“He can’t breathe,” the nurse said.
“Suction him,” Paige ordered. As she watched the patient begin to catch his breath, she heard her name again on the PA system. “Dr. Taylor … Ward Four. Ward Four.” Paige shook her head and ran down to Ward Four, to a screaming patient with abdominal spasms. Paige gave him a quick examination. “It could be intestinal dysfunction. Get an ultrasound,” Paige said.
By the time she returned to the patient with the broken leg, the pain reliever had taken effect. She had him moved to the operating room and set the leg. As she was finishing, she heard her name again. “Dr. Taylor, report to Emergency Room Two. Stat.”
“The stomach ulcer in Ward Four is having a pain …”
At 3:30 A.M.: “Dr. Taylor, the patient in Room 310 is hemorrhaging …”
There was a heart attack in one of the wards, and Paige was nervously listening to the patient’s heartbeat when she heard her name called over the PA system: “Dr. Taylor … ER Two. Stat … Dr. Taylor … ER Two. Stat.”
I must not panic, Paige thought. I’ve got to remain calm and cool. She panicked. Who was more important, the patient she was examining, or the next patient? “You stay here,” she said inanely. “I’ll be right back.”
As Paige hurried toward ER Two, she heard her name called again. “Dr. Taylor … ER One. Stat … Dr. Taylor … ER One. Stat.”
Oh, my God! Paige thought. She felt as though she were caught up in the middle of some endless terrifying nightmare.
During what was left of the night, Paige was awakened to attend to a case of food poisoning, a broken arm, a hiatal hernia, and a fractured rib. By the time she stumbled back into the on-call room, she was so exhausted that she could hardly move. She crawled onto the little cot and had just started to doze off when the telephone rang again.
She reached out for it with her eyes closed. “H’lo …”
“Dr. Taylor, we’re waiting for you.”
“Wha’?” She lay there, trying to remember where she was.
“Your rounds are starting, doctor.”
“My rounds?” This is some kind of bad joke, Paige thought. It’s inhuman. They can’t work anyone like this! But they were waiting for her.
Ten minutes later, Paige was making the rounds again, half asleep. She stumbled against Dr. Radnor. “Excuse me,” she mumbled, “but I haven’t had any sleep …”
He patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. “You’ll get used to it.”
When Paige finally got off duty, she slept for fourteen straight hours.
The intense pressure and punishing hours proved to be too much for some of the residents, and they simply disappeared from the hospital. That’s not going to happen to me, Paige vowed.
The pressure was unrelenting. At the end of one of Paige’s shifts, thirty-six grueling hours, she was so exhausted that she had no idea where she was. She stumbled to the elevator and stood there, her mind numb.
Tom Chang came up to her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Paige mumbled.
He grinned. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks. Why do they do this to us?” Paige asked.
Chang shrugged. “The theory is that it keeps us in touch with our patients. If we go home and leave them, we don’t know what’s happening to them while we’re gone.”
Paige nodded. “That makes sense.” It made no sense at all. “How can we take care of them if we’re asleep on our feet?”
Chang shrugged again. “I don’t make the rules. It’s the way all hospitals operate.” He looked at Paige more closely. “Are you going to be able to make it home?”
Paige looked at him and said haughtily, “Of course.”
“Take care.” Chang disappeared down the corridor.
Paige waited for the elevator to arrive. When it finally came, she was standing there, sound asleep.
Two days later, Paige was having breakfast with Kat.
“Do you want to hear a terrible confession?” Paige asked. “Sometimes when they wake me up at four o’clock in the morning to give somebody an aspirin, and I’m stumbling down the hall, half conscious, and I pass the rooms where all the patients are tucked in and having a good night’s sleep, I feel like banging on all the doors and yelling, ‘Everybody wake up!’ ”
Kat held out her hand. “Join the club.”
The patients came in all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors. They were frightened, brave, gentle, arrogant, demanding, considerate. They were human beings in pain.
Most of the doctors were dedicated people. As in any profession, there were good doctors and bad doctors. They were young and old, clumsy and adept, pleasant and nasty. A few of them, at one time or another, made sexual advances to Paige. Some were subtle and some were crude.
“Don’t you ever feel lonely at night? I know that I do. I was wondering …”
“These hours are murder, aren’t they? Do you know what I find gives me energy? Good sex. Why don’t we …?”
“My wife is out of town for a few days. I have a cabin near Carmel. This weekend we could …”
And the patients.
“So you’re my doctor, eh? You know what would cure me …?”
“Come closer to the bed, baby. I want to see if those are real …”
Paige gritted her teeth and ignored them all. When Alfred and I are married, this will stop. And just the thought of Alfred gave her a glow. He would be returning from Africa soon. Soon.
At breakfast one morning before rounds, Paige and Kat talked about the sexual harassment they were experiencing.
“Most of the doctors behave like perfect gentlemen, but a few of them seem to think we’re perks that go with the territory, and that we’re there to service them,” Kat said. “I don’t think a week goes by but what one of the doctors hits on me. ‘Why don’t you come over to my place for a drink? I’ve got some great CDs.’ Or in the OR, when I’m assisting, the surgeon will brush his arm across my breast. One moron said to me, ‘You know, whenever I order chicken, I like the dark meat.’ ”
Paige sighed. “They think they’re flattering us by treating us as sex objects. I’d rather they treated us as doctors.”
“A lot of them don’t even want us around. They either want to fuck us or they want to fuck us. You know, it’s not fair. Women are judged inferior until we prove ourselves, and men are judged superior until they prove what assholes they are.”
“It’s the old boys’ network,” Paige said. “If there were more of us, we could start a new girls’ network.”
Paige had heard of Arthur Kane. He was the subject of constant gossip around the hospital. His nickname was Dr. 007—licensed to kill. His solution to every problem was to operate, and he had a higher rate of operations than any other doctor at the hospital. He also had a higher mortality rate.
He was bald, short, hawk-nosed, with tobacco-stained teeth, and was grossly overweight. Incredibly, he fancied himself a ladies’ man. He liked to refer to the new nurses and female residents as “fresh meat.”
Paige Taylor was fresh meat. He saw her in the upstairs lounge and sat down at her table, uninvited.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”