Downtown Dani Read online

  “Good luck with that.”

  Liz gives me a thumbs up as she leaves.

  With Liz gone, I quickly finish my consult note and take one last gander at Dr. Cardona’s sweet ass on my way out of the unit.

  CHAPTER 2

  As I power walk down the hallway, I assess my patient list to determine the next most pressing order of business. My multitasking is interrupted by an incoming text on my phone. It’s from Gwen, my college roommate. She just had her first baby a couple of months ago, so I haven’t heard from her in a while.

  Gwen: Emergency!

  My chest immediately tightens with dread.

  Dani: What is it? Are you and the baby ok?

  Gwen: Baby fine. I on other hand had sex for first time since delivery and felt like Manny’s penis was wrapped in low-grit sandpaper that tore out lining of vag. Hurt like a mofo! No sex EVER again if can’t fix. What should I do?

  No medical crisis here, thankfully. I wonder what would be a reasonable fee for each sex text response? Five bucks? Maybe ten? I think I could get close to doubling my meager resident’s salary at that rate.

  Dani: Are you breastfeeding?

  Gwen: Yep

  Dani: You had C-section, so no vaginal injuries from delivery. My guess – low estrogen levels from breastfeeding causing vag dryness. Very common. Try lubricant when making whoopee with hubby. Should get better with time.

  Gwen: Thanks Dr. Dani from me and Manny! He was cut off until solution found.

  Dani: Good luck!

  Just as I push the send button on my last text response, I hear a voice behind me that makes it feel like an army of tiny fire ants are attacking the skin of my neck and racing haphazardly up towards my hairline. Victor Delosi. What a prick. Unfortunately, Victor is my fellow fourth-year urology resident, and I’ve had to see and deal with him on a daily basis since the beginning of my residency four years ago.

  Victor thinks he is God’s gift to the OR, but I’m not impressed. I mean, he’s good enough to not fuck up in any obvious way, but he ain’t all that and a bag of chips. The weird thing is, pretty much everyone in the hospital acts like they are in agreement with him. He has completely pulled the wool over their eyes.

  Victor is a sly, narcissistic, master manipulator. Using his dashing good looks (even I can’t deny an objective truth) and flashing his mega-watt smile, he could sell ice to an Eskimo. He is incredibly gregarious and talks, talks, talks, and bullshits his way out of most unpalatable tasks and into the most coveted situations. In general, I try to stay above the fray and ignore him, but sometimes even I can’t refrain from throwing some counter punches to let him know that I’m not a pushover and will absolutely not be rolled over.

  Just the other day I saw the aftermath of a central line he put in a patient in the recovery room and left the debris and trash from the procedure all over the patient and bedside table. He then asked the patient’s nurse if she’d be a doll and clean it up because he had an “emergency to attend to.” Who does that? Be a big boy and pick up your own mess. To my bewilderment, the nurse said, “Yes, of course,” like she was happy to do this for him. It absolutely baffles me because if I, or any of the other urology residents, tried to get away with this (which I would never do), the nurse would tell us all to fuck off and be very justified in saying so. As a side note, five minutes later I happened to come across Victor exiting the coffee shop in the hospital lobby. Nice emergency, fuck face.

  However, from the moment I met Victor at the New York Memorial Hospital resident orientation, I could see through his smoke screen like I had magical x-ray glasses on and I know it pisses him off. Most people eat up his bologna like candy, but I am immune to his superpower of persuasion. Another reason for the underlying current of contempt for me is the fact that he is a lazy sack while I, in strict contradiction, work my ass off and show him up on a regular basis. I stay to operate on my post-call days and double scrub on late cases to get more experience. I do more research and publish more papers. I present at more conferences.

  Victor, in contrast, wants to get ahead by rubbing elbows and being best buds with everybody in the hospital. To a certain extent, he has been very successful with this approach. Everybody thinks he is the cat’s meow. If I hear one more time how great, and handsome, and funny Dr. Delosi is, I’m going to vomit in my mouth. However, I genuinely believe that what is going to get me up to the next rung on the medical ladder and make me a better doctor is putting in the time and the energy in my training now.

  It certainly doesn’t help either that Victor and I are vying for the same fellowship here with Dr. Weinhurst. He has the operating volume to accommodate two fellows each year. One spot oftentimes goes to a New York Memorial Hospital urology graduate if there is somebody from the graduating class who wants the fellowship, but never two. It’s either going to be Victor, or me, or neither of us. I have kept my nose to the grindstone these past four years and I am not going to let that charlatan cheat me out of the fellowship that I deserve. In my opinion, actions and hard work speak louder than words. Let’s hope Dr. Weinhurst thinks so too.

  “Dani, just the person I was looking for!” exclaims Victor.

  Victor has caught me in the hallway where the back entrance into the recovery room is located, which is generally sparsely populated. It’s usually a good place to step into if you need to make a private phone call. Today is no different and it’s just me and Victor alone.

  I take a deep breath before turning to face him. “Hello, Victor,” I force myself to say in a civil manner.

  “How’s your call day going so far?”

  “It’s been a blast, just like all call days,” I say with only a hint of sarcasm. “By the way, how was the urethroplasty you did this morning? You never signed the patient out to me when you finished the case.”

  “Oh man, you really missed an awesome surgery. The guy had a gnarly stricture in his bulbar urethra. It was so bad that he couldn’t urinate and he had a suprapubic tube in place to empty his bladder. We did a sweet buccal mucosal graft to repair it and the ENT attending even let me help harvest the tissue from the patient’s cheek. Too bad you’re on call today. These cases don’t come around all that often,” Victor says in a less than sincere tone knowing he is pouring salt in the wound.

  Being on call means for a full twenty-four hours you hold The Bomb, the urology pager that receives all pages directed to the urology service in the hospital. An apt name for sure. You never know what disaster it will explode with next. The sound of that pager alerts you to bad news and more work 99.99 percent of the time. As the on-call resident, you are responsible for anything that happens with the patients on our service, urgent consults from other departments in the hospital, and urologic issues in the emergency room.

  While the on-call resident takes care of all of the issues on the floor, the other urology residents get the privilege of going to the OR to assist in the urology surgeries the attendings in our department have booked for the day. That is where the real action is and the more senior a resident you are, the bigger and more exciting the cases you get to participate in.

  I’m so jealous that Victor got to do the urethroplasty because it is a rare case. However, I’m certainly not going to let on that I feel that way. It would only give him more pleasure.

  “Yes, Victor, I am very aware of that fact,” I say keeping my cool. “Can you please give me the patient’s information?”

  “Oh right, right. This patient is a fifty-two-year-old male, status post urethral injury from a motorcycle accident. He has a history of hypertension. No surgeries in the past. The case went smoothly. Estimated blood loss was fifty milliliters. He’s got a Foley catheter in place that he will go home with in about two days.”

  I pull my patient list and Bic multicolored pen out of the breast pocket of my white coat and quickly write down the new information as it is relayed to me. “Got it.” Now that this patient is out of the OR, he is my responsibility to take care of until I pass the pa
ger off to the next resident on call tomorrow morning.

  Since I have the pertinent information I need from Victor, I turn and start to walk away to continue with my on-call to-do list. It’s a never-ending race to cross off tasks faster than new ones get added. If I don’t work quickly enough, I will drown in a sea of medical chores.

  “Oh, one more thing Dani.”

  Sigh. Unfortunately, Victor has more to say. “Yes?”

  “Since you’re the on-call resident today, you need to check out a consult from the hematology/oncology service.”

  “That’s weird. Did they call you on your personal pager? I haven’t gotten any pages from them on The Bomb.”

  “No, I saw it in the consult book, but I’ve got a long case I’m about to go into and I probably won’t be out until after 6:00 pm. I thought it would be a good idea for you to get that taken care of.”

  My blood begins to roll at a slow boil. The on-call resident completes urgent consults that need to be dealt with immediately. However, the fourth-year residents that are not on call are responsible for the non-emergent consults that are written in a book in the urology department front office. These are completed between cases or after finishing in the OR for the day.

  “Victor, don’t be a twat. You know it’s your day to take care of the consults from the book. I’m already swamped with enough other crap. Don’t try to dump your work on me.”

  “Look Dani, you’re on call and you need to take care of what’s going on on the floor while the rest of us are busy in the OR. This consult can’t wait until the end of the day.”

  “You’re so full of shit, Victor,” I say in a dull voice, not even remotely convinced. “You know that is not how things work on this service and I’m not going to be your scut monkey. You get your own work done when you finish up your cases. I don’t understand why it’s so necessary to be done now. What is the consult anyway?”

  “A guy up on unit 5C has hematuria.”

  That’s the bone-marrow transplant unit. Victor and I did the non-emergent consults yesterday and that sounds very similar to one of the consults assigned to him. “Didn’t you already do the same kind of consult on that unit yesterday?” I ask.

  Without even a moment’s hesitation, Victor continues with, “Oh yeah, it is strange that we were called for a similar consult on the same unit yesterday. Come on, Dani. You know those patients are really sick. The consult probably should have been called directly to The Bomb. The patient’s name is Bhasin, room 534A. I’m sure it will be quick. Do one for the team, Dani.”

  I stare at him dumbfounded.

  Victor, looks at me in faux shock. “What?”

  “Victor, you know I saw the list of consults in the book yesterday, and yes, I remember that name in the book. I already did three of the five consults from that day. You only had the two. Did you just not do it last night before you went home?”

  Victor is clearly not used to being caught in a lie and somebody saying “no” to him. Victor’s shiny exterior dissipates instantaneously with my calling him out on his BS and the villainous Victor shows his true face. I call tell that I’m starting to piss him off. Good.

  “Look Cutter, stop being a bitch and just take care of it.”

  Oh my, the “B” word. Victor is getting flustered and I’m definitely enjoying it. “What’s the problem, Victor? Got a hot date tonight and being a doctor just isn’t convenient for you this evening. Sorry buddy, it doesn’t work that way. Get your shit done just like the rest of us and take care of your own responsibilities.”

  I’m clearly pushing some buttons. Victor gets a look in his eyes that I find very unnerving. Uh-oh, I might have misjudged this situation. Victor walks slowly closer to me and gets right up in my face so that I can smell his coffee stained breath with each slow and exaggerated exhalation. My red flag starts waving wildly now that he has seriously invaded my personal space. I don’t like it one bit. In fact, it takes all my will power to stand my ground and not take a step back. Victor puts his long, boney finger menacingly in front of my nose and hisses, “At least I’ve got women who want to fuck me every single night, unlike your sorry ass. Your husband even kicked you to the curb after he figured out what a cunt you are.”

  Everything around me falls away and I feel like I am standing on the edge of a very large cliff looking into the abyss below me. I am stunned beyond belief. How does Victor know about Brandon? I have always held my personal life close to the vest. The only person I have ever told at work that I am divorced is Liz, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would never spill the beans on me.

  A malicious grin creeps onto Victor’s face. He knows he has found a chink in my armor. I am so taken aback, my guard is let down and I speak before I can stop myself. “How do you know that?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve got some connections down in Texas that aired some of your dirty laundry, and man does it stink. You were such a shitty wife, just like you’re a shitty surgeon, that your husband had to go out and fuck a hot piece of ass with some real tits.”

  At this point my red flag has been tossed by the wayside and emergency sirens are sounding off in my head. With a tsunami of rage and embarrassment bubbling up and out of me, my hands instinctively rise up to Victor’s chest and I give him a push just to get him out of my face. As soon as I do it, I know I have made a mistake. Victor confirms this when his smirk sprouts even wider.

  “You’d best be careful Dani. It’s not good for a surgeon to lose control of one’s self.” And with that he turns on his heel and appears to waltz down the hallway. Before he rounds the corner, he leaves me with, “You know what? Maybe I will just take care of that consult on 5C now.”

  I am rooted to my spot, breathing quickly, trying to figure out what just happened. Bile starts to rise up in my throat, but I suppress the urge to gag. How did Victor get such personal information about me? He must have actively sought it out. What the hell? My personal life is nobody’s business and certainly not his.

  To add insult to injury I can’t believe I let Victor get to me to the point that I actually physically pushed him. He’s twice my size, but still. I do think it was justified because he was well beyond an appropriate personal space limit, but one thing I’ve always prided myself on is my self-control and ability to keep calm in high-stress situations. That’s part of the reason why I thought surgery was the right career path for me. And I can’t be wrong about the path I’ve chosen. I’ve sacrificed too much.

  When Brandon and I got married right after we graduated from the University of Texas, I was working as a nurse and we were planning on starting a family in the near future. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t want to take orders from doctors. I wanted to be the doctor giving the orders.

  Brandon was upset when I told him I wanted to go to medical school and put our family plans on hold, but he went along with it at first. He became even more bitter when medical school actually started and I had to dedicate so much of my time to studying. I know I prioritized school over him and that we were going through a rough time in our marriage, but I never thought Brandon would cheat on me. I was devastated when I found out. And even though I was so angry at Brandon, I also blamed myself because it was my decision to pursue being a doctor that made Brandon unhappy. I felt like such a failure when my marriage fell apart and there was nothing I could do to repair it. I didn’t want to quit medical school and my marriage was irreparably damaged. There was no going back. My only choice was to move full-steam ahead in medicine and focus all my efforts on my job because I’d be damned if I failed in my career as well.

  I put both of my hands on my temples and cradle my head. Shit, I can’t wallow in this though. I’ve got so much to get done today that I have to put this behind me, at least for now. I stuff all the ugly feelings into a tiny compartment in the back of my brain, shut the door, and refocus on my patient list.

  CHAPTER 3

  Back up on unit 4B, where most of the urology in
patients are located, I’ve managed to get through a majority of the discharge paperwork on the patients leaving today. My pager is momentarily silent, which gives me the opportunity to notice that I am starving. I check my watch: 12:07 pm. I haven’t eaten since 5:30 am, so it’s definitely time for lunch. I take my pizza Hot Pocket out of my white coat pocket. I remove the plastic wrapper and discard the cardboard microwavable crisping sleeve. Who has time for that? By now it has thawed enough so that it tastes like a delicious cold piece of pizza right from the fridge. Mmm-mmm-mmm. I wash it down with a little cup of apple juice - you know, the kind that has the aluminum foil seal over the top. Thankfully, the nurses on each unit save the unopened juices, jellos, and tapioca puddings from the patients’ meal trays and store them in the little fridges at their work stations. These have been the mainstay of my caloric intake on many a day and night.

  My reprieve is short-lived and my pager once again sounds its alarm. I dial the callback number, 3354, displayed on the pager screen. “OR four,” I hear at the other end of the line.

  “Hi, this is Urology. I was paged,” I respond.

  “We need your help getting a catheter in our patient on the operating table. He’s already intubated, but we can’t get the case started until this catheter is in. Can you come now?”

  “Sure. How old is the patient?”

  “He’s sixty-nine-years-old.”

  “Given his age, it’s probably an enlarged prostate giving you trouble,” I reason out loud.

  “Probably. I was able to get the catheter in halfway no problem before I met resistance. When I pulled the catheter out, there was blood at the tip.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.”

  “Thanks, but can you please make it fast? My attending surgeon is going nuts that his case is delayed.”

  “I’m on my way now.”

  I gather up my paperwork and put it in my coat pocket to work on later. Just then I hear a text ping on my phone. I take my phone out of my coat pocket and open a text from Liz.