“Then let me show you,” Charles said. “But I need your help. You hold his eyes open while I rotate his head.”
As if touching something forbidden, Lynn used the thumb and the first finger of her left hand to elevate gingerly Carl’s upper lids. She stared down into blankness of his mildly dilated pupils. It gave her an eerie feeling, as if she were violating his personhood. Silently she shouted for him to wake up, to smile, and to talk and say that this whole episode was a sham and a joke. But there was no reaction, just his rhythmical breathing.
“Okay, good,” Charles said. He bent over Carl’s chest and put his hands on either side of his head. He first rotated Carl’s head toward Lynn and then back toward himself. “There, did you see it?”
“What am I seeing?” Lynn asked in a hesitant voice. It was all she could do to keep from recoiling and running from the room.
“Notice that when I rotate the head, the eyes move in the opposite direction.” Charles rotated Carl’s head again.
It was now easy for Lynn to see that Carl’s eyes did rotate as Charles had described, blankly staring upward as his head went to the side.
“It’s a vestibulo-ocular reflex,” Charles said in a didactic-medical monotone that was all too familiar to Lynn. “It means that the brain stem and the involved cranial nerves are operating as they should. If the patient is malingering, acting as if unconscious, something you will see on occasion in the ER, the eyes move in the direction of the rotation. If the brain stem is not functioning, then the eyes don’t move at all. Rather dramatic, wouldn’t you say? I could also show you the same phenomena using caloric stimulation, meaning putting cold water into his ears. Would you like to see that as well?”
“This is quite enough,” Lynn said. She pulled her hand back, allowing Carl’s eyelids to close slowly. She had to get away. To where, she didn’t know. As a member of the hospital community and soon to be a doctor, she felt a responsibility in Carl’s disaster above and beyond her recommending Dr. Weaver and the Mason-Dixon Medical Center.
“I have all the paraphernalia available,” Charles said. “It will only take a second to get it. It’s no imposition whatsoever.”
“Thank you,” Lynn said, backing up from the bed. “I appreciate your taking the time to show me what you have, but I have to go. I’m sorry.”
“That’s quite all right,” Charles said. He stared at Lynn and furrowed his brows. It was obvious he was confused about her behavior. “If any of the other members of your preceptor group would care to see this classic doll’s eye movement, I’d be happy to show it to them.”
“Thank you,” Lynn said. “I’ll let the others know.”
Lynn fled out of the ICU. Once in the hall, she stopped and took a few deep breaths. It was somehow comforting to be back in the usual commotion of the hospital with patients, nurses, and orderlies passing her. Her heart was still racing. There was nothing she could do to help Carl, and her first thought was that she had to find Michael. She needed an anchor, someone to hold on to during this storm of uncertainty and emotion.
5
Monday, April 6, 12:25 P.M.
Lynn found Michael in the cafeteria. She had first gone back to check the coffee shop, but he and the others had left. She thought about texting him but had no idea what to say. Instead she wanted just to find him. Maybe she wouldn’t even say anything for a time.
Considering the hour, she had decided the cafeteria was the best bet, as the food was considerably cheaper there than at the coffee shop, and Michael rarely missed a meal. As usual the room was crowded with its usual lunchtime rush. It had taken her a moment but she managed to locate him in the food line. She felt lucky he was by himself. The other members of the earlier coffee-shop group were nowhere to be seen. She was glad about that. She wanted to talk only to Michael.
“Hey, Lynn. How’s Carl doing?” he asked when he turned to look who had tapped him on his shoulder.
“I need to talk,” Lynn said, her voice faltering. “Privately.”
“Okay, no problem,” Michael said. Knowing her as well as he did, he immediately sensed her brittle emotional state. He eyed her. “You okay?”
“That remains to be seen,” Lynn said. There was an audible catch in her voice.
“How about grabbing some lunch and hanging with me?”
“I’m not hungry at the moment.”
“Do you mind if I eat while we talk?”
“Of course not!”
“Then let me settle up for these vittles. Then we can sit over there in left field by the far wall. I see a couple of free tables.”
Lynn glanced in the direction and nodded. The cafeteria was as good as anyplace else in the hospital for a talk with Michael. The hubbub might actually help her keep her emotions in check.
Although Lynn wasn’t hungry, she was thirsty, and she got herself some water before sitting at one of the free tables they had seen from the steam-table line. The area was farthest away from the windows, which looked out onto a sumptuously landscaped interior garden. A number of tables in the garden were the most popular, and were the first to fill up when the weather was as good as it was. Lynn could see quite a few of her classmates outside.
As she sat waiting for Michael to pay, she watched him in the checkout line. He was a commanding presence and stood out from the similarly white-coated medical students. The main reason was a combination of his size and the fact that he was black. In Lynn’s class there were only three African American males along with five females of color, making up only 6 percent of the class despite the school’s active recruitment efforts. Michael was a muscular man with a thick neck who Lynn learned had played football at the University of Florida and who had had a shot at playing professionally had he not set his heart on becoming a doctor. Lynn knew that the career choice was a debt he owed to his mother. His features were broad, his skin a dark mahogany, and his hair was relatively long and worn in what Lynn had come to know was a lock-twist. Initially she thought they were short dreadlocks but now she was the wiser.
Back on the second day of medical school when Lynn had first spoken with Michael when paired with him for the anatomy lab, she had been mildly intimidated. Not only was he a sizable man, but he seemed to her to have an animus toward her right out of the gate. From their first words he complained about her attitude, so she did the same. During the initial days they merely tolerated each other, and both had to make an effort just to get along well enough to work together.
Lynn had never considered herself racist, but over time Michael had made her see that she had been to an extent, and that racism was unfortunately alive and well in America. Michael for his part learned from her that he was so accustomed to having to deal with patronizing attitudes that he often evoked it. He also came to learn from her that despite fifty-plus years of feminism, misogyny and gender discrimination had not disappeared. Both came to understand that with racism and gender issues, one had to be a member of the oppressed to really appreciate the subtleties and the not-so-subtleties of discrimination that had so influenced their respective lives. Throughout her life, Lynn always felt she had to do a bit better than the men with whom she was competing whereas Michael always felt he had to do much better than everybody.
As Lynn and Michael came to understand they were kindred spirits, they began to appreciate each other’s idiosyncrasies apart from race and gender, stemming from their different backgrounds: Lynn, from a middle-class Atlanta upbringing, with two siblings who ultimately fell on hard times; and Michael, from a single-parent household from the South Carolina Low Country, with five siblings who had had to struggle to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. They also became aware of their similarities besides their being extremely motivated hard workers who strived for excellence. Both had defied stereotypes and had responded to STEM programs in their schooling, meaning science, technology, engineering, and math. Both early on liked computer gaming and had an interest and facility in coding. Both had aced college. In medical school both were on full scholarships, which was the main reason they were at Mason-Dixon University. Both of them had been accepted at all the medical schools to which they had applied, but Mason-Dixon had had the best offer financially. Finally, although Lynn had been close to her father, she also knew what it was like not to have one.