I need to walk, clear my head. After I shove my phone back into my pocket, I don’t even know how long I just go, crossing streets and making blind turns. It’s not until I look up and realize I’m outside the hospital that I even register my feet took me here just like the last time I needed to clear my head. Maybe my battered conscience is trying to remind me of the good I do. Or rubbing my face in what a contradiction I’m being to the tenets I’m supposed to espouse.
FIRST DO NO HARM.
I still go in and make my way toward the rheumatology ward to peek in on Noah. I keep my eyes peeled for Doctor Aldrin as usual. I really do not want to run into her today. I know plenty of other people here well enough to just smile and wave as I pass, but with her, I think I’d somehow cave in ways I didn’t with the detective and just spew at her that I’m dating a serial killer and need a serious intervention.
Lucky for me—or Trey—both?—I don’t see her.
But I do see Noah, in his room, playing a game with his sister. His parents are there too, talking quietly on the other side of the room. I feel like I’d be intruding to go in. I once again don’t have Zappy to give back to Noah. I owe the kid his plushie back. I kept meaning to plan another visit but every time I saw that damn matcha and its stupid smiling face on my bedside table, I’d think…
How can I face someone I have worked so hard to help when I’m helping someone else whose purpose in the world is tohurt? Does it help more people to let Trey get away with what he does, if the people he’s killing deserve it? I can’t answer that yet, and it’s both why I couldn’t turn Trey in, and why I can’t go in to visit Noah now.
Next time, I tell myself, as I turn back to head down the hall. Next time I will.
And I’ll be sure to bring Zappy.
PRESENT DAY
“Earth to Walker?”
“Huh?”
“Dude,” Ben laughs—one of my fellow residents who has since moved on to his oncology fellowship at another hospital. “You are so spaced out tonight. Hitting the books that hard?”
I’ve been trying to, but I usually get about an hour in, and around the time I’m needing a break, my eyes drift to my FIRST DO NO HARM poster, and I start spiraling all over again.
It’s been several days since I chose to not turn Trey in, and I keep going back and forth on whether I made the right call. I’ve never been this stuck between decisions before, and now it’s seeping into what is supposed to be a nice get together with colleagues.
The phone sex the other day helped. Just not enough.
I’m at that party Laura invited me to a couple weeks back. We’re at her place, across town from my apartment, which isn’t too long of a rideshare away. It’s nothing but residents, most I likely won’t see again for a long time after this, because no one else leaving for their fellowship is staying at St. Vincent’s. Just me. The only residents I will see again are the newbies here mingling with us veterans.
Normally, I eat shit like this up. I love helping the next batch get settled. What we do is a tough job, and we need to have each other’s backs. But tonight, I am a million miles away instead of letting myself relax, and it’s apparently really freaking obvious.
There are only a dozen or so of us, all fairly close in age, give or take five years. We’re spread across the gamut of specialties too, so many different walks of life despite all being doctors. From different cities. Different cultures. Different backgrounds.
Honestly, sort of the perfect focus group.
“Maybe I’m a little fried,” I admit to Ben. “Besides certifications coming up—”
“No shop talk!” Laura loudly interjects, sweeping over to us where Ben and I are standing in front of her fireplace. She is on cocktail two—three?—while I’ve been nursing the same Jameson and Ginger for an hour.
It’s still a scorching hot summer outside, so the fireplace isn’t lit, but naturally, I was drawn to Laura’s version of a FIRST DO NO HARM poster above her mantle. Hers is in an intricate frame, all fancy and antique looking like she plucked it right off a plague doctor’s wall from the Middle Ages.
“Tonight is about cutting loose one last time, boys, not the grueling work we are about to embark on.” Laura’s volume has drawn the attention of the room, and since everyone else is looking my way, I figure…
Fuck it.
“How about a philosophical discussion?”
Someone makes a farting noise with their mouth pressed to the inside of their palm.
“I’m serious!” I shout over the ensuing laughter. The din of small talk has died down, and as the laughter fades too, I say, “A thought experiment. Relevant to all of us but not too shop talky. A fun experiment!” If you don’t know the stakes, which none of them do. I do. I gesture to Laura’s poster. “First, do no harm. It’s a mantra so ingrained in us, we don’t even really think about it beyond the words anymore. It feels like a given, right? Help—don’t hurt. Try to save as many people as we can and ease their pain. But what ifcausingharm to someone could help even more people avoid pain?”
“You mean the Trolley Problem,” Ben says.
“Or the Spock problem!” Nancy, one of the newer residents, shouts, and laughter filters through the room again.
“That isn’t a wrong comparison!” I argue, even though I laugh a little too. “It is the same problem. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?”
