Hooten. We teach. Residents learn. We don’t throw them under the bus. You want to discipline someone, discipline me. I assigned her the case.”
“Tina, I know how hard you’ve worked with this resident, but she may not be Chelsea material—”
“This is just wrong and you know it.” Tina could think of nothing else to say. She stared at Hooten, her jaw set.
The attorney spoke up, looking at Hooten as he did. “The hospital is just too exposed on this one.”
Tina ran through the cascade of events that would unfold for Michelle Robidaux. She would lose her job, her wages, her standing in the medical community. She would lose her legal representation and whatever shred of self-respect remained. She would probably return to Louisiana, where her family would no doubt let her know how foolish she’d been to think folks at big-name hospitals would accept their kind. Who knew what would happen after that? She felt her gut clench as she envisioned the next days and months for Michelle Robidaux, the first in her family to go to college.
“I can tell nothing I say is going to matter,” Tina said. Without another word, she got up and walked from the office.
“Tina, don’t turn your back on me,” Hooten called after her. She didn’t look back.
P ark enjoyed the spotlight, even when he was presenting at M&M, even if it meant explaining Ruth Hostetler’s post-operative sequelae of unbidden sexual desire. Park had toiled in obscurity for too long, first in Korea and then in the United States, not to savor his moments standing front and center. It was tough being on the bottom rung of the ladder, looking up, when you knew you were the smartest man in the room, and Park had little doubt he was the smartest man in the room most of the time.
He looked around at the doctors seated in front of him. He saw his fellow attending neurosurgeons Tina Ridgeway and Ty Wilson sitting next to each other. Tina Ridgeway was smart. Ty Wilson had magic hands, but he was no intellect. Neither one of them could match Park’s command of data, research, knowledge. Harding Hooten might pose a legitimate challenge, Park thought, but he was nearing retirement and could not match the raw drive Park brought to his job.
“We all know the story of the famous Phineas Gage in 1848,” Park began. “He was construction foreman for a railroad in Vermont, blasting rock, when a thirteen-pound tamping iron shot through his brain. The bar entered left cheek, traversed his frontal lobe, and exited here.” Park pointed to a spot just above his forehead, directly above the bridge of his nose.
“Did he get choppered to Chelsea General?” Villanueva called out. There was a smattering of laughter.
“I gotta make rounds at seven, can we skip ahead to the twenty-first century,” someone else called from the back of the room.
“Sounds like he was stuck between the eight-ball and a hard place,” came a third voice. Sung scowled.
Everything was a joke to Americans, Park thought. Life was serious business, bound by laws of obligation, honor, and family, but Americans thought they were living in one of those comedies they watched on television, with the action punctuated by artificial laughter every ten or fifteen seconds. Perhaps the pleasure centers of their brains had been rewired at a young age. When Park was a child, he would return home from school and either study, practice violin, or help his parents in their small and failing general store.
This was one of the Americans traits that vexed him. There were many others. Americans were also always in a hurry. They ate fast, drove fast, rushed from one thing to the next. They flipped channels, read headlines or abstracts or executive summaries, and then moved on. Shouldn’t you truly understand something before continuing to the next thing? This morning he was offering the assembled doctors a gift, a sculpture of ideas on the nature of brain injury, but they wanted him to rush through it. No
“Tina, I know how hard you’ve worked with this resident, but she may not be Chelsea material—”
“This is just wrong and you know it.” Tina could think of nothing else to say. She stared at Hooten, her jaw set.
The attorney spoke up, looking at Hooten as he did. “The hospital is just too exposed on this one.”
Tina ran through the cascade of events that would unfold for Michelle Robidaux. She would lose her job, her wages, her standing in the medical community. She would lose her legal representation and whatever shred of self-respect remained. She would probably return to Louisiana, where her family would no doubt let her know how foolish she’d been to think folks at big-name hospitals would accept their kind. Who knew what would happen after that? She felt her gut clench as she envisioned the next days and months for Michelle Robidaux, the first in her family to go to college.
“I can tell nothing I say is going to matter,” Tina said. Without another word, she got up and walked from the office.
“Tina, don’t turn your back on me,” Hooten called after her. She didn’t look back.
P ark enjoyed the spotlight, even when he was presenting at M&M, even if it meant explaining Ruth Hostetler’s post-operative sequelae of unbidden sexual desire. Park had toiled in obscurity for too long, first in Korea and then in the United States, not to savor his moments standing front and center. It was tough being on the bottom rung of the ladder, looking up, when you knew you were the smartest man in the room, and Park had little doubt he was the smartest man in the room most of the time.
He looked around at the doctors seated in front of him. He saw his fellow attending neurosurgeons Tina Ridgeway and Ty Wilson sitting next to each other. Tina Ridgeway was smart. Ty Wilson had magic hands, but he was no intellect. Neither one of them could match Park’s command of data, research, knowledge. Harding Hooten might pose a legitimate challenge, Park thought, but he was nearing retirement and could not match the raw drive Park brought to his job.
“We all know the story of the famous Phineas Gage in 1848,” Park began. “He was construction foreman for a railroad in Vermont, blasting rock, when a thirteen-pound tamping iron shot through his brain. The bar entered left cheek, traversed his frontal lobe, and exited here.” Park pointed to a spot just above his forehead, directly above the bridge of his nose.
“Did he get choppered to Chelsea General?” Villanueva called out. There was a smattering of laughter.
“I gotta make rounds at seven, can we skip ahead to the twenty-first century,” someone else called from the back of the room.
“Sounds like he was stuck between the eight-ball and a hard place,” came a third voice. Sung scowled.
Everything was a joke to Americans, Park thought. Life was serious business, bound by laws of obligation, honor, and family, but Americans thought they were living in one of those comedies they watched on television, with the action punctuated by artificial laughter every ten or fifteen seconds. Perhaps the pleasure centers of their brains had been rewired at a young age. When Park was a child, he would return home from school and either study, practice violin, or help his parents in their small and failing general store.
This was one of the Americans traits that vexed him. There were many others. Americans were also always in a hurry. They ate fast, drove fast, rushed from one thing to the next. They flipped channels, read headlines or abstracts or executive summaries, and then moved on. Shouldn’t you truly understand something before continuing to the next thing? This morning he was offering the assembled doctors a gift, a sculpture of ideas on the nature of brain injury, but they wanted him to rush through it. No
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