The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly (30 page)

It was a thrill to see my pod mates in makeup and cocktail dresses, and I was starting to get a bit tipsy; for once, we looked like the ones who belonged in
Us Weekly
. They were the reason I had survived the slog of residency, but I wouldn't fully understand that until I'd left them and had to practice on my own, as an attending at a different hospital in a different part of Manhattan.

In addition to being slightly drunk, I experienced a touch of melancholy as I looked around the ornate, wainscoted room. There were so many people who I never got to work with, never got to know. They all seemed so much happier right now, outside of the hospital. Glancing around, I realized that I had never met Dr. Sothscott after that fateful phone call in the CCU so many months ago. Was it possible I'd misheard his name? I never did find it in the hospital directory. Had it been someone using a pseudonym so he could freely blast me? I scanned the crowd and stopped at Mark, who was buoyantly wagging his index finger at me.

“Belieeeeve,” he sang to our table, “when I say…I…want it that way!”

I was staring down at my dark and stormy, contemplating the need to use the restroom, when Heather grabbed my elbow and smiled.

“I'm fine,” I said.

She pointed at the screen and nudged me; my face had just appeared as one of the five finalists for Best in a Cardiac Arrest.

A wave of pride washed over me. I had worked hard to demonstrate that I could calmly command a chaotic room, to not only appear calm but actually feel that way. To squelch the oh-shit-this-is-happening sensation when an arrest was called and act like bringing someone back to life was a routine part of my day. But knowing other doctors had voted on this was particularly special. “It's an honor,” I said, to no one in particular, “just to be nominated.” The words were intended to sound like a joke, but I meant them.

Meghan stuck her index finger in her mouth and pretended to gag. When Baio's face flashed on the screen as one of the other finalists, I looked over at him, but he was in mid-conversation with a pair of Lithuanian eyebrows. And next to them was Banderas.
Was Banderas wearing a blouse?

A chief resident read out our names and then narrowed the group down to a final two: Baio and me. I looked over again, but he still wasn't paying attention to the ceremony. How was he not paying attention to this? I was anxious and excited, probably more nervous now than during an actual cardiac arrest. I was also weirded out. How was my name mentioned in the same breath as Baio's? “What will America decide?” I said, sotto voce, as I picked at my entrée. “It's like the People's Choice Awards.”

“Best in a cardiac arrest,” the chief resident announced, “is Matt McCarthy.”

Of all the things that could've crossed my mind in that moment, my first thought was of uncooked spaghetti—the sensation I'd experienced when I first performed CPR on that ninety-five-year-old woman in the CCU on my first night on call. It was inconceivable that the physicians at Columbia thought I deserved this over Baio, the man who'd shown me how to do CPR. The guy who'd taught me just about everything I knew. He was the best doctor I'd ever worked with, someone
who seemingly knew how to handle any situation. If I had a medical question, I'd turn to him. If someone dropped dead in this room, I'd want
him
leading the resuscitation.

Heather gave me a kiss on the cheek and whispered, “Congratulations,” as Lalitha, Meghan, and Ariel gave me high fives.

“Ladies,” I said, trying to hide my slight embarrassment, “if any of you would like an advanced tutorial on the art of cardiac resuscitation, we can arrange private lessons. You'll find that my rates are competitive with—”

“Oh, barf,” Lalitha said. “Please stop. No acceptance speech.”

“Shut it down,” Heather said.

Maybe I'd grown; maybe I
was
better than Baio. The learning curve was steep, and perhaps I'd just barely nudged past him. I looked around the room to relish the moment, to catch the cheers of encouragement from my colleagues. Dr. Petrak gave me a thumbs-up, and Mark was whistling wildly through his fingers. I smiled, kissed Heather, and gave Mark a fist pound. Taking another long sip of the dark and stormy—a sip that was bound to nudge me from tipsy to intoxicated—I felt someone come up behind me, squeeze my neck, and whisper, “You're welcome.”

A year later, as I was on the verge of graduating from Columbia's residency training program it happened. Standing in a conference room—the same room where Dave had demonstrated the proper way to perform phlebotomy after my needle stick—I felt my pager vibrate. Before me was a gifted young medical student named Christopher, and I was again channeling Baio. I had completely shed the paranoid urgency and trepidation of intern year and was now dressed casually—khakis and a button-down—because I was on a research elective and
Petrak had asked me to spend my spare moments teaching medical students. “Forty-seven-year-old woman is found unresponsive,” I said, recalling the first arrest I'd run on my own. “Go.”

“Okay, okay,” Christopher said, twirling his curly dark hair. “Okay, what else?”

“That's it.”

Staring at this young man, I thought of all of the experiences that lay before him: the arrests, the tears, the grief, the joy, the rapture. The strange enchantments of medicine. I also couldn't help but reminisce on all that I had seen and done in my three years at Columbia. Remarkably, I used the reply-all button only once during residency, after our besotted awards dinner, when I wrote, “Heather is pregnant. Just kidding,” and shared a link to a Vampire Weekend song called “I Think Ur A Contra.”

My pager buzzed again. I halted the role-playing with Christopher and glanced down at the four words on my pager's tiny screen:
HE GOT THE HEART
.

“Holy fuck,” I said. “Let's go.” I grabbed Christopher by the shirt-sleeve and tugged him out of the room with me. “Holy shit, c'mon!”

Sprinting down a flight of stairs to the cardiothoracic intensive care unit, Christopher must've thought we were on our way to an actual cardiac arrest. I nearly trampled an Orthodox Jewish couple and quickly started scanning the beds in the unit.
No, nope, not him, not him, nope, no, no, YES!

The page wasn't tagged, meaning I had no idea who'd sent it, but scores of doctors knew that I was close with Benny and that I'd want to know if anything happened to him, good or bad. I sidled up to the team of surgeons and anesthesiologists standing in front of his room. Benny was attached to a ventilator and had a dozen tubes going into his arms, like I'd seen him so many times before. As we approached, a surgical intern was presenting his case to a team of transplant doctors, “…year-old man postoperative day zero status postcardiac transplantation. Currently sedated and stable on—”

“Do you guys know this patient's story?” I asked, butting into their horseshoe to address the medical team. “Do you know anything about this guy Benny Santos?”

Like Darby Masterson, I just wanted someone to know. Anyone. The young physicians stared at me blankly, blinking quickly, before consulting their scut lists. But there was nothing on their papers to indicate how special Benny was. To them, he was probably just another transplant patient. My eyes were met with blank stares. We stood in silence until I let out a celebratory yelp. “He got the fucking heart!”

One of the surgeons wrinkled his brow. “Are you from social work?”

I slipped on a gown and gloves and prepared to enter Benny's room. “No,” I said, fighting back a smile. “I'm not from social work.”

“Respiratory therapist?” another asked.

Without the scrubs or white coat, I didn't quite look like a doctor. I was just some enthusiastic, slightly unhinged guy in loafers who didn't mind interrupting their rounds. I nodded at Benny and said, “I've known this guy a long time.” I was about to elaborate, about to provide an anecdote that offered a glimpse into the life of this remarkable man, but I caught myself. How could I possibly explain what Benny had been through or what that struggle meant to me? I turned away from the team of doctors and took a few steps closer to him—his body once again attached to a ventilator, but this time, finally, with a new heart—and I smiled. The stories could wait. “Take good care of this guy,” I said softly. “I'm not his doctor anymore. Now…just a friend.”

I picked up a remote control sitting on the nightstand next to Benny's bed, turned on the television, and started flipping through the channels until I found
Judge Judy
.

This book exists because of one person: my editor, Kevin Doughten.
Good
Great guy.

Heather, my girl, you've endured far too many moments when, staring into your eyes, my thoughts were a thousand miles away, reliving a cardiac arrest. You are the best person I know, and every day that I wake up next to you is a good one.

Acknowledgments would not be complete without thanking my family: my mother, Belinda, who introduced me to
Talking Heads;
my father, Bernie, who really is holding out hope that I become a dermatologist; and my sister, Megan.
Who loves you, baby?

I am fortunate to be surrounded by a wildly talented group of friends—Rach, Charlie, Ben, and John—and by thoughtful people who worked so hard on this book: Claire Potter, Lauren Kuhn, Danielle Crabtree, Jessica Miele, and Sarah Kwak, to name just a few. Scott Waxman, a wonderful agent and friend, thank you for your continued support and encouragement.

I also want to acknowledge the men and women who work at Columbia making the world a better, more dignified place. And to the patients who have trusted us, thank you.

MATT
M
c
CARTHY
is an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and is on staff at New York–Presbyterian Hospital. His work has appeared in
Sports Illustrated, Slate, The New England Journal of Medicine,
and
Deadspin,
where he writes the Medspin column. His first book,
Odd Man Out,
was a
New York Times
bestseller.