Living and Dying in Brick City (27 page)

The
Essence
award opened my world a bit wider. Oprah’s producers called, and Rameck, George, and I later appeared on her show, as well as the
Today
show. Radio hosts Tavis Smiley and Tom Joyner also interviewed us on their top-rated black radio programs. Our memoir became a bestseller, and we began sharing our story all over the country, from classrooms to corporate boardrooms to auditoriums. Our foundation grew, attracting the volunteers needed to carry out our mentoring and scholarship programs. My social life got an upgrade, too. I no longer had to talk my way behind the ropes to many of the A-list parties and hot spots, which was, quite frankly, intoxicating to a young single doctor who’d made it his mission to explore the New York he’d missed as a child. New York became my escape from the stress of work. After a long, mentally exhausting shift, I’d dash home, shower and change, grab some food on the run, and make my way through the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan. Often, I’d party until the wee hours of morning, racing the sunrise to get home. I’d sleep three or four hours and then head back to the hospital to start all over again. I didn’t need much sleep—at least, that’s what I told myself.

So there I was one winter night, at the Soho Grand Hotel for pop star Mariah Carey’s surprise birthday party. I looked up, and Denzel was on my left and music mogul L. A. Reid on my right. Still new to these types of events, I played it cool, mingling like I
belonged in this glamorous crowd. But every now and then, when I saw another familiar famous face, I had the urge to rush over and say, “Hey, I’m a big fan of your work! May I have your autograph?”

As usual, I hung out until just before sunrise, and then started the half-hour drive home. I did everything I could to overpower the desire to sleep—danced in the car, bopping up and down on my seat, and sang out loud. I even rolled down the windows and stuck my face into the frigid air. I made it home safely, but in three hours, I was up again, racing to the hospital for the Wednesday morning lecture, where residents learn the meat and grit of the E.R. I returned home for lunch, changed into my scrubs, and went back to work for an overnight shift. Staying alert during those twelve hours—well, let’s just say it was a challenge. At about 2:00
A.M.
, I entered a room to check on a patient who had complained of a migraine. The room was dark to help ease the patient’s pain, and she was asleep. I nudged her, and she moaned, “Leave me alone.” I tried again, and she uttered her demand even more forcefully.

I pulled a plastic chair to her bedside with the intent to take her medical history, and then spoke loudly to get her attention. She muttered a few more choice words, and that’s all I remember. The next thing I knew, I heard voices. I opened my eyes to find practically the entire emergency department staff, including my boss, surrounding me, staring, with worry in their eyes. Somehow, the dark room, the patient’s refusal to wake up, and my exhaustion had caused me to crash right there. It was too late to pretend to carry on with business as usual. I was busted. Then, for some strange reason, the whole scene just seemed funny. I mumbled something about keeping my patient company and burst out laughing hysterically. My colleagues joined in. I guess they were relieved to know I was only sleeping.

Fortunately, the residency director took it all in stride and didn’t say a word. I’d never stumbled before that point, and my work ethic was not in question. But I didn’t need a reprimand to know that my body and mind had reached their limits. As a doctor, I should have known better. The medical community has long debated the effects of sleep deprivation among medical residents, who traditionally work excessive hours (without even considering personal factors that can exacerbate the issue). Numerous reports have shown that lack of sleep harms physicians’ job performance and increases the potential for medical errors. A few years later, in 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education would revise its guidelines, including an eighty-hour cap on the maximum weekly hours young doctors can work, but permitting shifts up to thirty hours. Critics argued that the changes did not go far enough. A congressional probe would ultimately push the council, in 2011, to implement more changes, including a maximum sixteen-hour work shift, followed by at least eight hours off, for residents. And the debate over further guidelines continues.

Before these new rules and my own literal wake-up call, I was like many busy people who think they don’t need much sleep to function well. I now know better. While it is true that the amount of sleep a person needs is as individual as the person, the National Sleep Foundation estimates that the average healthy man or woman needs between seven and nine hours a night. Too little sleep (generally six hours or less) slows reaction time and impairs vision and judgment, which can result in tragic consequences, particularly on the road. Drowsy drivers cause more than 100,000 motor vehicle accidents each year, 1,550 of them resulting in death and another 71,000 in injuries, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Studies also show that staying awake for more than twenty hours can cause impairment equal to that of a person considered legally drunk.

I was lucky. I never caused any accidents on the road, my patient didn’t wake up during my ordeal, and the rest of that fateful night was relatively slow. But I resolved then that it would never happen again. I couldn’t continue at the same pace. I had to achieve greater balance in my life, and making sure I got enough sleep was a huge part of that.

The other part was figuring out how to balance the demands of my work life with what had become my equal passion: community service. I was certain that reaching beyond the hospital walls to share with young people a message of self-empowerment could in the long run save as many lives as my work inside the emergency room. Problem was, time. I never had enough of it. Whenever the weekly schedule was sent out, I began calling my colleagues to try to negotiate a shift swap so that I could make it to a foundation event or speaking engagement. My co-workers were accommodating when they could be, but I worried how long their patience would last. That’s what pushed me into Darrell Terry’s office with a proposal one day in 2002.

In any profession, it’s always good to know somebody among the higher-ups who has your back. For me, that was Darrell Terry, then vice president of operations at Beth Israel. He was in his late thirties when we met in 2000, and I quickly connected to him as a friend and mentor. From my early days of residency, he looked after me and made sure I knew that his door was always open to me. I took those words literally and many times walked in unannounced just to chat. His office was on the hospital’s main floor, in the administrative suite, which housed all of the executives’ offices. An assistant sat just inside the suite to greet guests and announce a visitor to the appropriate administrator. I often walked in, greeted her, and kept on trekking toward Darrell’s office. Sometimes, the assistant would stop me mid-stride: “Mr. Terry is in a meeting. Would you like him to call the E.R.?” A short time later,
Darrell would make his way to my department, and if things were quiet, we’d catch up on the goings-on at the hospital, sports, and our personal lives. I admired that at the time he was a single father raising his son and daughter (though he would tell me later that he was uncomfortable with the well-intentioned praise he got from so many people for doing what he considered his responsibility).

Darrell had grown up nearby in East Orange, and, like me, had been born at Beth Israel. We both felt strongly that the hospital should be more than just a place where people worked, that it had an obligation to give back to the poor community that sustained it. But with a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in healthcare administration, Darrell was also a company man. He had taken the traditional route up the corporate ladder, where the gray-haired guy passes you the torch after you’ve spent time in the trenches earning your stripes, and he was determined to help me understand the way things worked. When I talked with him about my desire to move up quickly at the hospital, he urged patience. Slow down, I had my entire career ahead of me, he advised. That’s mostly how we differed. I felt an urgency to get things done right away, to move up so that I would be in a position to help direct some of the hospital’s resources into improving the surrounding community. As I saw it, the community needed us now. The Legends, Snakes, and Debras out there kept showing up in the E.R., day after day, shot up, beaten up, and damaged beyond repair. What if it was part of my job to find ways to help the hospital reach beyond the confines of its own walls and into the surrounding community?

That’s the idea I posed to Darrell during a conversation one day. He was intrigued. From a strictly business point of view it made sense for the hospital to use me in that way. The 2002 publication of
The Pact
had raised my profile dramatically. There were constant requests for interviews, and cameras began following me
around the hospital so often that some of my co-workers jokingly called me “Dr. Hollywood.” Beth Israel was a natural part of my narrative, which brought it into the public eye. Darrell joked that hospitals more often got that kind of publicity when they cut off the wrong leg. He promised to talk to his bosses to see what they could work out.

Shortly after my residency ended on July 1, 2002, Darrell called me into his office to share the good news: I had been promoted to part-time director of community outreach. While I would continue in my role as an attending physician in the emergency department, seven hours of my workweek could be devoted to community work. There was no detailed job description, which was great because it allowed me the flexibility to define the position. I was ecstatic. The protected hours eased my schedule somewhat, allowing me to do some of my community speaking engagements on company time. But I also helped to create new programs, like an anti-smoking campaign that included therapy and a support group for men and women who were addicted to nicotine. They met regularly at the hospital and shared their challenges and triumphs. I also became the go-to guy when high schools and colleges brought student groups to the hospital. I talked to students, often over lunch, about how Beth Israel had changed the course of my life and how they, too, could achieve their dreams. Interested students shadowed me in the emergency room, and I took part in the hospital’s annual Black History Month celebration honoring a local hero.

I also participated in the hospital’s yearly event that brought together the families of organ donors with the patients who received their loved one’s organs. There was always such joy in the room among those who got a second chance at life and the family members who got to see at least a part of their loved ones live on. The program inspired me to remember every time I renewed my
driver’s license to check the box agreeing to become an organ donor (and to let my family members know my wishes) if I happened to meet an untimely end. It was a commitment that I’d first made in medical school, and it’s a simple way that each of us can have a profound impact on another person’s life.

I’m a strong believer in partnerships, and Beth Israel seemed to me a natural partner for The Three Doctors Foundation, especially for two of our signature community events, Mentor Day and the Healthy Mind and Body Summit. For Mentor Day, hospital volunteers are matched with Newark children interested in medical careers. For the summit, hospital staff and medical students are provided with free blood pressure screenings, literature, and lectures about heart disease, diabetes, sexually transmitted infections, obesity, prostate and breast cancer, smoking cessation, depression, and other issues that have a significant (and often disproportionate) impact on minority communities. One of my favorite events as community outreach director was the hospital’s annual holiday celebration that provided gifts donated by hospital employees to poor families in the community. I loved this event so much because I’d never forgotten how much a similar celebration had once meant to my family and me.

I was about eight years old that blustery winter day when my mother, Andre, Carlton, and I hopped on the number 24 public bus and headed downtown to the Newark Symphony Hall for a Christmas party thrown by strangers. My mother signed us in, and we took our seats among the crowd of families already gathered there. Holiday music played in the background, and then I heard someone announce, “The Davis family.” My mother grabbed Carlton’s hand and mine, and we all walked to the stage. The presenter handed Moms a big black plastic bag filled with brand-new toys and clothes. Andre, Carlton, and I were so excited that we wanted to rip into the bag right there. But my mother thanked the
presenter, and we rode the bus back home and put the gifts under our Christmas tree. I felt like I was about to pop with anticipation every time I walked past that pile of gifts—that year, I felt like a normal kid. I’d been embarrassed during the holiday season in previous years when other kids talked about the new bikes, Big Wheels, and board games they were getting for Christmas, and I had nothing to share. Now some stranger had given us a Christmas. I never forgot that feeling.

Hospital administrators threw their full support behind me in my new role. They lent staff and financial support and showed up at community events to mingle with our neighbors. I was still as busy as ever, spending far more than seven hours a week volunteering in the community, but transferring seven of those hours into my workweek lessened the load a bit and increased my sense of fulfillment. The experience taught me a valuable life lesson: Ask for what you want on the job, and increase the chances of a positive response by presenting the mutual benefits.

I was in a good place mentally when a friend invited me to a house party in Brooklyn in July 2003. Brooklyn had not impressed me the few times I’d visited before, but something about the atmosphere seemed different that day as I made my way through the Holland Tunnel, across the Manhattan Bridge, and down Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues, finally landing at a two-story brick house in a tree-shrouded neighborhood.