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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Euthanasia
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I’ve gotten used to not sleeping much- my internship was pretty useful preparation for that- but it’s hard getting used to shunning the sun. It goes up, I go to bed. I get up in time to see it sink below the horizon. It just makes me uneasy- that’s the reason I haven’t been sleeping. Of course, if I’d known the chief of medicine would be here tonight, that might have been the cause. But I didn’t know, not until he paged me with a message to come to his office.
“Jack, have a seat.” He’s calm, too calm. He must have slept all day to be this calm, or started in on the scotch he’s pouring himself a glass of before I got here. I sit down, not awake enough to be comfortable, though my eyes and mind are on the edge of sleep. I’m drifting, back in med school, where my instructor’s going on about Hippocrates and his damned oath- of course the only part that echoes is the part everybody knows, “First do no harm.” I hear laughter, first my father’s, the way he’d laugh when he was drinking too much, but it grows and stretches until I know that it’s coming from me, and then I know why: the oath is bullshit. The harm we do is rarely medical, but often there even for a fool to see. And last night I was fool enough to see it, a man who’d beaten his son nearly into a coma, probably would have, had he not stopped in the middle to get a beer. The boy knew where his father kept his shotgun- knew enough to disengage the safety, how to make it roar- everything but how to make sure his father died. He was hit in the groin, and the wound was a mess. He’d been shot from close enough he was burned by belched barrel fire. Most surgeons couldn’t have saved him, but I chose not to even try. He was far from my first. The chief of medicine’s glass clanks against the edge of his desk when he sets it down. He pours another two fingers and my mouth waters because I want one, but of course I’m on call so he doesn’t offer me a glass. “I said when I hired you that you were one of the most talented surgeons I’d ever met. Well, as it turns out, I was underselling your ability. Your numbers over the years have been so good you’ve bumped up the stats for the entire hospital. But it seems like ever since you came onto the night shift you’ve had a little more trouble.” “And Jack, it isn’t so much that you’ve had a few more errors, lately, just that you’ve been having more fatalities. In fact, I think fatalities have been universal, when it gets right down to it. You either save people or they die, though still favored heavily towards the living end of that spectrum. But I was going through your case work over the last year, and I found that your difficulties started before the shift change, and I wondered why that might have been.” “I,” my throat was too dry to choke out another word. “Don’t, Jack, don’t.” My fists balled up inside my coat pockets, gripping a scalpel that isn’t there- but even if it were, I wouldn’t- not on a man who’s only sin was being smart enough to see through my lies. “I’m not worried, not about your ability, anyway. But how are things at home? Everything all right with your family? It was a kind thing you did, taking the night shift, but it can grind a person. Night does strange things to people, makes them do strange things to each other. We see a lot of that come through our doors. If it’s taking its toll- you just say the word, we’ll work something out. Maybe a rotating schedule, something. I just wanted you to know, we’re here for you. Not just me, but this entire hospital- we take care of our own. If you’ve got a need, and it’s something we can give, we’ll do it.” My pager goes off, a text. “I have to go. Looks like there was a meth lab raid, one of the suspects killed one of the cops and took a bullet himself.” He raises his glass in my direction and nods. His eyes are tired, but I think that’s from the drink As I walk through his office door my eyes roll back into my head, and I know I’m not up for saving a life; then again, that wasn’t really what I was thinking, anyway. |
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