The Best Of The Year - Medical Romance. Carol Marinelli
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stopped walking to look at me. ‘But he was very supportive of you in the meeting. He was the one who brought the meeting to order when we were all having a laugh about your research title. In fact, if I didn’t know you’d just come back from your honeymoon I would’ve said you and he were an item. Did you see that love bite on his neck?’ He gave another chuckle. ‘Takes me back to my old courting days.’
I could feel my blush like a spreading fire. ‘Personally, I think love bites are dreadfully tacky.’
He gave a grunt and continued walking. ‘So, what have you got in mind for Jason?’
I explained what I planned to do and he listened—patiently, for him—before giving me the go-ahead. ‘Can’t see how it can hurt,’ he said. He waited a beat before adding, ‘I hope to God the family don’t sue.’
I glanced at his worried expression. ‘They don’t seem the type and, besides, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a recognised complication of that type of neurosurgery.’
‘Doesn’t seem to matter to litigation lawyers, does it?’ He gave me a cynical look. ‘They want their pound of flesh and don’t care who they slice it off.’
‘I’m sure it won’t come to that, Stuart,’ I said, hoping it was true. Stuart was a highly competent surgeon but his gruff and autocratic manner often put people off side. When things went wrong, which they occasionally did because that kind of surgery on the human body wasn’t an exact science, some people thought their only option was to sue for damages, but they didn’t take into account the impact on the doctor.
Medicine today was far more of a team approach than in the past. Mistakes could be made anywhere along the chain of care but it was the doctor who ended up being the fall guy. It was especially difficult if the case was reported in the press. Biased reporting could smear a doctor’s reputation, tearing down a lifetime of hard work in a sensationalised phrase or two. And then there was the well-documented expert witness dripping with hindsight bias. And coroners’ cases, in which months could be taken over dissecting decisions that doctors had to make under pressure, in real time, with incomplete information in a badly constructed system. Insurance companies battled it out with their case-hardened lawyers but the doctor, usually with no medicolegal experience, was left as the scapegoat, with often devastating psychological fallout.
At my previous hospital a dedicated obstetrician had walked away from a thirty-year career after parents of a baby who suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and subsequent brain damage sued her for damages. The sensationalised reporting in the press besmirched her reputation to such a degree she felt she could no longer practise.
Stuart let out a tired-sounding sigh. ‘Well, I’d better get a move on. I’ve got a clinic and then a tutorial with the students and I’m on call for the second time this week. It’s a wonder my wife doesn’t call a divorce lawyer.’ He gave me a sideways glance. ‘How does your husband cope with the demands of your job?’
‘Erm …’
‘Should’ve married a doctor, Bertie.’
I gave him one of my strained smiles. ‘There’s a thought.’
For the next week I changed my roster to night shifts. I know it was cowardly but I really wasn’t ready to face Matt Bishop until I got my willpower under some semblance of control. Besides, there’s nothing more lust deadening than lack of sleep. One good side of working the night shift was that I could walk Freddy in daylight … I use the word loosely because the sort of daylight we get in London in January is pretty insipid.
The other benefit of being on night duty was that I could spend a bit more time with patients without the hustle and bustle of ward rounds and relatives visiting. ICU was quiet all but for the hiss and groan of ventilators or beeping of heart monitors and heart-lung machines.
I sat by Jason Ryder’s bed in the end room and watched as his chest rose and fell with the action of the ventilator. It was coming up to two weeks since his surgery and he was still in a deep coma, and every time we had tried to bring him out of it his brain pressures had skyrocketed. It wasn’t looking good but I refused to give up hope. I couldn’t get his wife, Megan, out of my mind. I could imagine how devastating it was for her to be expecting a baby at a time like this. The stress she was under wasn’t good for her or the baby. Studies indicated that high cortisol levels in expectant mothers could cause epigenetic changes in the foetus, leaving them at higher risk of heart disease or some types of cancers in later life.
And then there were Jason’s parents. I could imagine how my parents would feel if either Jem or I were in a coma. They would be frantic with worry, desperate for some thread of hope. No parent wanted to outlive his or her child. It wasn’t the natural order of things. Every time I looked at Jason’s parents I felt a pressing ache inside my chest, like a stack of bricks pressing down on my heart. I so wanted a good outcome for them and for Jason, who’d had such a bright future ahead of him.
I picked up the children’s book Jason’s parents had left earlier. It was one of my own favourites, The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks. Apparently Jason had loved it when he’d been about nine or ten years old. I, too, remembered being captivated by the idea of a toy coming to life. I picked up where Jason’s mother had left off before they’d left for the night and read a few pages.
I looked up after a few minutes to see Matt Bishop standing in the doorway, watching me. I had no idea how long he’d been there. I hadn’t seen his name on the night-shift roster but, then, he might have been called in for a patient. I knew he worked ridiculously long hours. It had taken me quite an effort to avoid running into him. I even darted into the broom cupboard next to the doctors’ room a couple of evenings ago when I heard him speaking with a colleague around the corner.
I can tell you I got a bit worried when he stopped right outside it and talked to Brian Kenton from Radiology. I had a sneaking suspicion he might have known I was in there. He took an inordinately long time to discuss a patient before moving on. I felt a fool, sneaking out of there a few minutes later, but what else could I have done?
I put the book down on the bedside table and rose to my feet. ‘Did you want me—I mean something?’ I asked, mentally cursing the fact I was blushing.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Much the same,’ I said. ‘His IC pressures spike every time I try to wean him off the ventilator. Stuart wants to keep them low to maximise perfusion of what might be marginally viable brain around the tumour bed. But before we ramp up sedation each time, there’s no sign of consciousness. He’s having another CT tomorrow to look at perfusion. And an EEG is planned after that.’
I handed him the notes, which he read through with a frown of concentration pulling at his brow. He drew in a deep breath, closed the notes and put them back on the end of the bed. He picked up the children’s book and turned over a few pages. ‘I remember reading this when I was about eight or nine.’
‘I read it too,’ I said. ‘I can tell you I never looked at a toy the same way again.’
His mouth curved upwards in a half-smile as he tapped the book against his hand. ‘So, this is part of your childhood awakening therapy?’
I searched his features for any sign of mockery but he was either keeping it under wraps or was genuinely giving me a fair and unbiased hearing. Or maybe he’d looked up some of the fledgling research online and was prepared to keep an open mind. ‘Reading familiar stories, playing favourite music, relating family memories of holidays or whatever to the patient can sometimes trigger an emotional response,’ I said. ‘There’ve been a few cases reported now where patients have woken from comas when exposed to something particularly emotive from their childhood.’
‘One assumes it would be beneficial to have a happy childhood in order to expect that sort of response.’
I frowned. ‘You didn’t have a happy childhood?’ I asked it as a question, but it could easily have been a statement of observation, given the way his features were set.
‘Not