“I’d been in the hospital thirty-one hours by then.”
“Thirty-one?”
“We were short.”
“Two surgeons quit that fall.”
“Nobody replaced them.”
“So I covered.”
“Everybody covered.”
“But mostly me.”
He rubbed his face.
“The on-call surgeon that night didn’t answer his page.”
“So I scrubbed in.”
“I’d done that operation five hundred times.”
“I could do it in my sleep.”
He laughed.
It wasn’t a laugh.
“That was the problem.”
“I was practically asleep.”
“There was a complication.”
“Something I should have caught.”
“I caught it late.”
“Not too late.”
“But late.”
I pressed my hand to my mouth.
“Is she…”
“She’s alive.”
“She’s still upstairs.”
“Four West.”
“Five more surgeries since.”
“She’ll walk out of there someday.”
“But she lost almost a year of her life.”
“Because of me.”
I didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t.
“The family never sued,” he said.
“Her mom’s a waitress.”
“She didn’t even know she could.”
“But the hospital did a review.”
“In February.”
I stared at him.
“Our anniversary,” I said.
He nodded.
“I ordered your flowers from the hallway outside the hearing room.”
“They suspended me in March.”
“In May, they gave me a choice.”
“Resign quietly, sign a paper, and keep my license.”
“Or fight it and lose everything.”
“The paper said I’d stay off the property.”
“Except for my own medical care.”
“You signed it.”
“I signed it.”
“And then you kept going back.”
He looked away.
“Every day?” I asked.
“Most days.”
“To see her?”
“She doesn’t have anybody but her mom.”
“Her mom works doubles.”
“Somebody has to sit with her.”
“Somebody has to read to her.”
“Somebody has to be there when she wakes up scared.”
“So you snuck past security.”
“For five months.”
“The nurses let me.”
“Denise let me.”
“Until last week.”
“A new guard saw me and reported it.”
I looked at the scrubs.
At the badge on its hook by the door.
“Your badge,” I said.
“It doesn’t work, does it?”
“No.”
“It hasn’t opened a single door since March.”
“You wore it every day.”
“So I’d look like I belonged.”
“So I could walk through the front entrance.”
