Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland Read Free Book Online Page B

clothes were cut from her body. A male nurse noticed she was wearing contact lenses and removed them, telling me how her eyes would dry out if we left them in. The girl did not blink.
    “You see that? Not good,” the nurse explained to me. “She’s got no corneal reflexes.” I stood by the gurney, trying to make myself small and not get in anyone’s way as the doctors and nurses buzzed around the young girl. They put intravenous lines in her arms, a catheter into her bladder, and they checked her for internal bleeding. This is done by peritoneal lavage, which is basically a way to rinse out the inside of the torso. It’s not exactly rocket science: If the liquid comes back red, there is internal bleeding. The liquid came back clear. Her heart started beating somehow, but she did not breathe on her own, and so she was intubated and connected to a respirator.
    I had been working with a second-year surgical resident up on the wards, and he startled me out of my glassy stare, which mirrored the young girl’s.
    “Julie. We gotta go talk to the family.” As we walked out of the trauma room, I glanced at the small blue sneaker lying on its side in the corner.
    These past couple of days, the second-year had seemed like such a softie, apologizing to patients if he needed to draw a blood gas, feeling sorry for a little boy who needed his IV site “cut down,” but he hardened up when confronted with this girl’s family. As he explained her current condition, I saw him become emotionally removed and overly technical with them—the mother, father, and older sister of a girl who was celebrating her new license to drive. He hid behind the medicaljargon, stiffening visibly as he explained our attempts at resuscitation, the condition of the heart, the lungs, the brain, which ones were working now and which weren’t. The sister looked at me with such hate in her eyes. Why was she blaming me? I wasn’t the doctor delivering the horrible news. But I knew why she was angry. There was something callous and hurtful about his attitude—and therefore mine, by association, although I remained silent, careful not to show any expression—as he catalogued the damage and explained the unlikelihood of her awakening from this coma.
    The family insisted that she remain on life support. They had heard of people waking up from comas, they’d seen it on television, and so we were unable to convince them of its improbability. She was admitted to the surgical ICU, a girl with a beating heart and nothing more, taking up an intensive-care bed in the hospital for thousands of dollars a day, so the family could have some time to say good-bye. They were angry and confused, and they wouldn’t be rushed into accepting what even I could clearly see: She was gone already.
    For reasons I did not yet understand, I ended up displaying the same condescending, remote attitude as my surgical resident when I was asked to go explain her condition again, this time to her high school friends who had gathered in the waiting room: “Right now, your friend is on a machine to keep her alive, and we’re not sure she’s going to pull through.” Short and sweet, and the young girls shrieked and sobbed. They barely stayed to hear my explanation of the shutdown of her various organ systems, turning away to hug each other and cry instead. It was my first time telling anyone their friend was dead, or as good as dead, and my delivery needed work, but doing a surgery rotation in an inner-city hospital would give me plenty of opportunities.
    Back at the hospital a few days later, a patient I’d been working with that holiday weekend had tested negative for the AIDS virus. Since I had stuck myself with a needle filled with her blood, I had been anxious, waiting for the results. Unfortunately for the patient, however, the good news about her test results meant very little in the scheme of things. Before the long weekend, she had been hit by a car and had broken her leg.