The Shadow Wife

Dr. Shire took Betsy’s blood pressure and reported the numbers to the group. Then he straightened up to his full, lanky height and motioned toward the door of the room.

“All right,” he said, “let’s move on. We’re running late today.”

Carlynn froze. They couldn’t leave. Not yet.

“Dr. Shire?” she asked as the students began to walk past her. “May I listen to her lungs for a moment?”

He hesitated, and the other students waited for him to say they didn’t have time, but the doctor studied her, an odd, inquisitive expression in his eyes, and she did not turn away.

“Yes, Miss Kling, you may.”

There was a groan from some of the students, but Dr. Shire moved close to the patient again as Carlynn approached the head of Betsy’s bed. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. What mattered right now was the life of this little girl.

Carlynn smiled at the youngster, hungry to touch her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she reached for the girl’s hands instead of for her own stethoscope.

“Hi, Betsy,” she said. “I’m going to listen to your heart and your lungs, but first I wanted to talk to you for a moment.”

Oh, it was hard to send her energy when she was so aware of the men behind her! Each of those young men would have simply moved toward Betsy, stethoscope in hand, leaning over the child without making eye contact with her, concentrating on the bruits and rubs they would hear through the cold metal disk. If she had her own way, if she could design her intervention any way she liked, she would spend a long time talking with a patient, then a long time touching them. But with Dr. Shire and the students at her back, she did not have the luxury of time. So she struggled to do both: talk and heal.

Betsy was with her, though. Everyone else in the room might have been a million miles away, but Betsy was right there. Her gaze, previously vacuous, now locked onto Carlynn’s eyes, and her delicate damp hands relaxed in her gentle grasp.

“What do you want to talk about?” Betsy asked in a small, hoarse voice.

“About how strong you are.” Carlynn expected to hear Dr. Shire interrupt her at any moment, but she continued, smiling at the girl. “You’re very strong. Even though you are quite sick, you still have the strength to ask me what I want to talk about. You’re an amazing and very brave girl.” She kept her eyes glued to Betsy’s, glad the students and Dr. Shire could not see the intensity of the shared gaze. She didn’t want to let go of the child’s clammy little hands. Any minute Dr. Shire would tell her she was wasting time, but she tried not to think about that.

“You have warm and pretty hands,” she said. She heard the students stir behind her and imagined they, too, were waiting, hoping, Dr. Shire would interrupt her so they could get on their way. “I’d like to listen to your lungs now,” Carlynn said. “Would that be all right with you?”

Betsy nodded and, with some effort, rolled onto her side, accustomed to the drill. Carlynn rested her stethoscope against the child’s back, but it was merely for show. She placed her hand flat over the disk, her other hand on the girl’s rib cage, just above her stomach. Closing her eyes, she breathed, imagining every molecule of her breath flowing through her hands and into the child. She held the position as long as she could without attracting any more attention than she already had from those behind her. As soon as she stood up, she almost keeled over from a sudden weakness in her own body, and she could not help but smile. The weakness was telltale: she had made a difference in this little girl’s condition.

“Feel better, sweetheart,” she said, resting her hand lightly on Betsy’s head. Then she turned away, ignoring the looks from her fellow students.

Dr. Shire cleared his throat. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s move on.”

Carlynn was last to leave the room. She looked back at Betsy, whose eyes were still on her, and smiled at the little girl, as though they shared a secret. In a way, they did.

Later that afternoon, Dr. Shire paged her over the hospital intercom. It was the first time she had heard herself paged, and it took her a minute to realize that it was her name ringing out through the corridors of SF General.

“Miss Kling,” Dr. Shire said when she called him on the phone in response to the page. “Do you have a moment to meet me in the cafeteria for a cup of coffee?”

It was an odd invitation, and she swallowed hard, wondering what sort of reprimand he would give her for her behavior in Betsy’s room earlier. “Yes,” she said. “I can be there in a few minutes.”

He was waiting for her in the corner of the doctors’ cafeteria, two cups of coffee on the table in front of him.

“Cream or sugar?” he asked, rising as she approached the table. He was being remarkably kind for someone about to chew her out.

“Black,” she said, although she wasn’t much of a coffee drinker. She knew this meeting was not about coffee, anyway.