Growing Up Chase

By Rebel Yell

Part Twenty-One (age 24)

He stared out the window, somehow unable to believe that the sun was shining, the sky was blue and to most of the city it was a beautiful day. Except for Mr. Wickman, and for his four kids and his twelve grandkids and his eight great-grandchildren and Dr. Robert Chase. It seemed unfair that the day was so perfect outside. When she woke up yesterday, Georgia Wickman didn't have a clue she'd be dead less than 48 hours later. She'd hardly a bit of health problems -- it was her husband with an iffy heart and high blood pressure and who'd been through cancer a few years ago. It shouldn't have been her, if one of the two of them was going to be so quickly dead. It took a moment for Rob to realize he was softly reciting prayers he'd first heard eight years earlier, and had memorized during his time at seminary school. He could still remember that look Father Bennett gave him, when he chose to memorize the prayers of Extreme Unction, rather than one of the happier occasions. They'd all had to memorize something, and those prayers meant more to him than the happier ones.

" Here, kid." Rob didn't look up, but accepted the mug that was practically shoved into his hands. Pete was a staff intensivist, he didn't technically have to worry about Rob at all and in fact had a reputation for hating interns, but he'd taken Rob under his wing right from the start. It wasn't quite "friendly" but Pete was definitely fond of him. What passed for fond with Pete at any rate. Rob imagined that this was what older brothers did -- torture you most of your life and tease you constantly, but every once in awhile gave your head a ruffle just to let you know he liked you after all.

" Look, kid, she died. Her heart gave out. She was 85, not a shocker that. It can't be your first dead patient. Hell, I know it isn't, we've had patients you've worked on die in the time you've worked here. What's gotten you today?"
" She was the first one that died under my hands. I was primary, and she died. She died with my hands on her, I was supposed to-" He cut himself off, hearing his voice shake. He was not going to cry in front of a senior attending. Especially Pete -- he'd never let him live it down.
" Kid, it's gonna happen. Get used to it, or get a nice safe office job or something in a clinic where the worst thing you see is an STD. Drink that, it'll make you feel better."
" When's the M and M?" Rob sipped at the drink, happy for something to do with his hands, no matter how inane.
" Early next week - Tuesday afternoon I think." The intensivists always knew when the morbidity and mortality meetings were scheduled out of habit, it was rare when one of them didn't have to present a case. "You go in looking like that, and they'll be waiting for papers to be served. You look like you just run over someone's kitten. Or maybe someone murdered yours. Listen, kid, did you do good work?"
" I think so."
" Hey, what did I tell you about thinking? Now. Did you do good work on Mrs. Wickman?"
" Yes. She presented with severe cardiac arrest last night, heart stopped entirely, they re-started it once in Casualty, and I ran two codes before the final time her heart stopped and it didn't respond to all efforts. I followed protocols to the letter. I did good work."
" Ridiculous question with you -- you never fuck up unless you get bored. It's the routine shit that gets you, not the codes. Anyone ever tell you that you're easily distracted? How many codes have you run since you started here?"
" Kylie keeps the board at the ICU 2 nurses station, but I think I'm at 54 that I've run personally."
" 54 codes and 1 death -- I hate your perfect cute little ass. Your numbers make the rest of us look bad. You need to screw up more often kid. Keeps you from getting an ego like a fucking surgeon's."

"Pete, you're married to a surgeon."
" I know what I'm talking about then, don't I? Look, Rob, you're a good doctor. I think you can be a damn good intensivist. But people are going to die under your hands. It's not necessarily your fault, doesn't mean you aren't still an exceptional doctor. But you aren't God, kid. You can't touch them and have them be healed."
" That much I know."
" Do the best you can, keep 'em alive as long as you can, but don't carry it around with you. There's too much death in the ICU to haul it around in your head. You'll be insane before you pass your boards."

" I know. It's just different, losing her. Doesn't make sense. Her husband even took it pretty well, considering. I just feel I could've done something more. I couldn't but I still…feel like that."

"Your shift's over in a hour. Sit here and mope a bit -- although if you want to pout, go do it where the nurses can see you. You're young, and that pout looks adorable. You'd have the girls queuing up down the hall to take you home and 'make it all better'. If I can't be enjoying our bounty of beautiful nurses, at least let me live vicariously through my young, pretty, single co-worker."
" You are a twisted man."
" Nope, just married. Go, mope, pout, take one of the nurses home and come back tomorrow with your mind clear. Go. Now, while I'm being nice."
" You're never nice."
" Fine. You caught me. I'm worried that you're going to sit in here brood the rest of the shift and if I wanted to watch someone mope about I'd go down to the daycare. Go, before I change my mind and decide a more fitting place for you is in records, organizing charts."
" See you tomorrow, Pete." Rob finished his tea, set it next to the sink (because Julia flipped if anything was actually in the sink) and slipped out of his white coat. It was simpler to just leave it in the intensivists' lounge -- a bit like leaving the doctor part of him behind.
" Get outta here, kid. And burn that fucking shirt, the pattern makes me nauseous." Rob smiled, made a rude gesture before heading out the door. He wore these shirts just to piss Pete off -- Pete who said that anything that wasn't a solid color was too fancy or just plain ugly or both. He was waiting for the day when Pete finally followed through on his threat to make Rob strip off the next time he wore something brightly colored and ugly into work. Just to see if Pete would actually do it.