His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington (38 page)

“What?! But he has a traumatic brain injury!” I protest on the John Doe’s behalf, and because I’ve had more than one run in with Douche-ner over his bad habit of focusing on the bottom line rather than on patient needs. I can’t even count the number of times he’s tried to push me to release the kids with shitty insurance sooner than anyone with a conscience would recommend.

“Actually, John Doe is recovering faster than you’d expect—at least from the physical stuff…”

Ken looks over both shoulders as if we’re on some sort of reality show, before leaning in to impart, “But the traumatic brain injury is turning into something else. I’m not exactly a doctor here, but at the last team meeting about John Doe’s case, Dr. Pawar and the psych team went on for a while with the social worker. Pawar’s saying his head scans are checking out, but then psych’s concerned because he’s still got amnesia, yet he knows a lot of general stuff, and check this out…”

Ken takes the file and flips through a number of typed documents to a page of handwritten notes from the last meeting of John Doe’s team.

“One of the third-year med students decided to run a Neuropsych Evaluation on him

for one of her class projects. Look at these scores.”

My eyes widen when I see the numbers, some in the three digits. Except for his complete lack of historical and cultural memory, there’s nothing on this report to indicate these scores belong to someone with a TBI, rather than, say, someone looking to get into medical school. Or become a rocket scientist.

“So he’s close to being a genius even after the TBI?” I murmur. “That’s a seriously unexpected result.”

“Right?” Ken agrees, nodding. “The team is having a real hard time figuring it out, so now they’re calling it Focal Autobiographical Amnesia. I haven’t had time to look it up on Wikipedia, but best I can tell, they’re saying there might be something more than a hit to the head going on here.”

It takes me a moment of mulling over Ken’s words and comparing them to what I learned during my fourth year psych rotation to figure out, “They think he’s not remembering on purpose?”

“Or that something traumatic happened
before
his accident. He’s got a few older fractures according to the x-rays. The kind of ribs and arm stuff you see when Mom doesn’t bring her kid in after Dad’s had too many and decides to downsize his beating victims…”

Hearing this, my heart pangs for the John Doe. “All the more reason not to release him. I mean, where is he going to go if he doesn’t have anybody to help with his recovery?”

Ken nods. “That’s the only thing keeping him in here considering he has no insurance to bill. Truth is, we don’t have anywhere to send him.”

I shake my head in disgust. “So we’re just going to kick him out? When?”

Ken thinks about it and shrugs. “Now that he’s pretty much healed…I’d say he’s here one or two more weeks, tops. Since his injury is no longer looking like a neuro case, Pawar doesn’t care too much, and psych’s psych—already too overwhelmed to take on any new cases—especially the ones without insurance. Social’s looking for a men’s shelter who can take him in.”

“Okay…okay…” I say, getting it. John Doe has no name so every minute he spends here is costing our already over-stretched regional hospital money.

“But there’s got to be some way to help him,” I say to Ken. “I mean, we just can’t kick him out...”

I gaze down at the linoleum, trying to figure out a solution to this dilemma, only to find Ken smiling when I look back up at him.

“What?” I ask him.

“I haven’t seen one of your kind in quite a while. A doctor who cares more about the patient than the patient’s condition. Pawar and psych have spent more time tangling over his official diagnosis than worrying that this guy is going to end up in a homeless shelter in a couple of weeks if no one steps up to claim him. But you really care about his well-being, and not just because he’s cute, but because underneath that medical degree, you’re a decent person.”

A small smile whispers across my lips. “Well, I did get into UWV-Med off the wait list.”

Ken lifts his eyebrows. “Then maybe they should let more people in off the wait

list.”

I’m not sure how to respond. I know a few of my fellow program mates, many of whom are now fellow residents, think I was let into the program for not the best reasons. One guy outright asked if this was a joke when I walked into Brain and Behavior on the first day of winter semester and it was announced I’d be taking the place of a med student who’d dropped out.

It doesn’t surprise me that same guy is now the senior neuro res here. Anyone who works with doctors knows neurologists have a reputation for not being the most sensitive or socially clued in people. Truth is, he might have been right about the program’s intentions when it came to my acceptance. But it doesn’t matter why I was accepted. I chose to come here, and that’s the only thing that matters to me at the end of the day. Still, I can’t help but feel flattered by Ken’s approval. It’s nice to know at least one person at UWV/Mercy thinks I deserve to be here.

Still, the John Doe upstairs is totally effed. We both know it.

“The best any of us could do for that guy right now is hope he remembers who he is,” Ken tells me before I leave his office. “Because at this point, that’s the only thing’s going to keep him out of a homeless shelter.”

Chapter Three

SO YEAH, John Doe has a sad story. A really sad story. But you know, shit happens.

Believe me, I know that after Chanel’s death. Just this week alone, my attending resident had to pass on two heartbreaking preliminary diagnoses to families who could barely afford to take time off of work to talk with us, much less find the money to pay for what could amount to months or years of treatments.

I’ve had patients a lot worse off than John Doe. Ronnie Greenwell’s mother broke down crying, even as her daughter sat there and nodded, when the peds attending and palliative care counselor told them we’d run out of treatment options later that day.

And this is only a small hospital in West Virginia. I can imagine the number of difficult conversations I’d be sitting in on at a larger facility.

In fact, I won’t have to imagine it for much longer. Because two weeks ago, I received news that I’d defied the odds of my upbringing, and been matched with a Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Seattle.

Which means in two months, I’ll be out of this backwater regional hospital, and moving on to a new life in the Emerald City after a short visit with my family in California.

So I really shouldn’t be losing much thought or sleep over an amnesia patient. I mean, yeah…it sucks. As close as my family is, just the thought of John being here in this hospital, all alone, without anyone to help or advocate for him, makes me feel pretty bad. But he’s still alive. He’s not dead or dying, which is way more than some of my past and current patients can say.

I should be doing any number of things during my lunch hour, including searching for apartments in Seattle. Or getting my monthly call home to my family out of the way. Sandy’s always complaining about me putting it off until the last second.

So yeah, John Doe’s case is none of my business.
He
is none of my business. And this morning, when he came down with Ken to watch the kids again, he settled for standing near the doorway and leaving before rehearsal was done. No more “Free Bird”

requests, and absolutely no reason for me to get too wrapped up in a patient completely outside my field of residency.

But instead of calling my dad, instead of looking at cute apartments in a cute city that I can’t wait to call home after I’m done with my three-year residency in June, I find

myself outside a certain door on the eighth floor.

Don’t knock. It’s not too late to turn back. Go! Go now!
I tell myself, even as I raise a hand and knock on the partially closed door.

“I’m doing something, but come on in if you have to,” a gruff voice on the other side calls out. He sounds more authoritative than I would have guessed. Like he’s used to being in charge.

Maybe he was a cop,
I muse as I slide inside.

The room, not surprisingly, is the smallest one in this wing, with a view of the parking lot rather than the Appalachian foothills. There’s barely enough room for a single visitor recliner, and I highly doubt the thing could actually recline with so few inches between it and the bed. The curtains are open, but the room is still dim, thanks to the relentless West Virginia gray, which still hasn’t quite given over to spring sunshine. Even worse, his radio is turned on and a classic rock song is playing. I don’t know the band, nor can I see them, but I swear I can hear their mullets loud and clear.

After a moment of adjustment, my eyes find John on the bed, his half a head of blond locks hanging down as he finishes writing in what looks like one of the cheap, brown kraft-paper journals the psych counselors are always issuing to our older kids.

So they have someplace to put their feelings while they go through treatment.

That would explain his rather reluctant response to my knock.

“Sorry, I’m interrupting. I’ll come back later,” I say and start to back the very short distance toward the door.

But when he hears my voice, he looks up. And his entire face softens when he sees me standing there.

“Hey, Doc! You finally came to visit me,” he says, like my arrival in his room was long overdue. He closes the journal and reaches over to his cabinet night stand to switch off the radio.

Even with the snaked head scar, he is so freaking handsome. So much so that it’s kind of hard to look at him without feeling flustered. To distract myself, I reach into my bag and pull out a recyclable sandwich container.

“I…um, brought you a sandwich.”

I hand it to him, and he appears delighted, but then baffled when he gets a look at the sandwich itself.

“Where’s the meat?” he asks, like that’s a way bigger mystery than his identity.

“There isn’t any,” I answer with a small laugh. “It’s hummus, cucumbers, and tomatoes with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses on top.”

My explanation doesn’t put a dent in his perplexed look. “They make sandwiches without meat?”

“Sure they do,” I answer. But then have to admit. “Well, maybe not in West Virginia.

Which is why I had to make these for us at home. The hospital cafeteria doesn’t have anything but peanut butter and jelly, and I don’t love all that sodium…”

He continues to look at the sandwich like it’s a completely alien substance from another planet. Then he asks, “You some kind of…” his whole face furrows in concentration, but he can only come up with, “…person who doesn’t eat meat?”

“A vegetarian? Yes, I am. I’m a vegan, in fact, which means I don’t eat meat or any other animal by-product.”

“Vegan…” he repeats. “That’s new.”

I keep my expression neutral, but inside I’m studying him with sharp interest, trying to figure out if he doesn’t know the word because of his amnesia, or because of where he’s from. Or maybe I’m just bitter because I went from a huge city with a vegan option on every menu, to a small town where the word vegan elicits snickers or suspicion. Or both.

Nevertheless, he takes a bite of his sandwich. Chews, then nods. “Not bad,” he tells me.

“Thanks,” I answer.

He takes another bite, chewing even more slowly before he swallows. “The way this sandwich tastes is new.”

“New?”

“I got this way of experiencing things. Some things feel old, like going to the bathroom and pancakes and ‘Free Bird’. I don’t remember ever doing or hearing any of it, but my body remembers it. And some things feel…the only way to describe it is

‘new.’ This sandwich feels new. And your hair…”

“My hair?” I pat the simple twist out I keep my medium-length hair in now that I no longer have any weave specialists in my “Favorites” contact list—or the time to sit through multi-hour hair appointments.

“Yeah, I ain’t never seen nothing like it. It’s pretty. Real pretty.”

An awkward beat, in which I put considerable effort into not pushing a few of those curls behind my ear, like the nervous high school girl I never ever was. At least not until now.

I clear my throat. “You’re probably wondering why I decided to stop by…”

With that seriously forced change of subject, I gingerly sit in the guest chair with my sandwich. “So what kind of exercises are you doing to help regain your memory?”

He frowns over his sandwich. “This a friendly visit or a doctor visit?”

“Kind of both.” I take a bite of my sandwich. More interested in covering up how his direct stare make my insides feel all squishy than alleviating my hunger.

“Truth is, Doc, I’m over medical visits. I wasn’t looking for one from you,” he tells me. Despite his rejection of my intentions, his voice has a warm tone to it, amused and husky with a hint of melody that puts me in mind of a country singer.

Maybe he’s a country singer
? I think. And his music comment makes me remember the other thing I brought for him.

I reach into my huge “V”irkin bag and bring out the smartphone I wiped and reactivated last night. “Does this feel old or new?”

He glances at the phone. “Old. Definitely old. My rehab nurse let me mess around on hers a few times.”

“Awesome,” I say, trying to sound more like a friend than a doctor as I bring out a pair of white earbuds and hand them over to him along with the smart phone. “Then you know how to access the iTunes app. I’ve already put a few songs on there for you…”

“You did?” he asks, his whole face lighting up.

“I did,” I answer, finding his happiness too infectious not to smile back. “And if you want more music, all you have to do is download it. I pre-loaded a gift card on there.”

He touches the device reverently, as if it’s a bar of gold and not just the first device I randomly grabbed out of the box of old special phones under my bed.

“Thank you,” he says. He hits me with that blue gaze again, tugging on me with that killer smile of his. “I can’t wait to listen to all the music you like.”