DISCLAIMER: All recognizable characters are not mine and belong to ER and NBC. All others are mine and my sister's and cannot be used without our permission.
Author's Note: My sister Kitlee and I have noticed two things about Dr. Romano
1) He is very devoted to children. He has encouraged Benton to prioritize his son (remember the episode when he sends Benton home with Reese?). Also, remember the one with the boy who had the disease that killed most children as babies? He made a remark to Corday basically talking about how horrible those people were for leaving their son. He's also a lot nicer to kids than to adults.
2) He is very devoted to the idea of marriage. He told Corday that she had to go back to Mark when she found out that he was dying. "Is he your husband? . . . Do you love him? . . . Then you have to be there for him." (I don't know if this is exactly what he said, this is just how my sister remembers it.) He also let her go to Hawaii to be with Mark, no questions asked.
Being devoted ER fans and angst writers (especially me), we decided to write a Romano fic to humanize him and give him a dramatic/depressing past. Please r/r!
Over the Rainbow
Lizzie was an adorable little girl. She loved crayons and rainbows and butterflies. She had two fat blonde pigtails and sparkling blue eyes. She loved watching Disney movies and Sesame Street. She was everyone's best friend in the whole world. She was friendly and happy, perfect in every way.
And she was *mine*. That was the most astonishing thing, that I could have a daughter as wonderful and angelic as Lizzie. Or, more importantly, that my ex-wife and I could have a daughter like Lizzie.
Yes, I was married. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, but I was one of those stupid doctors who got married during medical school. Only I didn't do it because I loved my wife and wanted to be with her. I did it because she got pregnant.
I still remember exactly how it happened. I was in the shower when the door to the bathroom burst open and my girlfriend, a tempermental fellow Harvard med school student named Karen, stormed in.
"Robert, we have to talk!" she yelled.
"Karen, what the hell are you doing here?" I shot back. "Get out of here!"
"Robert, I'm pregnant!"
I stuck my head around the curtain. "You're what?"
"I'm pregnant." Her arms were folded across her stomach defensively, and she glared at me.
I said the first thing that popped into my head. "Is it mine?"
The look she gave me would have killed a weaker person, but I just glared back. We were suited for each other; we were both arrogant, stubborn bastards.
"So what do we do now?" she asked.
"We'll get married of course," I snapped. "It's the only thing to do." We came from rich families who would have died if Karen had announced that she was going to have a baby out of wedlock.
"Fine," she said angrily in a voice which clearly said two things: 1) she wasn't happy about this; 2) this was all my fault. She turned around and stormed out of the bathroom, leaving me alone, dripping wet and upset.
It wasn't exactly a romantic beginning, but it seemed fitting for two people like us. We were married shortly after, and then Lizzie came.
Right from the start, Lizzie was a perfect child. She rarely cried, and she always stopped almost immediately after one of us picked her up. Mostly she just lay very quietly staring at everything or slept peacefully. She had big blue eyes, and although my mother said that most babies' eyes that started out that color eventually changed to green or gray or brown, Lizzie's stayed bright blue.
I would like to say that I was the perfect father, or at least a good one, but I know that would be a lie. I was a resident when she was young, so I was gone most of the time, and when I was there, I was exhausted. I was always ignoring her, and looking back, I can't believe that I wasted the time we had together either sleeping or watching TV.
My normal routine (when I wasn't working) went like this:
1) Lizzie bounces into my room at an ungodly hour, wanting me to wake up and play with her. I tell her to shut up, leave me alone, and go watch TV. (Her mother and I used TV as a cheap baby-sitter.) She leaves, and I go back to sleep.
2) I wake up around noon and shuffle around the apartment, showering and eating. I don't say anything since I'm still not completely awake yet. Lizzie is sitting with the TV on, but instead of watching it, she's coloring or having a tea party or something like that.
3) I go into the living room and change the channel to something that I want to watch that I can have on while Lizzie is in the room, usually golf. If there is a trashy movie on TV, I send Lizzie to her room.
4) I get up and go back to the hospital, leaving her either with a baby-sitter or (usually) with her mother, who follows a similar routine.
Looking back, I could kill myself for acting like that. This was my little girl, and most days the only things I ever said to her was to leave me alone and/or to go watch TV. All she wanted was for me to spend five minutes with her, and I never did. I never took her to the park or colored with her or even watched Sesame Street with her. I never thought that it was important to spend time with her. I wasn't close to either of my parents, so I didn't even try to have a good relationship with Lizzie. I took care of her physical needs: I fed her, I bought her clothes, and I gave her a place to live. But I never did anything beyond that. I can't even remember if I ever hugged her and kissed her and told her that I loved her. I want to think that she knew that I did, but how could she? I honestly didn't realize how much I loved her back then. I never felt like parents are supposed to, like they would do anything for their child. And yet despite all of this, Lizzie adored me. She didn't know that I was a terrible father, even though her teachers, baby-sitters, and neighbors were always glaring at me and her mother. We were her parents, and so Lizzie loved us. I still wonder how Karen and I managed to have a daughter like Lizzie since we certainly didn't deserve her. But for whatever reason or fluke, we had the perfect child.
If things had gone on like this, Lizzie would probably have wound up emotionally scarred for life. She would have been one of those adults who spend their lives lying on a psychiatrist's couch, complaining about their horrible childhoods. And of course Lizzie would have been justified in doing so. Or maybe things would have been different -- maybe she would have changed me, made me into a good person. Maybe we would be friends, and she would go on thinking that I was the perfect father. Not very likely, but sometimes I daydream about that and think about how wonderful life would have been.
But of course things didn't turn out that way, because one day everything changed.
It was just another day. I was at home, and as usual I had crawled out of bed around noon. Only today Lizzie hadn't come barrelling into my room at 6:00 AM. So after I'd dressed and eaten, I wandered into her room to check on her. She was lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, clutching her favorite stuffed bear, named Teddy. Her eyes were closed, but they opened the moment I walked in the door.
"Daddy," she whispered, "I don't feel good."
Mechanically, I felt her forehead. She didn't have a fever. "What's wrong?"
"Tired," she said, "I hurt."
"Where?"
She waved one little hand over her body.
"All over?" I guessed. She nodded, so I got her some children's Tylenol.
"Will this make me feel better, Daddy?" she asked.
"Yeah, probably. Now get some sleep."
"Okay." She took the pills and closed her eyes. "Night, Daddy."
"Night."
I wasn't worried because I figured she just had a bug. I should have known something was wrong, though, since Lizzie hated sleeping. She was convinced that the whole world had a big party every night while she was asleep, and so she slept as little as possible so that she wouldn't miss out on anything. Even when she had a cold, she never lay around in bed all day. But that day she was still asleep when her mother got home and it was my turn to go to work. I should have been worried, but all I said was that Lizzie wasn't feeling well and that she was asleep. Karen just nodded numbly before collapsing on our bed asleep.
I wouldn't have given any of this a second thought except for what happened a few days later. I was on duty at the hospital when I was paged down to the ER. I expected to see another bloody trauma, but instead Lizzie was lying on a stretcher in Trauma 1. Her skin looked nearly white against the sheets, but her face lit up when she saw me. "Daddy!"
The woman next to her turned to look at me. She looked sweet and gentle, but when she saw me, she glared at me, giving me an I-can't-believe-what-a-horrible-parent-you-are look. I was used to this, though, so I just ignored her.
"Lizzie, what are you doing here?" I asked.
"She fainted," the teacher said, still glaring at me. "She wasn't feeling well again -- she hasn't for several days. I told her to lie down, but she crumpled up on the floor unconscious. I called an ambulance to take her here, and I've been trying to reach her mother for over an hour." She frowned, as if shocked at how terrible Karen and I were. To be honest, I didn't really blame her. We were both doctors; you'd have thought that we would have noticed if Lizzie were that sick.
Of course, all I said was "Her mother's probably sleeping. She just got off of work a few hours ago. Try her in a couple of hours." I gave Lizzie a perfunctory kiss on the forehead. "Bye, Lizzie."
"Where are you going?" the teacher demanded.
"I have to get back to work. My boss is going to kill me as it is. Whatever is wrong, Karen will handle it. Now I have to go."
Lizzie stared up at me, her big blue eyes looking as though they were about to fill with tears. "Daddy . . . you're leaving?"
Now, I may be an inhuman bastard, but even I couldn't leave her after that. "No, no, no, I'm . . . I'm just going to tell the people up in surgery that I have to leave early, and then I'll be right back."
And so, I stayed. I sat by her bedside for hours, listening to her babble on and on about everything -- TV, hospital Jell-O, etc. And for the first time in my life, I did not tell her to be quiet. Not that I was listening . . . I guess that everyone must have some parental instincts, because suddenly I found myself worried about her. Perfectly normal five-year-olds did not pass out. I wanted to fool myself into thinking that it was nothing serious, but I was a doctor. Bacterial infection . . . virus . . . metabolic disorder . . . A list of possibilities ran through my head until I felt dizzy. But none of that could have prepared me for the diagnosis.
Cancer.
*****
They say that if you have to get cancer and you're a child, ALL (acute lymphotic leukemia) is the best kind to have because 85% of patients survive. What they don't tell you is that that means 15% of patients die. Lizzie was one of those 15%.
At first I tried to be hopeful. After all, my daughter's odds of survival were almost 6 to 1. I had seen patients whose odds were much worse survive many times.
Besides, I had to remain hopeful. I was all she had.
At the time, I could never have dreamed that Karen would do it. Sure she was heartless and uncaring, but I couldn't imagine that she would stoop to such a level. I guess I should have noticed that she seemed strange when she arrived, but of course I had other things on my mind.
She met me in the hallway outside of the pediatric oncology floor. I was standing by the nurses' station, pacing up and down the floor and waiting for her. It had taken me all day to get ahold of her.
"Karen, where the hell were you?" I demanded angrily. I rushed on without letting her answer. "Didn't you get my message? Lizzie's really sick, Karen. She has cancer." The words still sounded unreal. "Where were you? I've been calling all day."
Karen was slowly twisting her wedding band around her finger. "Look Robert . . . I was going to tell you this anyway . . . " She looked down and then stared straight into my eyes. "I've been having an affair. I've been sleeping with Dr. Norris for several months now, and . . . and he's going to Boston and . . . and he wants me to go with him." She paused before saying, "He asked me to marry him today, and I said yes."
I was stunned. Finally I yelled, "Didn't you hear what I just said? Our daughter has cancer. CANCER!"
She squared her shoulders and put on her doctor face, cool and distant. "What type?"
"Leukemia. ALL."
"Well then, she has an 85% chance of survival . . . "
"I know the statistics, damn it!"
"Her prognosis is good. She'll be fine." Her words were crisp and completely unemotional. Still wearing the same unflappable expression, she pulled the ring off of her finger and handed it to me. "Good bye, Robert."
She walked toward the elevator, and for a moment I was too stunned to follow her. Then I ran after her.
"You can't be serious! How can you leave her?"
"I told her, Robert, her prognosis is good. She's going to be fine." She stepped into the elevator, but I shoved my hand between the doors.
"She's your DAUGHTER, for god's sake, not some patient you met five minutes ago! You might show a little compassion!"
"Look, I didn't sign on for this, Robert," she snapped, emotion winning over her practiced bedside manner. "That 'till death do we part' crap? It didn't mean anything. I -- I just can't . . . "
For the first time in my life, I felt completely helpless. "What am I going to tell her?" I asked quietly.
"Tell her anything you want."
The elevator doors hissed shut, and for a moment I lay my head against the cold metal. It occured to me that I too could leave. I could go back to the apartment, take a shower, and then leave. It didn't matter where. I had credentials. I was a Harvard Medical School graduate and an excellent surgical resident. Maybe I wouldn't be able to be a doctor, but I could teach high school or work in retail or scrub toilets . . . anything so that I wouldn't have to face Lizzie again.
I don't know what made me go back in there. Maybe it was the knowledge that she needed me. Maybe I couldn't leave her completely helpless and alone. Maybe it was some biological instinct to protect my offspring. Whatever it was, I found myself walking back into her room and sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked small and helpless in a thin hospital gown, her face drawn and tired.
"Where's Mommy?" she asked in a small voice.
"M-mommy . . . Mommy isn't coming."
"Where is she? Why isn't she here?" Her voice was filled with tears.
My voice was hoarse and weak. Every word was a struggle. "It's just you and me now, Lizzie." I kissed the top of her head.
She closed her eyes, but opened them again. "Are you going to leave too?"
"No, I won't."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
Only then did she close her eyes. And only once she was asleep did I cry.
*****
Lizzie lay in the hospital for months. At first I visited her whenever I was off work. I didn't go home for days, sometimes weeks, at a time, showering in the men's surgical locker room and sleeping wherever there was an empty bed. I felt sick from exhaustion constantly. Lizzie's lip trembled every time I left her even though I spent every second I could with her. Finally I was about to drop.
Help came from an unexpected source. My attending pulled me aside one day after a difficult surgery, during which I was so tired that it was a miracle the patient survived. At the time I hated him for doing it, but now I'm grateful that he did.
"Robert, go," he said. "Go see your daughter. Come back when . . . come back when it's over."
"Are you firing me?" I demanded.
He smiled then. He was not a large man, but seemed so. Normally he was stern and demanding, but only kindness was in his voice when he said, "I am giving you a temporary leave of absence for as long as your daughter needs you. Now go, and I don't want to see you back until your daughter's been discharged."
From then on I was with her every day. I sat with her all the time, reading to her and talking to her for hours on end. After her chemo treatments, I nearly killed myself trying to put a smile back on her face. I brought in every one of her dolls and stuffed animals, starting with her beloved Teddy. I no longer complained when she asked me to talk to them; now I was the one giving her toys funny voices and making them dance and play. Now I was the one who never stopped smiling, even when every smile was painful.
I never gave up hope. During all of it, as I watched my daughter become sicker and sicker, I never once gave up hope. When the conventional treatments failed, I demanded that the doctors try every experimental one available. Each successive round of chemo left her more sicker and paler, but each time I told them to try again. I became the kind of parent whom many doctors hate, the kind who refuses to accept that their child is dying, who forces their child to undergo more and more painful procedures. When I look back, I can't believe that I made Lizzie suffer so much. She couldn't keep any food down for weeks on end. Her beautiful blond hair fell out. She became too weak to sit up. Everyday I looked into her big blue eyes and saw a silent plea to help her, to take the pain away. And yet everyday I demanded that the doctors pump more drugs into her.
Finally one day the doctor told me that there was nothing else they could do. "All we can do is wait."
"There has to be something you can do to help her!" I yelled. "She's sick, you're a doctor, so fix her!"
"I've tried everything, Dr. Romano," he responded, raising his voice slightly. "Lizzie has not responded to any of the treatments. Her blast count continues to rise no matter what we try." He tried to speak more soothingly. "All we can do now is make her comfortable and wait."
"I want a second opinion," I told him. "I want to speak with the head of pediatric oncology. No, actually, get me a REAL oncologist right now."
"You can talk to whomever you like. They will all agree with me."
"I'm not going to sit back and watch my daughter die!"
He was silent for a moment. "Lizzie is in an enormous amount of pain right now," he said slowly. "The chemo has left her very sick. She's too weak to survive any more chemo. If you like, you can see her chart for yourself."
I grabbed the chart away from him and flipped through it. Every bit of my medical training told me that he was correct. My daughter was going to die.
"Go see her," the doctor urged. "She needs you right now."
"I . . . " The sense of hopelessness I had felt when Karen had left was nothing compared to this. "I can't . . . "
"Yes you can. Your daughter needs you."
Numbly I walked back into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. Lizzie had been asleep, but when I sat down, she opened her eyes.
"What's wrong, Daddy?" she whispered.
"Nothing, baby." I kissed her the forehead. "I love you, Lizzie."
"I love you too, Daddy."
The nurse came in. "I'm going to give you some medicine to make you feel better, okay, Lizzie?"
Lizzie nodded. As soon as the nurse left, she closed her eyes. "I'm tired, Daddy."
"Well, you go to sleep then. I'll be waiting here when you wake up."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
*****
Lizzie lasted only four more days before she died in her sleep. She was only five-and-a-half years old. When she died, she was so small and pale that I could hardly recognize her as the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked little girl who used to wake me up at ungodly hours on my days off. She was just a shadow of the old Lizzie, the one who was always laughing and smiling. When I close my eyes, I can still see her bright, cheerful grin and hear her excited "Guess what, Daddy?" . . . It is a huge cliché, but sometimes I would look at Lucy Knight and see that women Lizzie could have been. Bright, beautiful, and stubborn as hell . . . I used to lie awake and wonder why Lucy got to grow up and Lizzie didn't. But then Lucy died, and part of me felt as though Lizzie had died all over again. I feel that way when any child dies. For a while, I thought about starting a fellowship in pediatric surgery, but I decided I couldn't take seeing kids die day after day. Once was enough.
I still think about her a lot. Any parent who has lost a child will say the same thing. I imagine what she would look like now -- short, slender, blonde hair, and those bright blue eyes. She'd be an adult now, maybe even a doctor. I imagine watching her fall in love, get married, and have a child of her own.
But most of the time, when I think about her, she is eternally five years old with fat blonde pigtails. She still begs me to play with her and sleeps with her arms wrapped around Teddy. Only this time I can do everything right. I can play with her and get up early to watch cartoons with her. I can take her to the park and watch her run in the sunshine.
And when I close my eyes, she is waiting for me, dancing under a rainbow . . .
Author's Note: My sister Kitlee and I have noticed two things about Dr. Romano
1) He is very devoted to children. He has encouraged Benton to prioritize his son (remember the episode when he sends Benton home with Reese?). Also, remember the one with the boy who had the disease that killed most children as babies? He made a remark to Corday basically talking about how horrible those people were for leaving their son. He's also a lot nicer to kids than to adults.
2) He is very devoted to the idea of marriage. He told Corday that she had to go back to Mark when she found out that he was dying. "Is he your husband? . . . Do you love him? . . . Then you have to be there for him." (I don't know if this is exactly what he said, this is just how my sister remembers it.) He also let her go to Hawaii to be with Mark, no questions asked.
Being devoted ER fans and angst writers (especially me), we decided to write a Romano fic to humanize him and give him a dramatic/depressing past. Please r/r!
Over the Rainbow
Lizzie was an adorable little girl. She loved crayons and rainbows and butterflies. She had two fat blonde pigtails and sparkling blue eyes. She loved watching Disney movies and Sesame Street. She was everyone's best friend in the whole world. She was friendly and happy, perfect in every way.
And she was *mine*. That was the most astonishing thing, that I could have a daughter as wonderful and angelic as Lizzie. Or, more importantly, that my ex-wife and I could have a daughter like Lizzie.
Yes, I was married. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, but I was one of those stupid doctors who got married during medical school. Only I didn't do it because I loved my wife and wanted to be with her. I did it because she got pregnant.
I still remember exactly how it happened. I was in the shower when the door to the bathroom burst open and my girlfriend, a tempermental fellow Harvard med school student named Karen, stormed in.
"Robert, we have to talk!" she yelled.
"Karen, what the hell are you doing here?" I shot back. "Get out of here!"
"Robert, I'm pregnant!"
I stuck my head around the curtain. "You're what?"
"I'm pregnant." Her arms were folded across her stomach defensively, and she glared at me.
I said the first thing that popped into my head. "Is it mine?"
The look she gave me would have killed a weaker person, but I just glared back. We were suited for each other; we were both arrogant, stubborn bastards.
"So what do we do now?" she asked.
"We'll get married of course," I snapped. "It's the only thing to do." We came from rich families who would have died if Karen had announced that she was going to have a baby out of wedlock.
"Fine," she said angrily in a voice which clearly said two things: 1) she wasn't happy about this; 2) this was all my fault. She turned around and stormed out of the bathroom, leaving me alone, dripping wet and upset.
It wasn't exactly a romantic beginning, but it seemed fitting for two people like us. We were married shortly after, and then Lizzie came.
Right from the start, Lizzie was a perfect child. She rarely cried, and she always stopped almost immediately after one of us picked her up. Mostly she just lay very quietly staring at everything or slept peacefully. She had big blue eyes, and although my mother said that most babies' eyes that started out that color eventually changed to green or gray or brown, Lizzie's stayed bright blue.
I would like to say that I was the perfect father, or at least a good one, but I know that would be a lie. I was a resident when she was young, so I was gone most of the time, and when I was there, I was exhausted. I was always ignoring her, and looking back, I can't believe that I wasted the time we had together either sleeping or watching TV.
My normal routine (when I wasn't working) went like this:
1) Lizzie bounces into my room at an ungodly hour, wanting me to wake up and play with her. I tell her to shut up, leave me alone, and go watch TV. (Her mother and I used TV as a cheap baby-sitter.) She leaves, and I go back to sleep.
2) I wake up around noon and shuffle around the apartment, showering and eating. I don't say anything since I'm still not completely awake yet. Lizzie is sitting with the TV on, but instead of watching it, she's coloring or having a tea party or something like that.
3) I go into the living room and change the channel to something that I want to watch that I can have on while Lizzie is in the room, usually golf. If there is a trashy movie on TV, I send Lizzie to her room.
4) I get up and go back to the hospital, leaving her either with a baby-sitter or (usually) with her mother, who follows a similar routine.
Looking back, I could kill myself for acting like that. This was my little girl, and most days the only things I ever said to her was to leave me alone and/or to go watch TV. All she wanted was for me to spend five minutes with her, and I never did. I never took her to the park or colored with her or even watched Sesame Street with her. I never thought that it was important to spend time with her. I wasn't close to either of my parents, so I didn't even try to have a good relationship with Lizzie. I took care of her physical needs: I fed her, I bought her clothes, and I gave her a place to live. But I never did anything beyond that. I can't even remember if I ever hugged her and kissed her and told her that I loved her. I want to think that she knew that I did, but how could she? I honestly didn't realize how much I loved her back then. I never felt like parents are supposed to, like they would do anything for their child. And yet despite all of this, Lizzie adored me. She didn't know that I was a terrible father, even though her teachers, baby-sitters, and neighbors were always glaring at me and her mother. We were her parents, and so Lizzie loved us. I still wonder how Karen and I managed to have a daughter like Lizzie since we certainly didn't deserve her. But for whatever reason or fluke, we had the perfect child.
If things had gone on like this, Lizzie would probably have wound up emotionally scarred for life. She would have been one of those adults who spend their lives lying on a psychiatrist's couch, complaining about their horrible childhoods. And of course Lizzie would have been justified in doing so. Or maybe things would have been different -- maybe she would have changed me, made me into a good person. Maybe we would be friends, and she would go on thinking that I was the perfect father. Not very likely, but sometimes I daydream about that and think about how wonderful life would have been.
But of course things didn't turn out that way, because one day everything changed.
It was just another day. I was at home, and as usual I had crawled out of bed around noon. Only today Lizzie hadn't come barrelling into my room at 6:00 AM. So after I'd dressed and eaten, I wandered into her room to check on her. She was lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, clutching her favorite stuffed bear, named Teddy. Her eyes were closed, but they opened the moment I walked in the door.
"Daddy," she whispered, "I don't feel good."
Mechanically, I felt her forehead. She didn't have a fever. "What's wrong?"
"Tired," she said, "I hurt."
"Where?"
She waved one little hand over her body.
"All over?" I guessed. She nodded, so I got her some children's Tylenol.
"Will this make me feel better, Daddy?" she asked.
"Yeah, probably. Now get some sleep."
"Okay." She took the pills and closed her eyes. "Night, Daddy."
"Night."
I wasn't worried because I figured she just had a bug. I should have known something was wrong, though, since Lizzie hated sleeping. She was convinced that the whole world had a big party every night while she was asleep, and so she slept as little as possible so that she wouldn't miss out on anything. Even when she had a cold, she never lay around in bed all day. But that day she was still asleep when her mother got home and it was my turn to go to work. I should have been worried, but all I said was that Lizzie wasn't feeling well and that she was asleep. Karen just nodded numbly before collapsing on our bed asleep.
I wouldn't have given any of this a second thought except for what happened a few days later. I was on duty at the hospital when I was paged down to the ER. I expected to see another bloody trauma, but instead Lizzie was lying on a stretcher in Trauma 1. Her skin looked nearly white against the sheets, but her face lit up when she saw me. "Daddy!"
The woman next to her turned to look at me. She looked sweet and gentle, but when she saw me, she glared at me, giving me an I-can't-believe-what-a-horrible-parent-you-are look. I was used to this, though, so I just ignored her.
"Lizzie, what are you doing here?" I asked.
"She fainted," the teacher said, still glaring at me. "She wasn't feeling well again -- she hasn't for several days. I told her to lie down, but she crumpled up on the floor unconscious. I called an ambulance to take her here, and I've been trying to reach her mother for over an hour." She frowned, as if shocked at how terrible Karen and I were. To be honest, I didn't really blame her. We were both doctors; you'd have thought that we would have noticed if Lizzie were that sick.
Of course, all I said was "Her mother's probably sleeping. She just got off of work a few hours ago. Try her in a couple of hours." I gave Lizzie a perfunctory kiss on the forehead. "Bye, Lizzie."
"Where are you going?" the teacher demanded.
"I have to get back to work. My boss is going to kill me as it is. Whatever is wrong, Karen will handle it. Now I have to go."
Lizzie stared up at me, her big blue eyes looking as though they were about to fill with tears. "Daddy . . . you're leaving?"
Now, I may be an inhuman bastard, but even I couldn't leave her after that. "No, no, no, I'm . . . I'm just going to tell the people up in surgery that I have to leave early, and then I'll be right back."
And so, I stayed. I sat by her bedside for hours, listening to her babble on and on about everything -- TV, hospital Jell-O, etc. And for the first time in my life, I did not tell her to be quiet. Not that I was listening . . . I guess that everyone must have some parental instincts, because suddenly I found myself worried about her. Perfectly normal five-year-olds did not pass out. I wanted to fool myself into thinking that it was nothing serious, but I was a doctor. Bacterial infection . . . virus . . . metabolic disorder . . . A list of possibilities ran through my head until I felt dizzy. But none of that could have prepared me for the diagnosis.
Cancer.
*****
They say that if you have to get cancer and you're a child, ALL (acute lymphotic leukemia) is the best kind to have because 85% of patients survive. What they don't tell you is that that means 15% of patients die. Lizzie was one of those 15%.
At first I tried to be hopeful. After all, my daughter's odds of survival were almost 6 to 1. I had seen patients whose odds were much worse survive many times.
Besides, I had to remain hopeful. I was all she had.
At the time, I could never have dreamed that Karen would do it. Sure she was heartless and uncaring, but I couldn't imagine that she would stoop to such a level. I guess I should have noticed that she seemed strange when she arrived, but of course I had other things on my mind.
She met me in the hallway outside of the pediatric oncology floor. I was standing by the nurses' station, pacing up and down the floor and waiting for her. It had taken me all day to get ahold of her.
"Karen, where the hell were you?" I demanded angrily. I rushed on without letting her answer. "Didn't you get my message? Lizzie's really sick, Karen. She has cancer." The words still sounded unreal. "Where were you? I've been calling all day."
Karen was slowly twisting her wedding band around her finger. "Look Robert . . . I was going to tell you this anyway . . . " She looked down and then stared straight into my eyes. "I've been having an affair. I've been sleeping with Dr. Norris for several months now, and . . . and he's going to Boston and . . . and he wants me to go with him." She paused before saying, "He asked me to marry him today, and I said yes."
I was stunned. Finally I yelled, "Didn't you hear what I just said? Our daughter has cancer. CANCER!"
She squared her shoulders and put on her doctor face, cool and distant. "What type?"
"Leukemia. ALL."
"Well then, she has an 85% chance of survival . . . "
"I know the statistics, damn it!"
"Her prognosis is good. She'll be fine." Her words were crisp and completely unemotional. Still wearing the same unflappable expression, she pulled the ring off of her finger and handed it to me. "Good bye, Robert."
She walked toward the elevator, and for a moment I was too stunned to follow her. Then I ran after her.
"You can't be serious! How can you leave her?"
"I told her, Robert, her prognosis is good. She's going to be fine." She stepped into the elevator, but I shoved my hand between the doors.
"She's your DAUGHTER, for god's sake, not some patient you met five minutes ago! You might show a little compassion!"
"Look, I didn't sign on for this, Robert," she snapped, emotion winning over her practiced bedside manner. "That 'till death do we part' crap? It didn't mean anything. I -- I just can't . . . "
For the first time in my life, I felt completely helpless. "What am I going to tell her?" I asked quietly.
"Tell her anything you want."
The elevator doors hissed shut, and for a moment I lay my head against the cold metal. It occured to me that I too could leave. I could go back to the apartment, take a shower, and then leave. It didn't matter where. I had credentials. I was a Harvard Medical School graduate and an excellent surgical resident. Maybe I wouldn't be able to be a doctor, but I could teach high school or work in retail or scrub toilets . . . anything so that I wouldn't have to face Lizzie again.
I don't know what made me go back in there. Maybe it was the knowledge that she needed me. Maybe I couldn't leave her completely helpless and alone. Maybe it was some biological instinct to protect my offspring. Whatever it was, I found myself walking back into her room and sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked small and helpless in a thin hospital gown, her face drawn and tired.
"Where's Mommy?" she asked in a small voice.
"M-mommy . . . Mommy isn't coming."
"Where is she? Why isn't she here?" Her voice was filled with tears.
My voice was hoarse and weak. Every word was a struggle. "It's just you and me now, Lizzie." I kissed the top of her head.
She closed her eyes, but opened them again. "Are you going to leave too?"
"No, I won't."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
Only then did she close her eyes. And only once she was asleep did I cry.
*****
Lizzie lay in the hospital for months. At first I visited her whenever I was off work. I didn't go home for days, sometimes weeks, at a time, showering in the men's surgical locker room and sleeping wherever there was an empty bed. I felt sick from exhaustion constantly. Lizzie's lip trembled every time I left her even though I spent every second I could with her. Finally I was about to drop.
Help came from an unexpected source. My attending pulled me aside one day after a difficult surgery, during which I was so tired that it was a miracle the patient survived. At the time I hated him for doing it, but now I'm grateful that he did.
"Robert, go," he said. "Go see your daughter. Come back when . . . come back when it's over."
"Are you firing me?" I demanded.
He smiled then. He was not a large man, but seemed so. Normally he was stern and demanding, but only kindness was in his voice when he said, "I am giving you a temporary leave of absence for as long as your daughter needs you. Now go, and I don't want to see you back until your daughter's been discharged."
From then on I was with her every day. I sat with her all the time, reading to her and talking to her for hours on end. After her chemo treatments, I nearly killed myself trying to put a smile back on her face. I brought in every one of her dolls and stuffed animals, starting with her beloved Teddy. I no longer complained when she asked me to talk to them; now I was the one giving her toys funny voices and making them dance and play. Now I was the one who never stopped smiling, even when every smile was painful.
I never gave up hope. During all of it, as I watched my daughter become sicker and sicker, I never once gave up hope. When the conventional treatments failed, I demanded that the doctors try every experimental one available. Each successive round of chemo left her more sicker and paler, but each time I told them to try again. I became the kind of parent whom many doctors hate, the kind who refuses to accept that their child is dying, who forces their child to undergo more and more painful procedures. When I look back, I can't believe that I made Lizzie suffer so much. She couldn't keep any food down for weeks on end. Her beautiful blond hair fell out. She became too weak to sit up. Everyday I looked into her big blue eyes and saw a silent plea to help her, to take the pain away. And yet everyday I demanded that the doctors pump more drugs into her.
Finally one day the doctor told me that there was nothing else they could do. "All we can do is wait."
"There has to be something you can do to help her!" I yelled. "She's sick, you're a doctor, so fix her!"
"I've tried everything, Dr. Romano," he responded, raising his voice slightly. "Lizzie has not responded to any of the treatments. Her blast count continues to rise no matter what we try." He tried to speak more soothingly. "All we can do now is make her comfortable and wait."
"I want a second opinion," I told him. "I want to speak with the head of pediatric oncology. No, actually, get me a REAL oncologist right now."
"You can talk to whomever you like. They will all agree with me."
"I'm not going to sit back and watch my daughter die!"
He was silent for a moment. "Lizzie is in an enormous amount of pain right now," he said slowly. "The chemo has left her very sick. She's too weak to survive any more chemo. If you like, you can see her chart for yourself."
I grabbed the chart away from him and flipped through it. Every bit of my medical training told me that he was correct. My daughter was going to die.
"Go see her," the doctor urged. "She needs you right now."
"I . . . " The sense of hopelessness I had felt when Karen had left was nothing compared to this. "I can't . . . "
"Yes you can. Your daughter needs you."
Numbly I walked back into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. Lizzie had been asleep, but when I sat down, she opened her eyes.
"What's wrong, Daddy?" she whispered.
"Nothing, baby." I kissed her the forehead. "I love you, Lizzie."
"I love you too, Daddy."
The nurse came in. "I'm going to give you some medicine to make you feel better, okay, Lizzie?"
Lizzie nodded. As soon as the nurse left, she closed her eyes. "I'm tired, Daddy."
"Well, you go to sleep then. I'll be waiting here when you wake up."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
*****
Lizzie lasted only four more days before she died in her sleep. She was only five-and-a-half years old. When she died, she was so small and pale that I could hardly recognize her as the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked little girl who used to wake me up at ungodly hours on my days off. She was just a shadow of the old Lizzie, the one who was always laughing and smiling. When I close my eyes, I can still see her bright, cheerful grin and hear her excited "Guess what, Daddy?" . . . It is a huge cliché, but sometimes I would look at Lucy Knight and see that women Lizzie could have been. Bright, beautiful, and stubborn as hell . . . I used to lie awake and wonder why Lucy got to grow up and Lizzie didn't. But then Lucy died, and part of me felt as though Lizzie had died all over again. I feel that way when any child dies. For a while, I thought about starting a fellowship in pediatric surgery, but I decided I couldn't take seeing kids die day after day. Once was enough.
I still think about her a lot. Any parent who has lost a child will say the same thing. I imagine what she would look like now -- short, slender, blonde hair, and those bright blue eyes. She'd be an adult now, maybe even a doctor. I imagine watching her fall in love, get married, and have a child of her own.
But most of the time, when I think about her, she is eternally five years old with fat blonde pigtails. She still begs me to play with her and sleeps with her arms wrapped around Teddy. Only this time I can do everything right. I can play with her and get up early to watch cartoons with her. I can take her to the park and watch her run in the sunshine.
And when I close my eyes, she is waiting for me, dancing under a rainbow . . .