Much seemed backward about his adoptive homeland. American parents deferred to children, shaping their lives to meet the extracurricular whims and social engagements of their offspring. They kept a calendar for their children as though the youngsters were royals and the elders social secretaries, organizing their work schedules so all the carpools to the various sports and lessons would be covered. The parents even placed stickers on the back windows of their minivans showing silhouettes of gymnasts or football helmets or soccer balls. The icons were labeled
BRITNEY
or
KELSEY
or
BRANDON
. The message was clear: The parents were there to promote and boast of their athletic accomplishments. What trivial pursuits!
Pet owners were perhaps the most baffling to Park. They obediently walked their dogs, even in the most inclement weather, carefully scooping up their turds and carrying them home in plastic bags as though they were some sort of prize. They even gave the dogs the same surname as the owner. It seemed so disrespectful and uncivilized.
Bored with pacing in the waiting room, Park walked up to the front desk and peered over the counter, looking for the doctor, a nurse, the receptionist, anyone he could pester. The office looked deserted. Probably a drug rep serving everyone lunch. It was a beautiful woman, no doubt, showing too much cleavage and persuading the doctors to prescribe her product. He remembered one of them had even tried to give him a book once. It was the story of a Viagra salesman, and the title was
Hard Sell
. Unacceptable, Park thought.
Park opened the door that read
NO UNACCOMPANIED PATIENTS BEYOND THIS POINT
and headed down the corridor. Framed children’s art decorated the hallway between examination rooms. When he neared the end, he saw an MRI on a light box. It was an axial cut of the brain, Park instinctively thought. The image had contrast, and there was some motion artifact around the border. Probably a lazy technician, Park mused, but he had to admit it was a pretty clear image. He moved closer. The picture showed a bright mass in the right hemisphere. It wasn’t a solid mass, but rather somewhat blurry and uneven with rough borders and scalloped edges.
No doubt
, Park said silently,
a classic glioblastoma multiforme
. Probably the most malignant tumor known not just in the brain, but in the entire human body. No cure, and no proven effective treatments. Whoever this poor bastard was would need an operating room immediately. Park shook his head. Even he would have trouble handling that one. He guessed the patient had six months to a year to live. He wanted to tell Milner or Miller, that slow doctor, that he should refer the patient who had this scan over to his clinic. Park looked at the scan again and the patient’s name in the lower corner of the image caught his eye:
SONG
. Park did a double take. His wife’s maiden name. Strange. Then he remembered. Song. His alias. He nearly threw up.
I
t had been just ten minutes since Ty arrived at the hospital, parking his motorcycle outside the ER entrance seconds before the helicopter landed. He ran up to the helipad. “Gimme the bullet,” he shouted over the whir of the helicopter blades as he helped wheel the patient toward the open glass doors to the hospital.
“Three-passenger MVA,” the medic shouted. “Father was driving, and was killed at the scene. This is the ten-year-old son, with likely epidural hematoma, and mother is about five minutes out with an intracerebral blood clot in the right frontal lobe…she doesn’t look good, and is going to need an operation quickly as well.”
Ty looked at the chart. “Ahmad,” he read.
Oh yeah, the dad was Dr. Ahmad, the pediatrician.
“Oh my God,” Ty said, “I knew him really well.”
The medic looked hard at him. “Well, then maybe you knew about his drug habit?” The medic paused. “Yeah, everyone’s favorite pediatrician was high as a kite when he rolled the family minivan.”
Just then the next chopper could be heard approaching the helipad with Mrs. Ahmad. “We need another neurosurgeon stat—who is on backup call?” Ty shouted. The nurse looked down. “Park,” she said. Sung Park.
T
en miles away at the county medical center, Park tried to collect himself as he stood staring at the scan. He was trying to find some explanation for what he was seeing. There was no mistaking it. He had gone from denial to anger to acceptance in the last five minutes and now his knees buckled. He reached out to one of the walls for support, knocking a six-year-old’s framed rendition of a butterfly to the floor. The shattering glass brought the doctor and a nurse.
Sung Park drove his Honda down the road back to Chelsea General with his MRI film in an oversize manila envelope. His eyes were red, and he subconsciously wiped away the moisture from his eyes. His pager was going off next to him, but he could not hear it.
Rhapsody in Blue
played on his car radio. He turned it up. It was one of the first American songs he’d heard in his homeland of Korea, and it was then he’d first dreamed of moving to the United States. There was something about that classical music infused with jazz that appealed to Park. It represented a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, its melting pot, and its metropolitan madness. It had a steely rhythm and just enough rattle bang—Park used to play it over and over again in his tiny dorm room outside Seoul. His hands were perfectly placed at the 10 and 2 positions on the steering wheel, and he drove the speed limit. He ignored the person honking behind him, trying to pester him to drive faster. All he could think about was the number of patients he had seen over the years with glioblastoma. Some had lived as long as a few years, but most didn’t make it past 14 months—14.6 months to be precise. Ted Kennedy had lived about that long, and ironically so did George Gershwin, the composer of the music in Park’s car, a now morbid soundtrack to his life.
He made a single call after telling Milner—Miller, whatever his name was—that he was an idiot when he tried to console Park and tell him the tumor might be benign. He told Harding Hooten’s executive assistant, Ann Holland, when she answered, that he needed to see Dr. Hooten right away. At first, she was a little reluctant to schedule a meeting.
“It’s an emergency,” Park said.
He then fumbled with his jacket, scooped up his films, and walked out.
P
ark took the elevator up to the twelfth floor, walked down the hall and into Hooten’s office. He stared hard at the Rothko and then regained his composure. Since the time when he was a very young man, Park had relied on his determination and scientific mind, and he was going to use them now to improve his odds as much as he could. He had not gone through medical training twice to lose it all to cancer, he thought.
Hooten was waiting for him. “Sung,” he said by way of greeting.
Park slid the MRI out of its sleeve and passed it to Hooten. The chief of surgery pushed up his reading glasses and held it up to the light.
“Nasty-looking tumor. You are going to have your hands full with this one.” Hooten checked the name along the bottom of the MRI. “I would tell Mr. Song not to buy the family-size jar of mayonnaise.” Hooten shook his head.
“I am Song,” Park said evenly. “That is my film.”
“My God,” Hooten said. He appeared stunned.
“I want you to operate as soon as possible. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow.” Park passed a list to Hooten. “Here is the name of the anesthesiologist, the nurses, and the others I want assisting with the surgery.”
“Sung, you should wait a week. Give you time to get your affairs in order?”
“Any delay will hurt my chances.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t rush into this.”
“It’s not rushing. It’s the logical decision.”
Hooten looked at the film again for a long time and then up at Park. “You sure about this, Sung?”
Park felt a pang of doubt, but stared ahead with determination.
“All right, see you in pre-op at six.”
Park reached out and shook Hooten’s hand.
V
illanueva sat on his stool in the emergency room, combination air traffic controller, conductor, and ringmaster. He didn’t need a radar screen, baton, or whip. The Big Cat waved his massive arms and called out like a carnival barker. He was in his element. He sent the fractured hip one way, a dehydrated child another, a baby with a high fever a third.
Paramedics brought in a drunk stinking of urine, his hair greasy and matted, his clothes filthy.
“Thanks for the gift, guys,” Villanueva said. “But I feel bad, I didn’t get you anything.” The paramedics smiled and rolled their eyes. They’d heard the Big Cat’s patter before.
“Catch us next time,” one of the paramedics joked back.
“Next time, you’ll be taking a case like this to county, right, boys?”
Another gurney arrived a moment later, refocusing Villanueva. This one carried a white-haired man knocked unconscious by his common-law wife. El Gato pointed to Trauma Bay 3.
The common-law wife walked in complaining of back pain, and Villanueva steered her to the opposite side of the OR, trying to prevent more fireworks between the two. She was moaning, saying “the bastard” had pushed her over a coffee table.
This must be what it’s like to be a Hollywood maître d’. Keep the rival agents away from each other
, Villanueva thought.
The cases were not always so benign. Chelsea General had the occasional gunshot victims from turf wars among gangs. Sometimes members of both gangs would arrive by ambulance, and Villanueva had to make sure there was plenty of room—and at least a couple of real cops—between the two sides. The hospital had its own police force but they were no match for the young gangsters. They kept people from parking illegally out front and wandered the halls giving directions to patients and family members lost in Chelsea General’s labyrinth. Villanueva called the ER’s regular cop on duty Barney Fife. He was a frail narcoleptic who spent much of his shift sleeping.
“Who’s got the back?” Villanueva called out, waving toward the woman who said she’d been pushed over the coffee table. “Smythe. That’s you.”
“Certainly, Dr. V,” Smythe answered. Smythe was originally from London and retained his
Masterpiece Theatre
accent despite living in North Carolina from age twelve on.
“Hey, Smythe,” Villanueva called out with an atrocious imitation of the junior doctor’s upper-crust accent. “Why is it I’m twice as smart as you and you sound twice as smart as I am?”
The nurses sitting behind Villanueva laughed. “You got that right, Dr. Villanueva,” one said. “He sounds smart with a capital
S
,” she added with an exaggerated English accent.
Another piped up, “I’d much rather have the gent with the accent take care o’ me.”
“You’re going to get the Big Cat angry!” a third nurse chided playfully.
A nervous-looking resident walked back studying a chart, trying to avoid Villanueva’s detection.
“Not so fast, Dr. Um-So,” Villanueva called out to him. The doctor’s real name was Kauffman, but everyone called him Dr. Um-So, though Villanueva was the only one who did it to his face. Um-So stopped.
Villanueva grabbed the chart the younger doctor carried. “You avoiding me?”
“No, Dr. Villanueva. I got this case.”
“What case is so important you can’t talk to the Big Cat?”
“Man complaining of bloody stools.”
“You’re choosing bloody stools over me.”
The nurses laughed.
“No, Doctor, um.”
“You’re saying bloody stools are more important than a little quality time with me. That’s what I’m hearing.”
Um-So was clearly flustered. He stammered but said nothing intelligible.
“Why are you wasting time with the case?” Villanueva asked. “It sounds like a job for Dick the Butt Doctor.” Villanueva never tired of this joke. Richard Lincoln was the chief of Proctology. He was an outstanding physician but that didn’t prevent him from being known as Dick the Butt Doctor. Villanueva returned his attention to Kauffman.
“You read all the journals. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Kauffman thought about it for a minute.
“Um so,” Kauffman began. His verbal tic appeared to be hardwired. Half a dozen doctors and nurses within earshot had to turn away so he wouldn’t see them laughing. “Noninvasive motion ventilation in COPD patients can be implemented—”
Villanueva interrupted again. “Saw that. Severe neurological dysfunction and pH less than 7.25 do not constitute absolute contraindications blah, blah, blah. Tell me something I don’t know.”
Kauffman thought for a moment. The hint of a smile on his face.
“Um so, laparoscopic surgeons who excel at video games make 47 percent fewer errors—”
“—and work 37 percent faster than their peers,” Villanueva finished for him. “
Archives of Surgery
. You can do better!”
Kauffman held up his chart by way of an excuse, but Villanueva shook his head.
“I’m counting on you.”
“Um so, did you know the word
bedlam
comes from the Bethlehem Hospital for the Criminally Insane, in London.”
“No shit?” Villanueva clapped Kauffman on the back. “Now, that’s interesting.”
Their banter was interrupted by the husband in Trauma Bay 3. Like a sedated lion whose tranquilizer had just run out, he sat up with a roar, startling everyone in the room.
“What’d she hit me with?” he demanded.
“Relax, Mr. Merriweather.” Johnson, the neurologist, gently pushed the man’s shoulders back down onto the examination table. “Looks like a large blunt object. Now let’s see how your eyes are working.”
Hearing the question, the common-law Mrs. Merriweather stopped her dissertation on back pain and her good-for-nothing, common-law husband and called across the room.
“It was the goddamn lamp.”
Villanueva scanned the room and located Barney Fife snoozing with a
People
magazine over his eyes. The Big Cat slid off his stool and sidled toward the midpoint between the feuding couple. Villanueva was once again ready to revive his offensive lineman skills and block a mad rush. When it became apparent the man simply wanted to know what had laid him low, Villanueva returned to his stool, directing traffic and conducting the ER symphony. On his way, he grabbed a doughnut from a three-day-old box sitting on the nurses’ desk. He took a bite just as he perched himself up on the stool, smiling. Two seconds later the stool simply collapsed. First there was a crack in one of the steel-reinforced wooden legs. As Villanueva started to look down, the other legs broke right in the middle, landing the seat of the stool and Villanueva smack on the floor. It was quite a sight, a 350-pound Hispanic man in barely fitting scrubs rolling around on the ground trying to right himself. More embarrassed than hurt, Villanueva eventually got his footing. Now that he was clearly all right, mild giggles started to break out in the crowd that had gathered.