He Let Our Daughter Die to Save His Mistress Chapter 13

He Let Our Daughter Die to Save His Mistress Chapter 13

He turned up eleven days later, at my hospital, in my trauma bay, at 3:40 in the morning.

I want to be very clear that I did not know.

The page came through as a hypothermia and sepsis, unidentified male, fifties, found unresponsive behind a

strip mall in the industrial corridor. My unit takes overflow adults when the main house is slammed, and that

night the main house was slammed.

I was gloved and calling for warm fluids before I looked at the face.

Then I looked.

Everyone in that room knew who he was. It’s a small state and it was a big story. The charge nurse, Bernie, looked up at me across the table with an expression I’ve thought about a lot since.

“Dr. Halloran,” she said quietly. “I can call Dr. Osei in. Twelve minutes.”

The man on my table had a core temp of 84.2 and a leg that was frankly septic and a pressure that was

going.

Twelve minutes.

“No,” I said. “Warm saline, get the Bair Hugger, I want blood cultures and vanc and pip-tazo now. Bernie, chart

me as attending and put a note in that I’ve disclosed a prior relationship.”

I worked on him for two hours and forty minutes.

I opened that leg and took out what was killing him. I stood over the body of the man who let my daughter

bleed for six hours and I did not let him die, and I did not do it because I forgave him – I want that in the

record too. I did it because of a thing I decided when I was nine years old in a house I didn’t choose, which is

that I would never be the kind of person who looks at someone on the floor and decides they don’t count.

He counted. That’s the whole difference between us. It always was.

He came up out of sedation the next afternoon.

I was standing at the foot of the bed with a tablet, reading his labs. Bernie was behind me with the door

open, because we do not do closed doors, ever.

His eyes found me and I watched him try to work out if he was hallucinating.

“Your leg’s going to be shorter than the other one,” I said. “You’ll need the cane permanently. There’s a bed at

the county shelter and a social worker named Alicia coming at four, and if you go with her you’ll get a

caseworker, a bunk, and a chance at the methadone clinic if you need it. If you don’t go with her, you’ll be back

here in six weeks and next time you’ll lose the leg.”

couldn’t speak. The tube had only just come out.

He lifted his hand about two inches off the blanket toward me.

I didn’t take it.

“I’m not your wife,” I said. “I’m your surgeon. That’s all I am, and it’s the last thing I’ll ever be to you.”

Tears went sideways into his ear. He nodded.

“You can’t come back to St. Brigid’s,” I said. “You can’t come to Lily’s House except through those doors as patient. And you can’t ever write to me. Do you understand what I’m giving you? I’m giving you a bed and a leg

and no absolution. Take it or don’t.”

His mouth moved. It took him three tries.

“Thank you,” he said. Then: “Grace. Was she at the end-was she-”

“She was asking for you,” I said. “Same as always.”

I turned around and walked out and I did not look back through the window, and Bernie followed me into the med room and stood in front of me while I shook for four minutes, and then I went and rounded on eleven

children.

He left with Alicia at four p.m.

He did the ninety days at the shelter. He got the caseworker. Then he stopped showing up, and the file closed,

the way those files close.

I heard about it the following January, from Ruth, who called me on a Tuesday.

A man had been found in the greenbelt near the rail cut after a four-day cold snap. No ID. They matched him off the surgical hardware in his leg – my hardware, my serial number, my operative note.

Ruth asked if I wanted to claim the remains.

I sat in my car in the physicians’ lot with the engine off for a long time.

“No,” I said. “But don’t let the state do it. Bill it to the trust. Cremation, no service, no marker.”

“And the ashes?”

I looked out at the loading bay where they bring the children in.

Ask them to scatter them,” I said. “Somewhere without a name on it. He’ll know what that’s for.”

[CHAPTER CONTENT]