“Music please.” I spoke to the scrub nurse closest and she conveyed the message to whoever was in charge of that tonight.
The moment it started Quincy’s eyes shot to mine. I smiled at her as warmth filled me. She used to play the song on repeat whenever she was studying, it’d grown on me.
She muttered something about God helping her as she shook her head, her eyes going back down to the little boy’s chest. She ran her index finger down the middle of it as we went through everyone present ending with myself and Quincy.
She looked around at everyone like she was memorising where each individual stood in case she needed to address someone in particular.
“Ready?” She asked.
“Let’s do this.” I replied.
Five hours. It took me five whole hours to get half of the tumour out after Quincy finished working on his heart. The other half was untouchable, unless we inflicted severe damage to other parts of the brain. In a little over a month that fucker had grown at a rate that had me amazed. Not much phased me when it came to tumours, but that thing was impressive…in a completely unimpressive kind of way.
Despite our daily scans seeing it face to face was glorious. I know it sounds insensitive and sick, but seeing a tumour in a scan was completely different to seeing it in real life. I’d seen it grow in the scans, but seeing the way it pushed on the healthy brain matter, the way the brain tissue tried to adapt to the intrusion…it was just fucking incredible.
Brains are such brilliant and beautiful things. How something so sensitive controls all your functions. How it’s the thing that determines whether you are alive or not is just magic. I mean, yes, the heart plays a big role and if it stops doing its job then the brain doesn’t stand a chance, but it’s only when your brain is gone that you are really dead. You could have a heartbeat and still be dead. Brain dead.
So, yeah. Brains. The anatomical God.
We ended up inserting a reservoir under Jack’s scalp that would deliver the Chemo treatment straight to the brain in hopes that the direct treatment stood more of a chance at doing its job. The traditional method clearly wasn’t working, and we needed it to, desperately, if Jack was going to stand any chance of surviving this.
By the time we’d closed him up we were closer to nine hours. Quincy had inserted a pacemaker which would keep his heart going temporarily. Once we’d dealt with the tumour, she’d put him on the transplant list, and hopefully he’d get a working heart.
Still, if those parents had just trusted me from the start this would have been a completely different procedure. It killed me that I couldn’t physically do more for him. It killed me that the seizure he’d had pre-surgery might have caused even more damage than we were anticipating and not just to his heart, but to the brain itself.
It angered me.
I pulled the surgical gown off in one fluid motion, removed the gloves and left the operating theatre. I should’ve gone straight to the parents and let them know that for now he was okay. I couldn’t say that he was stable, because he’d just had open heart surgery followed by a Craniotomy. If that didn’t put him into the unstable category, then I don’t know what would short of actually being on life support.
Why couldn’t they just let me step in earlier? I could’ve done more. He would’ve needed less intervention. His heart. His little heart that was the tiniest I’d ever seen on the table.
Fuck!
There weren’t many times that I felt like I wasn’t done. Like I hadn’t done enough, because I didn’t stop until I had to. But I couldn’t help but feel like I should’ve done more to push his parents. Maybe I should’ve just pressured them that little bit more. Told them more graphically what would happen if they waited to make a decision.
I felt morose and completely frazzled. I felt the need to close myself off and just continue berating myself over it all. I walked into the empty staff room and grabbed a plastic cup of water. I honestly hadn’t even noticed that she’d followed me.
I sat on one
of the wooden slatted benches and removed my scrub cap before yanking the mask from around my neck.
She stood with her back leaning on my locker. Her bright pink shoes in contrast with the bright blue of her scrubs. She didn’t say anything for a while, but I could feel her watching me. It was like she was giving me space but without leaving me.
It should’ve felt like an awkward intrusion, but instead it made me focus on something else. It was disarming and heartening.
“I don’t just think about what life would be like if things were different.” She said in a quiet breath. “I imagine it and picture it in my head and I wish so hard that it was true.”
I rested my chin on my clasped hands and looked up at her.
I was not expecting that. It was like a happy slap. Surprise!
The moment I’d heard her suck in enough air to speak I thought she was going to tell me I’d done everything I could. I thought she was going to apologise again for something that wasn’t her fault. Instead she completely knocked me for six. She pulled her scrub hat off and tucked it into the back pocket of her trousers and then she reached down into her top and pulled out her grandmother’s sapphire Claddagh ring, sliding it back onto her middle finger. She stood in front of me and crouched so that we were face to face, her hands resting lightly on my knees.
“If I hadn’t been pregnant and you hadn’t been married when Richard left…” She swallowed and took a deep breath. She raised her shaking hand slowly and traced the side of my face with her index finger, her eyes never leaving mine. Her tongue licked across her bottom lip before she rolled it between her teeth. She cupped my face, “I would’ve done this…”
Her eyes zeroed in on my lips before she tilted my face up and touched her lips to mine.
Everything stopped.