removed his gown. Then he washed his hands and face, first with hot, then cold water. After he was finished, he checked his shoes for blood and wiped them clean with a paper towel, which he always did before meeting with a patient’s family.
“They’re outside, in the waiting room,” the desk nurse, Julie, informed him. “Mother and father.”
At this late hour, the OR was practically deserted. Just a skeleton staff remained.
“She insured?” Cogan asked.
“Through the father’s company.”
“Hey, you wouldn’t have any of your famous herbal tea packets stashed away there, would you?”
The nurse smiled. “What’s in it for me?”
“I’ve got cookies.”
“What kind?”
“Homemade chocolate chip. Remember O’Dwyer, the guy who was in the fight the other night? His wife hooked me up.”
She thought about it. Then, looking inside her desk drawer, she said, “It’s your lucky night, Cogan. I’ve got apricot.”
“I’ll be back.”
He pushed a button on the wall that opened the automatic OR doors and walked through them, down the hall to where the couple was seated on a vinyl couch.
“Mr. and Mrs. Kroiter?”
They stood up anxiously. “Yes.”
“Hello, I’m Dr. Ted Cogan. I’m a surgeon. Please. Sit down.”
The couple probably would have been glad to continue standing, but Cogan was the one who wanted to sit. He’d been standing for the last two and a half hours.
“Your daughter was in a car accident,” he began. “We’re not exactly sure what happened—we don’t know what caused the accident—but the paramedics said her car jumped the curb and she hit a telephone pole.” He paused briefly to let them absorb what he said, then continued, “She came into the hospital and we realized she was bleeding internally, so we took her to the operating room. It turned out she’d ruptured her spleen, and we had to do a splenectomy. The operation was uneventful, and she’s doing very well. She has a few broken ribs and some minor cuts and scratches, but otherwise there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s on her way to the recovery room as we speak.”
“Does that mean she’s OK?” the girl’s mother asked.
Cogan looked at Mrs. Kroiter. More and more, he noticed, his initial impressions of people were rooted less in looks but in temperament. Beauty registered, certainly, but his primary concern—the first question he invariably asked himself—was, “Is this person going to be difficult?”
The couple didn’t look difficult. She was dressed in a nylon warm-up suit, purple and green, Nike—something she might wear for a quick trip to the mall or Safeway. The husband had on a jacket and tie. Business looking. Nothing flashy. Funny, Cogan thought, he prefers to face the public in his standard uniform, even at two o’clock in the morning. Mrs. Kroiter was slender, in her early forties, as was the husband. She had short hair, dark eyebrows, and blue eyes that were puffy and red, presumably from crying. The husband was bald but it didn’t hurt his looks, for he had a military air to him, good strong bone structure in his face, and blue eyes like his wife, but brighter, more alert, and seemingly more patient. One of those guys who played football in high school even though he probably shouldn’t have, he thought.
“Mrs. Kroiter,” he said, “your daughter has sustained a very serious injury, but if all goes well she should recover from it.”
“So she’s going to be OK?”
“Again, you have to understand, your daughter’s just come out of surgery. We had to remove her spleen. Everything went very well. She’s doing very well.”
The husband put his arm around the wife, who was seated next to Cogan, and extended his right hand across her. “Bill Kroiter,” he said in a deep, confident voice.
Cogan shook the hand.
“Cogan, you said your name was?”
“Yes.”
“You performed the operation?”
“That’s right.”
“The spleen, that’s an organ?”
“Yes. The spleen filters your blood and protects against bacterial infection. The body—especially the adult body—can function fine without it, but a major infection will always be a possibility. We gave your daughter an injection in the operating room to protect her from the bacteria to which she will be most susceptible, streptococcal pneumonia. She’ll have to take antibiotics until she’s twenty-one, and she’ll have to be very careful when she has a cold or feels at all fluish.”
It went like that for a while. The couple asking questions and Cogan trying to answer them as clearly and succinctly as he could. But he kept having to repeat himself. It was the same with most families. They didn’t trust you at the start