She clapped a hand to her mouth and stumbled out the door. Out in the hall, she leaned against a wall and bent over, hands on her knees, breathing hard, until the nausea had passed. When she straightened up and looked around, she found herself alone. Everyone else was still in the room with the code.
So she was the only one who saw the surgeon emerge. He strode to a nearby sink, glanced over his shoulder, and calmly threw up into the basin. Repeatedly. In great, heaving bursts.
She looked on, fascinated. It was an impressive amount of puking. But more impressive was how quiet he managed to be. She hadn’t known it was possible to empty one’s stomach so violently yet so silently.
He went on like that for a while. When through, he’d washed his hands, splashed water over his face, drank out of the faucet, and turned around.
His eyes met Rita’s.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned. He had perfect teeth: two rows of gleaming white enamel. He didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. Or ruffled.
He asked her name and what year of med school she was in.
Mortified, she wondered how he knew she was a med student. Was it that obvious? Did she look that clueless? That stupid? She ran her hands self-consciously down her sides.
Oh. Right, she thought. The short white coat.
Only med students wore short white coats.
Rita told him her name.
“Rita. Lovely. Just like the Beatles song.”
She felt heat rushing to her cheeks. That’s exactly what her father had always said. Lovely Rita, meter maid. His eyes were an intense shade of bluish green, like pictures you see of the Mediterranean; and he had somehow managed not to get any vomit in his hair, which was coifed, but not too coifed. Like a rock star.
A really cool rock star.
“Right. Well, Rita, you and I aren’t missing anything out here,” he said. “Because that poor man is certainly not going to pull through. I told them to keep at it for a while, though. Have a go at it. Good for them to practice.”
He pointed at the sink into which he’d just puked.
“Touch of the flu,” he said. “I know, I know.” He waved his hand in the air dismissively. “I’m not supposed to be here. I should be home, in bed. I should at least be wearing a bloody mask. But that wouldn’t exactly instill confidence in the troops now, would it?”
He tipped his perfectly dimpled chin toward the patient’s room. “Can’t have the doctor leading the whole bloody charge looking like he belongs in isolation on the TB ward.”
He pulled a paper towel from the bin above the sink and wiped his mouth. “You see, Rita: we surgeons, when we get sick, we don’t lie in bed, whining like small children. We get the job done.” He grinned, a high-wattage affair that made her cheeks burn fiercely. “Right. Do you know what I’m going to do now, Rita?”
Rita shook her head.
“I’m going to steal an IV—a big one, fourteen-or sixteen-gauge—from the supply room and stick it in my arm.” He pointed to the crook of his elbow (That’s where the antecubital vein is, she remembered. We use it to give IV fluids). “Then I’m going to run a liter of LR into me.”
(LR. Lactated Ringers. A hydration fluid.)
“Maybe two,” he continued. “Surest way to replace fluids and stave off dehydration. Wouldn’t you agree?”
To this, she didn’t have a response.
He slid his hands in his pockets and leaned rakishly against the wall. “Are you interested in surgery, Rita?”
Rita replied indeed she was though she hadn’t completed any surgery courses yet, and had never considered it before. But one of her fellow students had once advised her, in a hushed and conspiratorial tone, to always answer in the affirmative whenever a resident or attending asked if you were interested in their particular medical specialty. It helped your grade.
He nodded. “Do you think you have what it takes? To be a surgeon?”
Rita was a fierce—some who knew her well would even say insane—competitor, and in college had been a nationally ranked cross-country runner for a Division I team. Back in college, puking during and after big races had been no big deal. She figured the same principle applied here.
She said yes.
He sized her up, then nodded. “Brilliant. I’m going to tell you a secret. Do you know what the trick is? To being a surgeon? To being a truly good surgeon?”
She answered she didn’t.
“Never look weak. That’s it.” He gestured toward the door of the patient’s room, through which Dr. Acne and a trickle of others had started to emerge. “If they sense weakness, everything else falls apart.”
Dr. Acne spotted him and began to walk over.
He smiled again at her, dazzlingly. “Never look weak, Rita.”
She couldn’t help herself: She giggled and returned the smile like she was some idiot teenager. The feminist in her looked on, appalled. She never giggled. Particularly for a boy.
“Right, then. Have a good evening, Rita.”
She looked on as he gave a few final instructions to Dr. Acne—something about calling time of death, and death certificates—and then watched him stroll away.