“It’s okay if you’re not.”
“But I am.”Who are you trying to convince—him or you?
“Okay.” Said quietly. With compassion.
“You’re right.” I sighed. “I’m not.”
“There’s no easy way to deal with this. Losing patients is part of being a doctor. And a nurse. But no matter how much they try to prepare you for it in medical school, it still hurts.”
I sighed. “People don’t believe me when I say I’ve never lost a patient on the table.”
“Because that’s completely unrealistic. Patients die.”
“Not mine.”
“Leo—”
“Okay, I’ve lost patients.” I hated saying it aloud and so never did.
He gripped me tighter.
“But never because of a mistake I made.”
“You’re human—”
“Not when I’m operating. I studied so damn hard, Quinton. Honest-to-God.”
“You probably didn’t cause the death yesterday. Post-operative complications happen. For any number of reasons. You learn from it and you move on.”
I grasped the hand pressed against my chest. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Of course you can. There will be more lives to save. More people who need a confident surgeon. Look, even if you did something wrong—which I’m not suggesting—then you learnfrom that mistake and you keep going. You can’t give up because of one bad outcome.”
“I almost did. Before.”
He held still.
“My first patient. Iana Howland.” Even saying her name brought a tremendous amount of pain.
“Oh?”
“My first solo surgery. After all the years of training and of being watched and learning. I finally had my own OR.”
“Okay.” He said it cautiously.
I didn’t blame him—obviously this story wasn’t going to end well. “She crashed during recovery. I don’t know if she could have been resuscitated. I’ll never know. Because the nurse on duty had stepped out of the room to take a personal phone call. Oh, she was only supposed to be gone for a few seconds. And the other nurse was helping a patient relieve themselves and so couldn’t jump into action in that crucial moment.”
“Jesus.”
“Right?” I tried to hold back my anger. “The nurse who was delinquent was reprimanded—a week off work without pay. As you know, nurses are hard to find. A note went on her record.” I gritted my teeth. “Would Iana have died anyway? No way of knowing. For unknown reasons, her heart stopped. The autopsy showed the repair of her aorta was textbook perfect. I was briefing her family on the surgery when the alarm went off. I ran. But…we couldn’t restart her heart.”
“Oh God.”
“Yeah. So when I see an on-duty nurse with a cell phone, I tend to lose my shit.” I rubbed my face. “Not just because I’m arrogant—but because I know what a moment of inattention can mean.”
“I’m sorry for that.”
“I had to go back to tell her family she’d gone. Post-operative complication. There’s no closure from that. No coming back. That void is permanent. Forever. They blamed me. How could they not?”
