rapist, we’re now closed to trauma. He’ll deplete our blood bank, take up nursing hours, OR staff time, and—because my team is just that good, he’ll make it out of the OR to tie up our last ICU bed, probably for days. All for nothing. Because you know as well as I do, he was down too damn long.”
Leah barely heard the last half of his harangue; she was caught on one word. “Rapist?” Rapist? The police officer had said something during the trauma about letting the kid die, but Leah had been too focused on saving his life to listen. “I thought he was the victim—”
“Surprised you had time to think, so busy raising Lazarus. Cops tell you how he got stabbed? Attacking a girl in a parking lot—had the knife on her but a good Samaritan came along, jumped him.”
“I—I didn’t know.” Leah still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that the kid was a rapist. He was so damn young. She remembered when they’d cut off his clothes, he’d had rolls of baby fat, his pale skin marred by acne. God, what a waste. The elation of triumphing over death was replaced by a sinking feeling deep in her gut. She swallowed hard then faced Toussaint, chin up, refusing to be cowed. She’d done the right thing. “Doesn’t matter who he was or what he was doing when he got injured. My job is to care for each patient the best I—”
“Your problem?” He steamrolled over her words. “Is that you think small. Don’t see the bigger picture. You should’ve thought about what bringing him back from the dead would cost everyone. Should’ve declared him, then maybe we could have saved some lives with his organs. Least then the kid’s life would’ve been worth something.” Toussaint came from an older generation of surgeons and seemed to think that his own hardscrabble climb out of the South Bronx gave him the right to preside as judge and jury over his patients—along with the other medical professionals who treated them.
Leah’s posture grew rigid at his challenge. “You’d just let him die? Because of what he’s accused of doing?”
“No. Not because of his crimes.” He shook his head. “Because I have to think of everyone’s best interests. Including that kid and his family—the quality of life he’ll have. Or not have. You know as well as I do. Kid has zero chance of recovery. We don’t have the resources to waste.”
“I’m not a bean counter—”
“Little comfort to the next poor slob we have to turn away because we’re too busy keeping your miracle-boy alive.” His phone rang. “Yeah, I’m on my way.” He hung up. “Got to get to the OR, finish what you started. I’ll see you at next week’s Morbidity and Mortality conference where you’ll be justifying your actions.” He pulled the door open. “You really should think about taking that job at the Crisis Intervention Center. Plenty of lost causes to fight without endangering innocent lives.” Satisfied that he’d had the last word, he flapped his white coat around him as he whirled, strutting away like a bantam rooster.
Leah stared after him. The weekly Morbidity and Mortality conference gathered the medical staff to discuss cases where things went wrong in the hopes of preventing similar incidents. It was meant to be a peer-teaching event but occasionally deteriorated into a public shaming.
She left the trauma room, not making eye contact with anyone, certain her cheeks were blazing red after Toussaint’s accusations. She reached the nurses’ station, where she eyed the triage queue. Not bad for Valentine’s Day—whoever created a mandatory date night holiday in the middle of February had never spent a winter in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. Luckily the weather was clear tonight, no snow in the forecast for another day or two. She glanced at the clock: seven past eight. “Nancy, I’m taking five.”
“Tell Emily I say hi,” the charge nurse replied. The ER staff always tried to free Leah for her good-night call to Emily—her own prescription for self-care to get her through a twelve-hour shift. “What did Ian get you for V-day?”
“No idea. He said it’d be a surprise.”
Nancy and Jamil, the ward clerk, exchanged glances. “Oil change. Same as last year.”
“I hope so,” Leah said. “I hate having to deal with that stuff, especially in winter.”
She headed toward the ER’s back hallway and used her ID badge to key herself into the office she shared with three other attendings. She quickly