“Mrs. Spencer, I’m going to have to call you right back.”
Eli
“It’s a miracle she survived,” Bunhead said behind me as I stared at the charts up on the wall.
“What is our next step, Dr. Davenport?” Dr. Stretch came up beside me, and when I turned to him, he took a step back. “Dr. Davenport—”
“Stop talking!” I snapped, and they all jumped. “Stop talking. Stop saying the fact that she is alive is a miracle, because it isn’t. Close your mouths and look at her x-ray. Does that tumor look odd to any of you?”
Dr. Four Eyes adjusted his glasses and stepped forward. “Looks like it moved to the right some.”
“Isn’t that good? You couldn’t operate because of the location, but if it moved or shrunk—”
“It didn’t move,” Dr. Stretch whispered, looking between her old x-rays and her new ones. “She has two tumors. The chemo helped the bigger one shrink, but she has a second one right next to it. Her kind of medulloblastoma makes up less than 12 percent of all brain cancers,” I said, stepping forward and putting up more of her scans. “Chemotherapy and surgery were long shots for her from the beginning. Now, the cancer is spreading. Her body is dying, and we brought her back today, but we are working on borrowed time. She won’t make it to the end of the week.”
“Are you going to tell her father?” Bunhead whispered.
“I did.” I faced them. “Get them their discharge papers and fax all their information to Dr. Birell at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopki—”
“Dr. Davenport!” A nurse came in.
I already knew why, and I ran toward the room I had only just been in two hours before. This time I was watching Ian, who had given up on the defibrillator and now was just using his hands.
“How long has she been down?” I asked him.
“A little over three minutes.” He sighed, stopping himself because he knew what I knew.
“What are you doing?” Toby yelled at me. “Save her! Save her! What are you doing?!”
“Mr. Wesley, your daughter collapsed this morning, she had a seizure two hours ago, and her heart has given out now. Anything more is torturing her. Her body can’t take it any more. I’m so sorry. I truly am. I’m so sorry for your loss, but she’s gone.” Looking to Ian, he nodded, then glanced at his watch as I unplugged everything from her body.
“Time of death, 8:43 PM,” he whispered.
Toby collapsed at the side of her bed, sobbing on top of her body.
My chest felt like it was on fire. I felt like I had stripped this man of everything he had left. Because I wasn’t good enough, I had cost him his daughter. Exiting the room, I didn’t stop for anyone, just walking, maybe running—I couldn’t tell what my body was doing any more. Everything passed in a blur until I found myself outside, breathing heavily under the pouring rain.
I failed. God. Why I did I fail? “Ahh!” I screamed up into the rain.
“Eli!” Guinevere ran closer to me, her hand overhead, as if that would stop the downpour. “Eli, what is it? What’s wrong?”
For some reason, I tried to smile for her, but I couldn’t. “Me. I’m what’s wrong. You should go home alone today—”
“Eli, talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk! I’m tired of talking. All I do is talk all damn day!” I yelled. Sighing, I ran my hands through my hair. “Please don’t wait or look for me.”
Walking back into the hospital, I tried to ignore how bad my head and chest hurt.
Chapter Nineteen
The Oath We Make
Guinevere
“How long will he be like this?” I asked Dr. Seo, watching as Eli stitched up an old woman’s arm in the ER. For the last 96 hours, I wasn’t even sure if had really eaten anything. He was basically living at the hospital and, from the looks of the hair growing on his chin, he hadn’t thought to bring a razor.
Dr. Seo bit into his apple, leaning against the wall. His pink hair was now back to black and in a half ponytail. “It depends. If you haven’t noticed, Eli doesn’t handle death well. He thinks just because he’s a doctor, he can save everyone if he’s just a little better. When he and I were interns, we lost an older man. He came in with his son after they had been in a car accident. His son appeared more hurt, so Eli focused on him, not realizing the boy's father was bleeding internally. It wasn’t his fault; his son really was hurt. After the man died, Eli barely ate or even left the hospital for a month. He only slept because his mother threatened and swore she would bar him from the hospital. So he made a makeshift bed in the on-call room. No one else dared sleep in it, either.”