The place was empty. The early nursing shift had already changed into scrubs and was at work in the operating rooms; the women surgeons had not yet arrived. Her timing was perfect.
Thank God for small favors. She could use a few more this morning.
Rita placed her phone on one of the spare wooden benches that squatted between the rows of lockers. She located her locker, dialed the combination, and yanked at the handle, which refused to yield. Chagrined, she reset the dial and tried again. It would not open.
It took three more ineffectual attempts, each more frantic, for her then to realize that she was trying to open the wrong locker.
God, what’s wrong with me?
She took a deep breath, then located and opened her actual locker, from which she procured a bottle of Advil and a plastic bottle of water. She washed a few of the Advil down. Her stomach protested with an audible groan.
Rita sat down heavily on the bench next to her phone, took off her glasses, and laid them on the bench.
She took a sip of water and tried to size up her situation.
You mean—you were here all night?
How are you feeling, Dr. Wu? For real?
“I don’t know,” she said aloud. She cradled her head in her hands and closed her eyes.
Her phone vibrated with an incoming text, rattling the wood and propelling it in electronic spasms toward the side of the bench. Without moving her head or opening her eyes, she reached out, grabbed the phone before it toppled off the edge, and hit the reset key. Silence again enveloped the room.
Minutes later it vibrated again. With great effort and no enthusiasm, she lifted her head to look at the screen and read the text. It was the pre-op area, informing her for the second time (the previous message having been the first) that her first patient of the day, Mrs. Sanchez, had checked in, and that she and her family were waiting to speak with her before her operation.
Rita’s stomach clenched, and she tasted bile in the back of her throat.
God, but she felt horrible.
How could she possibly operate this morning?
No weakness.
She’d trained herself to ooze strength from every pore of her body, and canceling the operation would look weak. Backing down was not in her nature. She couldn’t let a little nausea stand in her way.
Her phone buzzed again. This time an incoming phone call.
Goddamn pre-op nurses!
She stabbed the accept call icon without checking the incoming number.
“I’ll be right there!” she barked.
“Rita?”
“Oh. Darcy.” It was her kid sister. “Sorry. I thought you were … Sorry, Darcy.”
Wait—what’s Darcy doing up at this hour? Since crashing at Rita’s a few days ago, Darcy hadn’t been getting up much before noon.
“Darcy? Why are you awake? Is everything okay?”
“Yes. I mean, I think so. It’s just that—”
“Okay. Good.” Rita’s phone vibrated: another text from pre-op. “I’m glad you’re okay. Look. Now’s a really bad time. I’ve got work stuff right now. Can I give you a call back in a few minutes?”
“Um … okay. I guess. But—”
“Thanks. I’ll—wait! Darcy?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you, uh, remember what time I left the house last night? To go to the hospital?”
“Oh. Um … around seven, maybe? After we finished dinner?” She paused. “Hey, Rita, something kind of weird happened to me—”
“Gotta run. Call you later. I promise.” She hung up without waiting for Darcy’s response.
So she’d definitely come to the hospital last night on her own. The question was, what had happened then?
She looked at her locker and thought of her fumbling attempts to open it.
No weakness.
She thought of the operating-room table …
… (naked I’d been naked) …
… and the big gaping hole in her memory …
… (I’d been NAKED) …
… and the pain and fuzziness in her head …
… (hungover but I couldn’t be because I DON’T DRINK ANYMORE) …
… and the blood dripping from her ear …
… (what was THAT all about?)
… none of which made any sense.
And she asked herself again: Could she really operate this morning?
That chief surgery resident she’d met, so many years ago: He would have operated. He puked in a sink, but he still ran that code.
“He ran that code,” she murmured.
But he really shouldn’t have, lovely Rita, her father’s voice answered.
She rubbed her face with both hands.
You can’t operate this morning, lovely Rita. God knows what you’d do if someone handed you a scalpel right now.
No, she didn’t know. And she didn’t want to find out.
She had to cancel it because it was the right thing to do.
To her surprise, she experienced a surge of relief. She’d expected shame: shame over her weakness at not sucking it up and getting the job done, despite feeling like crap. Instead, it was as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
There’s no weakness, lovely Rita, in doing the right thing by your patients.
No, she thought. There isn’t.