Terminally Ill Read online

  Two minutes later, I handed Kameron two box of pills. “You can start the first pill on the first Sunday after your period. Take them at the same time each day. I do want to see you within the next month, and I want you to book an hour appointment in case I need to do an internal exam, not just for STI’s, but to make sure everything is okay.” I knew something about sexually transmitted infections, but I wanted to read up on polycystic ovarian syndrome. I wondered if that might be her problem, since she was on the obese side and her period might be delayed. “Do you have any questions?”

  I didn’t expect a hug, but I was a little startled when she just yanked the boxes out of my hands and stuffed them into a scuffed, checkered backpack. “Two boxes? God! This SUCKS!”

  She charged out of the room and slammed the door.

  Chapter 16

  After a double shot of Kameron the Rude and Dr. Callendar, Asshat M.D. (was she his secret love child?), I was positively relieved to hustle my bum over to palliative care for the afternoon.

  Dr. Huot patted the shoulder of Karen, one of the nurses, before she beckoned me over to her side. For once, she’d turned her smile down to 60 Watts instead of 100. “Dr. Sze, one of our patients passed away early this morning.”

  “Is it Mr. Bérubé?” I asked right away, since he was the one I knew the best.

  “No. It was Mrs. Sinclair, in room 5680. She had cancer of the ovaries.”

  I shook my head. Everyone hates ovarian cancer, the slow-growing, catch-you-by-surprise-until-you’re-near-death kind. On second thought, I suppose everyone hates all kinds of cancers, but to paraphrase Animal Farm, some cancers are more cancers than others.

  “Have you ever pronounced a patient’s death?” inquired Dr. Huot.

  Strangely enough, I hadn’t. They don’t call medical students to pronounce patients, because we’re not M.D.’s and can’t sign anything. And so far, in my brief career as a resident, the only dead person I’d encountered was Dr. Radshaw, when they’d called a code blue in the men’s change room, and there were plenty of other real doctors to pronounce him (or not, as the case may be).

  “Do you feel comfortable going in by yourself?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, even though I secretly felt like a newborn colt on shaky legs.

  “I will go in with you,” she said.

  I smiled and nodded in thanks as we turned left out of the nursing station and fell into step together. The nicest doctors hold your hands for the simplest things, which is a balm compared to 3 a.m., when the patient’s crashing, you really need a second opinion, and you’re pretty much gorked. Sure, you can page the senior resident. You could even page the staff at home. If you’re absolutely stuck, you can run down to the emergency room and track down the doctor, but that one physician basically doesn’t leave the ER and can’t run every code on the floor. You’ve got to step up.

  I’d only met Ms. Sinclair on rounds. She used to crochet a white blanket. More recently, she kept the blanket square on her lap and gazed out the window. She didn’t like to talk a lot. She said the TV was too loud.

  Ms. Sinclair’s room was at the very end of the hallway, across from the staircase close to Péloquin Street. She was lying in bed with the sheets drawn up to her chin and no one by her side.

  I hustled to her side, mindful that Karen, Ms. Sinclair’s nurse must have left not long ago, but it didn’t feel right for the patient’s body to be alone, especially when I could hear someone else’s daughter next door encouraging her mother to take a bit of toast with strawberry jam.

  Ms. Sinclair’s wrinkled face lay very still, even though her mouth and jaw hung slightly open. Her eyes were closed. I tried to imagine that she’d died in this position because she’d been singing or happily snoring.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  Dr. Huot lowered her eyes to my stethoscope, so I automatically fit the ear pieces into my ears and listened to Mrs. Sinclair’s chest. I didn’t hear any breath sounds, but I moved it to the corners of her heart and auscultated (listened to) the silence there, too.

  Then I lifted my fingers to the midpoint of her neck and pressed the site where I’d normally feel her carotid artery, just like I’d done with Elvis a few days ago.

  My hand jerked. Was that a pulse?

  After a second, I realized it was my own pulse thrumming in my fingertips. I let my hand fall.

  Dr. Huot glanced above the bed, at the ophthalmoscope, so I pulled it out of the holder and gingerly retracted Mme. Gélinas’s eyelid to shine a light on her staring pupil. The pupil didn’t contract. I shone the light on her other side before I replaced the instrument.

  Weak sunlight diffused through the window, above Mrs. Sinclair’s face.

  I nodded at Dr. Huot, and she followed me out the door, After we left the room, Dr. Huot smiled as she washed her hands. “You did very well,” she said.

  Strange. I felt like I hadn’t done much of anything.

  She said, “The important thing is to respect the patients and the people who love them, and you are able to do that.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  “Do you need some time to process your experience?”

  I shook my head. I felt strange and off-balance, like I’d lost something and couldn’t find it, but I didn’t need to contemplate that.

  “I have completed the paperwork so that you may go see Mr. and Mrs. Bérubé. They were asking for you.”

  “Should I write in the chart first?”

  “If you like. I have already done so. We are simply waiting for the extended family, who are driving in to say good-bye.”

  At the nursing station, I scribbled a note under Dr. Huot’s. She had already written the time of death as 7:59 a.m., so she’d sent me into Ms. Sinclair’s room for practice rather than necessity. Underneath her toothy smiles, Dr. Huot was a show runner, too.

  Karen emerged from the little staff room just off the nursing station. I’d still never hung out there. Judging from Karen’s slightly red eyes, it was just as well that I hadn’t barged in today.

  I offered her a sympathetic smile, but she bent over the wire chart rack. I didn’t bother trying to catch the eye of Ricky, the palliative secretary, because I knew I’d be 0 for 2. Instead, I took a hard right out of the nursing station and hurried down the hallway toward the Bérubés. I nearly crashed into a man who popped out the door at the central set of stairs.

  “Dr. Sze,” he said.

  Once my heart settled back into my chest, I recognized Peter the Preacher, wearing a charcoal suit and carrying a Bible under his arm.

  Relief spilled out of me. He was the perfect person to take over right now. “Hi, Mister—” I realized I didn’t know his last name.

  “Peter is fine. That’s what everyone calls me.”

  I’m still getting used to calling grown ups by their first names, but this one felt more natural. “Um, Peter, one of our patients passed away and her family’s on their way. I don’t know if that’s your role, to meet the family, or if we should call the priest?”

  “The priest is otherwise engaged for the next two hours, so they asked me if I could provide some consolation in the meantime.”

  The palliative team was ten steps ahead of me, as usual. “Great!” I smiled at him and waved goodbye.

  Two more steps left of the stairs, I peered into Mr. Bérubé’s shadowed room, where the door was open but the blinds drawn. I stepped across the threshold as quietly as possible, belatedly realizing that I should have whispered to Peter the Preacher.

  Mr. Bérubé snoozed in a chair by the window.

  Mrs. Bérubé smiled and waved at me. Not only was she sitting on her husband’s bed, but she appeared to be bent over his little rolling table, finishing off his mashed potatoes. She set down her fork. “How are you today, Dr. Sze? Did you have lunch?”

  I nodded. For a second, she reminded me of my grandmother, who always asked if I’d eaten yet.

  As if she were reading my mind, she said, “I
know, I have a bad habit of fussing over people. We have four children and six grandchildren, and I never stopped being a mother. But I wanted to see you today. I sensed something was troubling you.”

  I gave her a strange look. “You mean when I met you the other day?”

  “Yes, the other day, but more so today. I had a feeling about you and wanted to reassure you. That is what I do. I read people’s fortunes.”

  How bizarre. She made quilts, she won spelling bees, and now she said she read fortunes. “Well, that’s good.” I glanced at Mr. Bérubé for help, but he slept on, nestled inside his colourful quilt. I couldn’t help wondering what she foresaw for her husband, but it was kinder not to ask. “How is your husband today?”

  “He is fine. Very weak, as is expected, but he had a good day today. We walked all the way down the hall and back, and now he is resting.” She smiled at me. “I used to tell fortunes constantly, when I was in school like you. All the girls used to ask me the usual things, if they would marry a cute boy, how many children they would have. I was always surrounded by girls laughing and begging and screaming over any misfortune. I told one girl her husband would die early, but she would have three cats. Oh, she was so angry. One day, when I had stayed late after school, George asked me to read his palm. I never read for the boys. I thought it wasn’t modest. But he asked so nicely, and the teacher was still there. I thought it was proper. So I read it for him. I said he had found a wonderful girl who would stay with him ‘til the end of his days. He looked at me and said, ‘It’s you.’ I smiled at him, and we have been together ever since.”

  It was a beautiful story, like all of Mrs. Bérubé’s stories, especially if you didn’t think too hard about the “end of his days” part. “Did you really see yourself in there?”

  “Of course. Let me see your palm.”

  I shook my head. “That’s all right.”

  “Oh, there’s no need to pretend propriety with me, Dr. Sze. I know you’re curious.”

  I shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “I don’t think it’s professional.”

  She laughed. “Your job is to comfort the dying and their families?”

  I glanced at Mr. Bérubé and nodded. He roused from his sleep for a second, blinking slowly at me before turning to his wife. She rose from the bed and tucked the quilt around his arms more tightly. “Is that better, George?”

  His eyes drifted closed. His chest rose and fell in a gentle rhythm.

  She turned toward me. “He’s comfortable. I’m the one who needs comforting, and it would calm me down to read your palm.”

  Strangely enough, I’ve always wanted to get my fortune told. Walking the streets of Toronto at night, you’ll often see a neon sign featuring a hand, or a “Fortunes told” sign. I’ve never gone in. Here was a patient’s wife asking me to let her do her thing. So even though I was lingering in the doorway, where anyone else could see me, I held out my right palm.

  She took my hand in hers. Her skin was warm, and her touch was firm, not frail. She studied my palm for a moment, staring at the creases. I glanced over my shoulder. The last thing I wanted was for Dr. Huot to walk by and see me holding hands with Mrs. Bérubé. I clearly wasn’t talking about medication doses.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Let me see your left hand.”

  I showed her my left hand, but I had to ask, “Why?”

  “Your left hand is like a script, the life you were born with. The right hand is like a play, the story you’re acting out right now. I want to see the similarities and the differences between them.” She looked at me and nodded once. “Your life is diverging.”

  Diverging. As in splitting? That didn’t sound good. I swallowed and waited for her to explain.

  “You feel trapped here, in many ways. You’ve deviated from your original path so many times, you’ve created a new path. I’m not certain where you’re going, except that your life will be filled with adventure.”

  “I don’t want adventure,” I said before I could think. “I’ve had enough adventure to last a lifetime.”

  “No? ‘Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost, but climb.’ Edna St. Vincent Millay. Is that not what you are heading for? Ah, I see that you could choose safety. Family. The life you were meant to have. You need to choose soon.”

  She was talking about Ottawa and Ryan and my family. I knew it. But I kept my mouth shut. My friend Ginger once said that she got a tarot card reading from a friend. She stayed mute kept her face blank, to try and make her friend work as hard as possible.

  “Or you could continue on this unknown path. ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.’ Lewis Carroll. Regardless, I see a great deal of passion and heartache. You are exploring new things, and that’s good, even though it comes at great cost to yourself, and—what’s this? You’re going to write a book.”

  I squirmed. I used to write in a diary. I haven’t had time for the last few years. It seemed unlikely.

  “You’ll have children, but not for a few years.” She squinted. “Yes, definitely more than one child.”

  “You sound like I have a choice. I thought your fortune was all figured out. Like destiny,” I blurted out. So much for the mute ploy.

  Mrs. Bérubé laughed and clapped her own hands together. “What would be the fun in that? Your fortune is constantly being rewritten, by yourself, by God…not the major things, usually, but all the minor things. It’s the surprises that keep us fresh.” She glanced at her husband in the chair. His mouth fell open and a snore escaped. A smile spread across her face. “‘It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.’”

  “That was Shakespeare, right?” I asked.

  “Julius Caesar,” she answered. “I’m told that I don’t always get the quotes right, but I have the spirit of them, and that’s the most important thing.”

  That was the exact opposite of medicine, where precision and authority and evidence are king.

  She looked at me with laughter in her eyes. “Have I disturbed you?”

  “A little,” I said. Really, she was telling me what I already knew.

  “Good,” she said, and went to sit beside her husband. The meeting had ended.

  She was an odd old woman, all right. Most family members just said hello, or asked for a blanket before they realized that I was a doctor, but I felt like Mrs. Bérubé had spotted me, lit me on fire and set me adrift.

  I left the room, shaking my head. I needed to think about this. It was entirely possible that she’d overheard rumours about me and Tucker and Ryan, then made up a fortune about it. But she was on-target about feeling trapped. Sometimes, I felt downright suffocated.

  The stupidest part was, I’d imprisoned myself. I leapt into detective work as a lark. I buzzed back and forth between two different guys like a bumblebee on meth. But no matter how I got here, I still feel trapped tighter than Houdini in a milk can.

  She was telling me I could escape. She said I had a choice. I liked that.

  I spared one final glance for the Bérubés as I slipped out the door. She was stroking his thinning hair, like any other devoted wife. You’d never guess that she told fortunes, quoted poets like one of the witches in A Wrinkle in Time, and actively disturbed the housestaff.

  Chapter 17

  Dr. Huot was on the phone when I returned to the nursing station. She glowed at me and said, “We have another consultation in the emergency room.”

  My heart sank. I dreaded running into the bribing guy again. “Is it David Watson’s mother?”

  She gave me a funny look.

  “He works for a pharmaceutical company. His mother has pancreatic cancer. Her name is…” I drew a blank. “I think Mary something. Is it for them?”

  Dr. Huot’s brow smoothed out. “I believe you’re talking about Mary Kincaid.”

  “Yes. That’s it.”

  “I did that consultation myself Friday afternoon. No, this is for an 89-year-old gentleman with met
astatic colon cancer.”

  I forced myself to smile. “I’ll go right down.”

  The gods were with me. Mary Kincaid lay in the same hallway near the vending machines, but today a middle-aged woman in light blue scrubs sat in a chair beside her. No sign of David Watson.

  So he’d hired someone, possibly a nurse. A sign of our two-tier health care system, but at least I didn’t have to face him again.

  I met the 89-year-old patient, a balding man in a hospital-issued gown who whispered, “I want to go home.”

  “You can’t, remember, Gervais? We talked about this,” snapped the much younger woman by his side.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to smile. “Are you his daughter?”

  “I’m his wife,” she said, even angrier now.

  Crapola. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “Why don’t we start at the beginning. What sort of problems are you facing at home?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? He can’t stand up. He fell on his way to the bathroom this morning. I heard a huge crash. I came running, and I couldn’t pick him up. I had to call the ambulance.”

  I looked into Gervais Allain’s sad eyes and took his hand. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

  He nodded mutely. But all three of us knew he wasn’t going home. He probably couldn’t afford private twenty-four hour care, and his wife was fed up, or as I’d say in French, elle est tanée.

  By the time I interviewed them and Dr. Huot came downstairs and reviewed everything, it was 4:59 p.m. I tried not to think about Ryan, but I kept touching the phone in my pocket. Sometimes phone reception blanks out in the hospital. I’d have to check it where I had a signal. I also wanted to check my e-mail on a computer, since I didn’t opt for the Internet on my pay-as-you-go phone.

  Dr. Huot set down her pen with a smile. “Did you notice Mr. Allain’s Fentanyl patch?”

  “I didn’t check it, but I know he’s on 37.5 mcg,” I said. I’d prescribed his medications already. I refused to glance at my watch.

  She shook her head. “His patch was on his shoulder and no one had marked the date or the time.”