The Shapes of Wrath by Melissa Yi

Author:Melissa Yi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781998758029
Publisher: Windtree Press

37

May 22, 15:17

HOPE

At the computer, I tried to click the right items to get Ms. Wells set up for the OR.

Good news: he'll take care of one of our patients.

Bad news: he wants to give me "private lessons" in his office.

What should I do? Who could I tell?

"It's on this screen," said Singh, who'd appeared beside me.

"Oh! Thanks!" I said too loudly. He coached me through the clicks, but I wouldn't remember any of it.

Sexual harassment will do that to you. I've endured comments and touches outside the hospital, but not repeatedly from my own supervisor.

I felt pulled in a quadrillion directions. Who had tried to kill Dr. Burns? Who hit Mireille? How could I escape the angriest man alive yet still pass this rotation?

"You okay?" asked Singh.

After a minute, I shook my head.

"I know," he said.

Neither of us looked at each other. Then I burst out, "How can you stand it?"

His lips quivered. His eventual smile appeared with such a dead look in his eyes that I turned away again.

"I'm almost done," he said, like a mantra. He was heart-stoppingly close to finishing his five years of general surgery residency and getting the H-E-double hockey sticks out of here.

I pictured even five months with a man who'd started breaking my spirit within hours. My brain balked.

"You're a superstar," I said, and my voice broke.

He almost laughed. "If I were, I wouldn't be at this hospital."

That made me pause. "Don't general surgery residents come to St. Joe's?"

"Not in their last year."

Right. Why place your most experienced and skilled residents at a tiny, barely-part-of-the-teaching-circuit hospital, with no trauma, no transplants, no advanced cancer patients?

"What happened?" I whispered.

Singh made it simple. "He got shuffled here and he asked for me."

"Why?"

Singh shook his head instead of answering. Who knows why a madman does anything? He gazed at the patient in front of us, the one sitting up in his bed in front of the Plexiglas nursing station. "They were short here. The surgery resident went on mat leave. He said he needed the most experienced resident, and it would only be for a month."

"How long have you been here?"

"Two months. He made me transfer even before he got here himself. And I worked at UC with him nine months ago."

Creepy. Before I could ask more, Singh's pager beeped. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"To the OR. Appy's on the table, then the A case."

"Which A case?" I glanced at Ms. Wells's bed. I would have said the trauma patient came first, but no one was asking me. And I guess it was better to have one life-saving surgery than none.

"You can scrub in," Singh offered.

I smiled anemically. This whole morning, I'd been looking forward to it. Now I didn't want to stand next to Vrac in case he rubbed against me, in addition to poisoning the air with his words.

"See you in OR 3."

"For sure. Could I ask you a question? About, uh, a case at UC?" My heart fluttered. Nikki had said he was named in the lawsuit.

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