this mysterious and embarrassing subject galled him.
Cecilia came in the bathroom, took one look, and said, “I’ll phone a plumber in the morning.”
Of course, Herb chided himself. Why didn’t I think of that?
Martin glanced at Herb. His eyebrows were furrowed. It was an expression Herb had seen recently. He couldn’t place where or when.