silvertons:
In order to do this audit, I’ve had to look at Paige’s file. Her insurance lapsed. She was kicked off her plan earlier this year. Last month, she bounced two checks to Dr. Kiel. Of late, she’s been charging her treatments to a credit card. Teriflunomide. She has to have it, but it is expensive. Hmm. Non-negotiable in every sense. So now you see the two parts to my malaise. Drudgery and sympathy.
silvertons:
You should be in the hospital right now. Told you there isn’t time. Besides, what’s the point of living with a former surgeon if she can’t stitch the occasional bullet hole? The muscle in your shoulder is shredded, okay? You need to be treated for the pain.
silvertons:
Why do you keep doing that? Doing what? Worrying that I’m thinking about some other job. This is my job. This is what I do.
silvertons:
I’m proud of him, okay? You’re proud of a man that fired into a group of people? I mean, not him exactly. The work I did. The surgery you performed? The night he was shot, I dug two .38s out of his arm, another two out of his thigh. The fifth was in his chest, and his lungs were filling with blood. I got a tube in, but the place was a circus, so I almost missed the muffled heart tones, the distended vein in his neck. His pericardium was filling with blood, too. I mean, it happens to maybe 2% of patients, but even a hole the size of a pin prick can flood it. I remember inserting the needle into his chest. You go too deep, you risk puncturing the heart itself. But then I heard this pop when I got to the membrane, and then I started to draw the blood away. A few minutes later he was stable enough for surgery. I found the .38 lodged inside the wall of his bronchus. And that was that. I stitched him up, and ten days later he was transferred to a prison ward for recovery. Usually when I think back to those days, I don’t feel great. But seeing Shinwell yesterday, it made me feel good.
