Do No Harm

Someone rapped on the door. "Be there in a minute!" David said. He turned back to Don. "Then wait to eat, or if the agony is too much for you to bear, come get me, and I'll take care of dealing with the family members."

"That man just lost his son. Do you really think my not eating a hot dog is going to make things easier for him? I doubt he even noticed." He crossed his arms. "Look, you brought a bunch of shit down on yourself lately. The press is beating you up. The board's on your ass. Don't take it out on me. This is preposterous."

"No, Don. It's shitty care."

"You are always on my ass. What are you worried about? Do you think if I'm gone for an extra ten minutes, or I'm eating a hot dog, that someone's gonna sue your precious department?" He shook his head. "Well, rest assured. Everything I do can hold up in a court of law."

"Since when is that the gauge by which we judge our level of treatment?"

Don did not respond. On his way out, David grabbed a roll of gauze from the counter and tossed it at him. "You have mustard on your lip," he said.

He found the man sitting stunned in a chair in the lobby, people bustling around him in all directions. His face had reddened and he was breathing hard, as though fighting down a panic attack.

David crouched and looked up into his face. "Mr. Henderson? Robert Henderson?"

The man's eyes flickered, but there was no look of recognition in his face.

"Why don't you come back with me for a minute?" David said. "We can find a private room."

With a hand in the small of Henderson's back, David guided him back to Fourteen. The sleeves of Henderson's yellow Carhartt jacket extended down over hard, calloused hands. A white outline, the shape of a tin of tobacco dip, had been worn into the back pocket of his jeans.

Henderson sat on the bed, paper crinkling beneath his legs. He turned his hands over before his eyes, as if checking to see if they were real. His face, slightly sunburned, was wrinkled beyond its years from hours spent working outside. His face quivered, as though he were about to cry, then stiffened again. David sensed that Henderson did not cry very often.

David slowly became aware of his own discomfort in the face of Henderson's suffering. He was inadequate at this-the comforting. As a diagnostician, as a technician, as a scientist, he was exceptional, but in this department he was lacking. There was nothing for him to do-no action to take, no medicine to administer, no test to run. If these past few days had driven anything home, it was the fact that people suffer from events beyond their control. Often, they make all the right choices and suffer anyway. Again, he found himself wishing Diane were here to console Henderson.

"Kevin was gonna be the first one on my side of the family to graduate college," the father said. "Was making good grades too. His mom's been working double shifts to help pay. I been trying too-to work steady. He was a good kid. A good fucking kid." He swiped angrily at a tear with his cuff. "Don't know how I'm gonna tell his mom."

"Do you live with her?" David asked.

Henderson shook his head. "She's up in Seattle. Remarried."

"Would you like me to call?"

Henderson shook his head. "I should do it." He sighed, puffing out his cheeks. "You have kids?"

"No."

"Well, if you do, have mean ones. Good kids, good kids are the ones that die. You get a fuckup like me, I'm gonna live forever." He lowered his eyes into the fork of his thumb and index finger. "That kid was the best thing I ever did in my life. I hope I told him. I hope I told him enough."

David sat quietly, uncomfortably. "I don't know a single person who gets everything said to those they love. It sounds like you said so much more than most of us do." His pager went off-a text message to pick up a package at Sandy's office-and he felt a quick flare of necessity. His desire to leave Henderson to jump back on Clyde's trail shamed him. He turned off the pager and sat with Henderson for a few minutes, glad he had chosen to remain.

"You have to go?" Henderson asked.

"No."

Henderson lowered his shoulders, his hands twitching on his knees. Receptive. Needing. He looked up at David, his face starting to come apart. "Can I?"

David moved over and embraced him, and Henderson keened openly for a while. It took him a few moments to raise his head again, then David sat by his side, the stain of Henderson's tears drying on the front of his coat. The two men stared at the wall.