I walked into Denise Lundquist’s room and found her husband, Peter, seated next to her, gently stroking her hand with his own. Denise was asleep, and Peter, wearing a charcoal gray mock turtleneck and a pair of green jeans, had a legal pad in his lap. He was a young guy, probably in his early thirties, and he stood up quickly as I entered the room. I could tell he was flustered.
“Are you the attending?” he asked.
“No,” I said, shaking his hand. “I’m the intern, Matt. I work with the attending.”
I took a seat next to him, and he nodded, interlocking Denise’s limp fingers with his. Something about his gentleness touched me. He was a solid, well-built man, but his voice was soft, almost a whisper, as if he were afraid he might wake his wife up.
“I have a bunch of questions,” he said, touching the yellow pad. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“Of course, fire away.”
I was conscious of my naturally somber demeanor and tried to lighten the mood with a large smile, but I wasn’t entirely sure what I was smiling at. Denise was improving, but in rough shape. The hue of her skin still did not look human; it looked like it had been peeled from a mannequin. The situation didn’t exactly call for confetti. Was there a proper physician’s facial expression, I wondered, for a cautiously hopeful moment? Something that conveyed guarded optimism? I’d have to start watching Baio and the Badass for this.
Peter reached for his reading glasses on a small nightstand but, realizing he would have to let go of Denise to put them on, decided against using them. I motioned toward the bifocals, but he waved me away and cleared his throat.
“Today someone mentioned a possible heart transplant. Does she need a new heart?”
I stared at the young woman and squinted. Despite her terrible color, Denise was gradually improving, and on rounds we’d discussed transitioning her to a general cardiology floor in the coming days. Had Peter heard us talking about someone else?
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t recall anyone mentioning a heart transplant for your wife. But I don’t want to give you bad information.”
“Understood.” He checked off the first question and took a deep breath.
I leaned close to him and saw that he had written down thirteen questions. Instinctively I guessed that I’d be able to answer four, maybe five of them at best. I felt bound to disappoint Peter, or worse, leave him more confused, like I had Sam. As my jaw tightened for another round of teeth grinding, I suddenly became aware that I was moving almost imperceptibly away from Peter, toward the door. I had unconsciously sat back in my chair and could feel my legs tense, ready to rise; my body was beating an involuntary retreat. So this is what Benny meant, I thought. Looking at Peter looking at me, I could imagine what Benny saw: a doctor shutting down and going through the motions. A doctor who maybe didn’t care enough. A doctor who was so afraid he might be wrong that he couldn’t properly care for his patients. I caught myself and leaned forward, looking Peter in the eyes.
“I will obviously find out for you whether any heart procedure is being discussed,” I said. “But I don’t think there is.”
Peter nodded. He stared down at the words he’d written on the legal pad but didn’t speak. He simply stroked his wife’s hand and watched her breathe. She made a faint gargle, and he parted his lips expectantly. I tilted my head to look at the questions, hoping I could read and answer them on my own. Squinting, I could just make out the next one.
Why did God let this happen?
Nope. I moved to the next one. Scanning down the sheet, I saw that he’d scribbled a heart and inside it written
Denise + Peter
I looked at this grief-stricken husband and then back at the sheet. In the bottom corner, he’d drawn a smaller, broken heart without names in it. Raising my eyes up from the drawing, I looked on as Peter wiped the bangs away from Denise’s eyes.
And then, I burst into tears.
Not “eyes welled up” tears but genuine, blubbering, sloppy tears, heaving breaths, quivering shoulders. Perhaps it was the fear of what was being discussed that very moment at M and M, or perhaps it was being in the presence of such profound love and heartache. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. But the act of being there for Peter, of facing his pain and need, was simply too much. I had taken it all on myself and it flattened me like a pancake.
Peter led me by the shoulder to the corner of the room, gentle but urgent. “Matt,” he said quickly, “is she…dying?”
I struggled to pull myself together. “No,” I said through sobs. “Peter, she’s doing amazing. Amazingly well.”
He struggled to read my face. “Well then, what is it?”
My thoughts were with this grieving man, but they were also somewhere else. I ached to know what was being discussed at the Morbidity and Mortality conference. How many heads were shaking? Who was cursing my name?
“Denise is expected to make a full recovery.” As the words exited my mouth, I wanted to snatch them back. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to present such a rosy picture. On rounds, we agreed that Denise was improving, but she was still critically ill.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, taking a step back. “Thank God.”
“Yes.”
My words belied my emotional state. Peter was very confused.
“You love your wife,” I wanted to say.
I turned my blurry eyes in the direction of Denise and said, “It all got to me just now. I’m sorry.”
He patted me on the shoulder. “We’ve all been through a lot.”
I laughed the way one does through tears at a funeral. Here was another tip they’d omitted at medical school: when you can’t comfort the patient, make the patient comfort you. Peter and I sat back down, and he once again took Denise’s hand.
“Can we just sit?” he asked as he put the legal pad on her bed. “Just the three of us?”
“Yes, of course.”
I was unaccustomed to such wild emotional swings; I wondered if I was developing a mood disorder. How did senior physicians build up enough emotional calluses to avoid bawling without becoming automatons?
“You know,” Peter said, “it kills me to know I played a role in this.” He touched the lobe of her ear with the back of his hand and frowned. “That I’m the one who told her about her brother. I keep replaying the scene in my mind, thinking I should’ve done it differently.”
I wiped my eyes on my white coat as more tears trickled down my cheeks. I was a fucking mess. Everyone breaks, Baio had said. I just never guessed that I’d break so soon.