Oxygen (13 page)

The Fourth of July.
Friends are setting off firecrackers and drinking mojitos at a colleague’s waterfront home on Mercer Island, where docks thrust into Lake Washington, hundred-thousand-dollar footnotes on the multimillion-dollar mansions. I am on call at the hospital.

The day has dissolved into a stream of emergency laparoscopies, labor epidurals and C-sections, until a late evening lull sends me back to my call room to try to catch a nap before the usual onslaught of holiday emergencies begins. As soon as I curl catlike on top of the rough cotton bedspread my pager beeps; the LED screen flashes the seven digits of an office line somewhere inside the hospital. A surgeon, most likely, calling about an upcoming case. My energy sinks as the night’s work piles up, and I have to remind myself I asked for this additional shift.

“Hey, I saved you the best seat in the house to watch the fireworks. Meet me on the fourteenth floor.”

“Joe. You nutcase. What are you doing here—don’t you ever get sick of this place? And there is no fourteenth floor. Where are you calling from?” I get a giddy lift hearing his voice on this endless day.

“Sure there’s a fourteenth floor. You just have to know where to look for it—like a lot of life’s more exalting vistas.”

He could only mean the roof. The highest patient floor is eleven, and above that is a maze of storage areas—sort of a grandmother’s attic stuffed with wheelchairs, ventilators, traction devices and braces for all manner of fractured and failing skeletons. A medical junkyard. There is no thirteenth floor—not in a hospital.

“Which stairs should I take?”

“Depends on whether you want to watch the sunrise or the sunset.”

“I’ll come up through the south wing. Then we’ll have both options.”

The stairwell rises in a cloistered shaft parallel to the bustling patient wards, its thick concrete walls cool and sweaty. I push against the silver bar of the metal fire door that seals the dark stairs from the building’s rooftop. The flood of slanted evening sunlight is jolting after the white lights and hard surfaces of the operating rooms. It catches Joe in a wash of gold—gold glinting off his reddish hair and the thick soft hair of his arms, that half-shaven beard casting an inverse halo of gold under his jaw.

He is leaning back on elbows cocked over the cement rooftop wall, staring directly at the door as I exit, grinning like a colluding, teenaged prankster. How old is Joe? Forty-two or fourteen? How can he not make me want to pretend life holds no consequences beyond the joy of the moment?

Sitting on the hot asphalt roof among the detritus of cigarette butts and foil gum wrappers is a tiny chocolate cake. I recognize it immediately as a Fran’s chocolate torte, one of the few delicacies of Seattle guaranteed to plump me into my larger pair of blue jeans. A single sputtering sparkler is fizzing into sulfuric smoke on top of the torte.

“Sorry. The ice cream was melting, so I had to eat it myself.”

“Hey, if you feel like you have to be at the hospital on the Fourth of July, why not just take my call day? I could have gone to the beach for you and let you know how terrible the weather was or how bad a sunburn I got or something.”

“I already did that this weekend. Then I wanted to watch the fireworks and I figured the best view would be from the Aurora Bridge, but I might get unexpectedly depressed about something and decide to jump off. So I came here instead.”

When I pick up the shiny dark torte it releases a seductive aroma through the summer air. The sparkler has melted a tiny black pond in the circular center of solid chocolate. Joe runs his pinkie along the outer rim, gouging out a moat of chocolate, then licks it clean. Everything is magnificently shadowed in the horizontal sunlight. The roof is deserted, despite the sweeping scape of Seattle’s surrounding mountains and sea.

“Scoble should move the anesthesia call room up here and glass it in. He’d have people begging to work weekends,” I say.

“You can see Lake Union from here, if you lean around the ducts at the end of the roof.” He grabs my hand and pulls me to the eastern end of the building. The twilight is deepening and the landscape is taking on the indefinable blue of near darkness, the blue of transition. He’s right. By stretching around an air-conditioning tower I can just make out the shimmery surface of Lake Union, the clustered lights of party boats rocking in the breeze, waiting for the first crack and whine of fireworks to spread in the blackness like fiery peacocks.

“I met you right out there, four years ago tonight. Do you remember that? I’d just moved here—I had a huge U-Haul parked in front of my condo and I was supposed to start work the next day. And I’m obligated to go to this welcoming party.”

I remember. I’ll always remember that night. The anesthesia department had rented a boat out on Lake Union, anchored right in front of the fireworks barge and Gas Works Park. It was an evening when we all saw perhaps too much of each other’s unprofessional sides, drinks flowing unfettered and weather hot enough to justify—or rationalize—minimal clothing. All the tension of the operating rooms seemed to be uncoiling in the heat. Joe was a reasonable excuse to throw a party. By sunset I was tucked into an isolated booth beneath a clouded porthole. Then Joe was sitting next to me, handing me a beer. He put a plate of iced jumbo shrimp on the table in front of us. The fireworks were just starting and he said almost nothing to me, besides his name. It felt like the only honest conversation on the boat.

It’s almost dark now. Around us the hilltops are episodically lit with tiny colored explosions and to the west the ferries, ringed with tiers of brightly lit windows, stream across the bay like floating birthday cakes. The air is a perfect balance of light humidity and heat, my skin a fluid component of the atmosphere. My eyes begin to sting and the city lights blur into melting stars.

Joe watches me, sensing the shift in my mood. He doesn’t say anything, no flippant remark that I could nonchalantly punt back. Instead he reaches out and squeezes my shoulder.

I turn away from him and see the fading silhouette of the Olympics simplified to a two-dimensional cutout. “I suspected you weren’t just randomly roaming by the hospital with a Fran’s chocolate cake in your front seat.”

“It’s a torte, not a cake. They charge five dollars extra for the torte.”

“Whatever.”

He leans back on the ledge, watching the sparse bursts of bottle rockets before Seattle begins its show. “Quite a view, isn’t it?” he says, allowing me the moment to compose myself.

“So why does it make me so sad? To be this intensely alive for an instant?” I release a weakhearted laugh at the absurdity of the question.

Joe stares at the dimming horizon. He answers so quietly I almost miss it. “Because you never really look ’til it’s almost gone.”

Below us the city grows tense with the anticipation of fireworks.

He looks over at me. “Marie, you need to let go of this. You have to stop blaming yourself for this girl’s accident. You’ve been carrying this around alone for so many weeks now.”

I hold my face in my hands and sorrow surfs against my eyes. “Let go? How do I do that? I think about it every time I sit still for more than five minutes. I go over every single step of it, every blip of the monitors, every drug I gave. Every time I introduce myself to a patient I see that woman’s face, her mother’s face. It’s not just about the little girl. Death might be a blessing if it means you never have to face this kind of grief. To lose your baby? I don’t see how she…”

Joe breaks in. “Listen to yourself. This little girl, be realistic. What kind of a future did she have? I’m not trying to be cruel—I’m sure it’s been a huge blow for her mom—but stand back a little. What could you have done differently?”

“You don’t know…” I stop, wiping tears away with the back of my hand, avoiding his eyes. I have to bite my lip to keep from shouting the autopsy results at him. I understand now why criminals feel compelled to confess their crimes.

“What? What don’t I know?”

I shake my head, then answer in a hoarse whisper, “I see her mother in these depositions. She looks even more lost than I am. She had to watch that expert of Feinnes’s—he made it sound like her daughter was all but murdered by my incompetence. Can you imagine trying to find the truth in all this when you don’t understand half the medical words? God, this whole gruesome legal process has taken on its own perverse momentum.”

“Not without the help of her lawyers, I’m sure.”

I stare out at the glittering party boats on the lake. A light breeze is dropping the temperature and I start to shiver. “My own lawyer would hang me out to dry if he knew I was talking to you about this.”

“Screw the lawyers.”

I answer him in a flat, defiant tone. “Right. Screw the lawyers. You know the pitiful thing? I’m almost rooting for Bobbie Jansen’s side just so she at least comes away with enough money to start another life.”

Now he steps around in front of me and grabs both of my shoulders squarely in front of him, the balls of his thumbs pressing into my clavicles. “Marie. Anesthesia is not perfectly safe. Neither is flying or driving a car or taking over-the-counter cough syrup. Whatever happened to Jolene—and you will probably never figure out what happened to her—was going to happen no matter who was taking care of her. Regardless of how this settlement comes out, she is dead and you are not the reason. The biggest battle you have in front of you right now is to forgive yourself. My God,” he says in an exasperated tone, “for all anybody knows she was going to die at that moment whether she had surgery or not. If you have to blame somebody, pin it on Brad. He had a chance to change things if he thought you were doing anything wrong.”

“Brad’s paid enough for this already.”

“My point exactly. So have you. Don’t make yourself the next victim in this tragedy.”

I shove his hands off my shoulders and shout, “Have you ever been responsible for a child’s death? Sure, you’ve lost eighty-year-old heart patients, but a kid? I was the one in charge when she died.” I back away and restrain my voice to a quiet storm. “Think about it. This was the only child of a woman who’s already lost her husband. What fills her mind every evening when she comes home to a house with that empty bedroom? More than one life was lost in that operating room.”

At that moment the northern sky begins fracturing into a rainbow of colored fire as rockets are shot from a barge in the middle of Lake Union. We watch the lights in silence until I tug his sleeve. “Come on. I’ll walk you down to the lobby. I’ve got to check on some people in Labor and Delivery.”

I think about Bobbie Jansen
every day. I imagine her house with its empty rooms and silent dinner table. I imagine her dressing table mirror rimmed with photographs tucked beneath a peeling wooden frame—pictures of a baby holding a furry teddy bear, a toothless infant smiling drunkenly at the looming camera, a toddler splashing in a plastic wading pool, an eight-year-old girl blowing out the candles on her last birthday cake.

This is what I should have screamed at Joe before he left. The rest of the night I rescript our conversation, berate myself for what I didn’t say, regret what I did.

Will shows up at seven thirty to relieve me. “Hey, rough night, huh?” he asks. There is a deeper layer to his concerned look; he must recognize more strain than one bad call night should forge.

“Death by perpetual paging—you know. The sheets are clean on the bed. I never even pulled back the bedspread.” He grins at me but studies my face.

I turn away and stuff my hairbrush and socks into a shoulder bag. “So, there are still three epidurals running, one VBAC, but she’s almost fully dilated and her tracings look good. I got a couple of calls about add-on cases for general surgery, but we should be able to work them in at the end of the day. Two rooms are running light.”

“Want to grab a cup of coffee before you take off?”

“Thanks. I think I’ll try to get some sleep so I can go for a run later. Looks like it should be beautiful today.” The sunshine through the narrow window near the ceiling flickers off a river of dust motes flowing between the two of us. We are in the brief hour of direct natural light this makeshift room gets before the sun passes behind the looming wings of clinics and laboratories that have been patched onto the original building. It must be like this in prisons: a slot of sun each day that inmates follow across the floor like heliotropes rooted in concrete.

“Great, great.” He is standing in the doorway and I have to gently push past him to leave. “Well, have a good one. See you tomorrow.”

The curbside gutters are cluttered with spent firecrackers and plastic American flags stapled to little wooden sticks; an empty beer bottle rattles across the street like the last drunken partygoer. I lock my front door behind me as if I suspect I am followed.

Two messages are on the machine from Lori about my dad. He has burned a pile of books in his fireplace and set off the smoke alarm—a neighbor called her to say the fire department nearly broke down his door before he answered it. Gary’s called asking when he can reschedule his visit, wondering if it’s a new romance that’s made me so hard to reach lately.

And the third voice is Donnelly’s. It’s short and cheery. “Call me as soon as you get a chance. Tell Anne to put you right through to me.” My heart starts racing. Anne never puts me right through to his office. I always have to wait for him to call me back. In fact, it had been of some nominal relief to know that my case fell low enough in his rank of threat to keep me on hold. Something has changed.

It’s only 7:45 in the morning. No one will be at his office until 8:30 at the earliest. I have forty-five minutes to play out scenarios of professional crucifixion. I pour coffee beans into the grinder but spill most of the bag onto the floor. My hands are numb. I wish time were a physical body I could grasp and yank forward. I fill the bathtub with hot water and slide down under it like a blanket, my nose just above the water. The clean line of it divides my face—a line of hot and cool, water and steam, breath and suffocation. The clock barely moves.

At 8:20 I start dialing the phone and ring back every few minutes until the receptionist finally answers, her voice as manicured as a recording.

“May I speak to Mr. Donnelly, please?”

“Could I tell him who’s calling?”

“Dr. Marie Heaton. I’m returning his call.”

Next I should hear Anne telling me Donnelly’s in a meeting and he’ll get back to me. But instead she sounds almost fawning. “Dr. Heaton, thank you for calling. I’ll put you through.”

“Marie. How are you?” His voice is too considerate. “Glad you could get back to me so quickly—I thought you might be out of town for the holiday. Listen, a couple of issues have come up that we need to talk over. Can you come by my office sometime today?”

So whatever it is he won’t tell me over the phone. I clear my throat. “Sure, John. I’m free. What time would you like me to come?”

“I’m open all morning. How about ten o’clock?”

Anne appears in the doorway minutes after I arrive.

“Good morning, Dr. Heaton. Mr. Donnelly is expecting you. I’ve just brewed some coffee if you’d like a cup.”

“No thank you, Anne.”

“Perrier?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Has she ever been so solicitous of me before? I can’t remember.

Morning clouds outside the office windows feather the arc of mountains and islands; the earth is a discernible sphere from this height. Donnelly shakes my hand and gestures at one of the two high-backed wing chairs. Caroline Meyers-Yeager is sitting in the other. She stands up and waits for me to be seated.

“Good morning, Dr. Heaton,” she says. “Mr. Donnelly thought it would be best for us to meet together this morning.” She holds my eyes a second too long, and I catch a flash of sympathy.

My face burns as I sit down; a sense of dread rises that makes my knees weaken.

John and Caroline exchange an indecipherable glance and then John starts talking. “We appreciate your coming in on such short notice. I know you have a busy schedule.” He pauses, waiting for me to return some pleasantry, but I can’t even smile.

“Well.” He coughs lightly. I see his eyes narrow for a second. “Let me get right to the point. Some issues have come up that make it necessary to change our tactics. We’re going to broaden the team. The thinking is that we’ll have a stronger position if we separate your defense from the hospital’s at this juncture.”

I look at Caroline and try to read her face. “Is this about the autopsy results?” I ask.

Caroline steps into the conversation, sounding unperturbed, even a little distant. She is nearly swallowed by the enormous chair, sleek in a peach-colored silk suit. From this angle I can detect the tucked cheek muscles of a face-lift when she talks. “When this malpractice suit was initially filed against both the hospital and you, an employee of the hospital, it was reasonable to defend you as a unit. That decision was made when it appeared this would be a fairly straightforward financial negotiation with Ms. Jansen and her lawyers. In answer to your question, yes. The autopsy results make your defense more complicated.”

I nod, trying to look like I have faith in their logic.

Now John starts talking. “First Lutheran, or more specifically Frank Hopper, your CEO, is concerned that any divergent issues would be better handled separately, to make sure we keep everyone’s best possible outcomes at the top of the agenda. Caroline and I agree with that.”

“Divergent issues,” I repeat, focusing just past him through the window where a seagull is diving among the updrafts, its beak yawed in a muted cry. “What you’re telling me, if I’m understanding this right, is that the hospital is intending to blame Jolene’s death on my mistake. To lower their damages.”

He leans closer toward me over his desk, all pretense dropped. “You can’t get a fair defense if the same lawyer is defending both you and the hospital. Not with the autopsy results. It might have been wiser to separate your teams from the start. I think Caroline would probably agree with me on that.” He raises his eyebrows and looks at Caroline, who nods, and gives me a quick, uninterpretable smile.

Donnelly opens a manila folder in front of him and slips a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket. “The insurance company is recommending another lawyer for you. Charlie Marsallis. Firm over near the federal building. Good group of people—I’ve worked with him before. Caroline has a list of other lawyers if you want to interview them.”

I start to write his name down, but my hands fall into my lap. After working all night I don’t have any more energy to filter this. “So you’re telling me that I’ll be starting with a new lawyer? In the middle of the case? And you’ll still be representing the hospital?”

“No. I’m dropping out altogether. Too many confidentiality issues. The hospital will also be starting with a new legal team.”

I feel Caroline watching me and turn to her. “What do you think I should do? I don’t have any idea how to choose a lawyer.”

She relaxes her perfect posture for the first time today, leaning toward me. “It’s a tough spot for you, and I’m sorry. I wouldn’t recommend Mr. Marsallis unless I completely trusted him. He’s excellent. I’ve already discussed your case with him and he’s more than willing to represent you.” Then she stands and shakes hands with John. “I have to get to a meeting.” Turning back to me, she says, “Call Marsallis. If you don’t feel comfortable I’ll get you a list of other names. Let me know what you decide.” She collects her briefcase and bag and is gone.

John rocks back in his chair. The room is quiet.

I finally break the silence. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Well. I’ll be sure Marsallis gets every scrap of paperwork we’ve generated so far; we’ll take care of all the data transfer.”

“John, could you clarify some of these ‘divergences’ for me? I feel like…like more is going on here than anyone’s telling me.”

“Listen.” He looks right at me again, but his eyes expose a separation of allegiances that has already happened. “The figures for this settlement are running into the millions—way beyond the limits of your policy. First Lutheran has to do everything it can to protect its future, its capacity to care for the people of this community.” He takes his glasses off and folds them closed. “Marie, have you prepared yourself for the possibility that, if this settlement exceeds your coverage, you will become financially liable for the residual?” He raises his eyebrows as he waits for my response, appears surprised that I don’t have an immediate answer for him. “Your only other option here is to go to trial and hope the jury finds in your favor, but I can guarantee you the hospital will fight that.”

“You can reassure the hospital that I won’t pursue that option.” My voice is an emotional void.

He taps his folded glasses against the desktop and hesitates a minute. “Well. Marsallis is an excellent attorney and I’m sure you’ll come out of this just fine. Stop at Anne’s desk on the way out and she’ll get you set up with him this afternoon, if you like. He’s expecting your call.” He stands up to walk me out.

Charlie Marsallis is in court all week and his secretary, who is clearly unfamiliar with my name, judging by Anne’s having to spell it out for her twice, schedules an appointment for next Monday at 10:30
AM
. I’ll have to find somebody to cover for me again at the hospital.

Donnelly reaches out to shake my hand. I’m suddenly conscious of the weight of my arm, reluctant to touch him. “Phil wanted this, too, didn’t he? Frank wouldn’t have asked for this without telling Phil.” My spine tingles with the ugly truth of it.

Donnelly lets his hand drop. “You’ll need to talk to Phil about that. Good luck, Marie. I hope things turn out all right for you.” Anne breaks in with a stack of messages. Our meeting is apparently over.