Story by Bethany
Chapter 1
Have you ever really hated someone?
I mean, really hated them? Despised them, everything about them. Loathed every little red hair on his head and fantasized about something awful happening to him, even though it’s 22 years since you’ve last seen him. Maybe not death, but definitely some prolonged torture. Maybe medieval torture, like with those stretching machines that would attach to his arms and legs and get him to really scream, begging my forgiveness, which I would never grant in a million years.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.
Showing posts with label The Best Revenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Best Revenge. Show all posts
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 2)
I hadn’t had my morning coffee yet, so when my pager starting beeping at 8AM on Monday morning, it set off a hammer pounding on my temples. I’m useless till I get my coffee, especially on Mondays. I fumbled for the little black box clipped to my belt until it thankfully stopped beeping.
The page had come from my resident Chloe, who was ready to round on the ward with me. I dropped by my office, where I slipped on my long white coat and hung my stethoscope around my neck. A lot of attending physicians opted to go without the white coat, but I couldn’t get away with that look. Whenever I walked around without my white coat, I was invariably mistaken for a nurse, even with an ID badge clipped to my chest that said “Rachel Miller, MD” in big bold letters. I don’t know what it was about me that screamed out “nurse.” I think maybe I look too matronly.
I grabbed some coffee in the lounge and met Chloe on the stroke ward a few minutes later. Chloe was a second year resident training in neurology who had been on my service for one week. For the first few days I’d worked with her, I looked over her shoulder a lot to make sure she wasn’t making any mistakes. But as far as I could tell, her orders were always impeccable. When I would suggest we order an echocardiogram on a patient, Chloe would already have the form filled out and in the chart.
However, whenever I see Chloe, the first thing my eyes are always drawn to is her engagement ring, which is the size of a chicklet. That giant diamond overwhelms everything she does or wears. I don’t know how she could walk around with that thing without getting her throat slit. It’s the city, for Christ’s sake.
Even aside from the giant rock, Chloe was always a picture of style. Today she was dressed in shades of black, ranging from her gray fitted sweater to her black pumps. If I knew something about labels, I could have remarked on her slacks or shoes, but all I knew was that they looked very expensive. She didn’t earn much as a resident, so I’m guessing the gentleman who paid for the huge rock was footing the bills for her wardrobe. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was blonde and attractive and I could see that men liked her.
“Hi, Dr. Miller,” Chloe said brightly. That was the other thing about Chloe: she was always happy. She never got stressed out when things were busy on the ward or when we were racing down to the ER to figure out of the latest stroke admission needed his blood thinned. Even though I appreciated her positive attitude, just once I wished I could see her lose her cool. Get angry that she had to miss a date with her fiancé because of sudden chest pain in one of her patients. I felt like a terrible person for even thinking such a thing though. Chloe was nice. I didn’t begrudge her any happiness just because I wasn’t happy.
“How was your weekend, Chloe?” I said and was immediately sorry I asked. Most people would just say “fine” but I recalled last Monday when I asked her that, I got a full rundown of all the events of the last two days.
“I was on call Saturday night,” Chloe said. “So it was pretty busy. But Steve cooked me dinner on Sunday night, so that was really nice.”
I’ll bet, I thought, only mildly concerned that now even my thoughts were starting to sound bitter to me.
“He made pasta primavera,” Chloe continued, “and he chopped fresh vegetables all by himself. Isn’t that sweet? Except he sliced his finger open when he was chopping a carrot, and he was joking around that I’d have to suture it up for him or something. I mean, as if I have suturing materials around the house, you know? Anyway, the bleeding completely stopped on its own and the pasta still came out great, although a little soggy because he left it—”
“That’s nice,” I interrupted her. There was some study that found that if a patient was allowed to keep talking uninterrupted, the longest they would go would be a minute and a half. But Chloe wasn’t a patient and she showed no signs of running out of steam. “How many weekend admissions?”
“Two,” Chloe replied, transitioning easily into Work mode from How I Spent My Weekend mode. “Peter Morgan and…” She checked her notes. “Alexander Connors.”
Alexander Connors. Alexander Connors? Holy shit. Holy shit. I nearly choked when Chloe handed me a copy of the ward census and saw it written there in black and white: Alexander Connors. Bed 11. Last room on the right.
Gripping the census sheet in my fist, crinkling the page slightly, I continued to stare at the name that had haunted me for 22 years. I needed to get a grip. In all likelihood, this Alexander Connors was not the one who had made my life miserable so many years ago. In fact, he almost definitely was a different person. Most of the patients on the stroke service were older. It was unusual to get someone under age fifty. The Alex Connors I knew would be only 33 now, like me, which meant that he was an unlikely candidate to have had a stroke. I suspected I’d be seeing a sixty year old man who happened to have the same name, but still, the whole thing put a damper on my day and threw me off.
“Are you okay, Dr. Miller?” Chloe squinted at me.
“Of course I’m okay,” I said, forcing a smile. “Let’s round.”
The stroke service had a maximum of twelve beds, but not all the patients with a stroke diagnosis came to us. The general medicine service could manage a basic stroke patient by themselves, but we got the patients who were complicated in some way. We got the patients with blood pressure that was difficult to control or with some crazy coagulation disorder. Or a bleed.
We started at the beginning of the hallway with the patients I knew already. Chloe had already seen all the patients herself, so she was prepared to tell me all the issues that had cropped up. Mr. Anderson’s diabetes was out of control, for instance, which wasn’t surprising considering a nurse told me he had wheeled himself to the cafeteria yesterday to purchase a donut. With sprinkles, of course. Sorry, but just because the donut has a purple filling, that doesn’t mean it counts as a diabetic fruit exchange.
Once we finished up with the old patients, Chloe moved on to the new admissions, one of which was the unfortunately named Alexander Connors. We hesitated outside Mr. Connors’s closed door and Chloe pulled out her notes. “Ready?” she asked me.
I nodded, thinking that for lunch I would treat myself to a nice chocolate brownie. I deserved one.
“So this is Alexander Connors,” Chloe began, “he’s a 33 year old man with no past medical history who—”
“What?” I interrupted her.
The patient was 33 years old? Had I heard right? That was the same age I was. The same age Alex would be if...
Oh god. Oh no. Please no.
Chloe frowned at me. “What’s wrong?”
“You said he’s 33 years old?” I said.
Chloe nodded and shrugged. “Yeah, pretty young. Although we’ve had younger. Remember that 28 year old woman we discharged last week? Oh, and during my internship, I saw this one guy who was only 17 and he had a giant…”
I wasn’t listening to Chloe. The door to the patient’s room was slightly ajar and I nudged it open further with the tip of my worn shoes. I could just barely make out the face of my new patient.
Damn. It was him. It was The Alex Connors. The same Alex Connors who made my life miserable 22 years ago. The same Alex Connors whose voice I still heard telling me I looked ugly every time I searched in my closet to find something to wear on a date. It was the same guy, right here in my stroke unit.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Alex looked a lot different. Obviously. He wasn’t an eleven year old kid anymore, which was evident by the stubble across his chin and the chest hair peaking out from under his standard-issue hospital gown. His face was both completely different, yet eerily similar. His jaw was more square, more masculine, but he still had the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose and the reddish brown hair, now more brown than red, that almost curled at the tips. He was still recognizable as the guy who ruined my life all those years ago. I gasped slightly, but quickly composed myself.
“Is anything wrong, Dr. Miller?” Chloe asked me.
I shook my head and forced a smile. “No. Please continue.”
“Mr. Connors had stroke of his anterior spinal artery,” she said. “On Friday afternoon, he was biking up a really steep hill with his friends and he started to feel back pain and weakness in his legs. He got off the bike and collapsed. They took him to the emergency room here, where they diagnosed the stroke. His blood pressure has been in the normal range and we’re not sure what caused the stroke. Right now, his deficits consist mainly of weakness in both legs.”
“Right,” I said. My mouth felt dry and I longed for my bitter coffee. “So why did he have the stroke? Have they done coagulation studies? Checked for diabetes? Lupus? HIV?”
“We drew everything,” Chloe confirmed. “All the results are still pending. Nothing so far has indicated a cause of the stroke.”
“Oh,” I said.
We stood there for a minute. Chloe finally spoke up: “Dr. Miller? Do you want to go inside?”
Not really, but it was clear I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I stepped back to let Chloe go in ahead of me. Alex Connors jerked his head up when we entered and managed a crooked smile. “Hi,” he said.
Now that I could see him in full view, I could tell how pale he was and there were dark circles under his familiar gray eyes. He looked like he had been to hell and back. But what killed me above everything else was that even looking as haggard as he did, he was still awfully cute. If I was just meeting him for the first time today, I knew my heart would have gone out to him. I always felt for the young people who ended up on my stroke unit. But when I looked into his familiar face, I could still hear the words echoing in my ears: Rachel is so ugly. Even 22 years later, it still stung just as much as it did when I was a kid.
“Hi, Mr. Connors,” Chloe said. “I’m Dr. Wexler. Do you remember me from this morning?”
“Of course I remember… I only met you an hour ago,” Alex said, shaking his head. “My brain isn’t screwed up too, is it?”
Chloe laughed sympathetically. “No, of course it’s not. Anyway, I’d like to introduce you to my attending, Dr. Miller.”
Alex laid his eyes on me. At that moment, I knew with a hundred percent certainty that he had absolutely no idea who I was. And why should he? As much as he had an impact on my life, I’m sure I had absolutely no impact on his. And I had pretty much the most common name in the world. Rachel Millers were a dime a dozen.
“Hello, Dr. Miller,” he said. He gestured in the direction of the chair next to his hospital bed. “This is my fiancée Eva.”
Somehow in all the excitement, I had failed to notice the woman sitting at his bedside. Eva. Alex’s fiancée. I couldn’t help but stare at her. She was somewhat attractive but not supermodel beautiful or anything. In fact, she looked like she could have stood to lose a few pounds.
“Everyone says such good things about you, Dr. Miller,” Eva spoke up, managing a tense smile. “We just know you’re going to get Alex all better.”
I looked back at Alex, lying in that hospital bed. Would you like another chair for your giant ass? My face burned, remembering everything Alex had said to me over twenty years ago like it was yesterday. My hands involuntarily balled into fists. I could see that Alex was staring at me, waiting for me to say something. There was a small part of me that was sorely tempted to point out that his girlfriend might need another chair for her giant ass, but instead I cleared my throat and put on my most professional face. “I don’t get people better,” I said in a cold voice that was starkly different from the usual gentle tone that my patients loved. “There’s nothing we can do here to make you better. That’s up to fate.”
I didn’t look at Chloe, who I was sure was gaping at me.
“Well, the whole family has been praying for Alex,” Eva said.
I snorted, then quickly tried to convert my snort into a cough. I needed to be professional here.
It occurred to me at that moment that I was going to have to examine Alex. I didn’t want to touch him, but I performed a physical exam on every single patient and I couldn’t make an exception for him, just because I hated him. “Is it all right if I examine you?” I asked, hoping he might somehow refuse.
“Go for it,” Alex said.
I approached the bed and stopped when I was about a foot away. Alex was looking up at me and I was certain he had to recognize me, but I saw no sign of that in his face. Up close, I could see his hair was greasy from not having showered in several days. As I tugged down his hospital gown to listen to his chest, I noted that he looked like he was in decent shape, although not that good. He clearly wasn’t somebody who spent every day at the gym, but he had sort of a natural firm muscle tone in his chest.
I started off by resting my stethoscope over the left side of his rib cage. I tried to avoid touching him directly as I did that, but it was almost impossible not to allow my fingers to graze the dark hairs on his chest. I closed my eyes for a moment and listened to his heart thumping reassuringly. No sign of any arrhythmias. I moved the diaphragm of the stethoscope over his lungs and instructed him to take deep breaths. He complied. His lungs sounded excellent. I could always tell the smokers from the nonsmokers by listening to their lungs, even the young ones. It seemed like Alex Connors had led a relatively healthy lifestyle. He wasn’t an athlete, but he hadn’t done anything to earn him a stroke at age 33.
Next I performed a full neurological exam. First I scrutinized his face, asking him to lift his eyebrows and show me his teeth to make sure his face was symmetric. I examined his arms next and I could see from the way his biceps popped out that his strength was intact there.
I saved his legs for last. “Can you move them at all?” I asked him.
Alex shook his head. “Not really.”
“Not really or not at all?”
He lowered his eyes. “Not at all.”
I put my hand on his quadriceps to see if there was even a slight muscle twitch, but there was nothing. Eva was looking on with her brows knitted together.
Sensation was somewhat diminished in his legs but still intact. The anterior spinal artery innervated the motor tracts of the spinal cord, so most of his deficits were motor. He could still feel me touching his legs and could tell whether his feet were in the up or down position. Still, the deficits in strength were so severe and complete that it didn’t bode well for his recovery.
Of course no examination of a spinal cord injury was complete without a rectal exam. I really, really didn’t want to do a rectal exam on Alex Connors. Not that I ever wanted to do a rectal exam, but this was the least I ever wanted to do it in my life, and that included the 80 year old obese nursing home patients.
“Dr. Wexler,” I said. “Did you do a rectal exam?”
“Yes,” she said and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“Sensation intact,” she said. “But no voluntarily tone.”
I looked at Alex, whose cheeks had turned slightly pink. “Can you tell when you have to have a bowel movement?”
He was full on blushing now. “I can tell,” he said, glancing at his fiancee. “But I can’t… you know, control it.” He added quickly, “That’s going to get better, right?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I replied. “If not, there are several brands of adult protective undergarments.”
Alex raised his eyebrows. “Adult protective…?”
“Diapers,” I clarified.
Alex’s face turned several shades paler. Eva, on her part, looked even more shocked and horrified than he did. I followed the tube snaking out from under Alex’s covers, which belonged to a catheter in his bladder. I guessed he wasn’t going to have much better luck trying to pee, but I could save that fun for another time.
I would never admit to anyone that after over twenty years, it felt really good to finally see Alex Connors squirm.
The page had come from my resident Chloe, who was ready to round on the ward with me. I dropped by my office, where I slipped on my long white coat and hung my stethoscope around my neck. A lot of attending physicians opted to go without the white coat, but I couldn’t get away with that look. Whenever I walked around without my white coat, I was invariably mistaken for a nurse, even with an ID badge clipped to my chest that said “Rachel Miller, MD” in big bold letters. I don’t know what it was about me that screamed out “nurse.” I think maybe I look too matronly.
I grabbed some coffee in the lounge and met Chloe on the stroke ward a few minutes later. Chloe was a second year resident training in neurology who had been on my service for one week. For the first few days I’d worked with her, I looked over her shoulder a lot to make sure she wasn’t making any mistakes. But as far as I could tell, her orders were always impeccable. When I would suggest we order an echocardiogram on a patient, Chloe would already have the form filled out and in the chart.
However, whenever I see Chloe, the first thing my eyes are always drawn to is her engagement ring, which is the size of a chicklet. That giant diamond overwhelms everything she does or wears. I don’t know how she could walk around with that thing without getting her throat slit. It’s the city, for Christ’s sake.
Even aside from the giant rock, Chloe was always a picture of style. Today she was dressed in shades of black, ranging from her gray fitted sweater to her black pumps. If I knew something about labels, I could have remarked on her slacks or shoes, but all I knew was that they looked very expensive. She didn’t earn much as a resident, so I’m guessing the gentleman who paid for the huge rock was footing the bills for her wardrobe. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was blonde and attractive and I could see that men liked her.
“Hi, Dr. Miller,” Chloe said brightly. That was the other thing about Chloe: she was always happy. She never got stressed out when things were busy on the ward or when we were racing down to the ER to figure out of the latest stroke admission needed his blood thinned. Even though I appreciated her positive attitude, just once I wished I could see her lose her cool. Get angry that she had to miss a date with her fiancé because of sudden chest pain in one of her patients. I felt like a terrible person for even thinking such a thing though. Chloe was nice. I didn’t begrudge her any happiness just because I wasn’t happy.
“How was your weekend, Chloe?” I said and was immediately sorry I asked. Most people would just say “fine” but I recalled last Monday when I asked her that, I got a full rundown of all the events of the last two days.
“I was on call Saturday night,” Chloe said. “So it was pretty busy. But Steve cooked me dinner on Sunday night, so that was really nice.”
I’ll bet, I thought, only mildly concerned that now even my thoughts were starting to sound bitter to me.
“He made pasta primavera,” Chloe continued, “and he chopped fresh vegetables all by himself. Isn’t that sweet? Except he sliced his finger open when he was chopping a carrot, and he was joking around that I’d have to suture it up for him or something. I mean, as if I have suturing materials around the house, you know? Anyway, the bleeding completely stopped on its own and the pasta still came out great, although a little soggy because he left it—”
“That’s nice,” I interrupted her. There was some study that found that if a patient was allowed to keep talking uninterrupted, the longest they would go would be a minute and a half. But Chloe wasn’t a patient and she showed no signs of running out of steam. “How many weekend admissions?”
“Two,” Chloe replied, transitioning easily into Work mode from How I Spent My Weekend mode. “Peter Morgan and…” She checked her notes. “Alexander Connors.”
Alexander Connors. Alexander Connors? Holy shit. Holy shit. I nearly choked when Chloe handed me a copy of the ward census and saw it written there in black and white: Alexander Connors. Bed 11. Last room on the right.
Gripping the census sheet in my fist, crinkling the page slightly, I continued to stare at the name that had haunted me for 22 years. I needed to get a grip. In all likelihood, this Alexander Connors was not the one who had made my life miserable so many years ago. In fact, he almost definitely was a different person. Most of the patients on the stroke service were older. It was unusual to get someone under age fifty. The Alex Connors I knew would be only 33 now, like me, which meant that he was an unlikely candidate to have had a stroke. I suspected I’d be seeing a sixty year old man who happened to have the same name, but still, the whole thing put a damper on my day and threw me off.
“Are you okay, Dr. Miller?” Chloe squinted at me.
“Of course I’m okay,” I said, forcing a smile. “Let’s round.”
The stroke service had a maximum of twelve beds, but not all the patients with a stroke diagnosis came to us. The general medicine service could manage a basic stroke patient by themselves, but we got the patients who were complicated in some way. We got the patients with blood pressure that was difficult to control or with some crazy coagulation disorder. Or a bleed.
We started at the beginning of the hallway with the patients I knew already. Chloe had already seen all the patients herself, so she was prepared to tell me all the issues that had cropped up. Mr. Anderson’s diabetes was out of control, for instance, which wasn’t surprising considering a nurse told me he had wheeled himself to the cafeteria yesterday to purchase a donut. With sprinkles, of course. Sorry, but just because the donut has a purple filling, that doesn’t mean it counts as a diabetic fruit exchange.
Once we finished up with the old patients, Chloe moved on to the new admissions, one of which was the unfortunately named Alexander Connors. We hesitated outside Mr. Connors’s closed door and Chloe pulled out her notes. “Ready?” she asked me.
I nodded, thinking that for lunch I would treat myself to a nice chocolate brownie. I deserved one.
“So this is Alexander Connors,” Chloe began, “he’s a 33 year old man with no past medical history who—”
“What?” I interrupted her.
The patient was 33 years old? Had I heard right? That was the same age I was. The same age Alex would be if...
Oh god. Oh no. Please no.
Chloe frowned at me. “What’s wrong?”
“You said he’s 33 years old?” I said.
Chloe nodded and shrugged. “Yeah, pretty young. Although we’ve had younger. Remember that 28 year old woman we discharged last week? Oh, and during my internship, I saw this one guy who was only 17 and he had a giant…”
I wasn’t listening to Chloe. The door to the patient’s room was slightly ajar and I nudged it open further with the tip of my worn shoes. I could just barely make out the face of my new patient.
Damn. It was him. It was The Alex Connors. The same Alex Connors who made my life miserable 22 years ago. The same Alex Connors whose voice I still heard telling me I looked ugly every time I searched in my closet to find something to wear on a date. It was the same guy, right here in my stroke unit.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Alex looked a lot different. Obviously. He wasn’t an eleven year old kid anymore, which was evident by the stubble across his chin and the chest hair peaking out from under his standard-issue hospital gown. His face was both completely different, yet eerily similar. His jaw was more square, more masculine, but he still had the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose and the reddish brown hair, now more brown than red, that almost curled at the tips. He was still recognizable as the guy who ruined my life all those years ago. I gasped slightly, but quickly composed myself.
“Is anything wrong, Dr. Miller?” Chloe asked me.
I shook my head and forced a smile. “No. Please continue.”
“Mr. Connors had stroke of his anterior spinal artery,” she said. “On Friday afternoon, he was biking up a really steep hill with his friends and he started to feel back pain and weakness in his legs. He got off the bike and collapsed. They took him to the emergency room here, where they diagnosed the stroke. His blood pressure has been in the normal range and we’re not sure what caused the stroke. Right now, his deficits consist mainly of weakness in both legs.”
“Right,” I said. My mouth felt dry and I longed for my bitter coffee. “So why did he have the stroke? Have they done coagulation studies? Checked for diabetes? Lupus? HIV?”
“We drew everything,” Chloe confirmed. “All the results are still pending. Nothing so far has indicated a cause of the stroke.”
“Oh,” I said.
We stood there for a minute. Chloe finally spoke up: “Dr. Miller? Do you want to go inside?”
Not really, but it was clear I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I stepped back to let Chloe go in ahead of me. Alex Connors jerked his head up when we entered and managed a crooked smile. “Hi,” he said.
Now that I could see him in full view, I could tell how pale he was and there were dark circles under his familiar gray eyes. He looked like he had been to hell and back. But what killed me above everything else was that even looking as haggard as he did, he was still awfully cute. If I was just meeting him for the first time today, I knew my heart would have gone out to him. I always felt for the young people who ended up on my stroke unit. But when I looked into his familiar face, I could still hear the words echoing in my ears: Rachel is so ugly. Even 22 years later, it still stung just as much as it did when I was a kid.
“Hi, Mr. Connors,” Chloe said. “I’m Dr. Wexler. Do you remember me from this morning?”
“Of course I remember… I only met you an hour ago,” Alex said, shaking his head. “My brain isn’t screwed up too, is it?”
Chloe laughed sympathetically. “No, of course it’s not. Anyway, I’d like to introduce you to my attending, Dr. Miller.”
Alex laid his eyes on me. At that moment, I knew with a hundred percent certainty that he had absolutely no idea who I was. And why should he? As much as he had an impact on my life, I’m sure I had absolutely no impact on his. And I had pretty much the most common name in the world. Rachel Millers were a dime a dozen.
“Hello, Dr. Miller,” he said. He gestured in the direction of the chair next to his hospital bed. “This is my fiancée Eva.”
Somehow in all the excitement, I had failed to notice the woman sitting at his bedside. Eva. Alex’s fiancée. I couldn’t help but stare at her. She was somewhat attractive but not supermodel beautiful or anything. In fact, she looked like she could have stood to lose a few pounds.
“Everyone says such good things about you, Dr. Miller,” Eva spoke up, managing a tense smile. “We just know you’re going to get Alex all better.”
I looked back at Alex, lying in that hospital bed. Would you like another chair for your giant ass? My face burned, remembering everything Alex had said to me over twenty years ago like it was yesterday. My hands involuntarily balled into fists. I could see that Alex was staring at me, waiting for me to say something. There was a small part of me that was sorely tempted to point out that his girlfriend might need another chair for her giant ass, but instead I cleared my throat and put on my most professional face. “I don’t get people better,” I said in a cold voice that was starkly different from the usual gentle tone that my patients loved. “There’s nothing we can do here to make you better. That’s up to fate.”
I didn’t look at Chloe, who I was sure was gaping at me.
“Well, the whole family has been praying for Alex,” Eva said.
I snorted, then quickly tried to convert my snort into a cough. I needed to be professional here.
It occurred to me at that moment that I was going to have to examine Alex. I didn’t want to touch him, but I performed a physical exam on every single patient and I couldn’t make an exception for him, just because I hated him. “Is it all right if I examine you?” I asked, hoping he might somehow refuse.
“Go for it,” Alex said.
I approached the bed and stopped when I was about a foot away. Alex was looking up at me and I was certain he had to recognize me, but I saw no sign of that in his face. Up close, I could see his hair was greasy from not having showered in several days. As I tugged down his hospital gown to listen to his chest, I noted that he looked like he was in decent shape, although not that good. He clearly wasn’t somebody who spent every day at the gym, but he had sort of a natural firm muscle tone in his chest.
I started off by resting my stethoscope over the left side of his rib cage. I tried to avoid touching him directly as I did that, but it was almost impossible not to allow my fingers to graze the dark hairs on his chest. I closed my eyes for a moment and listened to his heart thumping reassuringly. No sign of any arrhythmias. I moved the diaphragm of the stethoscope over his lungs and instructed him to take deep breaths. He complied. His lungs sounded excellent. I could always tell the smokers from the nonsmokers by listening to their lungs, even the young ones. It seemed like Alex Connors had led a relatively healthy lifestyle. He wasn’t an athlete, but he hadn’t done anything to earn him a stroke at age 33.
Next I performed a full neurological exam. First I scrutinized his face, asking him to lift his eyebrows and show me his teeth to make sure his face was symmetric. I examined his arms next and I could see from the way his biceps popped out that his strength was intact there.
I saved his legs for last. “Can you move them at all?” I asked him.
Alex shook his head. “Not really.”
“Not really or not at all?”
He lowered his eyes. “Not at all.”
I put my hand on his quadriceps to see if there was even a slight muscle twitch, but there was nothing. Eva was looking on with her brows knitted together.
Sensation was somewhat diminished in his legs but still intact. The anterior spinal artery innervated the motor tracts of the spinal cord, so most of his deficits were motor. He could still feel me touching his legs and could tell whether his feet were in the up or down position. Still, the deficits in strength were so severe and complete that it didn’t bode well for his recovery.
Of course no examination of a spinal cord injury was complete without a rectal exam. I really, really didn’t want to do a rectal exam on Alex Connors. Not that I ever wanted to do a rectal exam, but this was the least I ever wanted to do it in my life, and that included the 80 year old obese nursing home patients.
“Dr. Wexler,” I said. “Did you do a rectal exam?”
“Yes,” she said and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“Sensation intact,” she said. “But no voluntarily tone.”
I looked at Alex, whose cheeks had turned slightly pink. “Can you tell when you have to have a bowel movement?”
He was full on blushing now. “I can tell,” he said, glancing at his fiancee. “But I can’t… you know, control it.” He added quickly, “That’s going to get better, right?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I replied. “If not, there are several brands of adult protective undergarments.”
Alex raised his eyebrows. “Adult protective…?”
“Diapers,” I clarified.
Alex’s face turned several shades paler. Eva, on her part, looked even more shocked and horrified than he did. I followed the tube snaking out from under Alex’s covers, which belonged to a catheter in his bladder. I guessed he wasn’t going to have much better luck trying to pee, but I could save that fun for another time.
I would never admit to anyone that after over twenty years, it felt really good to finally see Alex Connors squirm.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 3)
“So what’s wrong this time?”
After my encounter with Alex Connors, I had called an emergency lunch with my best friend in the hospital, Grace Tucker. Grace worked as an attending physician in the ICU, and I’d been friends with her since we were both naïve little residents. Actually, I’m pretty sure Grace was never a naïve anything. Even as a kindergartener, I suspect she was bossing everyone around.
Grace and I usually met up in her office. Grace’s office was as painfully tiny as mine with barely enough room for her many diplomas and certificates on the wall: college diploma, med school diploma, medical school honors society, Intern of the Year, Resident of the Year, diplomat of the Board of Internal Medicine, certificate of passing her subspecialty training in critical care. Unlike me, Grace never wore a white coat. She had earned herself a reputation as a hardass bitch in the ICU and she didn’t need a white coat to command her authority.
“Come on, spit it out,” Grace said. “I’m a busy woman. My residents are apparently complete idiots who can’t treat a paper cut.”
I took a bite of the brownie I had treated myself to, as promised. “It’s this new patient, Alex Connors,” I said. “He came in over the weekend. Anterior spinal artery stroke, around T6.”
“What, is he being a pain in the ass?”
“No, he’s nice,” I said. “He’s young, only in his early thirties…”
“Is he cute?” Grace asked.
One thing Grace and I talk about a lot is Men. She’s just as single as I am and probably dates even less than I do, which is an achievement. We act like it’s Grace’s career that gets in the way of her social life, but we both know it’s not. Grace is overweight. Really, really overweight. And she’s not the kind of woman who would be gorgeous if only she lost a few pounds either, although she does have nice hair. I love Grace though, and I think any guy who passes her up doesn’t know what he’s missing.
“It’s not about him being cute,” I said. Okay, the truth was that, yes, Alex was cute. Of course he was. But that was all beside the point. “It’s not that,” I said. “The thing is, I know him…”
Grace raised her eyebrows. “Go on.”
I sighed, resigning myself to telling this story. “Alex and I went to middle school together and he was… incredibly cruel to me. Used to tease me a lot. He’s just an awful, mean, horrible person.” I swallowed. “I know I’m supposed to take care of him and get him better, but honestly, all I want to do is strangle him.”
“Wow,” Grace commented after a long pause, “you are even a little crazier than I thought you were.”
“Thanks,” I said, chewing a bite of the dressing-free salad I had purchased to balance out the brownie. What the hell was I thinking ordering a salad with no dressing? “So what do I do? I hate this guy.”
“Don’t you feel sorry for him?” she said. “I mean, the poor guy is, what, a paraplegic now? Isn’t that punishment enough?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But he could be recovered in a few months. Knowing his luck, I’m sure he will be. This is just a speed bump for him.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “If you think about it, you’re in a pretty enviable position.”
“I am?”
“Rachel, for one of the smartest women I know, you can be kind of dense sometimes,” she said. “Let me spell this out for you. This guy Alex made your life miserable for a year. And now here you are, the doctor in charge of his care. And best of all, he doesn’t even know who you are! You can finally exact your revenge.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Grace giggled. “Maybe some 3 AM enemas? Daily rectal exams? Be creative.”
“I can’t do that!” I cried. “It’s totally unethical.”
“I think it’s a gray area,” she said.
“I’m not going to do anything like that to him,” I insisted. “I can’t.”
Grace shrugged. “So you’re just going to be a bitch to him while he’s on your service? Like that’s any better.”
She had a point. I had been rude to Alex and his fiancée and it was very unlike me. But that was something that I couldn’t control. I couldn’t bring myself to be nice to Alex. However, intentionally doing things to hurt him was a whole different ballgame.
We heard a pager go off, and both Grace and I automatically jumped to attention. “I think that’s you,” Grace said.
I glanced at the number on my pager and recognized it from the stroke unit. Grace offered me her phone to use and I returned the call. One of the nurses on the unit picked up the phone. “Dr. Miller?” she said. “The new patient, Connors? His fiancée says she wants to talk to you.”
“Oh?” I said, my mouth dry. “Um, did you page Dr. Wexler?”
“No,” the nurse insisted. “She says she wants to talk to you, Doctor.”
Oh god. Alex must have figured out who I was. They were going to reprimand me for being unprofessional. I was going to get fired. And before I even had the chance to order Alex a 3AM enema.
I told the nurse I’d be right there and I excused myself from Grace, who clucked her tongue at me about doing the resident’s work. I raced down to the stroke unit, rehearsing a speech feigning ignorance about knowing who Alex was. They couldn’t really accuse me of anything. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was innocent.
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When I arrived on the stroke unit, Eva was waiting for me at the nursing station. I was relieved to see that she didn’t look angry. Her dark hair was pulled behind her head in a messy ponytail and she looked tired. I decided that she wasn’t particularly pretty, but might clean up well, like if she put on a sweatshirt that wasn’t wrinkled or something. Right now, she was clearly not at her best. “Hi, Dr. Miller,” she said. “Thank you for coming here so quickly. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
The conference room at the end of the hallway was thankfully empty. Eva took a seat and I sat down next to her, preparing to answer her questions. She opened her mouth, but before she could ask me anything, she burst into tears.
I stared at her in shock, not sure what to do. To buy some time, I stood up and brought a box of tissues over and offered them to Eva, who accepted gratefully. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “It’s just been a really hard weekend.”
I nodded sympathetically. I looked down at the diamond on the engagement ring on Eva’s left hand, which was nowhere near as big as Chloe’s. I remembered reading in the social history that Alex was a computer programmer. I wasn’t sure what kind of salary he made, but obviously not as big as Steve’s salary.
“Money’s been really tight lately,” Eva said, as if reading my mind. “We just closed on a house last month and we’ve been renovating it. And the wedding is in two months and that’s cost a fortune…”
Alex and Eva, buying a house, having a dream wedding. Was I supposed to feel sorry for her or something? What next? Were her diamond shoes too tight?
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with Alex out of work,” she said.
“Apply for disability,” I said. A good disability plan would cover his full salary for quite a while.
“Yes, but…” Eva bit her lip. “Do you think he’ll eventually be able to go back to work?”
“He works with computers, right?” I said. “That’s a sedentary job. Why wouldn’t he be able to go back?”
“Because…” Eva’s eyes filled with tears. “He can’t do anything right now. He can’t even get dressed himself…”
“That can all be addressed in rehab,” I reassured her.
Eva wrung her hands together. “Dr. Miller, do you think that he’ll…”
I knew what she was going to ask. I’d heard the question a thousand times before. I could have completed it for her, but I didn’t. “What?” I said.
“Do you think he’ll be able to walk again?” she asked in a small scared voice.
That’s what they all wanted to know. Will I be able to walk? Especially someone as young as Alex. The answer was that I didn’t know. Right now, he sure couldn’t.
“Initially, he’ll need a wheelchair,” I said to her. “Maybe if he gets some more movement back in his legs, he might be able to walk on a very limited basis with braces and crutches.”
“Braces and crutches?” Eva’s face was pale.
“Well, he can’t move his legs,” I reminded her.
“But… won’t that get better?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
For a moment, I worried she’d start crying again, but instead she leaned back in her seat, looking dazed and overwhelmed. I reminded myself that Eva wasn’t the one who had been mean to me all those years ago. But then again, if Alex was an asshole, the woman engaged to him couldn’t possibly be that wonderful.
What was Eva thinking? I bet anything she was thinking that she had picked wrong. She had gotten engaged to Alex and put all her eggs in his basket (so to speak), invested in a house with him, and now a wedding. And he had screwed her over. Maybe even worse than he screwed me over. She’d thought she was going to have the fairy tale ending, but instead she was stuck with a fiancé who couldn’t even walk anymore.
I guessed that she was also thinking about her wedding in two months and how maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that they hadn’t gone through with it yet.
After my encounter with Alex Connors, I had called an emergency lunch with my best friend in the hospital, Grace Tucker. Grace worked as an attending physician in the ICU, and I’d been friends with her since we were both naïve little residents. Actually, I’m pretty sure Grace was never a naïve anything. Even as a kindergartener, I suspect she was bossing everyone around.
Grace and I usually met up in her office. Grace’s office was as painfully tiny as mine with barely enough room for her many diplomas and certificates on the wall: college diploma, med school diploma, medical school honors society, Intern of the Year, Resident of the Year, diplomat of the Board of Internal Medicine, certificate of passing her subspecialty training in critical care. Unlike me, Grace never wore a white coat. She had earned herself a reputation as a hardass bitch in the ICU and she didn’t need a white coat to command her authority.
“Come on, spit it out,” Grace said. “I’m a busy woman. My residents are apparently complete idiots who can’t treat a paper cut.”
I took a bite of the brownie I had treated myself to, as promised. “It’s this new patient, Alex Connors,” I said. “He came in over the weekend. Anterior spinal artery stroke, around T6.”
“What, is he being a pain in the ass?”
“No, he’s nice,” I said. “He’s young, only in his early thirties…”
“Is he cute?” Grace asked.
One thing Grace and I talk about a lot is Men. She’s just as single as I am and probably dates even less than I do, which is an achievement. We act like it’s Grace’s career that gets in the way of her social life, but we both know it’s not. Grace is overweight. Really, really overweight. And she’s not the kind of woman who would be gorgeous if only she lost a few pounds either, although she does have nice hair. I love Grace though, and I think any guy who passes her up doesn’t know what he’s missing.
“It’s not about him being cute,” I said. Okay, the truth was that, yes, Alex was cute. Of course he was. But that was all beside the point. “It’s not that,” I said. “The thing is, I know him…”
Grace raised her eyebrows. “Go on.”
I sighed, resigning myself to telling this story. “Alex and I went to middle school together and he was… incredibly cruel to me. Used to tease me a lot. He’s just an awful, mean, horrible person.” I swallowed. “I know I’m supposed to take care of him and get him better, but honestly, all I want to do is strangle him.”
“Wow,” Grace commented after a long pause, “you are even a little crazier than I thought you were.”
“Thanks,” I said, chewing a bite of the dressing-free salad I had purchased to balance out the brownie. What the hell was I thinking ordering a salad with no dressing? “So what do I do? I hate this guy.”
“Don’t you feel sorry for him?” she said. “I mean, the poor guy is, what, a paraplegic now? Isn’t that punishment enough?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But he could be recovered in a few months. Knowing his luck, I’m sure he will be. This is just a speed bump for him.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “If you think about it, you’re in a pretty enviable position.”
“I am?”
“Rachel, for one of the smartest women I know, you can be kind of dense sometimes,” she said. “Let me spell this out for you. This guy Alex made your life miserable for a year. And now here you are, the doctor in charge of his care. And best of all, he doesn’t even know who you are! You can finally exact your revenge.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Grace giggled. “Maybe some 3 AM enemas? Daily rectal exams? Be creative.”
“I can’t do that!” I cried. “It’s totally unethical.”
“I think it’s a gray area,” she said.
“I’m not going to do anything like that to him,” I insisted. “I can’t.”
Grace shrugged. “So you’re just going to be a bitch to him while he’s on your service? Like that’s any better.”
She had a point. I had been rude to Alex and his fiancée and it was very unlike me. But that was something that I couldn’t control. I couldn’t bring myself to be nice to Alex. However, intentionally doing things to hurt him was a whole different ballgame.
We heard a pager go off, and both Grace and I automatically jumped to attention. “I think that’s you,” Grace said.
I glanced at the number on my pager and recognized it from the stroke unit. Grace offered me her phone to use and I returned the call. One of the nurses on the unit picked up the phone. “Dr. Miller?” she said. “The new patient, Connors? His fiancée says she wants to talk to you.”
“Oh?” I said, my mouth dry. “Um, did you page Dr. Wexler?”
“No,” the nurse insisted. “She says she wants to talk to you, Doctor.”
Oh god. Alex must have figured out who I was. They were going to reprimand me for being unprofessional. I was going to get fired. And before I even had the chance to order Alex a 3AM enema.
I told the nurse I’d be right there and I excused myself from Grace, who clucked her tongue at me about doing the resident’s work. I raced down to the stroke unit, rehearsing a speech feigning ignorance about knowing who Alex was. They couldn’t really accuse me of anything. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was innocent.
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When I arrived on the stroke unit, Eva was waiting for me at the nursing station. I was relieved to see that she didn’t look angry. Her dark hair was pulled behind her head in a messy ponytail and she looked tired. I decided that she wasn’t particularly pretty, but might clean up well, like if she put on a sweatshirt that wasn’t wrinkled or something. Right now, she was clearly not at her best. “Hi, Dr. Miller,” she said. “Thank you for coming here so quickly. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
The conference room at the end of the hallway was thankfully empty. Eva took a seat and I sat down next to her, preparing to answer her questions. She opened her mouth, but before she could ask me anything, she burst into tears.
I stared at her in shock, not sure what to do. To buy some time, I stood up and brought a box of tissues over and offered them to Eva, who accepted gratefully. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “It’s just been a really hard weekend.”
I nodded sympathetically. I looked down at the diamond on the engagement ring on Eva’s left hand, which was nowhere near as big as Chloe’s. I remembered reading in the social history that Alex was a computer programmer. I wasn’t sure what kind of salary he made, but obviously not as big as Steve’s salary.
“Money’s been really tight lately,” Eva said, as if reading my mind. “We just closed on a house last month and we’ve been renovating it. And the wedding is in two months and that’s cost a fortune…”
Alex and Eva, buying a house, having a dream wedding. Was I supposed to feel sorry for her or something? What next? Were her diamond shoes too tight?
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with Alex out of work,” she said.
“Apply for disability,” I said. A good disability plan would cover his full salary for quite a while.
“Yes, but…” Eva bit her lip. “Do you think he’ll eventually be able to go back to work?”
“He works with computers, right?” I said. “That’s a sedentary job. Why wouldn’t he be able to go back?”
“Because…” Eva’s eyes filled with tears. “He can’t do anything right now. He can’t even get dressed himself…”
“That can all be addressed in rehab,” I reassured her.
Eva wrung her hands together. “Dr. Miller, do you think that he’ll…”
I knew what she was going to ask. I’d heard the question a thousand times before. I could have completed it for her, but I didn’t. “What?” I said.
“Do you think he’ll be able to walk again?” she asked in a small scared voice.
That’s what they all wanted to know. Will I be able to walk? Especially someone as young as Alex. The answer was that I didn’t know. Right now, he sure couldn’t.
“Initially, he’ll need a wheelchair,” I said to her. “Maybe if he gets some more movement back in his legs, he might be able to walk on a very limited basis with braces and crutches.”
“Braces and crutches?” Eva’s face was pale.
“Well, he can’t move his legs,” I reminded her.
“But… won’t that get better?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
For a moment, I worried she’d start crying again, but instead she leaned back in her seat, looking dazed and overwhelmed. I reminded myself that Eva wasn’t the one who had been mean to me all those years ago. But then again, if Alex was an asshole, the woman engaged to him couldn’t possibly be that wonderful.
What was Eva thinking? I bet anything she was thinking that she had picked wrong. She had gotten engaged to Alex and put all her eggs in his basket (so to speak), invested in a house with him, and now a wedding. And he had screwed her over. Maybe even worse than he screwed me over. She’d thought she was going to have the fairy tale ending, but instead she was stuck with a fiancé who couldn’t even walk anymore.
I guessed that she was also thinking about her wedding in two months and how maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that they hadn’t gone through with it yet.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 4)
I know it’s hard to for people to take me seriously when I’m blaming an eleven-year-old boy for wrecking my social life. But that’s exactly what Alex did. Maybe he didn’t directly ruin my life, but he started me down a one-way path that resulted in my current state of loneliness.
In high school, I was painfully shy. If it were socially acceptable to style my hair to completely cover my face, I would have done it. When my breasts finally developed, they were an embarrassment to me. They were too lumpy and asymmetrical. The left one was bigger than the right. Instead of wearing sweaters to hide my lack of a chest, I was now wearing sweaters to hide my blossoming chest.
You probably won’t be surprised to know I didn’t date in high school. I wanted to. I saw the pretty girls in the hallways making out with their boyfriends between classes and I felt overwhelmed with jealousy. It seemed so easy for those girls. The closest I ever came was Evan Zucker in my senior year physics class, a painfully skinny kid with hair so red it shouldn’t have existed in nature. He used to call me almost nightly with questions about the physics homework, despite the fact that I noticed his grades on exams were higher than mine. (Actually, I think he went on to become a physicist.)
The last day that senior prom tickets were available, I remember Evan mentioned it to me. He caught up with me before class and pointed to the kids selling tickets in the hallway. “Last day to get tickets,” he remarked.
I waited a beat, wondering if he was going to ask me to the prom. He didn’t. “Prom is dumb,” I said in my best 17 year old angsty voice, channeling Courtney Love.
I remember Evan blinked and looked a little taken aback. I always wondered if maybe he really had wanted to ask me to the prom and my declaration that prom was dumb discouraged him. In any case, I spent prom night at home, making brownies then eating them while watching Nick at Nite. There was a Get Smart marathon on.
When I got to college, my freshman roommate Connie took me clothes shopping after we’d been living together for about two weeks, at some trendy shop where nobody was over age 25, including the salesgirls. She kept plucking stringy little hot pink tops out of the clothing racks and holding them up to my chest. “This would look so good on you, Rachel,” she breathed.
I looked down at the glittery lettering on the tank top that read “naughty girl” and gasped. “Um, I don’t think so,” I said.
My friends saw me as a challenge. They would say, “Rachel needs to me set up!” They would ignore my protests of, “Oh, no, she doesn’t.” I would make them swear not to set me up, then I’d somehow end up at a dinner with a “coincidentally” single guy along who was clearly meant for me. I remember one guy, I think his name was Roger, whispered in my ear mid-dinner, “Ugh, I think we’ve been set up.”
“I know,” I said, blushing with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“We should get revenge,” Roger said, nudging me in the arm and grinning.
“Mmm,” I murmured, blushing deeper at the thought that being set up with the likes of me was a revenge-worthy offense. At the next break in the conversation, I made up an excuse and went home alone.
After my first year of med school ended, I attended a party with a fair amount of alcohol available. Nobody drinks like med students and I managed to throw back a few beers, which downgraded me from frigid to simply uptight. It was in this compromised state that I was approached by my former lab partner, Joe “What’s the beating red thing?” Hoffman. A lot of male med students are very attractive and smooth and good at getting girls, but Joe was none of those things. However, we were both quite drunk. We spent the better part of an hour laughing at how incompetent we both were in anatomy lab. When Joe suddenly kissed me and invited me back to his apartment, it didn’t even occur to me to say no.
And that’s the story of how I lost my virginity at age 23.
Joe called me a few days later, but sans alcohol, the conversation felt stiff and awkward. We went out on a dinner date that involved a lot of long pauses in the conversation, but improved significantly when we decided to split a bottle of wine. When Joe called me for another date, it occurred to me that the only way we could be a couple is if I became an alcoholic, so I decided to spare both of us some AA meetings and told him I was too busy.
“Too busy doing what?” Joe had challenged me. “Classes are over for the summer.”
“Too busy washing my hair,” I had retorted. I thought my answer was kind of funny, but he never spoke to me again.
After I dated Joe, it occurred to me that I really didn’t have much in common with most men, beyond the fact that our parts fit together. Avoiding men was actually much easier than trying to date them, since I didn’t have the kind of looks that caused me to get approached very often. I attempted internet dating and fix ups for a little while, but I really didn’t like it. It’s so much easier to just be single than to delve into the pool of losers out there.
After my encounter with Eva left me with shaking hands, I scheduled an emergency appointment with my shrink Felicia. I got out of work at 3:35 and was at Felicia’s tiny, dimly lit waiting room by 3:50. There’s no receptionist in the waiting room. You just sit down, pick up a magazine, and wait for your therapist to come get you. Usually the waiting room is empty, but today there was a guy maybe in his late twenties sitting there with a magazine. Even after all this time, I still feel self-conscious being seen in the waiting room of a psychiatrist.
I sat down in one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs, too jittery to even pick up a magazine. The guy looked up from his copy of People magazine and smiled at me. I groaned inwardly. Making eye contact with other people in the psychiatrist’s waiting room was a definite no-no. I guess this guy didn’t realize that.
“This is my first time here,” he remarked to me.
Oh god, I couldn’t believe he was talking to me. Talking to people in the psychiatrist’s waiting room was an even bigger no-no than making eye contact. I smiled tightly at him, hoping he’d get the hint that I didn’t want to talk to him.
“It always seemed kind of weird to me,” he went on, oblivious to my discomfort. “You know, seeing a shrink. But I guess everyone does it these days, huh?”
I muttered something. I eyed the entrance to the waiting room, willing Felicia to appear.
“I’m John, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand to me.
I stared at his hand. Touching someone in the psychiatrist’s waiting room was an extremely big no-no and exchanging names was just short of insanity. I knew it was rude to leave him hanging, but I waited a beat too long and John withdrew his hand. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “You don’t want to shake hands with some nut job in the shrink’s waiting room.”
I blushed. “Sorry.”
John shrugged and for a second, I really envied him. He just put himself out there and seemed completely unperturbed by the way I had snubbed him. He went back to his magazine and I considered apologizing further but at that moment, Felicia appeared at the entrance to the waiting room to collect me.
I love Felicia’s office. It always feels so warm and homey to me. In typical shrink-style, she does have a couch, but I’ve never actually laid down in it. I sit on the right side of it and just sink into the soft cushions. Felicia sits opposite from me and behind her there are four bookcases stuffed to the brim with books. Some of them are psychiatry books, there are a lot of fiction books too. I’ve actually borrowed a few books from her over the years.
“So tell me, Rachel,” she said, leaning forward as she talked to me. When we first started out, she used to take notes, but now she doesn’t anymore. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Felicia knew who Alex Connors was. I’d talked about him many times before. I knew she’d appreciate what I was about to say. “My new admission today was Alex Connors,” I said.
Felicia looked appropriately surprised. “You’re kidding,” she said. “To the stroke unit? Isn’t he only in his early thirties?”
“He had a stroke in his spinal cord. It was kind of a freak thing.”
“Wow,” Felicia said. “Poor guy.”
“Poor guy?” That wasn’t the response I had hoped for.
“Well, he had a stroke,” Felicia pointed out. “You don’t feel bad for him?”
“I don’t,” I replied honestly. “A lot of really nice people end up on my service. Alex is a jerk. I’m sure the way he treated me as kids was just the tip of the iceberg.”
“You don’t know that.”
I sighed. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on your side, of course,” Felicia said. “But I think you should consider the possibility that Alex Connors isn’t the horrible human being you’ve made him out to be.”
“How could you say that?” I asked her angrily. “You don’t understand what he did to me if you could say that. I mean, where have you been for the last seven years?”
“Rachel,” she said. “You’re an extremely rational, intelligent person in every other way. You’ve got to get past this. Whatever Alex did to you, you can’t let it destroy your self-confidence.”
“Too late,” I said.
Felicia smiled at me. “So after all these years, what did you say to the guy?”
“Say?”
“Did you tell him off?” she asked. “Explain to him how much he hurt you?”
I frowned. “Well, no.”
She shook her head. “Why am I not surprised?”
“The thing is,” I mumbled. “He doesn’t know it’s me. I mean, he didn’t recognize me.”
“And you didn’t tell him?”
I hung my head guiltily.
“Rachel, most people don’t get this kind of opportunity,” Felicia pointed out. “You can talk to him rationally, like an adult. I’m sure he’d apologize.”
I wasn’t so sure. It’s been my experience that people don’t tend to like to apologize. But that wasn’t the reason I was afraid to say anything to Alex. What I was most scared of was that when I asked him why he had been so cruel, he would tell me that I was so ugly, he hadn’t been able to help it. Then he’d look me over and tell me I hadn’t changed in twenty years. That was my big fear and I couldn’t say it out loud, even to Felicia.
“I can’t do that,” was what I finally said.
“Well, regardless,” Felicia said. “I think the most pressing question is whether you can continue to serve as his physician. Are you going to provide him with optimal medical care?”
I snickered to myself as I remembered what Grace had said about daily rectal exams. But that wasn’t me. “I think so,” I said.
Felicia raised her eyebrows and for a moment, I doubted myself. But I’ve never acted unprofessionally in my life and I wasn’t about to start right now. Maybe providing good medical care to Alex would help me get over what he did to me all those years ago. Somehow.
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As soon as I got home, my cell phone immediately started ringing. I saw my mother’s number pop up and my stomach sunk. I had completely forgotten that I had an appointment scheduled this afternoon to be fitted for a bridesmaid dress for my younger sister Shauna’s wedding. This was the second time I had missed an appointment and I predicted this incident was going to be heralded as evidence of my lack of reliability for years to come.
I answered the phone and braced myself. “I’m sorry,” I said, before she could tear into me.
“You’re sorry,” my mother repeated. “You know, this is the second appointment you’ve missed. Shauna’s going to be really upset.”
“There was a patient who was sick,” I lied. “I couldn’t leave.”
“Don’t make up stories, Rachel,” Mom said. Damn, how did she always know when I was lying?
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said again. “Really. Things got busy and I just forgot.”
“You know, Shauna has appointments nearly every day, trying to get things in order for the wedding.”
I wanted to point out that Shauna was a teacher whose day ended at 3PM every day, but I suspected that would make matters worse.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” I said, wanting to end this conversation. “Anything you want.”
I expected her to read off the date of the rescheduled appointment and make me swear on a Bible that I’d be there, but instead she reacted with glee. “You can go out on a date with that man I was telling you about last week.”
I frowned. I had forgotten all about that. I never would have made such an open-ended promise if I remembered she had a man she wanted me to go out with. Up until now, I’d actively avoided being set up by my mother. It felt so pathetic going out on a date she arranged for me. But then again, my baby sister was getting married in a month and I didn’t even have a date to the wedding. Maybe I needed to revise my definition of the word “pathetic.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Really?” My mother sounded shocked.
“Yeah, sure,” I sighed.
I listened patiently while Mom fed me the details on the man that she evidently believed would be my future husband. His name was Charlie, he was in his late thirties, and he worked as an accountant. He’d never been married. The way my mother knew him was that she played bridge with his mother. They were certain we’d hit it off.
“Is Charlie okay with his mother setting him up on a date?” I asked.
“Of course!” Mom said. That response disturbed me a bit, but I let it slide. I needed to be more optimistic. Maybe this guy Charlie would be great. Maybe he’d be the love of my life. Maybe a year from now, I’d be the one planning a wedding.
Yeah, right.
In high school, I was painfully shy. If it were socially acceptable to style my hair to completely cover my face, I would have done it. When my breasts finally developed, they were an embarrassment to me. They were too lumpy and asymmetrical. The left one was bigger than the right. Instead of wearing sweaters to hide my lack of a chest, I was now wearing sweaters to hide my blossoming chest.
You probably won’t be surprised to know I didn’t date in high school. I wanted to. I saw the pretty girls in the hallways making out with their boyfriends between classes and I felt overwhelmed with jealousy. It seemed so easy for those girls. The closest I ever came was Evan Zucker in my senior year physics class, a painfully skinny kid with hair so red it shouldn’t have existed in nature. He used to call me almost nightly with questions about the physics homework, despite the fact that I noticed his grades on exams were higher than mine. (Actually, I think he went on to become a physicist.)
The last day that senior prom tickets were available, I remember Evan mentioned it to me. He caught up with me before class and pointed to the kids selling tickets in the hallway. “Last day to get tickets,” he remarked.
I waited a beat, wondering if he was going to ask me to the prom. He didn’t. “Prom is dumb,” I said in my best 17 year old angsty voice, channeling Courtney Love.
I remember Evan blinked and looked a little taken aback. I always wondered if maybe he really had wanted to ask me to the prom and my declaration that prom was dumb discouraged him. In any case, I spent prom night at home, making brownies then eating them while watching Nick at Nite. There was a Get Smart marathon on.
When I got to college, my freshman roommate Connie took me clothes shopping after we’d been living together for about two weeks, at some trendy shop where nobody was over age 25, including the salesgirls. She kept plucking stringy little hot pink tops out of the clothing racks and holding them up to my chest. “This would look so good on you, Rachel,” she breathed.
I looked down at the glittery lettering on the tank top that read “naughty girl” and gasped. “Um, I don’t think so,” I said.
My friends saw me as a challenge. They would say, “Rachel needs to me set up!” They would ignore my protests of, “Oh, no, she doesn’t.” I would make them swear not to set me up, then I’d somehow end up at a dinner with a “coincidentally” single guy along who was clearly meant for me. I remember one guy, I think his name was Roger, whispered in my ear mid-dinner, “Ugh, I think we’ve been set up.”
“I know,” I said, blushing with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“We should get revenge,” Roger said, nudging me in the arm and grinning.
“Mmm,” I murmured, blushing deeper at the thought that being set up with the likes of me was a revenge-worthy offense. At the next break in the conversation, I made up an excuse and went home alone.
After my first year of med school ended, I attended a party with a fair amount of alcohol available. Nobody drinks like med students and I managed to throw back a few beers, which downgraded me from frigid to simply uptight. It was in this compromised state that I was approached by my former lab partner, Joe “What’s the beating red thing?” Hoffman. A lot of male med students are very attractive and smooth and good at getting girls, but Joe was none of those things. However, we were both quite drunk. We spent the better part of an hour laughing at how incompetent we both were in anatomy lab. When Joe suddenly kissed me and invited me back to his apartment, it didn’t even occur to me to say no.
And that’s the story of how I lost my virginity at age 23.
Joe called me a few days later, but sans alcohol, the conversation felt stiff and awkward. We went out on a dinner date that involved a lot of long pauses in the conversation, but improved significantly when we decided to split a bottle of wine. When Joe called me for another date, it occurred to me that the only way we could be a couple is if I became an alcoholic, so I decided to spare both of us some AA meetings and told him I was too busy.
“Too busy doing what?” Joe had challenged me. “Classes are over for the summer.”
“Too busy washing my hair,” I had retorted. I thought my answer was kind of funny, but he never spoke to me again.
After I dated Joe, it occurred to me that I really didn’t have much in common with most men, beyond the fact that our parts fit together. Avoiding men was actually much easier than trying to date them, since I didn’t have the kind of looks that caused me to get approached very often. I attempted internet dating and fix ups for a little while, but I really didn’t like it. It’s so much easier to just be single than to delve into the pool of losers out there.
After my encounter with Eva left me with shaking hands, I scheduled an emergency appointment with my shrink Felicia. I got out of work at 3:35 and was at Felicia’s tiny, dimly lit waiting room by 3:50. There’s no receptionist in the waiting room. You just sit down, pick up a magazine, and wait for your therapist to come get you. Usually the waiting room is empty, but today there was a guy maybe in his late twenties sitting there with a magazine. Even after all this time, I still feel self-conscious being seen in the waiting room of a psychiatrist.
I sat down in one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs, too jittery to even pick up a magazine. The guy looked up from his copy of People magazine and smiled at me. I groaned inwardly. Making eye contact with other people in the psychiatrist’s waiting room was a definite no-no. I guess this guy didn’t realize that.
“This is my first time here,” he remarked to me.
Oh god, I couldn’t believe he was talking to me. Talking to people in the psychiatrist’s waiting room was an even bigger no-no than making eye contact. I smiled tightly at him, hoping he’d get the hint that I didn’t want to talk to him.
“It always seemed kind of weird to me,” he went on, oblivious to my discomfort. “You know, seeing a shrink. But I guess everyone does it these days, huh?”
I muttered something. I eyed the entrance to the waiting room, willing Felicia to appear.
“I’m John, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand to me.
I stared at his hand. Touching someone in the psychiatrist’s waiting room was an extremely big no-no and exchanging names was just short of insanity. I knew it was rude to leave him hanging, but I waited a beat too long and John withdrew his hand. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “You don’t want to shake hands with some nut job in the shrink’s waiting room.”
I blushed. “Sorry.”
John shrugged and for a second, I really envied him. He just put himself out there and seemed completely unperturbed by the way I had snubbed him. He went back to his magazine and I considered apologizing further but at that moment, Felicia appeared at the entrance to the waiting room to collect me.
I love Felicia’s office. It always feels so warm and homey to me. In typical shrink-style, she does have a couch, but I’ve never actually laid down in it. I sit on the right side of it and just sink into the soft cushions. Felicia sits opposite from me and behind her there are four bookcases stuffed to the brim with books. Some of them are psychiatry books, there are a lot of fiction books too. I’ve actually borrowed a few books from her over the years.
“So tell me, Rachel,” she said, leaning forward as she talked to me. When we first started out, she used to take notes, but now she doesn’t anymore. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Felicia knew who Alex Connors was. I’d talked about him many times before. I knew she’d appreciate what I was about to say. “My new admission today was Alex Connors,” I said.
Felicia looked appropriately surprised. “You’re kidding,” she said. “To the stroke unit? Isn’t he only in his early thirties?”
“He had a stroke in his spinal cord. It was kind of a freak thing.”
“Wow,” Felicia said. “Poor guy.”
“Poor guy?” That wasn’t the response I had hoped for.
“Well, he had a stroke,” Felicia pointed out. “You don’t feel bad for him?”
“I don’t,” I replied honestly. “A lot of really nice people end up on my service. Alex is a jerk. I’m sure the way he treated me as kids was just the tip of the iceberg.”
“You don’t know that.”
I sighed. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on your side, of course,” Felicia said. “But I think you should consider the possibility that Alex Connors isn’t the horrible human being you’ve made him out to be.”
“How could you say that?” I asked her angrily. “You don’t understand what he did to me if you could say that. I mean, where have you been for the last seven years?”
“Rachel,” she said. “You’re an extremely rational, intelligent person in every other way. You’ve got to get past this. Whatever Alex did to you, you can’t let it destroy your self-confidence.”
“Too late,” I said.
Felicia smiled at me. “So after all these years, what did you say to the guy?”
“Say?”
“Did you tell him off?” she asked. “Explain to him how much he hurt you?”
I frowned. “Well, no.”
She shook her head. “Why am I not surprised?”
“The thing is,” I mumbled. “He doesn’t know it’s me. I mean, he didn’t recognize me.”
“And you didn’t tell him?”
I hung my head guiltily.
“Rachel, most people don’t get this kind of opportunity,” Felicia pointed out. “You can talk to him rationally, like an adult. I’m sure he’d apologize.”
I wasn’t so sure. It’s been my experience that people don’t tend to like to apologize. But that wasn’t the reason I was afraid to say anything to Alex. What I was most scared of was that when I asked him why he had been so cruel, he would tell me that I was so ugly, he hadn’t been able to help it. Then he’d look me over and tell me I hadn’t changed in twenty years. That was my big fear and I couldn’t say it out loud, even to Felicia.
“I can’t do that,” was what I finally said.
“Well, regardless,” Felicia said. “I think the most pressing question is whether you can continue to serve as his physician. Are you going to provide him with optimal medical care?”
I snickered to myself as I remembered what Grace had said about daily rectal exams. But that wasn’t me. “I think so,” I said.
Felicia raised her eyebrows and for a moment, I doubted myself. But I’ve never acted unprofessionally in my life and I wasn’t about to start right now. Maybe providing good medical care to Alex would help me get over what he did to me all those years ago. Somehow.
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As soon as I got home, my cell phone immediately started ringing. I saw my mother’s number pop up and my stomach sunk. I had completely forgotten that I had an appointment scheduled this afternoon to be fitted for a bridesmaid dress for my younger sister Shauna’s wedding. This was the second time I had missed an appointment and I predicted this incident was going to be heralded as evidence of my lack of reliability for years to come.
I answered the phone and braced myself. “I’m sorry,” I said, before she could tear into me.
“You’re sorry,” my mother repeated. “You know, this is the second appointment you’ve missed. Shauna’s going to be really upset.”
“There was a patient who was sick,” I lied. “I couldn’t leave.”
“Don’t make up stories, Rachel,” Mom said. Damn, how did she always know when I was lying?
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said again. “Really. Things got busy and I just forgot.”
“You know, Shauna has appointments nearly every day, trying to get things in order for the wedding.”
I wanted to point out that Shauna was a teacher whose day ended at 3PM every day, but I suspected that would make matters worse.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” I said, wanting to end this conversation. “Anything you want.”
I expected her to read off the date of the rescheduled appointment and make me swear on a Bible that I’d be there, but instead she reacted with glee. “You can go out on a date with that man I was telling you about last week.”
I frowned. I had forgotten all about that. I never would have made such an open-ended promise if I remembered she had a man she wanted me to go out with. Up until now, I’d actively avoided being set up by my mother. It felt so pathetic going out on a date she arranged for me. But then again, my baby sister was getting married in a month and I didn’t even have a date to the wedding. Maybe I needed to revise my definition of the word “pathetic.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Really?” My mother sounded shocked.
“Yeah, sure,” I sighed.
I listened patiently while Mom fed me the details on the man that she evidently believed would be my future husband. His name was Charlie, he was in his late thirties, and he worked as an accountant. He’d never been married. The way my mother knew him was that she played bridge with his mother. They were certain we’d hit it off.
“Is Charlie okay with his mother setting him up on a date?” I asked.
“Of course!” Mom said. That response disturbed me a bit, but I let it slide. I needed to be more optimistic. Maybe this guy Charlie would be great. Maybe he’d be the love of my life. Maybe a year from now, I’d be the one planning a wedding.
Yeah, right.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 5)
The next morning, I arrived on the stroke unit before Chloe did. She was stuck in the emergency room seeing a possible admission so I told her I’d start rounding on her behalf. She gave me a quick rundown on the patients and I told her to take her time in the ER while I handled things upstairs. I’m generally well liked by residents, which is probably because of my willingness to do their work for them.
I found myself starting out with Alex Connors’s room. I figured I had to see him eventually and it was better to get it over with. Besides, I preferred Chloe not to be in the room, witnessing my awkward response to him.
Alex looked different today. He had some color in his cheeks and there were a pair of wire-rimmed glasses resting on his nose as he read a local newspaper that was laid out on his lap. He didn’t wear glasses back in middle school and they made him look different. More serious, maybe. Kind of dorky, although admittedly still cute. He smiled at me when I came into the room. “Hi, Dr. Miller,” he said.
“Hello, Mr. Connors,” I said.
“Alex,” he corrected me. Patients sometimes told me to call them by their first names and I generally complied. But I never reciprocated the offer. You can never take down the wall of professionalism. I was always Dr. Miller.
Since he was making an effort to be friendly, I forced a smile. “Someone brought you your glasses, I see?”
“Oh yeah,” he said and grinned. “Eva went home and got them for me. I got tired of everything being blurry.”
“You didn’t used to need...” I caught myself before saying what I’d been thinking. “I mean, how long have you needed corrective lenses?”
“It’s been a while,” he said thoughtfully. “I started wearing them way back in high school. I figured after I joined the Computer Club, I may as well complete the picture, right?”
I didn’t laugh at his joke and Alex rambled on, “Eva hates them though. She says they make me look like a huge geek. She wants me to get contacts. What do you think?”
“What do I think?” I repeated, stalling for time. I didn’t feel comfortable commenting on Alex’s appearance.
“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to know. If you end up agreeing with Eva, I don’t want her to have more ammunition to make me stick pieces of plastic in my eyes.”
I noticed that his fiancée was absent from the room. “Is Eva at work?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, a little sadly. I guess he wished she could have been there. Really, I thought she probably should have been. When the man you’re going to spend the rest of your life is paralyzed from the waist down, it’s time to take a few days off from work. “She had a really important research meeting this morning. But she’ll be here in the afternoon.”
“I’m sure she will,” I said with more skepticism than I had intended.
Alex seemed a little taken aback. His brows knitted together and I could tell that I had touched a nerve—he was clearly concerned about the thoughts going through Eva’s head. But he was doing a pretty damn good job staying upbeat. I was impressed and a little irritated. “So,” he said. “What did the tests show?”
“All normal,” I said. Chloe had read me off the results and I had looked at the MRI personally. He had no clotting problems, no vascular abnormalities, and no weird diseases. There was absolutely nothing that could account for the stroke.
“Oh.” Alex raised his eyebrows. “Um, is that good?”
“It’s good,” I confirmed, after a hesitation. “It just means we don’t know why you got the infarct in your spinal cord.”
“Oh,” he said again. He looked troubled.
“Well, you were biking,” I said. “Right? It’s possible you overexerted yourself.”
“I’m 33 years old,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t ride a bike?”
“If you’re out of shape, a bike ride can be a lot of exertion.”
Alex stuck out his tongue at me. The gesture was kind of adorable and I found myself blushing. “Okay, you caught me, doc. I was completely out of shape.” He smiled. “I sit in front of a computer all day at work, and mostly all night at home. The biking was part of my new exercise regimen. I was trying to get rid of the old beer belly.”
I didn’t return his smile. I knew that if not for the history between me and Alex, I would probably have liked the man. Hell, he probably would have been my favorite patient. Maybe I would have even harbored a little crush on him.
I went through another physical exam and didn’t find any change. Alex still couldn’t move his legs at all. I could tell he was really trying to move them, trying to remember what signals he used to use to wiggle his toes, but it wasn’t working for him. “Damn,” he said. His face was red from the effort.
“It’s still early,” I said.
“Yeah,” he sighed, letting his head fall back against the pillow. He was staring at me and for a second, a strange look came over his face, like he was remembering something. My stomach sunk. Did he finally recall who I was? “You want to hear something crazy, Dr. Miller?”
I swallowed. “Sure.”
“When I was a kid, it was my dream to become a doctor,” he said.
Was that all he wanted to tell me? He practically gave me a heart attack. My shoulders sagged in relief. “Oh yeah? What happened?”
He gave me a conspiratorial look. “Well, this is the part you can’t tell anyone, especially not Eva. She’d never quit teasing me.” He paused dramatically. “So when I was in my high school biology class, we got our fingers stuck to test our blood type. And when I got my blood taken, I fainted.” He grinned sheepishly. “I figured if seeing one drop of blood made me pass out, it probably was too much of an uphill battle. I figured becoming a code monkey was a safer bet.”
Despite myself, I laughed. Alex looked very proud of himself for finally getting a rise out of me. Then he pulled off his glasses to clean the lenses on his shirt.
Without his glasses, suddenly he looked like the old eleven year old Alex again. I wrung my hands together as I remembered how I’d be innocently sitting in math class and hear him and the kid sitting next to him snickering to each other. I’d whip around my head and snap, “What?”
“Nothing,” Alex would reply, blinking innocently with a barely suppressed smirk. And as I turned my head back toward the blackboard, I’d touch the back of my head and feel dozens of little spitballs they had tossed into my hair. The two boys would dissolve into giggles as I tried to pick the sticky saliva-encrusted paper from my hair. I grew to hate Alex’s sense of humor and the sound of his laughter. I stared at his smiling face now, feeling my blood pressure rise from all those twenty years of pent up anger and hatred.
“It’s probably better you didn’t become a doctor,” I said. “You really need two working legs to be a doctor, so that obviously disqualifies you.”
Alex couldn’t have looked more shocked if I had slugged him in the jaw. His face turned bright red and he stared down at his legs. When he finally looked back up at me, all traces of humor were gone from his eyes.
“Is there anything else?” I asked him, using my most detached and impatient tone.
“No,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
I spun on my heels and left the room. My hands were shaking as I pulled the door closed behind me. I couldn’t believe what I had just said in there. It was beyond unprofessional and I felt slightly ill thinking about it. Yet the crazy thing was that I wasn’t sorry at all. Not one bit.
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I own an incredible apartment. For the longest time, I was avoiding purchasing anything, because I assumed I’d eventually want more space for my husband and children. When I hit thirty and realized that the husband and kids bit probably weren’t going to happen, at least not for a while, I decided I was waiting around for nothing. So I found an apartment that I fell in love with and I bought it. For me.
It’s a one bedroom place but it’s huge. There’s wall to wall carpeting and an incredible view of the city. The apartment was not cheap, but it completely worth it. After so many years of living in Manhattan, I can tell a nice apartment when I see one. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for furniture. Most of my apartment was furnished by Ikea. New, generic-looking furniture that would probably last five years tops.
I was tired from my long day, so I debating ordering a pizza, then decided I couldn’t wait and popped a box of frozen Lean Cuisine into the microwave. My entire freezer was packed to the brim with every offering from Lean Cuisine, most of which tasted very questionable. I was sick of TV dinners, but take out was always so greasy, and it just never seemed worth it to cook myself any kind of elaborate meal.
As I watched my shrimp and rice rotating in the microwave, I heard my phone start ringing. An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen. “Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Rachel?” a deep male voice inquired.
I frowned. “Yes. Who is this?”
“It’s Charlie. Charlie Weinberg.”
Charlie. The guy my mother was setting me up with. I felt my stomach churn. I guess I hesitated a bit too long, because he added, “Your mother gave me your number. She said I could call you?”
“Right,” I said, unable to muster any phony enthusiasm. “Hi, Charlie.”
“Is this a bad time?” he asked.
“No, it’s fine,” I said, glancing at the timer on the microwave. You’ve got five minutes, Charlie.
“So would you like to go out to dinner this weekend?” he asked. His voice was very deep, but it wasn’t deep in a sensual way like Barry White or even an intimidating way like Darth Vader. It was deep like an older man’s voice deepens with age and perhaps too many cigars. My mother had said she thought Charlie was in his late thirties, but I was suddenly very concerned that I might be making a date with a sixty year old. “How about Friday night?”
I guess the old man didn’t feel like I warranted a Saturday night invitation. “Uh, sure,” I said.
“Great.” He sounded relieved. “What kind of food do you like?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Anything.” I’m nothing if not low maintenance.
“There’s an Italian restaurant in midtown that I like a lot,” he said. “I can pick you up at seven?”
“Or I can meet you there?” I suggested, except it wasn’t really a suggestion. I didn’t think someone my mother would set me up with would turn out to be a crazy psycho killer, but you never know so I decided it was better if he didn’t see where I lived.
“It’s no problem for me to pick you up.”
“It’s no problem for me to meet you there.”
Charlie was quiet for a minute. Finally, he got it. “Oh. Okay.”
At that moment, the timer went off on my Lean Cuisine, so I excused myself. There was a time when I used to get excited by the idea of a date, but now they were just painful. Something to get through. I felt embarrassed even being seen on a date. I know it was my mother’s dream for me to have a date to Shauna’s wedding, but the chances that it was going to be Charlie were slim to none.
I found myself starting out with Alex Connors’s room. I figured I had to see him eventually and it was better to get it over with. Besides, I preferred Chloe not to be in the room, witnessing my awkward response to him.
Alex looked different today. He had some color in his cheeks and there were a pair of wire-rimmed glasses resting on his nose as he read a local newspaper that was laid out on his lap. He didn’t wear glasses back in middle school and they made him look different. More serious, maybe. Kind of dorky, although admittedly still cute. He smiled at me when I came into the room. “Hi, Dr. Miller,” he said.
“Hello, Mr. Connors,” I said.
“Alex,” he corrected me. Patients sometimes told me to call them by their first names and I generally complied. But I never reciprocated the offer. You can never take down the wall of professionalism. I was always Dr. Miller.
Since he was making an effort to be friendly, I forced a smile. “Someone brought you your glasses, I see?”
“Oh yeah,” he said and grinned. “Eva went home and got them for me. I got tired of everything being blurry.”
“You didn’t used to need...” I caught myself before saying what I’d been thinking. “I mean, how long have you needed corrective lenses?”
“It’s been a while,” he said thoughtfully. “I started wearing them way back in high school. I figured after I joined the Computer Club, I may as well complete the picture, right?”
I didn’t laugh at his joke and Alex rambled on, “Eva hates them though. She says they make me look like a huge geek. She wants me to get contacts. What do you think?”
“What do I think?” I repeated, stalling for time. I didn’t feel comfortable commenting on Alex’s appearance.
“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to know. If you end up agreeing with Eva, I don’t want her to have more ammunition to make me stick pieces of plastic in my eyes.”
I noticed that his fiancée was absent from the room. “Is Eva at work?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, a little sadly. I guess he wished she could have been there. Really, I thought she probably should have been. When the man you’re going to spend the rest of your life is paralyzed from the waist down, it’s time to take a few days off from work. “She had a really important research meeting this morning. But she’ll be here in the afternoon.”
“I’m sure she will,” I said with more skepticism than I had intended.
Alex seemed a little taken aback. His brows knitted together and I could tell that I had touched a nerve—he was clearly concerned about the thoughts going through Eva’s head. But he was doing a pretty damn good job staying upbeat. I was impressed and a little irritated. “So,” he said. “What did the tests show?”
“All normal,” I said. Chloe had read me off the results and I had looked at the MRI personally. He had no clotting problems, no vascular abnormalities, and no weird diseases. There was absolutely nothing that could account for the stroke.
“Oh.” Alex raised his eyebrows. “Um, is that good?”
“It’s good,” I confirmed, after a hesitation. “It just means we don’t know why you got the infarct in your spinal cord.”
“Oh,” he said again. He looked troubled.
“Well, you were biking,” I said. “Right? It’s possible you overexerted yourself.”
“I’m 33 years old,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t ride a bike?”
“If you’re out of shape, a bike ride can be a lot of exertion.”
Alex stuck out his tongue at me. The gesture was kind of adorable and I found myself blushing. “Okay, you caught me, doc. I was completely out of shape.” He smiled. “I sit in front of a computer all day at work, and mostly all night at home. The biking was part of my new exercise regimen. I was trying to get rid of the old beer belly.”
I didn’t return his smile. I knew that if not for the history between me and Alex, I would probably have liked the man. Hell, he probably would have been my favorite patient. Maybe I would have even harbored a little crush on him.
I went through another physical exam and didn’t find any change. Alex still couldn’t move his legs at all. I could tell he was really trying to move them, trying to remember what signals he used to use to wiggle his toes, but it wasn’t working for him. “Damn,” he said. His face was red from the effort.
“It’s still early,” I said.
“Yeah,” he sighed, letting his head fall back against the pillow. He was staring at me and for a second, a strange look came over his face, like he was remembering something. My stomach sunk. Did he finally recall who I was? “You want to hear something crazy, Dr. Miller?”
I swallowed. “Sure.”
“When I was a kid, it was my dream to become a doctor,” he said.
Was that all he wanted to tell me? He practically gave me a heart attack. My shoulders sagged in relief. “Oh yeah? What happened?”
He gave me a conspiratorial look. “Well, this is the part you can’t tell anyone, especially not Eva. She’d never quit teasing me.” He paused dramatically. “So when I was in my high school biology class, we got our fingers stuck to test our blood type. And when I got my blood taken, I fainted.” He grinned sheepishly. “I figured if seeing one drop of blood made me pass out, it probably was too much of an uphill battle. I figured becoming a code monkey was a safer bet.”
Despite myself, I laughed. Alex looked very proud of himself for finally getting a rise out of me. Then he pulled off his glasses to clean the lenses on his shirt.
Without his glasses, suddenly he looked like the old eleven year old Alex again. I wrung my hands together as I remembered how I’d be innocently sitting in math class and hear him and the kid sitting next to him snickering to each other. I’d whip around my head and snap, “What?”
“Nothing,” Alex would reply, blinking innocently with a barely suppressed smirk. And as I turned my head back toward the blackboard, I’d touch the back of my head and feel dozens of little spitballs they had tossed into my hair. The two boys would dissolve into giggles as I tried to pick the sticky saliva-encrusted paper from my hair. I grew to hate Alex’s sense of humor and the sound of his laughter. I stared at his smiling face now, feeling my blood pressure rise from all those twenty years of pent up anger and hatred.
“It’s probably better you didn’t become a doctor,” I said. “You really need two working legs to be a doctor, so that obviously disqualifies you.”
Alex couldn’t have looked more shocked if I had slugged him in the jaw. His face turned bright red and he stared down at his legs. When he finally looked back up at me, all traces of humor were gone from his eyes.
“Is there anything else?” I asked him, using my most detached and impatient tone.
“No,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
I spun on my heels and left the room. My hands were shaking as I pulled the door closed behind me. I couldn’t believe what I had just said in there. It was beyond unprofessional and I felt slightly ill thinking about it. Yet the crazy thing was that I wasn’t sorry at all. Not one bit.
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I own an incredible apartment. For the longest time, I was avoiding purchasing anything, because I assumed I’d eventually want more space for my husband and children. When I hit thirty and realized that the husband and kids bit probably weren’t going to happen, at least not for a while, I decided I was waiting around for nothing. So I found an apartment that I fell in love with and I bought it. For me.
It’s a one bedroom place but it’s huge. There’s wall to wall carpeting and an incredible view of the city. The apartment was not cheap, but it completely worth it. After so many years of living in Manhattan, I can tell a nice apartment when I see one. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for furniture. Most of my apartment was furnished by Ikea. New, generic-looking furniture that would probably last five years tops.
I was tired from my long day, so I debating ordering a pizza, then decided I couldn’t wait and popped a box of frozen Lean Cuisine into the microwave. My entire freezer was packed to the brim with every offering from Lean Cuisine, most of which tasted very questionable. I was sick of TV dinners, but take out was always so greasy, and it just never seemed worth it to cook myself any kind of elaborate meal.
As I watched my shrimp and rice rotating in the microwave, I heard my phone start ringing. An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen. “Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Rachel?” a deep male voice inquired.
I frowned. “Yes. Who is this?”
“It’s Charlie. Charlie Weinberg.”
Charlie. The guy my mother was setting me up with. I felt my stomach churn. I guess I hesitated a bit too long, because he added, “Your mother gave me your number. She said I could call you?”
“Right,” I said, unable to muster any phony enthusiasm. “Hi, Charlie.”
“Is this a bad time?” he asked.
“No, it’s fine,” I said, glancing at the timer on the microwave. You’ve got five minutes, Charlie.
“So would you like to go out to dinner this weekend?” he asked. His voice was very deep, but it wasn’t deep in a sensual way like Barry White or even an intimidating way like Darth Vader. It was deep like an older man’s voice deepens with age and perhaps too many cigars. My mother had said she thought Charlie was in his late thirties, but I was suddenly very concerned that I might be making a date with a sixty year old. “How about Friday night?”
I guess the old man didn’t feel like I warranted a Saturday night invitation. “Uh, sure,” I said.
“Great.” He sounded relieved. “What kind of food do you like?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Anything.” I’m nothing if not low maintenance.
“There’s an Italian restaurant in midtown that I like a lot,” he said. “I can pick you up at seven?”
“Or I can meet you there?” I suggested, except it wasn’t really a suggestion. I didn’t think someone my mother would set me up with would turn out to be a crazy psycho killer, but you never know so I decided it was better if he didn’t see where I lived.
“It’s no problem for me to pick you up.”
“It’s no problem for me to meet you there.”
Charlie was quiet for a minute. Finally, he got it. “Oh. Okay.”
At that moment, the timer went off on my Lean Cuisine, so I excused myself. There was a time when I used to get excited by the idea of a date, but now they were just painful. Something to get through. I felt embarrassed even being seen on a date. I know it was my mother’s dream for me to have a date to Shauna’s wedding, but the chances that it was going to be Charlie were slim to none.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 6)
To make up for the lack of Eva’s presence the day before, today Alex Connors’s entire family was packed into his tiny hospital room. It seemed like a lot of people, although in reality, it turned out to just be Eva, his parents, and his sister. Whenever I see large numbers of family members in a room, it makes me wonder who would show up if I ever was seriously ill. I suspect that it would just be my parents. I pictured my mother frittering about my sickbed, trying to stack the bedpans to make the room “more tidy.” And my father would sit in the corner by the window, reading the newspaper like usual, and intermittently glancing up at my mother and sighing. And possibly Grace would stop by too if she had a moment free in her busy day.
Alex seemed to be in pretty good spirits, surrounded by his family members. Chloe had completely fallen for his nice guy act and had declared to me this morning that he was her favorite patient. Then again, she told me that about a different patient nearly every day.
When Chloe and I walked into the room, Alex’s family introduced themselves to us and his mother pushed a Tupperware container into my hands. “This is for you, Dr. Miller,” she said. “For taking such good care of my Alex.”
I looked down at the Tupperware, which was stuffed with cookies. I could feel my thighs widening just looking at it. I handed the container off to Chloe, who took it obligingly. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Connors,” she said.
“Please call me Bette,” Mrs. Connors said.
I noticed the entire family was staring at me hopefully. “So have you gotten any movement back in your legs?” I asked Alex.
I watched him try again, although I could tell right away that he wasn’t going to be able to do it. I wrapped my fingers around his thigh, waiting to feel even a twitch, but there was nothing.
“Nothing,” I announced to his hopeful expression.
“But it’s still early, isn’t it?” Alex’s father spoke up.
I shrugged. Chloe gave me an odd look and said, “Of course it is! You should be really optimistic.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I corrected her. “As I’ve said many times, it’s still very early. Much too soon to predict any sort of recovery. To be honest, the fact that he has no movement at all at this point isn’t a good prognostic sign.”
Everyone in the room was kind of staring at me. I wondered if I had somehow gone too far, although I was just telling the truth. I wasn’t expected to sugar coat the truth for every single patient, was I?
“What about all those blood tests?” Mrs. Connors asked, breaking the silence. “Did they show anything?”
Chloe shook her head. “Everything was normal.”
I looked down at the Foley catheter tube that came out from under the blankets and led to a bag of urine hung from the side of the bed. “We need to get that catheter out,” I said suddenly. “You don’t want to get a urinary tract infection.”
“Oh,” Alex said. “Um, great. Good idea.”
I met Alex’s gray eyes. Ordinarily, I would have saved this conversation for a private time, but I remembered our childhood and decided there was no time like the present. “You’re probably going to be incontinent when we take it out,” I said. “We can give you a chance to see if you can hold it in, but the fact that you can’t hold in your bowel movements means you’re probably going to have similar problems with voiding urine.”
Alex’s face went white. His entire family was gawking at me. But I ignored them and went on: “You’re probably going to need to catheterize yourself when you go home. If I had to guess.”
“Oh,” Alex said.
Usually I ask the family members if they have any questions, but I didn’t pay the Connors that courtesy. I simply told them it was nice to meet them and marched out of the room, flanked by a still flustered Chloe. As I shut the door behind me, I could hear Alex’s father say, “Well, she was a ray of sunshine, wasn’t she?”
Once the door was closed, I folded my arms across my chest. “Also, Chloe, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I think it’s very inappropriate to give patients false hope.” The cold tone in my voice was extremely unlike me—I almost didn’t recognize myself.
Chloe blinked, clearly also surprised by my sudden bitchiness. “But… you usually…”
“What if he doesn’t have a good recovery?” I said. “Then the family will say, ‘Well, Dr. Miller told us he was going to get all better.’ And then they’ll be pissed off at us. You know as well as I do that the fact that he has no movement at all in his legs doesn’t bode well for his recovery.”
“I think it’s okay to give them some hope,” Chloe argued. “I think Connors really needs it. In fact, I think…”
I frowned at her. “What?”
“I think he’s pretty depressed,” she finished.
“Suicidal?” I asked. The most important question to ask any patient was whether there was a chance they might harm themselves. I hated Alex, but I didn’t want him dead, especially not while under my care.
“No, nothing like that,” she said. “I just think he seems sad.”
I felt a little jab in my chest. I didn’t want to say it, but I had noticed the exact same thing yesterday. Of course, Alex had a right to be sad. But that didn’t mean I was obligated to have any sympathy. If Chloe knew what he was really like, she wouldn’t have been speaking up for him.
“Maybe,” I said to Chloe, “you should go get him a box of tissues then.”
She stared at me, shocked. I knew I had a reputation for being an easygoing, compassionate physician and that was what Chloe expected of me after two weeks together. But who the hell cared what she thought anyway?
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While Grace and I were eating lunch that day, she dropped a bombshell on me: “I did a consult on Alex Connors yesterday.”
“What?” I was surprised. I hadn’t asked Chloe for a consult from the ICU on Alex. He had been nothing but stable since we admitted him.
Grace grinned. “Well, I figured that since he had some bleeding in his spinal cord, maybe he could use a little unofficial peek from the ICU. You know, just to see if the guy who ruined my best friend’s life had any blood pressure issues.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that what you told him?”
“I made up a very believable story,” Grace assured me. “And I must say, he appeared to be quite a nice young man.”
That seemed to be the consensus. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
“He also appeared quite cute,” she added. “I can see why he made your eleven year old self all hot and bothered.”
“Shut-up,” I said, blushing.
“He’s got those gray eyes,” she went on, starting to smile. “And that scruffy unshaven look is really sexy on him. I can see why you found him so hard to resist.”
“I don’t…” I muttered. “I mean, I didn’t find him hard to… I mean, he’s okay looking I guess, but he’s, you know…”
Grace’s eyes narrowed for a moment then widened. “Oh my god, you still like him!”
“Are you joking?” I snorted. “I despise him!”
“True,” she admitted. “But I think you also think he’s hot and want to jump him.”
I shook my head. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I?” Grace smiled. “Honey, there’s a thin line between love and hate.”
I denied it vehemently, but I had to admit that Alex was still very cute. Not that it really mattered or was something I was thinking about in the slightest. Aside from the fact that I hated him, he was also engaged. And even if he wasn’t, he had made it abundantly clear twenty years ago that he had no romantic interests in the likes of me.
Alex seemed to be in pretty good spirits, surrounded by his family members. Chloe had completely fallen for his nice guy act and had declared to me this morning that he was her favorite patient. Then again, she told me that about a different patient nearly every day.
When Chloe and I walked into the room, Alex’s family introduced themselves to us and his mother pushed a Tupperware container into my hands. “This is for you, Dr. Miller,” she said. “For taking such good care of my Alex.”
I looked down at the Tupperware, which was stuffed with cookies. I could feel my thighs widening just looking at it. I handed the container off to Chloe, who took it obligingly. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Connors,” she said.
“Please call me Bette,” Mrs. Connors said.
I noticed the entire family was staring at me hopefully. “So have you gotten any movement back in your legs?” I asked Alex.
I watched him try again, although I could tell right away that he wasn’t going to be able to do it. I wrapped my fingers around his thigh, waiting to feel even a twitch, but there was nothing.
“Nothing,” I announced to his hopeful expression.
“But it’s still early, isn’t it?” Alex’s father spoke up.
I shrugged. Chloe gave me an odd look and said, “Of course it is! You should be really optimistic.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I corrected her. “As I’ve said many times, it’s still very early. Much too soon to predict any sort of recovery. To be honest, the fact that he has no movement at all at this point isn’t a good prognostic sign.”
Everyone in the room was kind of staring at me. I wondered if I had somehow gone too far, although I was just telling the truth. I wasn’t expected to sugar coat the truth for every single patient, was I?
“What about all those blood tests?” Mrs. Connors asked, breaking the silence. “Did they show anything?”
Chloe shook her head. “Everything was normal.”
I looked down at the Foley catheter tube that came out from under the blankets and led to a bag of urine hung from the side of the bed. “We need to get that catheter out,” I said suddenly. “You don’t want to get a urinary tract infection.”
“Oh,” Alex said. “Um, great. Good idea.”
I met Alex’s gray eyes. Ordinarily, I would have saved this conversation for a private time, but I remembered our childhood and decided there was no time like the present. “You’re probably going to be incontinent when we take it out,” I said. “We can give you a chance to see if you can hold it in, but the fact that you can’t hold in your bowel movements means you’re probably going to have similar problems with voiding urine.”
Alex’s face went white. His entire family was gawking at me. But I ignored them and went on: “You’re probably going to need to catheterize yourself when you go home. If I had to guess.”
“Oh,” Alex said.
Usually I ask the family members if they have any questions, but I didn’t pay the Connors that courtesy. I simply told them it was nice to meet them and marched out of the room, flanked by a still flustered Chloe. As I shut the door behind me, I could hear Alex’s father say, “Well, she was a ray of sunshine, wasn’t she?”
Once the door was closed, I folded my arms across my chest. “Also, Chloe, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I think it’s very inappropriate to give patients false hope.” The cold tone in my voice was extremely unlike me—I almost didn’t recognize myself.
Chloe blinked, clearly also surprised by my sudden bitchiness. “But… you usually…”
“What if he doesn’t have a good recovery?” I said. “Then the family will say, ‘Well, Dr. Miller told us he was going to get all better.’ And then they’ll be pissed off at us. You know as well as I do that the fact that he has no movement at all in his legs doesn’t bode well for his recovery.”
“I think it’s okay to give them some hope,” Chloe argued. “I think Connors really needs it. In fact, I think…”
I frowned at her. “What?”
“I think he’s pretty depressed,” she finished.
“Suicidal?” I asked. The most important question to ask any patient was whether there was a chance they might harm themselves. I hated Alex, but I didn’t want him dead, especially not while under my care.
“No, nothing like that,” she said. “I just think he seems sad.”
I felt a little jab in my chest. I didn’t want to say it, but I had noticed the exact same thing yesterday. Of course, Alex had a right to be sad. But that didn’t mean I was obligated to have any sympathy. If Chloe knew what he was really like, she wouldn’t have been speaking up for him.
“Maybe,” I said to Chloe, “you should go get him a box of tissues then.”
She stared at me, shocked. I knew I had a reputation for being an easygoing, compassionate physician and that was what Chloe expected of me after two weeks together. But who the hell cared what she thought anyway?
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While Grace and I were eating lunch that day, she dropped a bombshell on me: “I did a consult on Alex Connors yesterday.”
“What?” I was surprised. I hadn’t asked Chloe for a consult from the ICU on Alex. He had been nothing but stable since we admitted him.
Grace grinned. “Well, I figured that since he had some bleeding in his spinal cord, maybe he could use a little unofficial peek from the ICU. You know, just to see if the guy who ruined my best friend’s life had any blood pressure issues.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that what you told him?”
“I made up a very believable story,” Grace assured me. “And I must say, he appeared to be quite a nice young man.”
That seemed to be the consensus. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
“He also appeared quite cute,” she added. “I can see why he made your eleven year old self all hot and bothered.”
“Shut-up,” I said, blushing.
“He’s got those gray eyes,” she went on, starting to smile. “And that scruffy unshaven look is really sexy on him. I can see why you found him so hard to resist.”
“I don’t…” I muttered. “I mean, I didn’t find him hard to… I mean, he’s okay looking I guess, but he’s, you know…”
Grace’s eyes narrowed for a moment then widened. “Oh my god, you still like him!”
“Are you joking?” I snorted. “I despise him!”
“True,” she admitted. “But I think you also think he’s hot and want to jump him.”
I shook my head. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I?” Grace smiled. “Honey, there’s a thin line between love and hate.”
I denied it vehemently, but I had to admit that Alex was still very cute. Not that it really mattered or was something I was thinking about in the slightest. Aside from the fact that I hated him, he was also engaged. And even if he wasn’t, he had made it abundantly clear twenty years ago that he had no romantic interests in the likes of me.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 7)
I went to the stroke unit at 3, hoping to wrap up things so that I wouldn’t have to come back afterwards. I was relieved that the unit seemed relatively quiet and I didn’t get bombarded with questions from nurses the second I walked through the door. I read through Chloe’s notes in the charts and signed them. I liked Chloe because she always knew what was going on. I didn’t need to constantly be looking over her shoulder every minute to make sure she was getting things done.
I was signing the last of the notes when a nurse named Vicky approached me with a worried look on her face. “Dr. Miller, there’s an issue,” she said. As a resident, the nurses called me by my first name or at least Dr. Rachel, but now that I was an attending, I mysteriously commanded more respect. Even if I corrected them, they all addressed me as Dr. Miller.
“Yes?” I asked.
“It’s Connors in room 11,” Vicky said.
Of course. “What’s wrong?”
“His left leg is painful and swollen.”
I strode down the hall, instinctively reaching at the stethoscope that was around my neck. Vicky followed at my heels, which I was grateful for. She was one of the best nurses on the ward.
Sure enough, when I reached Alex’s room, he seemed like he was in a significant amount of pain. He looked relieved to see me, which was a testament to how uncomfortable he must have been. “Hi, Dr. Miller,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
“So your leg hurts, huh?” I said.
“It’s killing me,” he admitted, taking a shaky breath. “I liked it better when I could barely feel it.”
“Did he fall?” I asked Vicky.
“No, Doctor,” she said.
“Any fever?”
“Vital signs stable,” she said, gesturing at the machine she had used to check his temperature, pulse, and blood pressure.
The covers were pulled away from Alex’s left leg, which was looking red and tense. I pressed my bare fingers against the skin of his calf and he winced. “Ouch,” he said.
I looked at his face. There was a line of sweat across his brow. I wondered if he was breathing more rapidly than usual. He flashed me a worried expression. “So what’s wrong?” he said. With a nervous laugh: “Am I dying?”
“I think you may have a blood clot,” I said to Alex. I turned to Vicky: “But he’s got the IVC filter, right?” Chloe told me Alex had had an IVC filter placed, which would keep any blood clots from going to his lungs. Blood clots were not uncommon when you have legs that are barely moving at all, even with compression devices on the leg to help circulate the blood. The key was to protect the lungs.
Vicky shook her head. “No, he didn’t get the filter.”
I almost choked. “What? Chloe told me he got it on Monday.”
“Well, I can tell you he never got it.”
Alex was watching us talk, an alarmed expression on his face. “What’s going on, Dr. Miller?”
“Just a little… shop talk,” I said. I needed to get out of this room five minutes ago. If I had thought there was any chance he hadn’t gotten the filter, I wouldn’t have mentioned it in front of him.
“I’m not an idiot,” he said, managing to look peeved despite his pain. “You can tell me what’s going on.”
I really couldn’t. God, what a mess. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I told him. “I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
Before Alex could say another word, I hustled Vicky out of the room. “We need Chloe to be paged right now,” I hissed. “He was supposed to have that filter placed three days ago. If he throws a pulmonary embolus, he could…” I didn’t want to complete that sentence, but Vicky knew as well as I did that pulmonary emboli were often fatal.
Vicky paged Chloe while I flipped through Alex’s chart, hoping to find a procedure note that would prove Vicky wrong. Alex’s apparent distress could have been from pain, but if he didn’t have that filter, it could also have been respiratory distress from a blood clot thrown to his lungs. Shit, this was really bad. I pressed my fingers into my temples, contemplating my next step.
“Okay,” I said to Vicky, in my most calm but no-nonsense voice. “Let’s get a continuous O2 monitor on him right now. If his O2 saturation is anything less than high 90s, come get me immediately. Otherwise, let’s give him two milligrams of IV morphine and see what he looks like when he’s more comfortable.”
Vicky nodded and ran down the hallway to carry out my orders. She was a really good nurse to have around in a tight situation and I could tell she was as worried as I was.
About a minute later, I had Chloe on the phone. “Chloe,” I said. “Tell me that Connors had the IVC filter placed on Monday.”
“He did,” Chloe confirmed.
“Are you sure?” I pressed her.
Chloe hesitated and that was when I knew. He never got the filter. I cursed to myself. “I’m so sorry,” she said quickly. “I thought he got it, but… I guess I never saw a note. Maybe they canceled it and never told me.”
I waved off Chloe’s apologies and raced down the hall back to Alex’s room, glad that I was dressed in comfortable shoes. Vicky had given him an IV pain medication and he looked a lot better already. I glanced at the monitor and saw that his pulse and oxygen saturation were perfect. He almost definitely had a clot in his leg, but there was no sign the clot had reached his lungs.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on, Dr. Miller?” Alex asked. His brow was furrowed, although the pain medications had mellowed him out significantly.
I offered him a falsely reassuring smile. “It looks like you probably have a blood clot in your leg,” I said. “But it’s not a big deal. The only worry is if it goes up to your lungs, so we’re going to put in a filter now to keep that from happening.”
“Awesome,” Alex said with a sigh. “They’re going to put in the filter right now?”
“Yes.”
“What if they’re busy now?”
“Trust me, you’re getting that filter within the hour.” I turned to Vicky. “Could you please get interventional radiology on the phone right away?”
Vicky hurried out of the room. Alex smiled at me. “I think I get it now,” he said.
I frowned, my stomach in a knot. “Get what?”
“Why everyone says you’re such a great doctor,” he said. He winked at me. “It was eluding me for a little while.”
I blushed. For a moment, our eyes met and my breath caught in my throat. He still had the same gray eyes he did when we were kids. There was something very boyish and sweet about Alex Connors, which was what had attracted me to him all those years ago. I wrung my hands together, unable to break eye contact.
“My darling, are you all right?”
I whirled around and saw Eva standing behind me. She was holding a brown paper bag and a coffee cup, and her eyes were filled with worry. She ran to Alex and embraced him while I stood there awkwardly. Thankfully, Vicky came to tell me that interventional radiology was on the phone, so I was able to escape.
After I explained the situation to the interventional radiology resident and made only one or two thinly veiled threats, Alex was bumped up to being next in line to have his IVC filter placed. Chloe had arrived at the unit by that point, full of tearful apologies. I could have handed her her ass on a plate for not following up to make sure her patient got his filter—it was only by the grace of god that Alex hadn’t dropped dead of a pulmonary embolus. But I had about five minutes to make it across the city to my bridesmaid dress fitting appointment, so I made Chloe swear not to leave Alex’s side till that filter was in him, then took off for a cab.
I was signing the last of the notes when a nurse named Vicky approached me with a worried look on her face. “Dr. Miller, there’s an issue,” she said. As a resident, the nurses called me by my first name or at least Dr. Rachel, but now that I was an attending, I mysteriously commanded more respect. Even if I corrected them, they all addressed me as Dr. Miller.
“Yes?” I asked.
“It’s Connors in room 11,” Vicky said.
Of course. “What’s wrong?”
“His left leg is painful and swollen.”
I strode down the hall, instinctively reaching at the stethoscope that was around my neck. Vicky followed at my heels, which I was grateful for. She was one of the best nurses on the ward.
Sure enough, when I reached Alex’s room, he seemed like he was in a significant amount of pain. He looked relieved to see me, which was a testament to how uncomfortable he must have been. “Hi, Dr. Miller,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
“So your leg hurts, huh?” I said.
“It’s killing me,” he admitted, taking a shaky breath. “I liked it better when I could barely feel it.”
“Did he fall?” I asked Vicky.
“No, Doctor,” she said.
“Any fever?”
“Vital signs stable,” she said, gesturing at the machine she had used to check his temperature, pulse, and blood pressure.
The covers were pulled away from Alex’s left leg, which was looking red and tense. I pressed my bare fingers against the skin of his calf and he winced. “Ouch,” he said.
I looked at his face. There was a line of sweat across his brow. I wondered if he was breathing more rapidly than usual. He flashed me a worried expression. “So what’s wrong?” he said. With a nervous laugh: “Am I dying?”
“I think you may have a blood clot,” I said to Alex. I turned to Vicky: “But he’s got the IVC filter, right?” Chloe told me Alex had had an IVC filter placed, which would keep any blood clots from going to his lungs. Blood clots were not uncommon when you have legs that are barely moving at all, even with compression devices on the leg to help circulate the blood. The key was to protect the lungs.
Vicky shook her head. “No, he didn’t get the filter.”
I almost choked. “What? Chloe told me he got it on Monday.”
“Well, I can tell you he never got it.”
Alex was watching us talk, an alarmed expression on his face. “What’s going on, Dr. Miller?”
“Just a little… shop talk,” I said. I needed to get out of this room five minutes ago. If I had thought there was any chance he hadn’t gotten the filter, I wouldn’t have mentioned it in front of him.
“I’m not an idiot,” he said, managing to look peeved despite his pain. “You can tell me what’s going on.”
I really couldn’t. God, what a mess. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I told him. “I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
Before Alex could say another word, I hustled Vicky out of the room. “We need Chloe to be paged right now,” I hissed. “He was supposed to have that filter placed three days ago. If he throws a pulmonary embolus, he could…” I didn’t want to complete that sentence, but Vicky knew as well as I did that pulmonary emboli were often fatal.
Vicky paged Chloe while I flipped through Alex’s chart, hoping to find a procedure note that would prove Vicky wrong. Alex’s apparent distress could have been from pain, but if he didn’t have that filter, it could also have been respiratory distress from a blood clot thrown to his lungs. Shit, this was really bad. I pressed my fingers into my temples, contemplating my next step.
“Okay,” I said to Vicky, in my most calm but no-nonsense voice. “Let’s get a continuous O2 monitor on him right now. If his O2 saturation is anything less than high 90s, come get me immediately. Otherwise, let’s give him two milligrams of IV morphine and see what he looks like when he’s more comfortable.”
Vicky nodded and ran down the hallway to carry out my orders. She was a really good nurse to have around in a tight situation and I could tell she was as worried as I was.
About a minute later, I had Chloe on the phone. “Chloe,” I said. “Tell me that Connors had the IVC filter placed on Monday.”
“He did,” Chloe confirmed.
“Are you sure?” I pressed her.
Chloe hesitated and that was when I knew. He never got the filter. I cursed to myself. “I’m so sorry,” she said quickly. “I thought he got it, but… I guess I never saw a note. Maybe they canceled it and never told me.”
I waved off Chloe’s apologies and raced down the hall back to Alex’s room, glad that I was dressed in comfortable shoes. Vicky had given him an IV pain medication and he looked a lot better already. I glanced at the monitor and saw that his pulse and oxygen saturation were perfect. He almost definitely had a clot in his leg, but there was no sign the clot had reached his lungs.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on, Dr. Miller?” Alex asked. His brow was furrowed, although the pain medications had mellowed him out significantly.
I offered him a falsely reassuring smile. “It looks like you probably have a blood clot in your leg,” I said. “But it’s not a big deal. The only worry is if it goes up to your lungs, so we’re going to put in a filter now to keep that from happening.”
“Awesome,” Alex said with a sigh. “They’re going to put in the filter right now?”
“Yes.”
“What if they’re busy now?”
“Trust me, you’re getting that filter within the hour.” I turned to Vicky. “Could you please get interventional radiology on the phone right away?”
Vicky hurried out of the room. Alex smiled at me. “I think I get it now,” he said.
I frowned, my stomach in a knot. “Get what?”
“Why everyone says you’re such a great doctor,” he said. He winked at me. “It was eluding me for a little while.”
I blushed. For a moment, our eyes met and my breath caught in my throat. He still had the same gray eyes he did when we were kids. There was something very boyish and sweet about Alex Connors, which was what had attracted me to him all those years ago. I wrung my hands together, unable to break eye contact.
“My darling, are you all right?”
I whirled around and saw Eva standing behind me. She was holding a brown paper bag and a coffee cup, and her eyes were filled with worry. She ran to Alex and embraced him while I stood there awkwardly. Thankfully, Vicky came to tell me that interventional radiology was on the phone, so I was able to escape.
After I explained the situation to the interventional radiology resident and made only one or two thinly veiled threats, Alex was bumped up to being next in line to have his IVC filter placed. Chloe had arrived at the unit by that point, full of tearful apologies. I could have handed her her ass on a plate for not following up to make sure her patient got his filter—it was only by the grace of god that Alex hadn’t dropped dead of a pulmonary embolus. But I had about five minutes to make it across the city to my bridesmaid dress fitting appointment, so I made Chloe swear not to leave Alex’s side till that filter was in him, then took off for a cab.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 8)
On the morning of any date, I wake up with butterflies in my stomach. Even before I remember I’ve got a date, my body is already in pre-date mode. I do things differently in the morning when I have a date that evening, which makes me think that I probably don’t care enough about my appearance on non-date days. One thing I do differently is that I use a real shampoo and conditioner, rather than my usual shampoo and conditioner in one. I don’t know if it actually makes any difference at all, but I feel like the shampoo + conditioner is for people who have given up and don’t give a shit how they look anymore. The other thing I do is to blow-dry my hair, lifting and fluffing each lock of hair with tender loving care instead of just yanking my hair into my usual wet bun. Just to give you an idea of how long it had been since I had a date, there was a thick layer of dust on my blow-dryer.
I wore baggy black slacks with a navy blue sweater to work today, thinking I’d change for the date when I got home as well as putting on make-up. Over the years, I’ve probably saved myself cumulative days of time by never wearing make-up to work. The Freshly Made Up look just isn’t me, and I’ve always felt like women who wore a lot of make-up looked like they were trying too hard.
When I arrived on the stroke unit roughly forty minutes after leaving my apartment, I found Chloe trapped in Mr. Arnold’s room. Mr. Arnold was a 62 year old diabetic with a left middle cerebral artery stroke. He was also hopelessly in love with Chloe. The whole thing was a little embarrassing, although Chloe didn’t seem to mind.
“Doesn’t she look pretty today?” Mr. Arnold said to me as Chloe wrote down his urine output for yesterday.
“Uh huh,” I muttered.
Chloe is the sort of doctor that patients get crushes on all the time. I would say that about 30% of the patients that we’ve had on our service have made comments about her looks at one time or another. Between you and me, I’ve never had a patient tell me I looked pretty. Back when I was in my mid-twenties, they used to comment that I looked “young,” mostly in kind of a disparaging voice, but I don’t even get that anymore. The biggest compliment on my appearance that I’ve gotten in the last two years is when a patient told me he liked the lettering on my white coat.
Alex’s room was the last one on the hallway. I gave my usual single warning knock and then opened the door. Maybe a little too hastily because I caught Alex and Eva in bed together. Making out. Her fingers were laced through his hair as they kissed, and his right hand was cupping her left breast through her blouse. Apparently, they hadn’t heard the knock.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I said, backing out the door. I did my best to look away.
“No, wait!” Eva cried, pulling away from him and rolling out of the bed. “Don’t leave, Dr. Miller. I’m sorry. We weren’t… I mean, we were just… you know…”
She looked to her fiancé for help, but he simply grinned. Chloe had remarked that Alex seemed depressed, but he looked pretty damn happy right now.
“I’m sorry,” Eva said again, looking very uncomfortable. She nudged Alex and he laughed.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, too,” he said, still smiling and not sounding very sorry at all. “It was entirely my fault.”
Eva nodded her agreement with this statement.
Alex reached over to the nighttable and picked up his glasses. His legs didn’t seem to be moving at all. It had been a week, which was still early, but it would have been nice to see something in the way of return of function. Completely dead legs were a bad sign.
As he slid the lenses up his nose, I noticed a look of disapproval on Eva’s face. I remembered what Alex had told me about her wanting him to get contacts. The truth that I would never reveal to anyone was that I disagreed with her. I thought the glasses were sexy. But I found it interesting that Alex was unwilling to attempt contact lenses to appease his fiancée.
“It’s okay, whatever you were doing,” I said. At least they were dressed. Kissing was allowed, but I was a little concerned about how far this would have gone if I hadn’t walked in on them right then. I found myself wondering how regular their usual sex life was. Did they do it once a week on Saturdays? A quickie every morning right before work? Nightly lovemaking followed by falling asleep cuddled in each other’s arms? God, why was I thinking about this? “Just, um, keep the lewdness to a minimum, okay?”
“Sure,” Alex said.
I felt a jab of jealousy. I remembered how I felt that jab every time I used to see Alex talking to another girl in our math class, back when I still had a crush on him. Especially if it was a pretty girl. It always seemed like girls were flirting with Alex. There was a girl who sat behind him named Cammie, who was always borrowing his math homework to copy. “You always get all the right answers,” Cammie would say, touching Alex’s arm as she returned his homework. “Thanks for helping me out.”
“No problem,” Alex would say with a smile. And I’d analyze that smile, wondering if he was in love with her. I debated if I should ask him if I could copy his homework, if that would make him like me better. After all, weren’t all guys suckers for girls who needed help?
Once Alex started tormenting me, his popularity with the opposite sex seemed to skyrocket. It seemed like he was always talking to a cute girl in the class. It didn’t seem fair that he should get attention from girls at my expense.
Of course, I wasn’t jealous because I was in love with Alex or anything. I was just angry that after he was such an asshole to me, he still managed to fall in love and get married before me.
“How’s your leg doing?” Chloe asked.
Alex pulled the sheets off his left leg, which looked just as swollen as yesterday. “Still kind of hurts. I got some Vicodin this morning.”
“The important thing is that your lungs are protected,” I said. I had called the unit personally last night to make sure the filter was put in. “We can’t do much about the clot without risking making the bleed in your spine worse. You don’t want that, do you?”
“Obviously not,” Alex said with a wry smile.
“I put in a consult for inpatient rehabilitation,” Chloe told them. “If they accept you, then you can go to the rehab unit downstairs and get aggressive physical therapy.”
“You mean to help him walk?” Eva asked eagerly.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I snapped, as Eva’s face fell.
There was a silence in the room. It always got very quiet any time I did anything to puncture their hope that Alex would make a full recovery and walk out of the hospital. Alex was picking at his blanket with his right hand and not looking at me. Every time I was in this room, I felt an overpowering urge to dash any hope they had. Hope is important. When hope is gone, that’s when people kill themselves. Not that I wanted Alex to kill himself, but I didn’t enjoy seeing him rolling around in bed with his fiancée either.
“I was wondering,” Eva said, “if there were any updates on what caused the stroke?”
I shook my head. “All the labs were normal. The imaging didn’t really show any cause.”
Eva’s brow furrowed. “Can I see it?”
I sighed audibly. It was my pet peeve when family members wanted to look at films that we assured them were normal. As if they were going to catch some grossly abnormal finding that we, the trained physicians, somehow missed.
“I could show her,” Chloe offered.
“Fine,” I huffed as Eva eagerly jumped out of her chair. I looked at Alex, “Do you want to see too?”
He looked down at his legs. “Yeah, um, no… I think I’ll pass.”
“We can get you a wheelchair,” Chloe suggested.
Alex’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “No, really, that’s okay.”
Chloe and Eva took off to look at the films, and I lingered behind. Alex was looking out the window by his bed. The flush that had been in his cheeks when Eva had been in bed with him had completely disappeared.
“You know,” I said, interrupting his thoughts, “you’re going to have to start using the wheelchair eventually.”
Alex looked back to me. I thought I might have gone too far and he was going to call me an evil bitch and ask what the hell was wrong with me. Instead, he simply nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’m just trying to let Eva remain in denial for a few more days.”
I was surprised. That was more insight than I had expected from him.
“She’s having a lot of trouble dealing with all this,” he explained. “She’s got this idea that in a couple of weeks, I’m going to walk out of here, fully recovered. But that’s not the case, is it?” Alex was watching my face carefully as he spoke.
“It’s still really too early to—”
“Yeah, bullshit,” he snorted. “That’s what you say, but I see the look on your face when you examine me. You don’t think I’m going to ever fully recover from this, do you?”
I looked into Alex’s gray eyes. “No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t.”
He nodded again. “I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
He added, “Don’t tell Eva.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as I was getting ready to go home for the day, I got a page from Nancy, another nurse on the stroke unit. “It’s Connors in room 11,” she reported. Of course. “We took his Foley catheter out this morning and he hasn’t peed all day.”
That was consistent with the damage to his spinal cord, but there was always a chance his bladder would be spared damage. No luck for him though. Alex wasn’t going to like what happened next.
I could have told Nancy to catheterize Alex and gone home, but I remembered what Grace said about getting a little revenge, and I decided to stop by the unit myself. Not that I was going to stick anything in Alex’s penis, but I wanted to be the one to deliver the news.
Alex was lying in bed, just like he’d been this morning. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, which is probably how anyone would look who hadn’t peed all day. There was relief in his gray eyes when I walked into the room. “Thank god you’re here, Dr. Miller,” he said.
My hands clenched into fists. Despite everything, he actually liked me. How could he like me? It meant I was doing something wrong. “I heard you’re having a problem.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I can’t… you know, pee. I feel like I need to, but when I try, I just… can’t.”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s not too surprising. I’ve asked Nancy to catheterize your bladder.”
“Oh, okay.” Alex’s face fell. “So, um, is there some medication I should take? How long am I going to have trouble with this?”
“It could be permanent,” I told him.
His eyes widened. “Permanent?”
“People with damage to their spinal cord have a dyssynergy between their bladder and the sphincter that lets urine out,” I explained. “There really isn’t any way to treat that aside from catheterizing your bladder at regular intervals. We’ll teach you how to do it while you’re here so that you can continue doing it at home.”
Alex was very pale. It bothered me that Alex always seemed like such a nice guy, which prevented me from some of the satisfaction of delivering this news to him.
At that moment, Eva breezed in the room clutching a brown paper bag with the smell of Ray’s pizza surrounding her. “Dinner!” she announced. She tossed the pizza on the night table and frowned, noting the somber mood in the room. “What’s going on?”
I was only too happy to inform Eva that her fiancé would need his bladder catheterized for the rest of his life, but when I looked at Alex, his eyes were wide and he was shaking his head at me. “Dr. Miller was just taking a look at my leg,” he told Eva.
“Ah,” she said. “Well, I’m going to hit the ladies room, so I’ll give you some privacy.”
As soon as Eva was gone, Alex said, “Thank you for not saying anything.”
I sighed. First he didn’t want Eva to see him in a wheelchair, now this. “You know,” I said, “if you’re going to marry her, she’s going to find out eventually. If your fiancé can’t be someone who supports you when you’re sick, then…”
“She supports me,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “I just need some time. Please.”
It wasn’t my place to tell Eva personal medical information about the man she was marrying. But the whole thing made me wonder about the nature of Alex and Eva’s relationship. It seemed to me that he felt things were hanging together pretty tenuously.
I wore baggy black slacks with a navy blue sweater to work today, thinking I’d change for the date when I got home as well as putting on make-up. Over the years, I’ve probably saved myself cumulative days of time by never wearing make-up to work. The Freshly Made Up look just isn’t me, and I’ve always felt like women who wore a lot of make-up looked like they were trying too hard.
When I arrived on the stroke unit roughly forty minutes after leaving my apartment, I found Chloe trapped in Mr. Arnold’s room. Mr. Arnold was a 62 year old diabetic with a left middle cerebral artery stroke. He was also hopelessly in love with Chloe. The whole thing was a little embarrassing, although Chloe didn’t seem to mind.
“Doesn’t she look pretty today?” Mr. Arnold said to me as Chloe wrote down his urine output for yesterday.
“Uh huh,” I muttered.
Chloe is the sort of doctor that patients get crushes on all the time. I would say that about 30% of the patients that we’ve had on our service have made comments about her looks at one time or another. Between you and me, I’ve never had a patient tell me I looked pretty. Back when I was in my mid-twenties, they used to comment that I looked “young,” mostly in kind of a disparaging voice, but I don’t even get that anymore. The biggest compliment on my appearance that I’ve gotten in the last two years is when a patient told me he liked the lettering on my white coat.
Alex’s room was the last one on the hallway. I gave my usual single warning knock and then opened the door. Maybe a little too hastily because I caught Alex and Eva in bed together. Making out. Her fingers were laced through his hair as they kissed, and his right hand was cupping her left breast through her blouse. Apparently, they hadn’t heard the knock.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I said, backing out the door. I did my best to look away.
“No, wait!” Eva cried, pulling away from him and rolling out of the bed. “Don’t leave, Dr. Miller. I’m sorry. We weren’t… I mean, we were just… you know…”
She looked to her fiancé for help, but he simply grinned. Chloe had remarked that Alex seemed depressed, but he looked pretty damn happy right now.
“I’m sorry,” Eva said again, looking very uncomfortable. She nudged Alex and he laughed.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, too,” he said, still smiling and not sounding very sorry at all. “It was entirely my fault.”
Eva nodded her agreement with this statement.
Alex reached over to the nighttable and picked up his glasses. His legs didn’t seem to be moving at all. It had been a week, which was still early, but it would have been nice to see something in the way of return of function. Completely dead legs were a bad sign.
As he slid the lenses up his nose, I noticed a look of disapproval on Eva’s face. I remembered what Alex had told me about her wanting him to get contacts. The truth that I would never reveal to anyone was that I disagreed with her. I thought the glasses were sexy. But I found it interesting that Alex was unwilling to attempt contact lenses to appease his fiancée.
“It’s okay, whatever you were doing,” I said. At least they were dressed. Kissing was allowed, but I was a little concerned about how far this would have gone if I hadn’t walked in on them right then. I found myself wondering how regular their usual sex life was. Did they do it once a week on Saturdays? A quickie every morning right before work? Nightly lovemaking followed by falling asleep cuddled in each other’s arms? God, why was I thinking about this? “Just, um, keep the lewdness to a minimum, okay?”
“Sure,” Alex said.
I felt a jab of jealousy. I remembered how I felt that jab every time I used to see Alex talking to another girl in our math class, back when I still had a crush on him. Especially if it was a pretty girl. It always seemed like girls were flirting with Alex. There was a girl who sat behind him named Cammie, who was always borrowing his math homework to copy. “You always get all the right answers,” Cammie would say, touching Alex’s arm as she returned his homework. “Thanks for helping me out.”
“No problem,” Alex would say with a smile. And I’d analyze that smile, wondering if he was in love with her. I debated if I should ask him if I could copy his homework, if that would make him like me better. After all, weren’t all guys suckers for girls who needed help?
Once Alex started tormenting me, his popularity with the opposite sex seemed to skyrocket. It seemed like he was always talking to a cute girl in the class. It didn’t seem fair that he should get attention from girls at my expense.
Of course, I wasn’t jealous because I was in love with Alex or anything. I was just angry that after he was such an asshole to me, he still managed to fall in love and get married before me.
“How’s your leg doing?” Chloe asked.
Alex pulled the sheets off his left leg, which looked just as swollen as yesterday. “Still kind of hurts. I got some Vicodin this morning.”
“The important thing is that your lungs are protected,” I said. I had called the unit personally last night to make sure the filter was put in. “We can’t do much about the clot without risking making the bleed in your spine worse. You don’t want that, do you?”
“Obviously not,” Alex said with a wry smile.
“I put in a consult for inpatient rehabilitation,” Chloe told them. “If they accept you, then you can go to the rehab unit downstairs and get aggressive physical therapy.”
“You mean to help him walk?” Eva asked eagerly.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I snapped, as Eva’s face fell.
There was a silence in the room. It always got very quiet any time I did anything to puncture their hope that Alex would make a full recovery and walk out of the hospital. Alex was picking at his blanket with his right hand and not looking at me. Every time I was in this room, I felt an overpowering urge to dash any hope they had. Hope is important. When hope is gone, that’s when people kill themselves. Not that I wanted Alex to kill himself, but I didn’t enjoy seeing him rolling around in bed with his fiancée either.
“I was wondering,” Eva said, “if there were any updates on what caused the stroke?”
I shook my head. “All the labs were normal. The imaging didn’t really show any cause.”
Eva’s brow furrowed. “Can I see it?”
I sighed audibly. It was my pet peeve when family members wanted to look at films that we assured them were normal. As if they were going to catch some grossly abnormal finding that we, the trained physicians, somehow missed.
“I could show her,” Chloe offered.
“Fine,” I huffed as Eva eagerly jumped out of her chair. I looked at Alex, “Do you want to see too?”
He looked down at his legs. “Yeah, um, no… I think I’ll pass.”
“We can get you a wheelchair,” Chloe suggested.
Alex’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “No, really, that’s okay.”
Chloe and Eva took off to look at the films, and I lingered behind. Alex was looking out the window by his bed. The flush that had been in his cheeks when Eva had been in bed with him had completely disappeared.
“You know,” I said, interrupting his thoughts, “you’re going to have to start using the wheelchair eventually.”
Alex looked back to me. I thought I might have gone too far and he was going to call me an evil bitch and ask what the hell was wrong with me. Instead, he simply nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’m just trying to let Eva remain in denial for a few more days.”
I was surprised. That was more insight than I had expected from him.
“She’s having a lot of trouble dealing with all this,” he explained. “She’s got this idea that in a couple of weeks, I’m going to walk out of here, fully recovered. But that’s not the case, is it?” Alex was watching my face carefully as he spoke.
“It’s still really too early to—”
“Yeah, bullshit,” he snorted. “That’s what you say, but I see the look on your face when you examine me. You don’t think I’m going to ever fully recover from this, do you?”
I looked into Alex’s gray eyes. “No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t.”
He nodded again. “I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
He added, “Don’t tell Eva.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as I was getting ready to go home for the day, I got a page from Nancy, another nurse on the stroke unit. “It’s Connors in room 11,” she reported. Of course. “We took his Foley catheter out this morning and he hasn’t peed all day.”
That was consistent with the damage to his spinal cord, but there was always a chance his bladder would be spared damage. No luck for him though. Alex wasn’t going to like what happened next.
I could have told Nancy to catheterize Alex and gone home, but I remembered what Grace said about getting a little revenge, and I decided to stop by the unit myself. Not that I was going to stick anything in Alex’s penis, but I wanted to be the one to deliver the news.
Alex was lying in bed, just like he’d been this morning. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, which is probably how anyone would look who hadn’t peed all day. There was relief in his gray eyes when I walked into the room. “Thank god you’re here, Dr. Miller,” he said.
My hands clenched into fists. Despite everything, he actually liked me. How could he like me? It meant I was doing something wrong. “I heard you’re having a problem.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I can’t… you know, pee. I feel like I need to, but when I try, I just… can’t.”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s not too surprising. I’ve asked Nancy to catheterize your bladder.”
“Oh, okay.” Alex’s face fell. “So, um, is there some medication I should take? How long am I going to have trouble with this?”
“It could be permanent,” I told him.
His eyes widened. “Permanent?”
“People with damage to their spinal cord have a dyssynergy between their bladder and the sphincter that lets urine out,” I explained. “There really isn’t any way to treat that aside from catheterizing your bladder at regular intervals. We’ll teach you how to do it while you’re here so that you can continue doing it at home.”
Alex was very pale. It bothered me that Alex always seemed like such a nice guy, which prevented me from some of the satisfaction of delivering this news to him.
At that moment, Eva breezed in the room clutching a brown paper bag with the smell of Ray’s pizza surrounding her. “Dinner!” she announced. She tossed the pizza on the night table and frowned, noting the somber mood in the room. “What’s going on?”
I was only too happy to inform Eva that her fiancé would need his bladder catheterized for the rest of his life, but when I looked at Alex, his eyes were wide and he was shaking his head at me. “Dr. Miller was just taking a look at my leg,” he told Eva.
“Ah,” she said. “Well, I’m going to hit the ladies room, so I’ll give you some privacy.”
As soon as Eva was gone, Alex said, “Thank you for not saying anything.”
I sighed. First he didn’t want Eva to see him in a wheelchair, now this. “You know,” I said, “if you’re going to marry her, she’s going to find out eventually. If your fiancé can’t be someone who supports you when you’re sick, then…”
“She supports me,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “I just need some time. Please.”
It wasn’t my place to tell Eva personal medical information about the man she was marrying. But the whole thing made me wonder about the nature of Alex and Eva’s relationship. It seemed to me that he felt things were hanging together pretty tenuously.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
The Best Revenge (Chapter 9)
Every five years or so, all the stars line up properly, my hair behaves itself, my skin is perfect, I pick the right outfit, and I look… well, nice. Miraculously, tonight was one of those rare nights. After I applied some subtle pink lipstick, mascara, and silver eyeshadow and squeezed into a “sexy” red top, I looked in the mirror and actually felt pleased. Charlie might not go running. Maybe I’d even end up with a date for Shauna’s wedding.
I wish Alex could see me like this.
I blinked at my reflection, surprised at the thought that had just passed through my head. I didn’t know why I was thinking about Alex right now. It wasn’t like I felt any kind of attraction to him.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true.
Yes, Alex was cute. Even after all these years, he was still my type, unfortunately. But he was clearly quite in love with his fiancée. And even if he weren’t, I was still angry at him for what happened all those years ago. Every time I looked at him, I could hear him calling me fat or ugly.
Maybe that was why I wanted him to see me looking dolled up. I’m sure he didn’t think much of the unattractive doctor handling his care, but if he could see me tonight, he’d realize I’d changed a lot since that awkward eleven year old girl. Even though, in reality, I guess I hadn’t really changed much at all.
I winced as I pictured Alex and Eva discussing me and what an ugly bitch I was. I was sure they’d noticed my bare ring finger and I imagined Alex telling Eva that I was bitter that I didn’t have a husband. “No surprise why she’s still single,” I imagined Alex would say.
I took a deep breath and forced myself not to think about him. By Monday, he’d probably be on the rehab service and I wouldn’t have to deal with him ever again. Thank god.
The original plan to arrive for my date with Charlie fashionably late. This plan dissolved when I found myself sitting on my couch thirty minutes prior to the meeting time, chewing on my thumbnail, and crossing and uncrossing my legs. When I couldn’t wait around another second, I grabbed my purse and headed downstairs to hunt for a taxi, arriving at the restaurant about five minutes early.
The restaurant was a small Italian place that had a dimly lit, romantic atmosphere. Since Charlie had chosen the place, I instantly wondered how many women he had taken here. Who was the last woman he had brought here on a date? Had she been taller than me? (Probably.) Thinner than me? (Likely.) Smarter than me? (Likely not.) Prettier than me? (Almost definitely.)
For a Friday night, the restaurant was fairly empty. There were two couples sitting at candlelit tables for two, holding hands across the tables as they gazed into each others eyes in a display that turned my stomach slightly. A third table was occupied by a lone overweight bald man. My stomach clenched. Was the bald man Charlie?
I walked up to the hostess. “Hi,” I said. “I’m meeting someone here. Charles Weinberg?”
The hostess nodded and sure enough, I was led right to the table where the single man was sitting. I tried my best to hide my distaste. Whether or not Alex was my type, I knew Charlie was definitely not my type. I don’t think Charlie was anyone’s type. He was more the kind of guy women got stuck with because they were 33 years old and still single. He was overweight and not hiding it well, his white shirt stretched over his gut. He was also balding in the most unattractive way I could imagine. The top of his skull was completely bare but there was thicker brown hair along the sides of his scalp. It seemed like sometime in my twenties, all available men suddenly went bald. His hair (or lack thereof) made him look older, but I guessed from the paucity of lines on his face that he actually was only in his thirties, like me.
Well, at least he was punctual.
“You must be Rachel,” he said, standing up as he offered me his hand. His hand was incredibly warm and sweaty. As I pulled mine away, I resisted the urge to wipe it off on my skirt.
“And you’re Charlie,” I said, stating the incredibly obvious. I was the master of first date conversation.
He nodded and gave me the old once-over. He seemed very pleased. I guess a guy who lets his mother set him up doesn’t have especially high standards.
As Charlie lifted his water glass to take a drink, I noticed his hand was shaking. I wondered if he was nervous or if I had just diagnosed him with a tremor. “Do you want to get a bottle of wine?” he asked me.
“No,” I answered quickly. Wine would make this date less painful and possibly improve Charlie’s tremor, but also might make me do something I would later regret. If I somehow ended up in bed with Charlie, I’d have to take a bath in bleach.
Charlie cleared his throat and tapped his fingers on the table. I noticed that he also had sweat stains under his armpits. “I hear you’re a neurologist,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wow,” he said. “That sounds exciting.”
In general, if men weren’t turned off by my appearance, they were scared off by my career. Last year, my mother made me go to a holiday party thrown by my sister, and when I told the one man who approached me the whole night that I was a neurologist, he blinked and said, “Whoa.” Then he turned away from me to talk to a 25 year old blonde in a short skirt. It’s a double standard, of course. The male physicians I knew all had women throwing themselves at them, whereas my career was akin to being man repellent. Men don’t want to date a woman who’s smarter than they are. That’s a fact. And the truth is that I’m smarter than most men.
“What kind of patients do you see?” Charlie asked me.
“Mostly stroke patients,” I said. “Our hospital has a stroke unit.”
“My grandmother had a stroke,” Charlie said.
“I… I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, it was a long time ago. She died years ago.”
I stared down at my lap. When the conversation on a date turns to dead grandmothers, you know things are going pretty badly.
I ordered a chicken Caesar salad and Charlie ordered something with far too much garlic. At least things were going so badly that I didn’t think he’d try to kiss me so I was safe in that respect. I mean, it wasn’t the worst date in history. I don’t know what my worst date was. I remember there was one where the guy said to me about fifteen minutes in: “I have to be honest with you, Rachel. You’re really not my type and I don’t want to waste your time, so I’m going to head out. It was nice meeting you though.” That date was pretty bad. Also, I heard on the news last night that this woman was killed by a man she was set up with on a date. So compared to all that, this was actually a pretty good date. I just had to put things in perspective.
When our food arrived, I felt a rush of relief. I had been praying for a break from our awkward attempts at conversation so it was wonderful to absorb myself in my salad. It turned out that I wasn’t the worst person the world at small talk—Charlie was giving me a serious run for my money. The only topic we hadn’t yet covered was the weather, which Charlie took care of while he was scooping up the last of his food and commented, “I’ve heard the summer is going to be extremely mild this year.”
I stared at him, not sure I could tolerate even another second of this date. I considered asking him if he’d mind if I took off now, but instead I replied, “I heard it will rain tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “I heard the same.”
When the check arrived, I made a reach for it, but Charlie waved me off. My plan had been to escape from him as soon as we left the restaurant, but it turned out my apartment was on the way to his so he hailed a cab and we rode uptown together. I noticed that in the cab, his knee was kind of touching mine. I wanted to move away, but I didn’t want to be rude either.
The cab skidded to a very abrupt halt in front of my building, throwing me forward in my seat. Usually I’m terrified of getting into a cab accident, but now it would have been a nice distraction from this awful date. I faced Charlie and plastered a smile on my face. “Well,” I began, preparing a goodbye speech in my head. I had a good time. Have a nice life. But before I could say anything else, Charlie was thrusting a handful of bills at the driver.
“I’ll walk you to your door,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
I got out of the cab and Charlie placed a hand on the small of my back. I could still feel him shaking a bit as his tremor worsened. I was tempted to get out my prescription pad and write for some beta blockers. We walked the few steps to the front of my building and I stopped. This was the furthest Charlie was going.
Charlie smiled at me. “I had a good time, Rachel.”
“Me too,” I lied. I wondered if he actually had a good time. It didn’t seem possible that someone on the same date as I’d just been on could have really had a good time.
“Can I call you?”
I bit my lip. Another date with Charlie. The thought didn’t excite me much, but then again, who was I to be so picky? He was a man. He was younger than my father. He wasn’t grossly disfigured. He was taller than me. He was employed. Hell, Charlie was a catch. “Okay,” I said.
Charlie leaned in and there was a tense second between when I realized he was going to kiss me and when he actually kissed me during which time I considered making a run for it. But as far as kisses went, it wasn’t awful. His lips were softer than expected. Slightly garlicky, but at least Charlie kept his mouth closed.
When we parted, he was smiling and looking quite pleased with himself. “I’ll call you, Rachel,” he said.
I just nodded. I didn’t want to say anything that would prompt him to seek an invitation upstairs.
I hurried up to my apartment where I indulged in the best part of any date: stripping off my clothes. I sighed as I kicked off my heels, pulled off my pantyhose, stretched out my calves and wiggled my toes. Lovely.
Charlie wasn’t that bad. And he seemed to really like me. Maybe I was getting better looking as I got older. Anyway, it would be better to bring him to Shauna’s wedding than to come alone. With a guy like Charlie, that was how you had to think of things. I’d rather get married to Charlie than spend my life alone. I think. Probably.
Well, it’s not like Charlie was proposing any time soon. We had one date.
I lay down in bed, closed my eyes, and imagined what it would be like to have sex with Charlie. I imagined him stripping off his shirt and revealing his large hairy gut and I winced. I quickly opened my eyes to block out this particular fantasy.
I wondered if Alex and Eva had had sex in that hospital bed yet. When we caught them in bed this morning, I could tell he looked like he wanted to, although it didn’t seem like Eva was on the same page as him. But I could clearly see the desire in his eyes, and chances were, he wanted to do it just to prove to himself that he still could. From when I had listened to him with my stethoscope, I knew that Alex had a nice chest. It was a little pale, but very lean and hard and…
Oh god, was I starting to fantasize about Alex?
I shook my head to clear it. I rolled out of my bed and did the next best part of any date: took a long hot shower and then went to sleep.
I wish Alex could see me like this.
I blinked at my reflection, surprised at the thought that had just passed through my head. I didn’t know why I was thinking about Alex right now. It wasn’t like I felt any kind of attraction to him.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true.
Yes, Alex was cute. Even after all these years, he was still my type, unfortunately. But he was clearly quite in love with his fiancée. And even if he weren’t, I was still angry at him for what happened all those years ago. Every time I looked at him, I could hear him calling me fat or ugly.
Maybe that was why I wanted him to see me looking dolled up. I’m sure he didn’t think much of the unattractive doctor handling his care, but if he could see me tonight, he’d realize I’d changed a lot since that awkward eleven year old girl. Even though, in reality, I guess I hadn’t really changed much at all.
I winced as I pictured Alex and Eva discussing me and what an ugly bitch I was. I was sure they’d noticed my bare ring finger and I imagined Alex telling Eva that I was bitter that I didn’t have a husband. “No surprise why she’s still single,” I imagined Alex would say.
I took a deep breath and forced myself not to think about him. By Monday, he’d probably be on the rehab service and I wouldn’t have to deal with him ever again. Thank god.
The original plan to arrive for my date with Charlie fashionably late. This plan dissolved when I found myself sitting on my couch thirty minutes prior to the meeting time, chewing on my thumbnail, and crossing and uncrossing my legs. When I couldn’t wait around another second, I grabbed my purse and headed downstairs to hunt for a taxi, arriving at the restaurant about five minutes early.
The restaurant was a small Italian place that had a dimly lit, romantic atmosphere. Since Charlie had chosen the place, I instantly wondered how many women he had taken here. Who was the last woman he had brought here on a date? Had she been taller than me? (Probably.) Thinner than me? (Likely.) Smarter than me? (Likely not.) Prettier than me? (Almost definitely.)
For a Friday night, the restaurant was fairly empty. There were two couples sitting at candlelit tables for two, holding hands across the tables as they gazed into each others eyes in a display that turned my stomach slightly. A third table was occupied by a lone overweight bald man. My stomach clenched. Was the bald man Charlie?
I walked up to the hostess. “Hi,” I said. “I’m meeting someone here. Charles Weinberg?”
The hostess nodded and sure enough, I was led right to the table where the single man was sitting. I tried my best to hide my distaste. Whether or not Alex was my type, I knew Charlie was definitely not my type. I don’t think Charlie was anyone’s type. He was more the kind of guy women got stuck with because they were 33 years old and still single. He was overweight and not hiding it well, his white shirt stretched over his gut. He was also balding in the most unattractive way I could imagine. The top of his skull was completely bare but there was thicker brown hair along the sides of his scalp. It seemed like sometime in my twenties, all available men suddenly went bald. His hair (or lack thereof) made him look older, but I guessed from the paucity of lines on his face that he actually was only in his thirties, like me.
Well, at least he was punctual.
“You must be Rachel,” he said, standing up as he offered me his hand. His hand was incredibly warm and sweaty. As I pulled mine away, I resisted the urge to wipe it off on my skirt.
“And you’re Charlie,” I said, stating the incredibly obvious. I was the master of first date conversation.
He nodded and gave me the old once-over. He seemed very pleased. I guess a guy who lets his mother set him up doesn’t have especially high standards.
As Charlie lifted his water glass to take a drink, I noticed his hand was shaking. I wondered if he was nervous or if I had just diagnosed him with a tremor. “Do you want to get a bottle of wine?” he asked me.
“No,” I answered quickly. Wine would make this date less painful and possibly improve Charlie’s tremor, but also might make me do something I would later regret. If I somehow ended up in bed with Charlie, I’d have to take a bath in bleach.
Charlie cleared his throat and tapped his fingers on the table. I noticed that he also had sweat stains under his armpits. “I hear you’re a neurologist,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wow,” he said. “That sounds exciting.”
In general, if men weren’t turned off by my appearance, they were scared off by my career. Last year, my mother made me go to a holiday party thrown by my sister, and when I told the one man who approached me the whole night that I was a neurologist, he blinked and said, “Whoa.” Then he turned away from me to talk to a 25 year old blonde in a short skirt. It’s a double standard, of course. The male physicians I knew all had women throwing themselves at them, whereas my career was akin to being man repellent. Men don’t want to date a woman who’s smarter than they are. That’s a fact. And the truth is that I’m smarter than most men.
“What kind of patients do you see?” Charlie asked me.
“Mostly stroke patients,” I said. “Our hospital has a stroke unit.”
“My grandmother had a stroke,” Charlie said.
“I… I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, it was a long time ago. She died years ago.”
I stared down at my lap. When the conversation on a date turns to dead grandmothers, you know things are going pretty badly.
I ordered a chicken Caesar salad and Charlie ordered something with far too much garlic. At least things were going so badly that I didn’t think he’d try to kiss me so I was safe in that respect. I mean, it wasn’t the worst date in history. I don’t know what my worst date was. I remember there was one where the guy said to me about fifteen minutes in: “I have to be honest with you, Rachel. You’re really not my type and I don’t want to waste your time, so I’m going to head out. It was nice meeting you though.” That date was pretty bad. Also, I heard on the news last night that this woman was killed by a man she was set up with on a date. So compared to all that, this was actually a pretty good date. I just had to put things in perspective.
When our food arrived, I felt a rush of relief. I had been praying for a break from our awkward attempts at conversation so it was wonderful to absorb myself in my salad. It turned out that I wasn’t the worst person the world at small talk—Charlie was giving me a serious run for my money. The only topic we hadn’t yet covered was the weather, which Charlie took care of while he was scooping up the last of his food and commented, “I’ve heard the summer is going to be extremely mild this year.”
I stared at him, not sure I could tolerate even another second of this date. I considered asking him if he’d mind if I took off now, but instead I replied, “I heard it will rain tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “I heard the same.”
When the check arrived, I made a reach for it, but Charlie waved me off. My plan had been to escape from him as soon as we left the restaurant, but it turned out my apartment was on the way to his so he hailed a cab and we rode uptown together. I noticed that in the cab, his knee was kind of touching mine. I wanted to move away, but I didn’t want to be rude either.
The cab skidded to a very abrupt halt in front of my building, throwing me forward in my seat. Usually I’m terrified of getting into a cab accident, but now it would have been a nice distraction from this awful date. I faced Charlie and plastered a smile on my face. “Well,” I began, preparing a goodbye speech in my head. I had a good time. Have a nice life. But before I could say anything else, Charlie was thrusting a handful of bills at the driver.
“I’ll walk you to your door,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
I got out of the cab and Charlie placed a hand on the small of my back. I could still feel him shaking a bit as his tremor worsened. I was tempted to get out my prescription pad and write for some beta blockers. We walked the few steps to the front of my building and I stopped. This was the furthest Charlie was going.
Charlie smiled at me. “I had a good time, Rachel.”
“Me too,” I lied. I wondered if he actually had a good time. It didn’t seem possible that someone on the same date as I’d just been on could have really had a good time.
“Can I call you?”
I bit my lip. Another date with Charlie. The thought didn’t excite me much, but then again, who was I to be so picky? He was a man. He was younger than my father. He wasn’t grossly disfigured. He was taller than me. He was employed. Hell, Charlie was a catch. “Okay,” I said.
Charlie leaned in and there was a tense second between when I realized he was going to kiss me and when he actually kissed me during which time I considered making a run for it. But as far as kisses went, it wasn’t awful. His lips were softer than expected. Slightly garlicky, but at least Charlie kept his mouth closed.
When we parted, he was smiling and looking quite pleased with himself. “I’ll call you, Rachel,” he said.
I just nodded. I didn’t want to say anything that would prompt him to seek an invitation upstairs.
I hurried up to my apartment where I indulged in the best part of any date: stripping off my clothes. I sighed as I kicked off my heels, pulled off my pantyhose, stretched out my calves and wiggled my toes. Lovely.
Charlie wasn’t that bad. And he seemed to really like me. Maybe I was getting better looking as I got older. Anyway, it would be better to bring him to Shauna’s wedding than to come alone. With a guy like Charlie, that was how you had to think of things. I’d rather get married to Charlie than spend my life alone. I think. Probably.
Well, it’s not like Charlie was proposing any time soon. We had one date.
I lay down in bed, closed my eyes, and imagined what it would be like to have sex with Charlie. I imagined him stripping off his shirt and revealing his large hairy gut and I winced. I quickly opened my eyes to block out this particular fantasy.
I wondered if Alex and Eva had had sex in that hospital bed yet. When we caught them in bed this morning, I could tell he looked like he wanted to, although it didn’t seem like Eva was on the same page as him. But I could clearly see the desire in his eyes, and chances were, he wanted to do it just to prove to himself that he still could. From when I had listened to him with my stethoscope, I knew that Alex had a nice chest. It was a little pale, but very lean and hard and…
Oh god, was I starting to fantasize about Alex?
I shook my head to clear it. I rolled out of my bed and did the next best part of any date: took a long hot shower and then went to sleep.
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