kathleen watt

recovery, a tall, dark-suited man stole into my room. I have since deduced he must have been the Chief of Microvascular Surgery. My rheumy eyes swiveled toward him, silhouetted against the ceiling tiles. When he sat next to the bed, moving aside my rolling tray table of bare necessities, I found myself slightly higher than he, looking down into his face, upturned and solicitous. My mind was on the tray table, anxious about my essential detritus momentarily out of reach of my life raft.

   

“You made it,” he said quietly. 

   

His words flowed over me like sunshine. Speechless, dissolving in surprise and gratitude, I mustered a feeble thumb’s up ...

   

[T]he man in the dark suit returned my gesture. Then he touched the warm, pulsing pad of his extended thumb to mine. A high-five from the huddle. A victory kiss from Mr. Thumbkin. 

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“You made it,” he’d said, which might have been “Great catch!” or “That’s my girl!” or “Stick with me kitten, you’ll go places!” 

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His words gave me credit I didn’t deserve yet I needed desperately. He had found me where I lay and wakened me with calm, straight-forward appreciation. Perhaps acknowledging me for seeing the job through, after passing me the baton of my survival—for not drop-ping it as I crawled across the finish line. That economical gesture was enough to embolden me for the rest of my recovery, to own it, to commit to it, and do as much for myself as he had done for me. He had legitimized my contribution, invited me to join the team, to take responsibility, for which he would give me credit. 

   

“You made it.”

   

If this is not a certified recovery room technique—this and Mr. Thumbkin—it ought to be.

   

As he turned to go, I dared to remind him, with a gesture, to restore my tray table to its place beside my raft. He took some long moments to understand my woozy pantomime. I needed my stuff. I started to feel embarrassed for him, wishing the genius would hurry up and catch on. 

*

My prosthodontist also returned early in my first week on the floor, to evaluate what was left of the failed flap, to verify the temporary acrylic awning spanning the remaining defect, and to survey my prospects for obturation. Still deep in the wacko weeds of hospital psychosis, I opened my eyes upon his back as he stood looking out the window far, far away, in the corner of my small room. 

   

Turning, he noticed I was awake and said carefully, “First of all, Kathleen, I want to tell you how sorry I am that your reconstruction was not successful.” 

   

Alone among my doctors, he had thought to lament my loss. A helium cloud of gratitude filled me at this simple expression of kindness. Nothing at that moment could have been more restorative. 

   

When he bent close to me, peering deep into my mouth behind his penlight, his swarthy Turkish complexion and pink cheeks hovered beneath my eyelashes, handsome and smelling of soap. He stood looking and looking inside my mouth, mapping out his way forward, allowing me ample time for flights of fancy.

   

In my cockamamie reverie, I saw the mottled red-brown-olive of a Texas alligator lizard, a giant, smooth galliwasp in a suit, surrounded by kittens and small children playing underfoot. I concluded the children were his, stopping by Daddy’s office. Must have been Saturday... 

   

I will never forget those words he said to me from far, far away across the tiny room. 

   

“First of all, Kathleen, I want to tell you how sorry I am. . .” 

*

The Carpenter held a place in my heart, though I knew him the least well of my surgical team. He handled the rough-hewn sawing and hammering, leaving the finish work to others. Of all my doctors, he was the most unassuming yet most likely to notice a languishing patient—to take a moment to see things from her perspective. I was ridiculously flattered when The Carpenter once complimented me on the biofeedback from my oxygen monitor, how it had modulated from panicky flutter back to rhythmic beep.

    

“Is that. . . ?”

   

His lively eyes flashed toward me, then the monitor, then back at me. “Is that a technique? Because it was going fast, and now it’s going slow! Did you do that?”

    

I could only issue a sage half-nod, which I hoped would confirm his amazement. I had no such technique, of course, nor had I even noticed the modulation until he did. But answer him I would, because he had so generously acknowledged me sitting there, waiting amid the brainiacs, with that stupid red clothespin blinking on my pointer finger. 

*

I had a little sport with the residents who were always looking me over, always poking and prodding. They took ludicrous pains not to divulge information, much less opinion, so as never to gainsay their attending physicians. Even the simplest of queries was deflected to “Dr. X when he comes in.” In one awkward moment, finding myself milling among them while nurses changed my bed, I asked a resident if I could sleep face down (I was desperate for  some new positions), which made him titter and turn to a classmate. 

   

“I guess. . .well, yeah,” he said, “why not?” Then he backpedaled. “Wait no! Well, no, I guess. No. Because of the trach.” 

   

Huh. I forgot about that.

   

To one dreadfully earnest flock of white coats pointing and murmuring at the foot of my bed, I scribbled:

   

DO YOU HAVE AN OBTURATOR? 

   

Their spokesperson unwittingly read my question aloud and before he could gather himself to reply, I answered for him:

   

NO! BUT I BET YOU’RE GLAD I HAVE ONE, RIGHT? 

   

“Kathy!” Kristina chided. 

   

“No, no, no,” said The Carpenter to my sister, standing beside her at my railing. “I’m glad she’s showing some fight. She’s coming back!” 

   

The tracheostomy which rendered me speechless had the opposite effect upon others. Visitors became uncontrollably chatty, straining for small talk. Residents and interns said things they might not have, had they remembered I could hear them.

   

I learned one of their number was known among them as 007, as in “James Bond, License to Kill”. This same intern, having filled an eyedropper with powerful antibiotics, struggled with my eyelids between her latexed fingers until I scribbled to her: 

   

IT’S THE OTHER EYE

   

“Miss Watt,” said one doctor-in-training who wore his father’s Harvard Medical School ring, “you’re going to have to learn to relax.” 

   

Oh yeah? I was feebly livid. Sit where I sit and let’s see YOU relax!

   

I had no compunction about raising a middle finger to this one. He turned back to his clipboard saying, “You better learn to like me because you’re my patient from now on.” 

   

The attitude was shtick. He didn’t really know me, of course, and he was bound by oaths that transcended mischief. Moreover, the shtick was deliberate. New doctors are specifically and exhaustively trained to repress natural impulses like empathy with the human in their care. Such impulses are referred to as “humane bias,” and a young doctor’s objective is to master it, effectively severing emotion from executive function. Humane bias only makes a muddle of the physician’s clear-eyed observation. 

   

Ultimately, after he got over impressing us, after I’d had my fill of sad eyes and kid gloves, I actually enjoyed his streak of anarchy, and we found a truce.

   

Always more competent than considerate, always more deft than delicate with my dressings, staples, and stitches, the young doctor eventually fell into kibitzing with Evie, saying with the jerk of a thumb toward me, “This one’s killing me.” 

   

We had become an effective team.

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   ❧❧❧

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