The Other Side of the Pillow

TEVIN

Chapter Twelve

“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”

—Albert Ellis

Two Months Later

It was a rainy day in May and the traffic was ridiculous as I tried to get to work. Sibley Memorial was in a quiet area, but getting into the vicinity meant driving through downtown DC from my house near Rock Creek Park. People in DC started panicking and driving crazy when it rained badly; during the winter, snow created absolute havoc. Whenever there were several days of bad weather, I would stay at the hospital like many of the other staff.

Being a doctor meant going into work when I was supposed to be there. When I didn’t show up, someone could literally die. I had a scheduled surgery that morning. A seventy-eight-year-old woman had vascular dementia. She was already suffering from Alzheimer’s when she had a stroke that ended up blocking the blood flow to her brain. I planned to go in and clear out the blockage from her veins and, hopefully, improve her ability to function.

When I first became a doctor, I had it embedded in my mind that I could save anyone’s life. Becoming a vascular surgeon made all the sense in the world to me; growing up, my father would always seem so prideful when he would sit at the dinner table and tell us all how he had prevented yet another person from dying. In our presence, he never mentioned the ones who didn’t make it, although I am sure he did to my mother.

I could appreciate him wanting to shield us from the fact that we are all dying. It is only a matter of the hour and the day. Even when I did realize that inadequate blood flow could damage and eventually kill cells anywhere in the body, I was still inspired to try to allow as many people as possible some additional time. If it ended up being ten more years, ten more days, or even ten more hours, it all counted.

Watching people deal with sickness and death still bothered me, even though I paid witness to it daily. Delivering the news of death was the worst, even though I never made promises that I could not keep. I was always honest about the complications that might arise, the percentage of people who survived certain things. I understood the importance of being realistic.

Still, Mrs. Sparrow Turner had touched my heart when I met her, and I prayed that she would survive the surgery. She was a sweet older woman, a widow who had been married for more than forty years before her husband dropped dead of a heart attack a few years prior. She had four children, eleven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. It always made it harder when people came from larger families. The waiting room would be packed with people pacing the floor, or clinging to one another, and sometimes a relative or two actually had to be admitted for observation because the stress would overwhelm them.

I will never forget one time when a woman was visiting her husband, who was on life support, after a repair of his abdominal aortic aneurysm. He had been without oxygen for a long time. She was so distraught when I told her that we were checking to see if he was brain dead, and advised her to start considering removing him from the machine, that on the way to the elevator she fell out. She ended up dying from an undiagnosed brain tumor and he ended up recovering. Having to tell him about his wife’s death was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my entire life.

Being a doctor had truly humbled me as a person. A lot of my colleagues were arrogant and often made mistakes because of their egos and not wanting to be team players. I was the type who loved to consult with others to get the benefit of their expertise. I realized that different people viewed things in different ways. Being confident was one thing; thinking you were God was quite another. After all, that job was already taken.

As I pulled into the parking garage in my white E63 AMG Benz, I noticed Katrina Maxwell getting out of her Ford Mustang. She waved and then waited for me to park and get out. Katrina was cool but she was overstepping being professional to try to get me into bed. It was not about to happen. I loved Jemistry and, as I had promised, I would never do anything to hurt or disrespect her.

“Hey, you,” Katrina said as I walked up beside her. “Don’t you look sexy this morning! Then again, you always look appetizing to me.”

“Good morning, Katrina.”

We walked toward the elevator together. I tried not to seem irritated by her, but it wasn’t easy.

Once we got on, she tried to step closer to me. “I’ve got tickets to see Kem at Constitution Hall next weekend. You want to go with me?”

“No, but thanks for letting me know he’s coming to town. I didn’t realize that. Jemistry loves Kem; I’ll have to try to snag some tickets.”

Katrina looked disappointed but she shouldn’t have been surprised. In the six plus years she had been trying to get me to date her, I had never agreed.

“Well, I’m sure some man will be happy to have me on his arm for the night.” She rolled her eyes. “Even though you think you’re too good for me.”

I glanced down at her. “Katrina, I don’t think that I’m too good for you. I simply don’t want to date you. We work together. I’ve been around you enough to be able to gauge whether or not we make sense, and most importantly, I’m already taken.”

“Oh yeah?”

I chuckled as the elevator ascended to the fifth floor. “Yes, indeed. She’s an amazing woman and I love her. That’s the end of it but I wish you well.”

Katrina rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth. “I’m sick of men turning down all of this.” She rubbed her hands over her body. “I’m too fine to be single.”

“I agree. You’re too fine to be single and maybe if you let men approach you, you could easily tell who’s interested and who’s not.”

“Men approach me all damn day, but all they want is sex. I need a provider. Someone who wants to be with me and only me.”

“Well, like I said, I really do wish you the best,” I said as I started to get off on my floor. She was going up two more floors. I used my hand to hold the elevator open for a few additional seconds. “And if for some reason you can’t find a date, I’m willing to buy the tickets off you for what you paid for them plus twenty percent.”

As the doors closed, Katrina looked like I had slapped her.

Seven hours later, I was sitting in my office, trying to regain my composure. Mrs. Turner had died on the operating table. While I realized that I had done my very best to help her, it wasn’t enough. Even with Alzheimer’s she had this amazing spirit about her, and a kindness that was hard to find.