Michelle Robidaux, on the other hand, was a face in the crowd. She was slightly overweight, medium height, with bad posture, stringy hair, and skin pocked by teenage acne. She always looked tired and besieged, even after the rare full night of sleep. Still, her story was remarkable. She was from a small town in Louisiana, where most of her family lived under the thumb of relentless poverty. Her parents raised chickens and grew vegetables and sugarcane, eking out a living on the small patch of land south of I-10 between Lafayette and Lake Charles. Michelle’s father had quit school in eighth grade to help his own father with the farm. Her mother made it through high school, but college was out of the question. Michelle’s grandfather was a mechanic who fixed mowers, boat engines, pretty much anything customers wanted to drop off and didn’t care if they didn’t get back for a month or so. Papi Bill was a clever enough mechanic but he was also a whiskey man, Southern Comfort specifically. “Created right here in Louisiana,” he often said when he poured a glass, and drinking it was always the first order of business. He’d start the day with a tumbler of SoCo and Coke, along with a couple of Tums. By midafternoon, he was skipping the mixer and the tumbler and could be found on a folding chair outside his workshop, drinking straight from the bottle, much of his unfinished work scattered in front of him like lawn decorations.
Michelle’s parents were too overworked to care much about the public school she attended, where teachers considered anyone who showed up regularly and stayed out of trouble to be a standout student. Not only did she show up, but Michelle proved herself different right from the start. She turned in her assignments. She asked smart questions, often beyond the ken of her teachers: “That’s an excellent question, Michelle. Why don’t you look it up yourself, come back tomorrow, and share your answer with the class.”
Most of all, Michelle was a voracious reader. In books, she could forget about her growling stomach, indifferent parents, and two older brothers who were drinking and stealing before they were teenagers. Michelle exhausted her elementary school’s library by third grade and moved on to the town library, where she caught the interest of the librarian, a matron named Mrs. Truex whose dowdy clothing and cat glasses on a chain were right out of central casting. Bobbie Truex had a brother, Rex, who had emerged from the town’s middling schools to become a successful car dealer in Baton Rouge. When he heard about the remarkable girl frequenting his sister’s library, Rex became a patron of sorts for Michelle, first encouraging the girl on visits to his hometown, telling her she could do whatever she wanted, and then paying her expenses in college.
To say Michelle was the first member of her family to graduate from college was true but missed the point: She was the first Robidaux to
consider
college. To them, college was a place for rich kids. Sure, college kids may have book smarts, but the only book that counted for Michelle’s family was the Good Book. As for medical school, becoming an astronaut would have seemed less alien to family and neighbors living across the flat, sun-scorched stretch of land wedged between the Gulf and I-10. There wasn’t a single medical school graduate from her zip code. Michelle’s story was a testament to her resolve. Now, though, the young woman began to wonder if she had traveled beyond the limit of that innate drive and intelligence. Maybe her reach now exceeded her grasp. Maybe striving to become a brain surgeon was too much for her. She thought about her upbringing and a family tree known more for boozing, brawling, and petty crime than any kind of success. For the first time in her life, Michelle started to question herself.
Prior to her arrival at Chelsea General, Michelle never doubted she was as smart as her Ivy League colleagues. But twice now, she had failed her exams, and it seemed everyone had abandoned her. They had been so excited to accept her into the program, and reveled in the telling of her story:
See that young doctor, she was raised on a dirt-poor farm
. She was an oddity to them, yet they took great pride in her achievements. They patted themselves on the back for taking her in at their prestigious hospital. Now only Tina Ridgeway seemed to care. A John F. Kennedy quote Michelle had first learned in second grade came uninvited and hit her like a slap: “Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan.” She was fast becoming Chelsea’s orphan.
Tears formed in the corners of Michelle’s eyes, and she wiped them away with the backs of her hands before they could begin an unprofessional path from her tear ducts, past the conjunctiva, and down her cheeks.
“All right, look, Michelle, I know you’re tired. Let’s pick this up tomorrow,” Tina said.
“Thanks, Dr. Ridgeway,” Michelle said.
“Tina,” Ridgeway reminded, “call me Tina.”
“Right, Tina.”
A beeper went off, and both doctors reached for their sides.
“It’s mine,” Tina said. She was hoping it would be Ty. It said simply,
311. 6.
A cloud crossed her face.
“Are you all right, Dr. Ridgeway?” Michelle asked.
Ridgeway sat staring at her beeper, and answered without looking up.
“Again, Michelle, it’s Tina, just call me Tina. And yes, I am fine,” she answered, perhaps a little too harshly. Tina realized her worry about Ty must have been broadcast across her face, and she quickly composed herself. As hard as they worked to keep it a secret, the hallway whispers had started.
What’s going on with Ty and Tina? Are they dating, sleeping together, and what about her husband?
It probably didn’t help they ate lunch together and often sat next to each other at conferences. If Tina had a question about a patient, she always took the case to Ty. Still, it would probably surprise other doctors at Chelsea General to know that Tina had spent four nights in the last two weeks at Ty’s apartment.
Tina knew life had a few hinge moments, when your actions or inactions could dictate your remaining path. That first night with Ty was one for her. It was both an admission and an indulgence: an admission that her marriage was all but over, and an indulgence in something improper. Her husband just assumed she was on call and was busy at the hospital. Truth was, he had stopped caring a couple of years before.
Now everyone was saying Ty Wilson might get fired or even worse. Ty hadn’t even told her what had really happened in the operating room that night. He hadn’t told anyone. But he was going to have to divulge all the details in Room 311 at 6
AM
tomorrow.
A
cross town in Dr. Sung Park’s house, dinner had just been cleared. His wife, Pat, had loaded the dishwasher, wiped the table down, and packed away the leftovers. There was not a speck of food to be seen, and the house was almost silent. This was especially odd considering there were three children under the age of six. Everything in the home smacked of bargain shopping, right down to the sensible dress Pat wore. It had been on sale for 70 percent off at a wholesale department store. Still, Sung had given her a disapproving look when she showed him the bill.
The children were reading to themselves, the only sound coming from the turning of pages. Even the two-year-old was flipping through a cardboard book of animals without uttering a sound. Pat Park admonished the five-year-old when she giggled at something she had read.
“Your father is working,” she said. Sung sat in his study reviewing a detailed paper on conjoined twin surgery. He was making meticulous notes, and drawing the operation step by step in a notepad he carried with him everywhere. He also used the exact same kind of pen every time. It was a red uni-ball micro pen with a .38mm tip. They cost fifty cents apiece at the office supply store, but Park got them for free. He pocketed them from the various department secretaries’ desks when they were away. Now he was using them to detail a picture of two infant heads pointing in opposite directions with a band of veins still connecting them. He made bullet points of how much blood-thinning medication would be given at this point of the operation, along with the desired blood pressure of each twin. Even though their names were written on the medical records, he called them simply twin A and twin B.
Bad luck to use real names
, he thought to himself.
The following day, he was going to try to edge his way into the operating room, where his chairman was scheduled to separate the conjoined twins. Every other neurosurgeon including the legendary Ben Carson had turned the family away, saying it was too risky.
Still, “the Boss,” as everyone called the chairman of Neurosurgery, was going to operate. Sung had been trying to take over the case, and when the chairman didn’t budge, Sung had even tried to undermine him. He’d gone to the CEO of the hospital to remind him that he had a lower complication rate than the Boss. Sung had done his research, and learned the CEO, like many heads of hospitals, really didn’t know anything about medicine, let alone brain surgery. So Sung had collected data. He handed the CEO a folder of information, including not only his low complication rates, but also his operative times, which were second only to Ty Wilson. He also had carefully copied his drawings of the operation step by step, and placed that in the folder, which Pat had bound for him this morning. The CEO pored over the papers for a few minutes, took a couple of sips of coffee, and then started grinning. For several seconds he didn’t say a word, he sat just grinning and impassively staring at Park. Park thought the man might be having atypical symptoms of a stroke. Just as Sung was about to say something, the CEO came around the desk and put his hand on Sung’s shoulder, like a schoolteacher might with a fifth grader. “I am telling you, Hooten find himself between eight-ball and hard place,” Sung said. He regretted it as soon as the words had come out of his mouth. He had mixed up his metaphors, something that was very embarrassing to him. The CEO smiled and walked back behind his desk. “No he won’t, Sung. He may find himself behind the eight-ball…or he may even be between a
rock
and a hard place…but not between an eight-ball and a hard place.” Sung turned bright red, and the CEO waved him out of the office. On his way out, the smug ass had told Sung he should sit in the corner during the operation and take notes. It was all Sung could do to keep from screaming. After all, he had completed not one, but two full neurosurgery training programs. After he became a full-fledged neurosurgeon in his homeland of Korea, he emigrated to the United States, only to be told his training would not be enough to become certified. He was asked to complete another seven years of training, working well over a hundred hours a week. It would’ve dropped most men to their knees. Not Sung. Even though he was a full decade older than his co-residents at the time, he outworked them and beat them every step of the way. At the same time, he had studied and practiced weekends and nights to master the English language, although he still spoke with a choppiness that seemed to worsen when he was angry or nervous. He knew he would never even have a chance at becoming chairman himself unless his English was better. Being a foreigner was one thing. Sounding like a foreigner was another. The teenager at the kiosk in the local mall had smirked when he purchased Rosetta Stone for English from her.
Now nearly fifty years old, Sung was just starting his neurosurgery career and wanted to make up for lost time. Suddenly, in the quiet house, came a shrill one-second beep, followed by another. Sung reached out his hand without looking, and his wife placed his beeper in his hand. Even at home, he ran the place like an operating room.
The page said,
311. 6.
Sung allowed himself a rare smile. Ty Wilson, the bright star of Chelsea General whose skills had put Sung’s own formidable talents in the shadows, was going to be publicly crucified. Sung made a note to wake up especially early, so he could get a seat in the front row. He wanted to see Wilson squirm.
D
r. Sydney Saxena took her pager wherever she went. It was an annoying habit, but without it she felt naked, exposed, in danger of failing. She wore her pager in the bathroom, the movies, even to her grandmother’s funeral. She checked it more often than most people check their watches. She carried it now, in her left hand, jogging past the elegant Barton Hills homes where a number of her colleagues lived. She could often be seen texting while running.
Anytime Sydney went somewhere without her pager, even for a minute, she feared it would buzz and she would not be there when she was needed or, worse still, miss an opportunity. When a professor had asked her, “What’s the worst part of being on call every other night?” Sydney had immediately responded, “You miss half the good cases.”
Sydney always wanted to be the first to respond, to be the most dependable among the neurosurgical staff. While many of her colleagues had distractions like husbands, wives, children, she was unencumbered. Most of the time, Sydney viewed this as strength. When the hospital chiefs were looking for someone utterly committed to the hospital when the Boss retired, she wanted her name to be at the top of the list. Even if they denied the opportunity this time, they would not be able to pass her over twice.
Sydney ran at a clip that would cause a casual jogger to wilt, usually right around seven minutes a mile. On one level, running went against her fierce work ethic. She wanted to outwork everyone at the hospital, and running took time away from that commitment, no matter how fast she was. But she also wanted to be sharp and have fresh ideas. She’d once learned in a college psychology class from an aging hippie named Professor Quattlebaum that some of our best insights come when our minds are not engaged. Mowing lawns. Showering. Jogging. It was one of those bits of counterintuitive knowledge Sydney believed and adopted as her own. Now if only Professor Quattlebaum had had the flash of insight telling him to replace the threadbare corduroys he wore to every class. She smiled at the recollection.
Sydney checked her watch. She had been running for exactly fifty-six minutes and fifteen seconds, her eighth mile of a ten-mile run and feeling good. The air was warm and fresh, thanks to a cleansing rain earlier in the day. She felt as though she could run all night. Three miles back, on Washtenaw Avenue, she had passed the 555 Building and noted that Ty’s fourteenth-floor window was dark. Sydney ran the schedule in her head and realized Ty was on call.