Coma

Susan inspected her clothes in the light. She noticed that the man across from her was staring at her. And the woman next to him was doing the same. In fact as Susan’s eyes moved around the car, she realized that everyone was staring at her as if she was some sort of freak. The eyes and the faces were unbearable. She tried to look outside as the train crossed the Longfellow Bridge. Still there was no conversation.

Everyone was watching her fixedly.

The train pulled into Charles Street. With great relief Susan jumped off the car and ran down the platform. In front of the Phillips Drugstore she caught a cab. Only then did she begin to calm down. Looking at her hands, she realized she was visibly trembling.

Wednesday, February 25, 1:30 P.M.

By one-thirty in the afternoon, Bellows had already had a full day by most people’s standards. He wasn’t physically tired, because he was well accustomed to his schedule. But he was emotionally tired, on edge. The day had begun auspiciously enough when he had awakened with Susan still at his side. He had enjoyed their evening together immensely, although he was doubtful about the potential longevity of their affair. Susan was hardly the type of girl he was accustomed to escape with. She had none of that wide-eyed feminine naiveté which formed the basis of Bellows’s idea of women. To his pleasant surprise, and despite his fears, sex had come naturally with Susan, although for him it was without the aggressive overtones he had learned to recognize as normal. Susan, and his own response to her, remained an absorbing enigma.

Getting up and leaving Susan sleeping in his” bed had provided a certain comforting feeling for Bellows. It made his role more traditional. Had Susan gotten up and come to the hospital at the same time as he did, it would have diluted his sense of sacrifice. And a sense of sacrifice was important for Bellows since it served as a fertile source of inner satisfaction.

But then the day had deteriorated. To Bellows’s horror, Stark had made a surprise appearance on early-morning rounds, and the chief was in a particularly vindictive mood. Stark had started rounds by asking Bellows what he had done to the attractive medical student assigned to him that made it so difficult for her to show up for rounds. Bellows had inwardly shuddered, realizing that Stark’s off-color implications were truer than Stark himself realized. For Bellows knew that at that very moment Susan lay sleeping in his bed.

Stark’s question had caused some short laughs and a few snide remarks by the others on rounds. Bellows had felt his face tingle with blood flowing through dilated capillaries. At the same time he had felt a sudden defensiveness.

Before Bellows had been given a chance to say anything, Stark had launched into a tirade about attendance and interest, performance, and reward. He had essentially told Bellows that any future absence by Susan would be debited to Bellows’s own record. Bellows was to make it his personal goal to see that all the students assigned to him performed exemplarily.

During actual rounds Stark had been as nasty as ever, particularly toward Bellows. In almost every case Bellows had been asked some difficult question and his answers never satisfied the irate chief. Even some of the other residents had realized that Bellows was being raked over the coals and they had tried to interfere by answering questions even when the questions were clearly directed at Bellows.

At the end of rounds, Stark had called Bellows aside to tell him that he was not performing up to his usual level, nor to the department’s expectations. Finally Stark had gotten around to what was really bothering him. After a rather lengthy pause, the Chief of Surgery had asked Bellows exactly what role he had played with respect to the drugs found in locker 338.

Bellows had denied any knowledge whatsoever of the drugs, except what Chandler had told him. Bellows had told Stark directly that he had used locker 338 for about one week before his permanent locker came available. Stark’s only comment to this information had been that he wanted the affair cleaned up in short order.

For Bellows, even being remotely related to such a situation caused him a disproportionate amount of anxiety. His horribly compulsive mentality magnified the whole affair out of proportion. His tendency toward professional paranoia began to feed on itself and, as the morning passed, his anxiety had waxed rather than waned.

Bellows operated on two cases himself that morning, allowing the students to come into the OR. On the first case, Goldberg and Fairweather had scrubbed, more to wet their hands than actually to help.

On the second case, Carpin and Niles had scrubbed. Bellows had been particularly careful and encouraging for Niles and it had paid off. There had been no fainting episodes. In fact, Niles had turned out to be the most dexterous of the students and had been allowed to close the skin.