Nightbleed

I remember feeling so helpless.

A young black man came into the emergency room. I was in my first year of a general surgery residency, but not even that, a preliminary year.

My colleagues, compatriots, and comrades were international. Some of them had been in practice for over 12 years in countries where you’re a clinician before you’re a doctor. They were so experienced and I was just… a baby doctor I said, I’m a baby doctor, my senior resident might have a different plan, let’s get you started and I’ll review with them. I always said that because I was, and I hate misrepresenting my abilities.

They need to know, patients need to know who to listen to, and especially when there is a hierarchy of doctors. They need to know who is the boss doctor. And that everyone is working together in a team.

But this boy came in, maybe a man. He was a young black man and I just… it’s not the same. I worked in gang intervention, and I worked with convict crews and ex-convicts for many years in my first career fighting wildland fire. I lived in southern Georgia, my friends are black men in the Marine core, my boyfriend at the time was a black ER doctor, and I started a post-incarcerated program at my high-tech consulting company with a black activist from Oakland for social justice. A good aim, a good ideal. Something we all want. We really do. We want to connect, and to stop being angry.

It’s tough to say anything as a white woman, but I think I can say, it’s not the same. You have to care enough to make sure that the person in front of you is getting equal treatment, and equity means sometimes scraping the blinders off your own eyes.

So this boy, he just had an ingrown hair, and it had become infected, and then he needed an abscess drained. A simple surgery but they hadn’t done a good job with the wound they had been sloppy and hadn’t made sure all the bleeding was stopped before they closed the wound. And he was bleeding, that night after the surgery, and it just didn’t stop. And the ER doc tried, and I’m sure they really did down there, in the pit we called it. He told me he did and I believed him. But they couldn’t stop it. And I was called, and I tried. I tried really hard and I couldn’t stop it.

And you’re not supposed to call the senior resident. You’re supposed to hold pressure for 20 minutes, hard, and not call. And then do it again, and again and eventually it will stop. That’s what they say. And I did. 20 long minutes with this man. Who wondered why his surgery was causing bleeding and had no other medical problems, who was a college student, and just needed to stop bleeding after a simple surgery. And I saw him there, naked black butt in a sea of white towels, blood everywhere. Spotted on the sheets and on his clothes and on the towels and the bed, and by then it was also on me.

And I looked at him, and he looked at me. And I saw all the gunshot victims who had died in Chicago last year and I thought, this is wrong. This isn’t Chicago. This man is somehow getting mistaken for someone else.

And I thought, fuck it. He is not in a shootout in downtown Chicago, he is a man thousands of miles away, who had a simple surgery, and doesn’t deserve to spend his evening in the ER begging for a simple solution. He is getting the wrong treatment. He needs a better doctor than me. And I called the senior resident on call. She was furious. She yelled at me over the phone. And I stood my ground and I insisted she come in to the hospital. I tried I said, and the ER doc tried, and he’s still bleeding. She said you didn’t try, you can’t call me for every little thing.

You didn’t try. You need to try again she said. And I said, no, you did this operation, you need to come into the hospital and help me because I don’t know what to do and I am concerned about him. And he has bled enough. And she did.

Her anger was so hot, when she arrived. She spoke to me like a subhuman, when she arrived in the middle of the emergency room in front of all the doctors and the nurses where my patient couldn’t hear. And everyone looked at their screens and their notes and pretended they didn’t hear what a bad doctor I was. But I heard it. And it hurt.

And she went into the room and thank god she stopped the bleeding. She was crisp, and kind, and cool and she stopped it under 20 minutes. She just knew more than me, and she had a lot of tricks I had never seen and they worked. And my patient was better. He stopped bleeding. He went home. And I was so relieved, so relieved. I wanted to cry with gratitude that he was taken care of.

I hope he doesn’t remember. I hope he forgot me, and that night, and how long it took. But I remember. I remember how he was treated, and that he wasn’t supposed to be important enough to wake a senior resident in the night time. And I have to remember because six months the senior resident waited until she gave me a damning enough review to make sure I would not practice medicine again. It was not the only thing I did that pissed her off, and it was not the only reason I chose to leave, but it was the real reason she never forgave me. Because I woke her up that night and insisted that she take care of her patient. I knew it when I did it, that it was going to be bad.

Sometimes you have to choose, who you want to be. And I chose. And that was love. I loved that man. I still do. And I would do it again.

You don’t have to know someone to love them.