Dickmaster’s gaze slices from me to him. “Why?”
“Not at liberty to say,” Mr. Sullivan replies. “But it’s nothing you need to concern yourself with. The hospital administration has given us all necessary clearances and permissions. They really ought to have informed you, Dr. Dick.”
Oh noooo . . .
From somewhere in the back, a medical student with a death wish snickers. But the rest of us don’t move an inch—because that’s what you do when you step on a land mine.
Nothing.
You wait—and hope to God it doesn’t blow you to bits.
“Dickmaster,” the doctor grits out, clenching his teeth furiously enough to crack them.
There’s a story the nurses tell in hushed tones on slow nights in the hospital halls. The tale of the fourth-year resident who was complaining in the break room about Dickmaster’s demands—and used the unfortunate nickname within earshot of the god himself. He wasn’t fired or even reprimanded—that would’ve been too merciful. Instead, his life became a nightmare of overnight shifts, double shifts, bedpan duty, emergency department stitches, blown IVs galore and charts as far as the eye could see. He ended up quitting—forced out—taking a research position in a basement office at some subpar university whose name no one can remember.
But, they say sometimes when you’re scrubbing in, if you listen very carefully, you can hear the mournful cry of the fourth-year resident’s soul begging to be let in to a surgery.
I glance at Tommy Sullivan in time to see him lifting a careless eyebrow and cupping a hand around his ear.
“Pardon?”
“My name is Doctor Dickmaster.”
“Ah, sorry about that.” His face is unreadable, even innocent, but his eyes practically dance a jig—because he’s not really sorry at all. “I’m hard of hearing on this side—old war injury.”
Dickmaster exhales through his nose, like a bull who’s been denied a spearing.
“Stay out of the way.”
Mr. Sullivan salutes. “It’ll be like I’m not even here.”
I wish.
He’s only been here an hour and he’s already getting me into trouble.
“And as for you, Haddock . . .” Dr. Dickmaster glares down at me in warning. Because in some ways, medicine is the great class equalizer. It doesn’t matter who your family is, your name, your title if you have one—it doesn’t matter who you know.
It’s what you know, what you can do, that counts. It’s all that counts.
“Keep up.”
* * *
“I think you’re pretty.”
It would be accurate to say the best surgeons in the world are arseholes.
Cold, clinical, egotistical bordering on narcissistic, emotionally impotent—practiced compartmentalizers. They have iron control over their thoughts, their focus, and are able to detach from any messy feelings that may seep in and trip them up. Like machines.
Arsehole machines.
All calculations and predictive outcomes and flawless performances.
Dickmaster is seen as a god around here, but the secret is . . . when he looks in the mirror, that’s what he sees too. Utterly confident in his power over life and death, completely secure in his own infinite knowledge.
It takes a high level of arrogance and indifference to cut a human being apart and be certain you can put them together again. To slice skin, sever arteries and incise muscle—to crack bone. For some it comes naturally.
For me . . . I’m still working on it.
I straighten up, removing my stethoscope from the chest of the round-eyed, tiny, dark-haired five-year-old in the hospital bed. Her smile is precious and irresistible.
“I think you’re pretty too,” I whisper tenderly. “And very brave.”
This is Maisy Adams’s third surgery. I’m not required to know her name—it’s her diagnosis that matters. Tricuspid atresia, a congenital defect in the atriums of the heart. Forty years ago she wouldn’t have seen her first birthday . . . hell, twenty years ago she wouldn’t have made it either.
But now she will. She’ll have the chance to grow and dream and live. Because of grouchy men like Dr. Dickmaster. Because medicine is an ever-evolving miracle. It sets right and saves what it couldn’t salvage before.
“That other doctor told Mummy that after this operation and then one more I’ll be all done,” she says.
Children like Maisy amaze me. So much resiliency and courage in such a small package. Enduring pain and procedures that would break most adults—and still retaining that innocent cheeriness the whole time.
“That’s right. One more operation after this one and you’ll be done.”
“And my heart will be all better,” she declares.
“Yes.”
I run my hand down her soft hair, petting her, in the way I remember my mother did once when I’d won first place in the spelling bee at school.
“Do you promise?” she asks, her expression solemn.
I make an X with my fingertip over the left side of my chest.
“Cross my heart.”
And the smile Maisy shines on me warms me from the top of my head to the very bottom of my toes.
But it shouldn’t.
Her postoperative stats are what should warm me. The techniques used in her surgery should be what excites me.