had been found, onward ) . The catheter had been installed, Fatima had explained, “in case doctors want plasma transfusion. Line ready to go. No problem.”
Watching the doctor mess with his pen, Alice felt the urge to swing her feet, kick up her hot pink socks. Her boots were off so that a second nurse—Requita?—had been able to get an accurate weight. Her socks remained on so Alice’s bare feet wouldn’t come into contact with anything germish. Besides, the exam room was chilly.
“Are you okay?” asked Eisenstatt. “I know it’s been a long day. Maybe some water?”
A rustling behind them, Requita began searching for a paper cup. Now the nurse left the room. At the same time a new woman entered, middle-aged, frizzy-haired Hispanic, unfortunately jammed into a tightly fitting, generic-looking blouse and slack set. She handed Eisenstatt a functional and spiffy-looking felt-tipped pen from her own overcrowded breast pocket. Alice double-checked the laminated hospital ID dangling from that bright purple strap—Dantelle? Yes, Dantelle. She’d come in before. A nurse-practitioner, a kind of cross between doctor and nurse. She’d gone over Alice’s history, sympathized with Alice about childcare, hadn’t been condescending or overboard.
“Water would be wonderful,” Alice said. “Thank you, Doctor.”
Near the elevated cupboards and shelves in the back of the room the final member of this gathering lingered: an attractive Indian woman, almost as tall as Eisenstatt, but willowy in a manner common to Alice’s world, with lustrous long hair, hot-ironed to fashionable straightness, and cords in her neck from too much working out. Dr. Bhakti was a visiting fellow, training to specialize in cancer treatment. She’d been in earlier, introducing herself and going over cursory bone marrow transplant information. She’d also sized up Alice’s outfit. Her glance might have been innocuous; still, Alice had noticed.
At the moment, Bhakti was sitting on the edge of a counter, filing her nails. Her boots were the second pair to capture Alice’s fancy this morning—confirmation that someone needed to get herself new boots.
“We straightened out the problem with your slides.” Eisenstatt read with medium interest from Alice’s file. “So that’s progress.” He flipped a page on the clipboard. “Everything indicates Dartmouth-Hitchcock did an excellent job. Getting you here to this stage was no small achievement. But there are still a few matters that I’d like to review. Can we go back and begin with the first symptoms, before you—”
“The nurse didn’t write that down?” Oliver asked. “None of the three other people who took her history got what you want?”
“I don’t mean to be difficult,” Alice said. “We’re grateful to be here. But we seem to keep going over information your staff asked me ages ago.”
Eisenstatt tipped his forehead, the nineteenth-century gentleman conceding a thorny point. “It’s maddening. You’re going to get a lot of it. Standard medical procedure. We go over things repeatedly. This is our thinking: it’s possible you’ll remember something that deviates from what the nurse heard. You might add a detail that adds to Dr. Bhakti’s understanding of this case. Each time a staff member or doctor hears your story, it gives us a chance to consult with one another, and hear everything fresh in our own ears. It’s an inconvenience for you, I know—”
Dating back to the night of her admission to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, continuing all the way through the morning of her release, Alice had tracked her blood cell counts; she’d made it her business to memorize the names of the nurses, personalize herself to the nursing assistants. Here at Whitman, for the umpteenth time, she was more than capable of verifying that, upon her admittance to DHMC, she’d been given two drugs, Zithromax and ceftazidime, for her pneumonia. (“Lower left lobe,” Alice remembered.
Watching the doctor mess with his pen, Alice felt the urge to swing her feet, kick up her hot pink socks. Her boots were off so that a second nurse—Requita?—had been able to get an accurate weight. Her socks remained on so Alice’s bare feet wouldn’t come into contact with anything germish. Besides, the exam room was chilly.
“Are you okay?” asked Eisenstatt. “I know it’s been a long day. Maybe some water?”
A rustling behind them, Requita began searching for a paper cup. Now the nurse left the room. At the same time a new woman entered, middle-aged, frizzy-haired Hispanic, unfortunately jammed into a tightly fitting, generic-looking blouse and slack set. She handed Eisenstatt a functional and spiffy-looking felt-tipped pen from her own overcrowded breast pocket. Alice double-checked the laminated hospital ID dangling from that bright purple strap—Dantelle? Yes, Dantelle. She’d come in before. A nurse-practitioner, a kind of cross between doctor and nurse. She’d gone over Alice’s history, sympathized with Alice about childcare, hadn’t been condescending or overboard.
“Water would be wonderful,” Alice said. “Thank you, Doctor.”
Near the elevated cupboards and shelves in the back of the room the final member of this gathering lingered: an attractive Indian woman, almost as tall as Eisenstatt, but willowy in a manner common to Alice’s world, with lustrous long hair, hot-ironed to fashionable straightness, and cords in her neck from too much working out. Dr. Bhakti was a visiting fellow, training to specialize in cancer treatment. She’d been in earlier, introducing herself and going over cursory bone marrow transplant information. She’d also sized up Alice’s outfit. Her glance might have been innocuous; still, Alice had noticed.
At the moment, Bhakti was sitting on the edge of a counter, filing her nails. Her boots were the second pair to capture Alice’s fancy this morning—confirmation that someone needed to get herself new boots.
“We straightened out the problem with your slides.” Eisenstatt read with medium interest from Alice’s file. “So that’s progress.” He flipped a page on the clipboard. “Everything indicates Dartmouth-Hitchcock did an excellent job. Getting you here to this stage was no small achievement. But there are still a few matters that I’d like to review. Can we go back and begin with the first symptoms, before you—”
“The nurse didn’t write that down?” Oliver asked. “None of the three other people who took her history got what you want?”
“I don’t mean to be difficult,” Alice said. “We’re grateful to be here. But we seem to keep going over information your staff asked me ages ago.”
Eisenstatt tipped his forehead, the nineteenth-century gentleman conceding a thorny point. “It’s maddening. You’re going to get a lot of it. Standard medical procedure. We go over things repeatedly. This is our thinking: it’s possible you’ll remember something that deviates from what the nurse heard. You might add a detail that adds to Dr. Bhakti’s understanding of this case. Each time a staff member or doctor hears your story, it gives us a chance to consult with one another, and hear everything fresh in our own ears. It’s an inconvenience for you, I know—”
Dating back to the night of her admission to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, continuing all the way through the morning of her release, Alice had tracked her blood cell counts; she’d made it her business to memorize the names of the nurses, personalize herself to the nursing assistants. Here at Whitman, for the umpteenth time, she was more than capable of verifying that, upon her admittance to DHMC, she’d been given two drugs, Zithromax and ceftazidime, for her pneumonia. (“Lower left lobe,” Alice remembered.
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