Oxygen Read Online Free Page B

power against the hospital’s rigid budget.
     
    My second case takes longer than expected, and we are an hour-and-a-half behind schedule by the time I greet my third patient. He is a sixty-three-year-old Starbucks executive with newly diagnosed lymphoma, and Stevenson is placing a catheter into the vena cava so he can be treated without the scorching infusion of chemotherapeutic drugs through the smaller veins on his hands and arms. When I meet him in the pre-op area he seems cool and stone-faced, giving me almost curt answers to my questions. I inject a milligram of sedation into his IV and the mask melts into a plea for consolation and hope, a stalling narrative about his newest granddaughter. The extra minutes have got Stevenson pacing in the operating room as he waits for me to bring the patient in. Now Stevenson’s getting testy and he barks at the radiology technician who is helping out, then mutters an apology under his breath, more for himself than the intimidated young woman. His impatience pervades the room, and even Mindy and Alicia stop trying to humor him.
    As soon as my patient is asleep I start getting fresh medications and equipment ready for the pediatric case to follow. A child needs more precise drug dosing than an adult; the margin for error is less forgiving, so I dilute the drugs into larger volumes and lower concentrations. Pediatric tubes and scopes and IVs and oxygen masks are all scaled smaller, reminding me of the dollhouses I played with in childhood with their tiny tables and kitchen stoves, their minuscule pans and dishes. The door swings open behind me and Joe walks into the room. He leans across my anesthesia cart on folded arms, his knotted blue veins branching over ruddy freckled hands. I sense Alicia pause in her concentration when she sees him—he has that effect on women.
    “Hey. My pancreatectomy got canceled so I’m done. You need a quick break before I go? Coffee in the lounge is only three hours old.” Joe has a way of making everything he says sound mildly humorous. If you don’t know him very well it’s easy to miss his sober side. He has a slight amblyopia, and when he is tired I catch his right eye drifting off center, like he is seeing the world from two points of view. Somehow it only compounds his charm—a detail of vulnerability women love.
    “I’m fine. Brad’s supposed to be able to get me a lunch break. You should sleep—seems like you’re always at the hospital these days.”
    “My contractor just gave me the bid for my kitchen—I asked Will for extra call. Not like there’s much to race home to.”
    “Where’s Claire? Is she complaining about your domestic indifference again?”
    “Like all my women.” He winks. “Don’t give me that wily smile.”
    “I’m not! I swear.” I clap a hand up over my mask.
    “You’re thinking about it, though.”
    “You need a dog, Joe. Something loyal and warm to sleep next to you every night.”
    This gets him laughing, and under the harsh white operating room lights the wrinkles around his eyes crease all the way to his hairline. Some men really do look better as they age, though I detect Joe’s feeling edgy about growing older. People rib him about being too cavalier, even in the OR, but he’s a dedicated doctor. It’s one of the reasons I like him so much. He put himself through medical school twenty years ago by working in a research lab at night, and he still drives himself relentlessly. He bought an Italian racing bike on a whim, and I teased him about how much it was going to cost him per mile ridden. The next weekend he rode from downtown Seattle up to Paradise Lodge on Mount Rainier and back again.
    Stevenson snaps at me to wedge a rolled towel under the patient’s back—he’s having trouble getting the catheter into the vessel—and I have to dive under the surgical drapes to lift the shoulders and head.
    Joe hands me a folded towel and whispers, “What’s got him so agitated?”
    “We’re