Walking out of the ED hours later, after further testing revealed that Sam wasn’t having a heart attack—not even a light one—I saw another old friend sitting alone in the waiting room. “Dre?” I whispered to myself.
She had put on some weight—at least twenty pounds, maybe more—but there was no mistaking her. She was wearing a bright green sundress, large sunglasses, and slippers; it was probably forty degrees outside, but she was dressed for summer. “Dre?” I said, somewhat louder. So much had happened since she’d walked out on me, and I still had many questions. She still had those bumps on her face, but they were smaller and there were fewer of them.
Rarely is a physician able to pinpoint someone who leaves such a lasting impression, but she, like Benny, was one of them for me. “Hey,” I said, taking a seat next to her, “it’s Dr. McCarthy.” She didn’t respond. Perhaps Dre was a pseudonym she’d made up on the spot and didn’t remember using. “I was your doctor a few months ago.”
Seeing her allowed a tangle of buried thoughts to emerge. I remembered how much I’d felt like a failure when she vanished. I was just another person in her life who didn’t get it, another stiff in a white coat who wasn’t worth her time. Part of the process of rebuilding my confidence in the months that followed had entailed learning how to avoid taking failures personally. But like a first love lost, Dre’s departure still stung. It was hard to be rational about it, even in retrospect. What had I done wrong? I still desperately wanted to know.
After her middle-of-the-night departure, I did some digging and discovered that Eminem and Dr. Dre had done a duet called “Forgot About Dre.” I’d occasionally played it when I took my HIV pills and had the lyrics tucked away for a moment such as this. I knew she was battling several chronic illnesses and would inevitably pop up in our emergency room again. But I didn’t expect it to be now, just before dawn on a chilly night in March. Her eyes were closed, so I gave her a gentle nudge. She looked better—not great—and the added weight suited her well. Did she remember me? I quietly said the lyrics in her direction:
“Everybody wanna talk like they got somethin’ to say…” I scanned the room; no one was watching us. “But nothin’ comes out when they move their lips just a bunch of gibberish.”
Dre flinched and her jaw went slack; it was a preposterous thing to say to a patient, but it’s what I said.
“Em?” Her frown gave way to a wide-ranging smile.
“In the flesh,” I said. She did remember.
“No shit.”
“Indeed.” I gave her a once-over. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just need a checkup.”
“In the ER?”
She didn’t respond.
“Well,” I said, “you look good.” I lightly touched the fabric of her dress as she tapped a matching handbag at her feet, and she whispered, “Calfskin.”
I thought back to that agonizing moment when I’d discovered she had vanished. “So, where in the world did you go that night?” I asked. “The last time I saw you. Why did you leave the hospital? How did—”
“Long story, Em.”
“I got time.” My pager vibrated as I spoke. Don was summoning me to see a young man with priapism—that dreaded scenario where an erection lasts more than four hours. It is an excruciating condition, one that on occasion necessitates an injection directly into the penis to prevent dangerous blood clots. I had a minute with Dre, maybe less.
“I just want to know,” I said, “why you chose to—”
“Em, you a real doctor?”
“Yes, of course.”
She grinned. “Just checkin’.”
“Please tell me you’re taking the…the meds. All of them.”
“I am!” She extended an arm and squeezed my shoulder. “Started seeing Dr. Chanel. She hooks me up.”
“Wonderful.” She felt my other shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You’re bigger than I remember, Em.”
We both had put on a bit of weight. “You wanna hear something funny?” I asked. “In med school, one of my instructors told me my physicality was intimidating to other students.”
“Physicality?”
“Yeah.”
“Who uses that word?”
“Weird, right?”
She held up her hand and counted out the syllables. “Phys-i-cal-i-ty.”
“So honestly, Dre, where did you go that night?”
“Out.”
“I know this is kind of a weird thing to say, but I was really hurt. Seriously.”
She touched my leg. “I’m taking the pills. But I had to go. I had to. I’m sorry.” Many of my poorer patients temporarily disappeared on the first or fifteenth of the month to collect unemployment or disability, but they usually came back the same day. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but my hands were generally tied. “Chanel hooked me up,” she added. “I’m good.”
“Well, you look good.”
She touched my face, like she had in the hospital. “So do you.”
“One more thing,” I said, quickly scanning another text on my pager. “Did you start taking the pills because of…because of me? Because of the conversations we had?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, honestly.” I closed my eyes. I never willed my patients to answer questions the way I wanted them to, but I was now.
“Oh, Em.”
“Be straight with me.” Or just humor me.
Dre turned her head slightly. “Honestly, no.” She stood up, straightened her dress, and patted me on the leg. “I’ve got to go. Good-bye, Em.”