Coma

These were the private offices for some of the more established doctors at the Memorial. A few patients were scattered along the corridor, reading and waiting. They all looked up as Susan passed. Their faces were uniformly expressionless.

At the end of the corridor Susan passed the office of the Chief of Surgery, Dr. H. Stark. The door was ajar, and inside Susan caught a glimpse of two secretaries typing furiously. Just beyond Stark’s office and on the other side of the corridor was a second stairwell. At the very end of the corridor, over two swinging mahogany doors an illuminated sign proclaimed: “Conference in Progress.”

Susan entered the conference room, letting the doors close quietly behind her. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, since the room lights were out. The focal point of light at the end of the room was the projected image of a Kodachrome of a human lung. Susan could just make out the outline of a man with a pointer describing the details of the photograph.

From the gloom in the foreground Susan began to discern the rows of seats and their occupants. The room was about thirty feet wide and some fifty feet long. There was a gentle downward slope of the floor to the podium, which was raised by two steps. The projection equipment was professionally hidden from view. The projected beam of light, however, was visible throughout its entire path due to the swirls of cigarette and pipe smoke. Even in the darkness Susan could tell that the conference room was new, well designed, and sumptuously appointed.

The next color slide was a microscopic section, and it provided relatively more light in the room. Susan was able to pick out the back of Niles’s head with its prominent lump. He was sitting in an aisle seat. She walked down to the proper row and tapped Niles on the shoulder. Susan could see that they had saved a seat for her. She had to squeeze past Niles and Fairweather before she could sit down. It was next to Bellows.

“Did you do a laparotomy or start an I.V.?” whispered Bellows sarcastically, leaning toward Susan. “You were gone over a half-hour.”

“It was an interesting patient,” said Susan, bracing for another lecture on punctuality.

“You can think of a better one that that, I hope.”

“To tell the truth, it was a dressing change on Robert Redford’s circumcision.” Susan pretended to be absorbed in the projected slide for a few moments. Then she looked over at Bellows, who snickered and shook his head.

“You’re too much, I ...”

Bellows was interrupted by becoming aware that the man on the podium was directing a question at him. All he heard was “... you can enlighten us on that point, Dr. Bellows, can you not?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Stark, but I did not hear the question,” said Bellows, mildly flustered.

“Has she shown any signs of pneumonia?” repeated Stark. A large X-ray of a chest with the right side clouded silhouetted Stark’s thin figure on the podium. His features could not be seen.

A fellow resident sitting directly behind Bellows, leaned forward and whispered for Bellows’s benefit, “He’s talking about Greenly, you asshole.”

“Well,” coughed Bellows, rising to his feet. “She did have a low-grade temperature elevation yesterday. However, her chest is still clear to auscultation. A chest film two days ago was normal, but we have one pending for today. There has been some bacteria in her urine and we believe that cystitis rather than pneumonitis is the cause of the temperature elevation.”

“Is that the pronoun you intended to use, Dr. Bellows?” demanded Dr.

Stark, as he walked over to the lectern, placing his hands on each side.

Susan struggled to see the man; this was the infamous and famous Chief of Surgery. But his face was still lost in shadow.

“Pronoun, sir?” intoned Bellows rather meekly and with obvious confusion.

“Pronoun. Yes, pronoun. You do know what a pronoun is, don’t you, Dr.

Bellows?”

There was a bit of scattered laughter.

“Yes, I think I do.”

“That’s better,” said Stark.

“What’s better?” persisted Bellows. As soon as he said it he wished that he hadn’t. More laughter.

“Your pronoun choice is better, Dr. Bellows. I’m getting rather tired of hearing we or some indeterminate third person singular. Part of your training as surgeons involves being able to deal with information, assimilate it, and then make a decision. When I ask a question of one of you residents, I want your opinion, not the group’s. It doesn’t mean that other people don’t contribute to the decision process but once you have made the decision, I want to hear I, not we or one.”

Stark walked a few steps from the lectern and leaned on the pointer.

“Now then, back to the care of the comatose patient. I want to stress again that you must be fully vigilant with these patients, gentlemen.

Although it can be frustrating because of the intense chronic care that is required and, perhaps, because of the grim ultimate prognosis, the rewards can be fabulous. The teaching aspect alone is priceless.