“Thanks, Mr. Jerome. I didn’t forget that. I’m leaving that one. Can you make sure it doesn’t get tossed.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Hooten.”
With that, Hooten turned for the door.
V
illanueva’s funeral was as enormous as the man himself. It brought together the different currents of his life. From his old neighborhood in Detroit, a few middle-aged men and women whose brown faces had been either worn or sharpened from a lifetime of hard work. From his football days, there were four hulking men with bad knees and sport coats that no longer fit. From Bloomfield Hills, his ex-wife and several of their old neighbors, men and women who had peered out of bow windows to see an enormous man playing catch with their sons. From his new neighborhood, the bartender Soupy Campbell and a few of the regulars at O’Reilly’s. From the hospital, doctors, nurses, orderlies, parking attendants. Villanueva had an effect, it seemed, on almost everyone at Chelsea General who came into contact with his enormous presence.
Sydney sat next to McManus. Dr. Um-So and his wife were there. Dr. Smythe sat with another similar-looking man. Park sat in the back row with his wife and three children. Ty sat by himself a few rows up.
Tina had taken news of the Big Cat’s death particularly hard. She was still in the hospital. She was out of her medically induced coma. Her brain seemed to be intact, but she remained heavily sedated. Even in the painkiller-induced fog, Tina had this thought: Everything principled in her life seemed to be falling away.
Nick sat in the front row, next to his mother. His eyes were red and downcast. Initially, he had blamed himself for his father’s death. If only he had started the car on the first try. If only he had convinced his father not to buy him the car. If only. His mother had convinced Nick that his father was a walking time bomb. If it wasn’t then, she said, his heart would have caught up with him soon. “It’s just the way he lived.” As she explained this, she thought about her ex-husband’s passion for life and made a note to drop the aloof lawyer she had been dating.
The priest said a few words about eternal salvation. The congregation sang “Amazing Grace.” Then Dr. Nancy Reid, one of Villanueva’s professors from residency, walked up to the stage. Reid was small and bookish, the physical antithesis to the Big Cat. She had to adjust the microphone at the pulpit downward and was so short most of the congregation only saw the top of her head. She coughed a couple of times as she tried to stifle her crying. “Jorge was my friend,” she started. “He was a flawed man. But he was deep, he was genuine.” Reid came out from behind the pulpit. “I never dared imagine the day Gato would die, but I guess it does not surprise me it happened like this, doing what he loved and trying to make someone’s life better and happier.”
She gave a compassionate smile to Nick, who wiped his eyes. “I remember my initial skepticism when a former professional football player told me he wanted to become a healer. I thought,
What does this big dumb jock know about medicine?
Boy, was I wrong,” she continued. The congregation laughed. “I am sure the people here from Chelsea General will agree that when George was around, everyone was somehow
better
. Patients healed quicker, and doctors performed at a higher level. That was the magic of George. You see, George was not content to be a wonderful doctor himself. He wanted others to follow his high standards, and he was not afraid to rattle a few cages.” Many nodded in agreement. “You would never have expected it, but he was the most gifted clinician we have ever trained. He had more clinical acumen in his eyes than a room full of diagnostic equipment. More important, despite his sometimes bombastic ways, he was also the most honorable man I have ever met. You could always count on George to do the right thing. Good-bye my dear friend and student. You left way too soon.”
One of Villanueva’s old teammates followed. He limped up to the pulpit. He was a former NFL tackle named Vic Warren, whose gut now outreached his barrel chest. Warren rubbed his flat top, gripped the pulpit for support, and then told the story of Villanueva’s rookie year. In the NFL, rookies were routinely hazed. They would have to carry the veterans’ playbooks or do push-ups or other tasks on command. Some of the hazing was uglier still. A few of the older white veterans on the Lions tried to get a rise out of Villanueva with ethnic slurs, Warren said.
“I won’t repeat them here because we’re in a church and all,” Warren said. “Another thing rooks would have to do was sing their college fight song in the dining hall. Remember, this was long before hip-hop or rap or any of that crap.” Warren looked embarrassed and turned to the priest. “Pardon me, Father.
“George probably got it worse than anyone I had ever seen. I remember once walking into practice seeing a circle of veterans around Gato. They were taunting him while he was doing push-ups. He had done two hundred perfect push-ups while singing the Michigan fight song, ‘Hail to the Victors,’ at the top of his lungs. They had only asked for a hundred push-ups, but George didn’t want to leave any doubt that he could take whatever they threw at him and more.” Warren paused. “By doing that, I don’t know, George somehow let everyone know he was proud of where he came from but didn’t take himself too serious.” Warren’s eyes clouded with tears. “That was the kinda guy he was.”
Nick looked up briefly at the former football player, but tears came and he returned his gaze to the cathedral’s stone, his hands over his face.
Hooten followed Warren. This was the first time many of his former colleagues had seen him since his sudden departure from the hospital. Hooten wore his signature bow tie and stood ramrod-straight.
“How do we measure a man?” Hooten asked. He looked out over the congregation and let the question hang the way he might let a question about a surgical decision hang in M&M.
Sydney wondered whether Hooten might be asking the question about himself. She felt sorry that Hooten’s career would be marked by a terrible mistake as its final act, the kind of mistake he fought hard to prevent others from making.
Ty thought briefly of Quinn McDaniel and of his own brother, neither of whom lived long enough to become a man. Ty thought of himself. He could only measure himself by the goals he set for himself and the effort he put into them: He would always treat the patient’s family as though it were his own, and he would always push his skills to the top of his profession.
“George Villanueva was a man of enormous appetites,” Hooten continued. “That was obvious. He devoured life. He jumped in with two feet and invited everyone around him to jump in with him.” This brought a few smiles.
“I’m not telling anyone in this church anything he or she doesn’t know. I’m sure everyone in this room can think of a story. Some of them should wait until we’re outside church.” The mourners laughed, grateful for a relief from their grief, and Hooten waited for the laughter to subside.
“George Villanueva was remarkable in one other way. He was a doctor who upheld the highest standards. More than any doctor I’ve worked with, he did not let anything or anyone get in the way of providing the best care possible.” Hooten paused again. He was distracted by thoughts of the white supremacist. That was an aberration for Villanueva. He had let his prejudices—justifiable as they were—get in the way there. Hooten looked up at the packed cathedral.
“George just did not care whose feathers were ruffled. It didn’t matter if it was a homeless person who wandered in off the street or one of our civic leaders. George was absolutely passionate about making sure that person got the best care modern medicine has to offer. George was one of the rare doctors who—day in, day out—lived his ideals. So I ask you—all of you—when you walk out of this place. Honor George. Do your best to live your ideals.”
More hymns were sung. The organist played a somber recessional. And the mourners went out, blinking in a bright midday sun.
D
riving back to the hospital, pulling into the enormous parking deck, walking across the footbridge into the original Chelsea General building, walking the busy hallways flush with patients, family members, house staff, doctors, administrators, there were no outward signs anything had changed at Chelsea General.
Patients entering the emergency room with a fractured leg or wandering up to the information desk looking for the newborn grandson or heading to radiology to learn if the persistent cough was lung cancer wouldn’t notice anything different. The hospital still inhaled the staff and the patients and exhaled the staff, the treated, and the dead.
For the doctors, nurses, and others who had been to Villanueva’s memorial service, reentry into Chelsea General came with a sense of emptiness. The Gato Grande’s ferocious, funny, and outlandish presence would no longer be there to cure, educate, amuse. They went back to their departments, reviewed charts, checked on patients, sat at monitoring stations but did so without energy. Time would fill this hollowness, and the memory of Villanueva would fade. His presence would be missed less, and his name would not come up as frequently. He would devolve in their collective memories into something of a caricature: a brilliant buffoon in giant scrubs.
Someone at the hospital had videotaped the funeral for the doctors, nurses, and techs who had to work. When Tina watched on a portable DVD player Sydney brought her, Hooten’s words stuck with Tina, and she repeated them like a mantra: “Live up to your ideals. Live up to your ideals. Live up to your ideals.” The words hung in the air like a dare. She had not been living her ideals, personally or professionally. In a flash, Tina realized what she needed to do, regardless of the personal consequences.
T
y Wilson, Chelsea’s greatest natural athlete, was walking down the operating room hallway. He had not a shred of self-doubt as he started washing his hands at the scrub sink. “Live up to your ideals,” he said. More than that, Ty knew in his heart that he was human. Medicine was a human profession. He made mistakes. All doctors made mistakes. The lapses arrived unannounced. They came in broad daylight, hidden from view by hubris or pride or ignorance or stubbornness. They arrived in the shadows, creeping behind inattention or distraction or fatigue. The medical errors were always there, waiting for their moment, waiting for human frailty.
After Quinn McDaniel died, Ty wanted to be forgiven for his deadly error in judgment. He thought forgiveness would make things right. If he could receive forgiveness from Quinn’s mother and his peers, he thought, that would be the first step to righting his wrong.
More than forgiveness, Ty had wanted to redeem himself. He wanted to do something that would somehow compensate for what he had done. Part of him realized that simply wasn’t possible, and he froze. Doubt consumed him. No effort could undo what he had done. All he could do—all anyone could do—was learn from mistakes and move on—becoming a better doctor in the process, and hopefully teaching countless other doctors to do the same.
S
ung Park was sitting on the porch telling Pat stories about Villanueva. The rare laughter she displayed during their romantic dinner now occurred almost every day. “He was at all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet,” Sung was saying. “He ate so much the owner come from kitchen and kick him out of restaurant.” They both started laughing. “But he was very special man. Whenever he go to restaurant, he always look around the room and pay for at least one table of people he didn’t know.” Pat smiled.
“I love you Sung, and I love that you remember your friend that way.”
S
ydney walked into her new office and saw the picture Hooten had left behind. She picked it up and dusted it off. She stared hard at Hooten, and mouthed,
Thank you, Boss, for everything.
S
ydney sat down in the chair Harding Hooten had occupied for as long as she had been at the hospital. The cream-colored walls were bare, with nail holes where the framed photographs had hung, each marking a milestone in Hooten’s personal and professional life. Hooten as chief resident. Hooten with President Clinton when he had visited the hospital. Hooten with his son in his high school graduation cap and gown. And so on. Where the pictures had been, the paint was a little brighter. The sun hadn’t hit those spots, and the effect was odd, almost unsettling. A pattern of rectangles marked the walls on either side of Sydney, like ghosts of Harding Hooten’s career. Sydney remembered reading how the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki vaporized some of the victims, leaving only a shadow on the wall behind them.
The shadow of Harding Hooten fell over Sydney Saxena as she occupied his seat. She idolized the man. When she’d first overhead a doctor describing the careless mistake that precipitated his retirement, she did not believe it. She thought it was a joke. Then a malicious rumor. A man with such exacting standards would not, could not make such a colossal blunder. But he had. It was a warning, a cautionary tale to her, to all the surgeons. Everyone was fallible. Even the great Harding Hooten.
When Sydney arrived at the office, maintenance was already there, changing the locks on the desks. They handed her the two shiny keys on a small, round ring and left her with a paint wheel, promising to paint the office as soon as she picked a color. Sydney felt like a traitor, an apostate in the cult of Harding Hooten. As stunned as she was to hear of Hooten’s professional fall from grace, she was more surprised she had been chosen as his successor.
The day was full of surprises. On a whim, she had stopped by the playground she usually only frequented on her birthday and felt for the first time in her adult life a pang of desire to have children. This revelation shocked her even more than her being named to succeed Hooten. After all, she fully expected to become chief of surgery. That was something she was working toward. It was a promotion she saw in her future. She just thought she would have to wait another decade before it became a reality. Wanting to have children was a real stunner, but as she watched the love between the mothers and daughters she realized she wanted that for herself. She pictured herself seated on one of the benches, thrilled for each new accomplishment, consoling after a fall, offering snacks. Out of the blue, Sydney felt that she was ready for the whole package.