A White Coat Is My Closet (50 page)

Before she could continue her explanation, Declan interrupted her. “I don’t understand, then. Something must be wrong. Explain to me what’s happening.”

Diane gulped a mouthful of air and tried to continue without crying. “It’s Sergio. There’s been an accident.” She tried to elaborate, but she seemed seconds away from breaking into sobs. “Do you think you could come to the hospital? Zack could really use the support of his best friend.”

I could now clearly hear the panic in Declan’s voice. “Of course I’ll come. I’m on my way. What happened? How is he?”

Diane clutched the phone, but her voice refused to cooperate. I gently took it out of her hands and brought it to my mouth. “Dec?” Just saying his name caused all my fears to crash over me like an arctic wave. I made no attempt to stop crying but put inordinate effort into trying to speak without blubbering incoherently.

“Sergio was mugged, Dec.” My entire body shook with grief. “The fucker who did it shot him in the chest. He’s been in surgery for two hours, but we still haven’t heard anything. The surgeon was optimistic going in, but Sergio lost a lot of blood. The bullet went in really close to his heart. I don’t know. I just don’t know.” My voice dropped to a soul-wrenching whisper. “He has to survive, Dec. He just has to. He can’t die without knowing how much I love him.”

“He won’t die, Zack. He won’t.” Though I knew Declan was pulling assurances out the sky, his words were nonetheless comforting. “You sit tight. I’m on my way. I’ll be there. I’ll be there, Zack. I’m coming now. You sit tight. You stay right where you are. I’ll get directions from the lobby.”

My voice regained a little strength. “Thanks, Dec. I knew I could count on you. I’ll be here.” I reached over and again pulled Diane against me and then let my gaze cross to the other side of the room. Beth and several other friends from the hospital were sitting in a tight circle, nodding at me encouragingly. “Diane is doing a really good job of holding me together and a few of my other friends are here as well. They’ve all been lifesavers.” I squeezed Diane tighter. “Truly. Lifesavers. See you when you get here, Dec. Thanks.” I hung up before I heard him respond, then sat back. If worry hadn’t been surging through my body like a jolt of caffeine, I would have collapsed from exhaustion.

Diane kept her head on my shoulder. The rhythm of her breathing slowed, and I thought that she’d fallen asleep until I heard her quiet voice. “He’s going to be okay, Zack. You’ll see. Dr. Wilber will be out any minute with good news. Stay positive.”

I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I didn’t know how I should feel. In this situation, would positive thoughts really make a difference? If so, why wouldn’t positive thinking have prevented Sergio from being shot in the first place? Was he being punished? Did he somehow deserve what had happened to him? The only conclusion my sleep-deprived brain could come up with was that life was just a big crapshoot. Events in the universe occurred at random. Tsunamis struck, earthquakes happened, and assholes shot innocent people for no earthly reason. It was impossible to envision how, at such a critical junction, positive thinking might now influence the outcome of Sergio’s surgery. Maybe I was feeling particularly pessimistic, but at that moment, despite every exalted hope, it seemed Sergio’s ultimate fate would be determined by a metaphysical coin toss.

That realization made me feel even more sullen, and I tried to mentally prepare myself to receive heartbreaking news.

No more than fifteen minutes later, Declan came bursting into the room. His hasty departure was evidenced by his appearance. His hair stuck up from his head in every conceivable direction. He was wearing a faded pair of sweats and a baggy T-shirt, and had mismatched flip-flops on his feet. His eyes were still puffy from having just been awakened, but he raced across the room with determined purpose. I was pulled into a bone-crushing hug before I was even fully standing. Feeling his protective arms encircle me caused another wave of emotion to come slamming through me, and tears once again spilled from my eyes.

While holding my head cradled against his chest, Declan looked at Diane. “Have you heard anything? Do we know how Sergio’s doing?”

Diane shook her head. There was a prolonged period of silence, then, probably in an effort to partially relieve the tension, Declan released me just long enough to give Diane a quick hug. “I’m Declan, by the way. I’ve heard so much about you that I feel like I already know you. Zack sings your praises all the time.”

When Diane fell away from his embrace, she looked at both of us. She only smiled faintly, but her expression didn’t convey any hard feelings. “And you must be the phantom friend whom I always assumed existed but was never told about specifically.” She gave my arm a playful shove. “Zack apparently has a habit of keeping the good-looking secrets to himself. I’m only privy to the bad and the ugly.”

I laughed a little self-consciously. “That’s not entirely true. I’ve been telling you about Declan for years. Whenever I said that I had spent time with friends and had had a blast, he was the ‘friends.’ Meeting him now is just giving you the opportunity to put a face to all the stories.” Then I forced a slight smile as I looked at Declan. “Though come to think about it, now that you two have finally met, I can embellish the stories with some of the juicer details.”

Declan pulled me back into his arms and gave me a threatening squeeze. “Better not. You give her so much as a suggestive hint about any of my embarrassing exploits, and I start giving free tours of all the skeletons in your closet too.”

“Point taken.” Though we fell back into an anxious silence, Declan continued to search my expression expectantly. Finally, his solemn question broke the tomblike quiet. “What do you know so far?”

I took a deep breath and was surprised when I was able to answer without my voice quivering like the strings on a violin. “We really don’t know much more than I told you. Sergio met some friends for dinner and was apparently mugged walking back to his car. The police found his wallet next to him, but it was empty of both cash and credit cards. The police assume the motive was robbery, but Sergio might have been gay bashed, then robbed as an afterthought. Either way, at some point during the altercation, the asshole or assholes who attacked him shot him in the chest. The surgeon is confident the bullet missed his heart, but his left lung collapsed, and he had a lot of internal bleeding. Sergio was in the process of getting his second blood transfusion when he was taken to the operating room. We hoped they would be able to quickly identify where the bleeding was coming from, repair the damage, and have him back to recovery long before now. It’s already been more than two and a half hours, and we thus far haven’t heard anything.”

Explaining the seriousness of Sergio’s condition caused my head to spin. I pulled myself out of Declan’s embrace and slid back down into my chair. “I can’t prevent myself from thinking every additional minute he’s in there brings me a minute closer to losing him.”

Neither Diane nor Declan responded. They saw no benefit in trying to offer what could very possibly be false hope. Instead, they sat on either side of me and each wrapped an arm around my shoulders. The silence stretched into several more minutes before I heard myself whisper, “Before I met Sergio, I’m not even sure I liked myself. I certainly didn’t fully accept myself, and I’ve spent the majority of my life fearing people would discover who I really am. Now, if there was even a marginal chance that it would better guarantee his recovery, I’d scream the truth from a mountaintop.”

Declan hugged me a little tighter. “That’s the funny thing, Zack. Sergio knew the truth about you from the moment you two met. He didn’t make you better; he just chose to be with someone who he recognized had great value. That’s who you’ve always been. The thing Sergio succeeded in doing was allow you to see yourself like the rest of us have seen you for a long time.”

Diane echoed Declan’s sentiment by also giving me a tighter squeeze.

“I don’t feel like a good person. It took him being shot to admit to the world how much he means to me.”

Declan sighed. “Don’t do that to yourself, Zack. Sergio knows how important he is to you. He also understands why accepting yourself has been a struggle. He didn’t care if you weren’t out to the whole world. He was happy you were honest with him. Facing a crisis does one of two things: it either breaks a person or it pushes them to find an inner strength they didn’t know they possessed. You’re just beginning to find your strength, Zack.”

Another tear trickled down my cheek. “Then why do I feel broken?”

Now Diane chimed in. “You’re not broken, Zack. Far from it. You’re in love and you’re scared. You’re exactly who you should be. Now quit doing this to yourself and quit imagining the worse. You know what they say—sometimes no news is good news.”

“Let’s hope,” I whispered to the floor. “Let’s hope.” The three of us again fell silent. Beth and my other friends crossed back over to our side of the waiting room and pulled up chairs to close a circle around us. The vigil continued.

About ten minutes later, Dr. Wilber appeared in the doorway. I snapped my head up and searched his facial expression as he walked slowly toward me. In my experience, a person’s body language was sometimes more telling than were their actual words. My chest felt like it was immediately crushed by a wrecking ball when his expression failed to convey even a marginal degree of optimism.

My head told me I should stand to greet him, but I couldn’t trust my legs to support my weight. Instead, I remained seated, and as I watched his deliberate progression through the room, I subconsciously held my breath to steel myself against the anticipation of getting horrific news.

It wasn’t until he was standing in front of me and he reached up to pull his scrub cap off his head that his face brightened. “Sergio’s a lucky man, Zack. I think he’s going to be okay.”

At first, I didn’t trust my ears to have heard him correctly. The blood was pounding in them so loudly I assumed the noise had drowned out what I had convinced myself would be him delivering the news that Sergio had died in surgery. It took a few seconds for the fog in my brain to clear enough to be able to process what he had said. “You think he’s going to be okay?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. It sounded more like pea gravel being shaken in a tin can.

“Yes, I’m fairly confident that though repairing the damage ended up being a trickier feat than I would have imagined, he’s going to make a full recovery. Fortunately, the weapon was a small-caliber handgun. The single bullet entered his chest, deflected off a rib, then nicked his left subclavian artery just at the juncture where the left vertebral artery attaches. It’s a miracle he didn’t lose more blood than he did. The surgery took longer than I anticipated because there was damage to both vessels, and I wanted to guarantee both were successfully repaired. The good news is that he maintained excellent blood pressure through the entire procedure, and because of collateral circulation, I’m confident his brain always maintained good perfusion. With the exception of requiring a little downtime, I predict he should be up and around in no time. Intraoperatively, there didn’t even appear to be any nerve damage, and he was already responding to commands by squeezing his fingers when he was being wheeled into recovery.” By this time, Victor had appeared behind Dr. Wilber’s shoulder. “In fact, thanks to Dr. Maldonado’s meticulous application of subcutaneous sutures, he shouldn’t even have too big a scar.”

Victor offered me a sheepish smile. “Told you we’d take good care of him, Zack. Figured you’d want him to maintain those perfect pecs.”

A relieved smile spread across my face as another spigot of tears opened. “That would have been my priority, Vic. Thanks for watching my back.”

A collective sigh of relief rose up from the entire group, followed quickly by a few cheers.

I shook Dr. Wilber’s hand so vigorously I became fearful I was putting his surgical career at risk. “I can’t thank you enough, Dr. Wilber. You’re a lifesaver, and for maybe the first time in my life, I mean that literally. Thank you.” Another tear made its wayward journey down my cheek. “You’re an incredible surgeon and an even more amazing human being. Thank you.”

He pulled his hand out of my grasp and drew me into a quick hug. “It was a privilege, Zack. I’m thankful we anticipate Sergio will have a good outcome.” He released me but continued to rest his hand on my shoulder. “I’m going upstairs to get a few hours’ sleep. If there’s any problem, the nurses can reach me in the call room. We left Sergio sedated, so he’ll be pretty out of it, but if you’d like, you can visit him in recovery. Just don’t stay too long. He got a lucky break, but we’d be ill-advised to push it. He needs to rest.”

As he turned to walk away, Victor stepped forward to shake my hand. This time, I ignored his outstretched palm, wrapped my arms around him, and pounded him gently on the back. I whispered softly enough that no one else was able to hear, “You’re more than a kickass surgeon, dude, you’re fuckin’ awesome. Thank you. If you hadn’t been in my corner, I’m not sure I would have found the courage to stand up to Klein. You’re the bomb. I hope you don’t suffer any fallout.”

When I released him from my embrace, Victor was smiling. “No worries, Zack. I know how to take care of myself, and besides, I’m pretty sure we both have an army of people willing to go to bat for us. At the end of the day, love, truth, and compassion triumph over bigotry.” His smile broadened. “He ain’t got nothing on us! We’re cool.”

“I’d like to think you’re right, but it still took balls to be among the first to take a stand. I owe you.”

“Perfect. I’ll hold you to that. As soon as Sergio’s out of that bed, I’ll let the two of you buy me a beer.”

I was still grinning as I walked back to rejoin my group of friends. Lots of hugs were shared, and I introduced Declan to the rest of the gang. Beth shook his hand and joked, “Guess it is true. The good-looking ones are always gay.”