by Sanjay Gupta
Hooten hoped that given the surgery, then radiation, chemo, and the customized vaccine, Park would have a chance. Maybe this vaccine would be a quantum step forward in GBM treatment. Perhaps Park would be on the side of the divide, one of the lucky ones there when medicine advanced a step in its fight against premature death.
Pat Park arrived after lunch and sat in the waiting area, knitting a gray scarf as she waited for her husband to emerge from surgery. She left at four to pick up her daughters at their after-school music program and then returned to continue her vigil.
When Sung Park was wheeled into Post-Op, the residents cycled through his room, checking his vitals and his chart closely and returning to the family waiting area to tell Pat everything was okay. She was touched, and a bit surprised that so many people cared about her husband. She was crying softly to herself when Hooten walked into the room.
Before leaving the hospital, Hooten had decided to stop by and speak to Pat Park. When he saw her crying, he walked over and gave her a hug. He realized he barely knew the woman. The Parks never attended the holiday party, as Sung had usually offered to take call on those days. Even then, he knew Park had been trying to impress him with his work skills, even at the expense of Pat and the kids. Hooten felt a pang of regret. Truth was, he didn’t have much to say, other than the operation had gone as well as could be expected. Hooten was careful not to paint too rosy a picture, although he suspected Park himself had given his wife a clear-eyed view of the operation and his grim prognosis.
Hooten explained that his colleague was lucky—the tumor was in a nondominant area of the brain, meaning Park’s chance of losing his speech or ability to understand was slim. The operation had gone seamlessly, and Hooten thought the chances of Park retaining his ability to move and speak were good.
“If you need anything at all, call me,” Hooten said. He wrote his home and cell phone numbers on the back of his business card and handed it to Pat. He finally walked out, feeling more exhausted than he could ever remember.
CHAPTER 24
P
ark awoke to find his wife and two daughters standing by his bedside. His vision was blurry and his thinking fuzzy, but Park was relieved to find them there. He took in their smiling faces and then took a deep breath. He enjoyed a strange sense of contentment. A rare sense of peace.
“Gahm-sah-hahm-ni-da,” Park croaked in Korean. Thank you. His throat was dry and his voice barely audible, but the words came out clearly. Park wasn’t sure why he thanked his wife and daughters; nor was he sure why he was speaking Korean. He spoke English at home, unless he and his wife were alone or he wanted to speak privately to her in front of the kids. It just came out: Thank you. The words weren’t exactly what he intended, but pretty close. He meant to say thankful.
Park’s voice was weak and rough. Weak, no doubt from the strain of surgery. Raspy from the intubation, he thought. Still, Park realized he was able to form thoughts, to enunciate, to express himself. Park’s own father had suffered a stroke in his eighties and could not speak the names of places. The frustration brought tears to his eyes. Park’s operation had not seemed to damage his brain or alter his consciousness. That was always a risk in brain surgery. The brain, after all, was complicated. There is hope, Park thought.
“Daddy!” five-year-old Emily said. “You’re finally awake.” She jumped up and down. “Hi Daddy!” Natalie said.
Park’s wife took his hand. She had tears in her eyes.
“Sung,” she said as if his name itself were a thing of wonder. “Sung,” she repeated.
“What day is it?” Park added in English, his voice still a dry whisper, like sandpaper.
“Saturday,” she said.
Park offered the hint of a smile, closed his eyes, and fell back asleep.
In a small Asian neighborhood home in Ann Arbor, Monique Tran sat next to Sanford Williams. Sanford wore jeans and a freshly pressed white buttondown shirt. Monique wore clogs, jeans, a flowered blouse, and a loose gray hoodie. Her hands were jammed in the hoodie’s pockets. They sat squeezed between her parents, who were dressed as though they were heading to church. Her younger sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—eighteen people in all—filled the small room in an arc, all looking intently at Sanford. The young doctor’s unlined face had the pinched look of someone experiencing severe intestinal distress. Monique gave him a pat on the knee.
“You okay, honey? You look like you’re going to lose your lunch.” Monique turned to the assembled family members. “People, it’s not polite to stare, okay?”
Monique’s family looked down momentarily and then resumed their unwavering gaze.
“Are we all here? Mom, you sure you don’t want to invite even more people, maybe the Nguyens, to come over?” Monique’s mother, sitting next to Sanford, started to get up. “Kidding, Mom.” She returned to the couch. “Okay, people. This is Sanford. We work together at Chelsea General. And…we are engaged.”
Monique pulled her left hand from her hoodie and held it out. On her ring finger she wore a large diamond ring on a simple band. She moved her hand from side to side as though she were a model on a home shopping channel.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
Among the assembled family members, there was a buzz of murmurs commenting on the news, a mix of admiration for the ring and shock at the announcement. Mostly shock. Sanford looked at Monique’s father, whose expression was unchanged, a grim mask, and then around the room expecting a handshake or two, a congratulatory pat on the back, maybe. Only Monique’s grandmother sat smiling nearby in a wheelchair, still recovering from her hip replacement. He strained to hear what the Trans were saying, but they were speaking in Vietnamese.
“What are they saying?” he whispered to Monique.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” she said, giving his knee another pat. Sanford’s gut tightened another notch.
“Mom and Dad,” Monique said, looking first at her mother and then her father. The assembled family members quieted. “You may have noticed he is not Vietnamese. But like us, he does come from another country…Alabama.” Confused looks. “That’s a joke. I know your heart was set on a nice Vietnamese boy,” Monique continued, looking first at one parent, then the other. “Sanford is a doctor, though. Aren’t you, honey? And what can I say? The heart sometimes has a mind of its own.” Monique paused and then laughed. “That makes no sense! Anyway, I’ve been teaching him some Vietnamese. Introduce yourself, Sanford.”
Sanford cleared his throat. His face, usually pale from the long hours in the hospital, was paler than normal.
“Chào. Tôi tên là Sanford Williams,” Sanford said. Hi, my name is Sanford Williams. He spoke this simple phrase with all the earnestness he could muster—as though he had these few words alone to convey his intentions toward Monique.
A couple of the younger cousins laughed.
“Pretty good, huh?” Monique said.
“Now tell them what you call me.”
“Bạn gái.” Girlfriend.
There were a few nods of approbation and appreciative smiles. Sanford looked around the room. Maybe the tide was turning.
“Now tell them what I call you?”
Sanford looked around the room, alarmed.
“Here?”
“Tell them my nickname for you.”
“But that wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“They like hearing you speak Vietnamese. It’s cute.” Monique turned from her fiancée to her relatives. “Don’t you, Tran family?” Monique didn’t wait for a response. She turned back to Sanford. “Go on.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.”
“’Cause it just doesn’t seem right.”
She pinched Sanford’s cheek. He flushed.
“We just love hearing the white boy speaking our language.”
“Okay.” Sanford shrugged. “If you say so.” He cleared his throat. “Bu yunghu con ngua.” Monique’s eyes widened in distress. Color
rose on her cheeks. An aunt gasped. Children gaped. The assembled Trans recoiled as though a tear gas canister had dropped in their midst. Sanford looked around, alarmed.
Monique’s father stood and grasped Sanford behind the arm, on his triceps, and pulled him from the couch.
“Time to go,” he said. They were the first words he’d uttered since they arrived.
Monique and Sanford hustled from the small, tidy house, across the porch and down the stairs to Sanford’s car.
“Are you crazy?” Monique asked.
“You said.”
“I didn’t mean that nickname.”
“But—”
“You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to be smart.”
“I said I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
Sanford used his key remote to unlock the Honda. The Trans had assembled on the porch and were glowering at Sanford. The young doctor looked nervously at the porch as Monique got in the car. All that was missing were the pitchforks and torches. He walked around the car and got behind the wheel.
“I didn’t mean Bu yunghu con ngua,” Monique said.
“But—” Sanford sputtered again. He started the car, not looking back. He pulled away the way he might flee a forest fire or a bank robbery. A block from the house, Monique started up again.
“Dumb ass. What sort of person says ‘hung like a horse’ in front of his fiancée’s parents?” Monique smiled and then she started laughing. “Is that the way y’all do it in Alabama?”
Sanford tried to smile along, but the trauma seemed to have paralyzed his zygomatic major.
“Well, what did you mean when you said nickname?”
“Gấu trắng. White bear.”
“But you never call me that.”
“I do, too.”
They drove another block or two in silence.
“Dumb ass!” Monique said, laughing again and punching Sanford in the shoulder. This time Sanford laughed. “That’s your nickname from now on. Dumb ass.”
CHAPTER 25
D
r. Ty Wilson waved to Allison McDaniel when she entered Angelo’s restaurant, a small breakfast dive known for its blueberry French waffles and raisin toast. Over the phone Allison had said she needed diversions on Sunday mornings because she didn’t watch her sister’s children that day. Still, as he waited for her, Wilson had wondered what he was doing. All rational thought argued against this meeting. He was sure Harding Hooten, the hospital attorney, and everyone else at the hospital would argue against it. Yet somehow, he felt compelled. Was he punishing himself? Or was this something else? A quest for his own personal redemption?
Ty had experienced something like an out-of-body experience watching his fingers punch Allison McDaniel’s number on his cell phone. To his surprise, she had agreed to the meeting.
“Good morning, Ms. McDaniel.”
“Allison, please,” she said, sliding into the booth across from Ty.
A waitress walked up.
“Coffee?” he said to Allison.
“Sure.”
Ty was drinking decaffeinated tea. He had never developed his colleagues’ taste for coffee, the stronger the better. Even without caffeine, though, he’d felt jittery since he arrived, like a high school freshman before a date. Some date, Ty thought.
Allison took a sip of black coffee and looked up at Ty. “So, why’d you want to meet with me?” she asked as casually as possible.
“Honestly, I’m not quite sure.” He hesitated. “Can I ask, why did you agree to come?”
“You were the last person to see my son alive. You’re a connection to Quinn,” Allison replied. “Also, I’m curious. My son couldn’t have been the first person who ever died during surgery.” She paused. “Honestly, I’m not sure why a big-shot surgeon at Chelsea General needs to see me.” She pushed her hair behind her ears and looked down at her clothing. “I’m a mess.” With a sigh she took a sip of her coffee.
“You know, I probably shouldn’t tell you this but in the days after Quinn—after I lost my son, I would convince myself I was dreaming. That the whole thing was a dream, and I was simply asleep in the middle of it all. That I just needed to force myself to wake up. And I’d tell myself that there would surely be a sign in the next sixty seconds proving that to be the case. A horrible dream.”
As Allison spoke, her voice started getting thick with emotion.
“I’d start counting. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. And before I’d hit ten, a dog would bark. Or someone would honk their horn. Or I’d hear a car radio somewhere.”
Allison’s voice caught like a baseball card in the spoke of a boy’s bicycle, and she closed her eyes. A pair of silent tears traced parallel lines down her slightly freckled cheeks.
“I knew it wasn’t a dream, but for those few seconds, I was free.” Allison laughed but it was more a snort of self-derision than anything mirthful. She wiped her tears quickly with both hands. “Like I said, I’m a mess. I haven’t been sleeping. I lost my job. I lost the one bright light in my life.”
Allison took a deep breath. She looked closely at Ty. Stared at him. “What do you want from me, Dr. Wilson? Are you worried about a lawsuit?
“Allison, please. It’s not that,” Ty said.
“Okay…I mean, what could I possibly tell you that you don’t know already? So, I’m wondering if there is something else you want to tell me. Why am I here, Dr. Wilson?”
Ty had been thinking about that question since he’d sat down in the booth. When he spoke, he struggled to find the right words. “No one has affected me the way your son Quinn has. After he died, I’ve questioned every one of the decisions I made that night. And I’ve also questioned just about every decision I’ve made since.”
Allison sipped her coffee. She watched Ty the way you might watch a stray dog.
“I am sorry, Ty…But what do you want from me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Ty said. All of a sudden, calling Quinn McDaniel’s mother seemed like a terrible idea. “Maybe I just want to say I’m sorry.”
“I know you’re sorry. I never doubted that you were sorry.”
Ty couldn’t help but wonder whether the hospital attorney was at that moment squeezing his temples like Obi-Wan Kenobi, sensing a strong disturbance in the Force. Could he tell that a doctor somewhere was straying? Doctors at Chelsea General were not supposed to apologize to their patients, certainly not to the mother of a deceased child. Chelsea General’s attorneys did not want any tacit admission of guilt, regardless of how justified or well meaning it might be. In their view, it wasn’t only love that meant never having to say you’re sorry. Medicine, too. Apologizing simply was not done at Chelsea General, at least not anywhere outside Room 311, at six o’clock on a Monday morning.
Other hospitals had evolved their policies on the apology and now encouraged doctors under the right circumstances to come clean and express their regret over a bad outcome. They’d come to believe that saying sorry was not only the right thing to do, but actually lowered litigation costs. While other hospitals had joined what became known as the “Sorry Works” campaign, Chelsea General’s attorney—and the outside firm the hospital hired when it went to court—remained firmly planted in the field of thought that concluded only a judge’s order should prompt an apology. They viewed “Sorry Works” as some sort of New Age pabulum, an unwarranted dropping of the guard.
The food arrived. Allison had waffles with strawberries. Ty was eating a spinach egg-white omelet. They took a few bites in silence. It started raining. “Lucky it isn’t snow,” Ty quipped, trying to break the awkward silence.
“What do you normally do on Sundays?” Allison asked.
Ty took this as an opportunity to ramble on about his love for his motorcycle, pickup basketball games, and his recent meditation classes. They both laughed at that. “I guess…on Sundays, we spend much of the day planning for Mondays, Monday Mornings,” he concluded. He knew she couldn’t possibly know t
he deeper meaning of that.
Allison smiled. “I have a question for you.”
“Sure.”
“If you didn’t operate, the tumor would have killed Quinn, wouldn’t it?” She looked pained as she asked it, and incredibly vulnerable.
“Yes,” Ty answered gently. “You probably would have had six or eight months with your son, but the tumor would have been fatal if we’d done nothing.”
That was the difference between surgery and internal medicine. If Ty had decided the brain tumor was inoperable, Quinn would have died of a brain tumor. With internal medicine, various diseases became compounded and collectively were responsible for the patient’s downfall. A patient died of heart disease and diabetes, perhaps worsened by obesity. Internists treated a disease, hoping to stop the progression. If they were lucky, they managed it, reduced the frequency or severity of the symptoms. Rarely did they cure anyone. Life was different for surgeons. They were making a bet each time they operated. They were wagering their skills against the symptoms, whether it was a tumor, a leaky heart valve, or a bum knee. If the operation was not successful, if the tumor spread or the heart failed or the knee continued to hurt, the surgeon had failed. No one said the patient died of heart disease or cancer. The patient died in surgery, or despite it. The dynamic was completely different.
“Look, I have lost people in my life, Allison. And…I have never forgiven…” He let the words trail off.
“Are you looking for forgiveness, Dr. Wilson?”
Ty just stared at his plate, unsure how to respond.
Ty and Allison finished their breakfast with few words beyond pleasantries about the food. On the way out the door, Ty thanked Allison for meeting him. She made a motion to hug him, but decided to put out her hand instead. “Thank you. The waffles were delicious.” Still holding his hand, she said, “I am not sure what it is, but I hope you find it.” As they parted ways, Ty was left with a sinking feeling of unfinished business. He watched her go and wanted to call her name. First, though, he knew he would need to figure out what he needed from this woman. “Allison,” he said, too softly for her to hear.
