ADRENALINE: New 2013 edition (16 page)

“Here, give me a hug,” he said, standing up.

“Sure.”

She set her mug on the table, stood on her tiptoes and embraced him tightly. Even though she was wearing flannel p-j’s, slippers, and wore no make-up, he found her very attractive. He always had. Her thirty-nine years and three pregnancies had done nothing to change that. He buried his face in her long black hair and breathed in her fragrance; it was a muted floral scent that arose from her favorite shampoo and bath soap. They fit together perfectly, so comfortably, he couldn’t tell whether it was just good fortune, or if their bodies had molded themselves somehow into an exact match over the years. He felt closer to her than he had in months.

She looked up into his eyes and said softly, “You’d never take drugs, would you?”

He returned her gaze and looked into her dark brown, liquid eyes. “No way. I’ve got too much to lose.”

“Colleen’s gonna be devastated,” she said, turning her eyes away.

“Yeah, I just can’t figure out what to do.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, Mike pleaded with me not to tell anyone. You know, that he just started, and he could stop like that.” He felt her body stiffen ever so slightly.

“Do you believe him?” She withdrew from his arms and backed up a step. Her voice had lost its soft tone.

“I don’t know.” Doug missed the warmth of her body. He sat down and picked up his coffee cup. He noticed she had given him his favorite mug, the one with three little cubs crawling all over the big papa bear. When he felt how hot the ceramic was, he set the mug down without taking a sip.

“Doug, you’ve got to tell someone.”

He could almost hear Laura’s mind shifting on the fly. “What do you mean?” he asked and looked up at her.

“You’ve got to tell the chief of the medical staff, Doctor, uh—”

“Nichols.”

“Right. You’ve got to tell him.” She started to pace.

“Well, I figured I’d sleep on it. If this got out, it would ruin Mike,” Doug said tiredly. He wasn’t in the mood for a long discussion.

“It’s not
Mike
I’m concerned about.”

He recoiled a bit from her stern tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Doug, you can’t let him in the OR anymore. What if he kills someone else?” “What!” He felt the peaceful mood slipping away like the steam escaping from the coffee mugs.

“Someone else might die because he’s on drugs and not paying any attention.” Laura’s eyes were now on fire, and she appeared to be brimming with energy.

“That’s not what happened, Laura. I was there.” He smiled at her in an attempt to offer an olive branch, but she wasn’t paying attention.

“Were you there from the beginning?”

“No—”

“So, you don’t know what really happened.” Her jaw was set, and he knew her mind was likewise set, in concrete.

“Look, Laura, the guy had a massive MI. Shit happens. I was with Mike during the resuscitation. He seemed fine.”

“It doesn’t matter, Doug. This isn’t something to take lightly. You’ve got to tell Nichols.”

Her authoritative tone always rankled him. Where did this come from? “And just what do I tell Mike? Sorry pal, best friend, I just can’t trust you. You’re a junkie. It’s time to give your career the old heave-ho, but don’t worry, it’s all for the best.” Doug felt himself heating up.

“Don’t get sarcastic,” she said and gave him a withering stare.

“Look, how about if we talk about this thing tomorrow. I’ve had a long day, and I’m pretty beat.” Doug stood up and eyed the hallway to the bedroom stairs.

“I’ve had a long day, too, with the kids.”

“The point is, Laura, if I tell Nichols, it’ll all be over. They’ll suspend his privileges—”

“No,” she interrupted hotly, “the point is, you don’t have a choice!”

“You mean, you’re not giving me one,” he countered. They traded glares briefly. He noticed her fists were clenched, a sign he had become all too familiar with recently, one that heralded an imminent meltdown.

“You’re so good at figuring things out,” she said. “Why can’t you figure out this one? If you don’t tell someone, and some innocent person gets hurt, it will be just as much your fault as his! Don’t you get it?”

Her raised voice and pointing finger completed his slow burn. He felt his face flush with anger. “Yeah, I get it all right! You really don’t care about Mike. You’ve written him off already. And I’m next!”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she squeezed her hands so tight her fingers blanched. Her voice worked although nothing came out but high-pitched squeals.

“Cut me a break,” he said to himself. He couldn’t stand it when she got so emotional. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking me to do? He’s my best friend,” he said trying to sound reasonable even though he knew he wasn’t anymore.

“And Colleen’s one of
my
best friends! Her pain will be far worse than Mike’s!
I’ll
have to deal with that!”

“Always the martyr,” he said with disgust.

“I hate you!” she screamed.

Judging from the intensity of her expression, he believed her. “Likewise!” He whirled and stalked out of the room, passing by the untouched coffee mugs, which were no longer steaming. “I’ve got to go to bed, so I can go to work tomorrow!” he called back over his shoulder.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Doug finished giving report about his patient, thanked the recovery room nurse, and washed his hands with some Betadine. It was 10:30 Saturday morning, and he had just finished the fractured hip case for Dr. Clark. He left the recovery room and headed for the anesthesia on-call room. For the moment, he didn’t have any other cases scheduled; he’d cleared the decks. Many a call day saw cases stacked up like planes at O’Hare jockeying for a place to land. He should’ve been happy, but he still felt like shit.

Doug had gone to bed last night buffeted by a wide range of emotions. He was sick over Mike and angry with him at the same time, and he was furious at Laura for telling him what to do. But mixed in was genuine sadness about their latest fight and confusion over why it was happening. When he went to bed, his stomach was tied up in knots, and his neck and back muscles were locked in spasm. Sleep had not been in the cards.

He passed the cysto room on his left and the anesthesia workroom to his right. Walking further, he came to the surgeon’s
lounge, and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee caused him to veer from his course. Even though he’d already gulped two cups earlier in the morning, he couldn’t resist a third.

He walked into the lounge and realized why there was a new pot of coffee. The two X-ray techs who had helped with the fractured hip case were standing by the coffee machine, cups in hand, waiting for it to finish brewing.

Now that their surgical masks were down, he could see their entire faces, not just their eyes. He thought it was interesting to note how wrong one could be in predicting someone’s face from just a view of the eyes. Doug remembered being surprised on more than one occasion after meeting a new scrub nurse or sales rep whom he’d never seen before. After talking to them for a while with masks up, he’d be forced to paint a mental picture of their face. When he finally saw them outside the OR, masks down, he was sometimes shocked to find that the girl with the pretty eyes and nice voice was actually unattractive, or that someone with plain eyes might be beautiful when their whole face was revealed.

Doug immediately recognized the bigger tech. Her name was Tammy or Tanya or something, and she was a veteran who had been there over twenty years. She had obviously been teaching her companion the finer arts of C-arm technique, and the ever-important skill of dealing with an orthopedic surgeon without being reduced to tears.

Doug had never seen the other girl before. She was much younger, probably right out of tech-school, and Doug couldn’t help but notice she was striking. Her long brown hair, previously tucked in her surgical hat, flowed freely over her shoulders.

Why should he even look at her? He was a married man after all, a father. She’d be lucky to be half his age. Still, her beauty tugged at something, some archetypal hardwiring of his brain. He wondered whether other men had the same problem.

The coffee machine ended its brewing cycle, and the X-ray techs both helped themselves. As Doug poured himself a generous cup and added some milk, he couldn’t help but steal some glances at the new tech. He was only partially successful and spilled a bit of milk on the table in the process. The older X-ray tech gave him a reproachful “That’s what you get for staring” look and exited the room with her baby duckling in tow.

“Damn it,” Doug cursed silently. He wiped up the spill with some paper towels and threw them into the trashcan with more force than he’d intended, sending the plastic hinged lid spinning out of control. Wow, a bit testy this morning, he noted.

Doug couldn’t get the picture of Mike’s flushed face and pinpoint pupils out of his mind. He couldn’t get Laura’s angry face and tears out either. All night he’d wrestled with Mike and Laura, arguing over and over about the drugs, wondering what to do.

He walked back to the on-call room and sat down sipping his coffee. He glanced up at the pictures on his desk. He had upwards of fifteen snapshots of Laura, the boys, and himself in every combination strewn about. Some of the older photographs had actually acquired frames, but most of the more recent ones were propped precariously on various knick-knacks on his desk. The large bottle of Advil was a favorite propping device.

He looked at last year’s Christmas picture of Laura and himself seated by the fireplace. God, she looked pretty when she smiled. She of course hadn’t been smiling last night when he told her about Mike. Strange, he thought, how easily they fought these days. They seemed to have lost the ability or desire to abort fights in the early stages. Now every argument, no matter how trivial, escalated to a full-scale fight. The braking mechanism was faulty.

Doug was very uncomfortable with their fighting. He had been raised in a relatively fight-free household. In fact, Doug’s only childhood memory in this area was of his mother sobbing, sitting on the staircase when he was five years old. He remembered trying to comfort her. Doug had never seen her cry, and to
this day the vision had visceral impact on him. He recalled vividly fearing the loss of his nice safe world and didn’t want his kids to have similar memories. So consequently, Doug believed early on that good relationships were fight free. Each time Laura and he tangled over the years, he would sulk away fearing the worst about his own marriage.

Over the twenty years they had been married, they had had their sporadic fights, and Doug had gradually come to accept that occasional spats didn’t equate with a bad marriage; sometimes he realized they were even useful to resolve sticking points in the relationship.

Now, however, things were worse. Doug couldn’t shut up the voice in his head: “See, I told you so. Fighting like this means something is fundamentally wrong with your marriage. Mom and Dad never fought. Maybe you’ve grown apart. It happens. Something is wrong.”

Doug was truly perplexed. He knew some of the problem lay with Laura and her workaholic syndrome, but what really bothered Doug, was trying to figure out just how much
he
was responsible for the hurt to the family. Why was
he
becoming less tolerant of Laura and her ways? Was this his subtle, passive/aggressive way of signaling his dissatisfaction with the marriage? Doug hadn’t dated much before Laura, and he wondered if this was coming back to haunt him. Was this all a manifestation of some mid-life crisis where he kept asking himself what might have been, or what would it be like with another woman?

Doug reflected on last night’s fight again. She was, of course, right about telling Dr. Nichols. Doug almost always agreed with Laura on big moral issues such as abortion, capital punishment, etc. This was one of the reasons they had been so compatible over the years. Opposites may attract, but nobody ever said they stay married. Deep down, Doug knew this, and it infuriated him all the more. He hadn’t wanted to call Dr. Nichols last night. He needed
time to explore all options, see if there was any way to spare his friend the disgrace.

It wasn’t that they had disagreed so much; they differed in their style of thinking. He liked to think things through, mull them over, analyze the problem from every angle. He knew this was just the opposite of Laura’s approach. She was usually able to make snap decisions or determine if something was right or wrong in a flash, and then stuck to her guns with the tenacity of a pit bull. He sometimes resented not having enough time to arrive at his own conclusions.

He took another sip of coffee and glanced at Mike’s desk. He shook his head, got out a piece of paper, and started writing. “Dear Dr. Nichols—”

Didn’t she mind being right all the time?

But he would wait a little to mail the letter. In fact, he would hand deliver it to Dr. Nichols next Friday at the Executive Committee meeting. He would have to tell Mike, and this was a conversation he dreaded.

After he finished the letter, he folded it up neatly and tucked it in the envelope. He stared at the envelope for a while. Strange, he thought, how this little envelope had the power to destroy a man’s career and ruin a friendship. He shook his head to dispel these thoughts and put the envelope in his briefcase.