“That poor family. I want to ask why they didn’t do the surgery immediately, but that’s not exactly the point anymore, is it? Have you had any updates?”
“No, I left after we got him on life support. They were hopeful they’d be able to take half of it still, so…” he shrugged, using the nail on his thumb to pick at the label on the bottle of water. “The letter was just so fucking sad. It wasn’t about him and saving his life or taking drastic measures, it was purely about his son.”
“I wonder why he carried the letter with him?”
“According to his wife, it was in case anything like this happened. He didn’t want to take any chances of not saving his son’s life.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, sitting back and staring at the floor. “It’s like he knew something was going to happen.”
With what sounded like a defeated sigh, Parker dropped his head to look at the floor. “Who knows? It just hits hard that he might not be able to give his son what he was hoping to, you know? Two lives lost because of an accident.”
Leaning into him, I thought about it. I didn’t know much about medicine, everything I’d picked up was from the television or books, so I didn’t understand how transplants worked. I was sure I’d heard somewhere that organs could come from people outside of the family. It didn’t take away the fact a tragedy had happened, but my hope was the boy would still be able to get what he needed before it was too late. Then again, how do you recover from losing your dad in the way this boy had?
I felt helpless for everyone concerned, including Parker.
“If it’s too damaged, can he get a transplant from someone else?”
“Yeah, he can, so long as they find someone compatible with him.”
Doctors are humans, so it’s bound to affect them when something happens like this, but it was hitting Parker hard.
Not wanting to sound callous, I thought about the best way to word what I wanted to ask. “Can I ask a question?”
Looking down at me, he raised his eyebrows. “Always. You know more about me than anyone apart from Dale and my shrink.”
“This can’t be the first loss of a patient you’ve had to deal with...” I began hesitantly. “Do they all affect you like this?”
I’d been worried he’d recoil and close up, maybe think I was a judgmental bitch, but the small smile on his face showed me he understood where I was going with this.
“It’s definitely not the first patient I’ve lost, but learning from patients and their cases makes you a better doctor.” That made sense. “By that, I mean—if someone comes in with a complex problem that we’ve never dealt with before, you go with a theory, make it practical, and gauge the impact what you’ve done has on the patient.”
“Like, use people as guinea pigs?”
“Exactly,” he nodded slowly. “Some infections don’t react to what’s usually used against them, and some injuries don’t heal as you’d expect. You have to adapt and adjust so that you can help the patient recover.
“When you lose a patient, if you were to just close the door and walk away, would you be learning from it? No. We don’t know everything there is to know about science and medicine—no matter what people think—so every day is a learning experience. Unfortunately,” he blew out a breath, “we can’t save everyone. I’m not a robot, I take on the hit of that loss and wonder what I could’ve done differently. Patients are human beings, someone’s son, dad, or brother. They’re not dispensable, they matter.”
“And have you ever thought that you fucked up and the death was on you?”
“I can’t answer that because I’ve got no way of knowing with the patients I’ve lost if a different treatment would’ve saved them. That’s not the kind of problems they had. But tonight’s was different. A man died, but a young boy has lost his dad, who loved him enough to be as prepared for a bad event as he was, and his only concern was his son’s life. And he might have to know that his dad died in an accident that took away something that would’ve lived on inside his body, keeping him alive. Does that make sense?”
It did. I couldn’t imagine having an organ inside me that came from one of my parents after they’d passed away, but I also couldn’t imagine being in that poor boy’s shoes.
“Will you be able to find out about the liver?”
Nodding, he cracked his neck as he sat up. “Yeah, I’ll find out when I get in tomorrow.”
I hadn’t expected it tonight, but I knew he needed company, so I was going to do for him what worked best for me when I was stressed.