Taiye Selasi - Ghana Must Go

A word with Dr. Yuki.

Or a question. Just the one. What he’d been wanting to ask and to ask to her face (or to half of her face: a good 50 percent was missing behind the shiny half-curtain of her asymmetric bob). Simply: how was she sleeping? Dr. Yuki the surgeon? Not the M.B.A., the adminstrator. The do-no-harm doctor. For the other one, the aspirant, the suit? Fair enough. Agent Yuki had her bottom line, her shareholders to please. One of Boston’s richest families, one of the hospital’s biggest donors, “the stakes were too high,” as per Marty, not to act. The family had demanded that someone be held accountable. “These things sometimes happen” was not accounting enough. So in a back room over a weekend — a Room of Judgment but with cocktails — it was decided that the surgeon would be fired. Would that work? Would that appease the Cabots? Yes, thank you, it would, please. Fair enough, Agent Yuki.

But Dr. Yuki?

She knew.

She knew what it took, to scrub in, to say, “scalpel,” to saw through the stomach with sharp sterile steel. She knew the great pride that he took in this terror, the joy — not just he but their whole prideful tribe. She knew that the procedure had been flawlessly executed. She knew, Dr. Yuki, and nevertheless when she spoke, it was to fire a good surgeon to appease a strong family, to say that he’d failed to “account for the risks.”

Though no doctor (but one) would agree with her assessment. Though her boss, the hospital president, had watched the surgery himself, that final insult-added-to-injury that almost cost them the lawsuit and would have were the judge not Ginny’s cousin.

Almost.

In the end it didn’t matter. The machine was in motion. It ate all the letters, the petitions, the appeals, colleagues arguing his case, that he’d done all he could, that they couldn’t have done better. To no avail. There was doubt. Dr. Putnam “Putty” Gardener — trusted Cabot family doctor, widowed Kip’s DKE frater, Boston Brahmin, racist, golfer — was insistent that the surgeon had (a) failed to appreciate and (b) failed to communicate the risks.

And that was that.

• • •

Now the surgeon wanted a word with the hospital vice president, to ask her to her face was she sleeping through the night? And so found himself parking (at some remove, out of habit), walking casually through the lobby, just as calm as could be, the Jamaican security guard Ernie smiling warmly as he entered — always happy to see the doctor (one) who knew his first name, who said “Good morning, Mr. Ernie” on arriving every morning and “My best to the kids” on departing every night, instead of blowing by blindly without greeting, without seeing him, as if the guards were inanimate, were lobby decor — then riding up in the elevator, alone, to the offices, here pausing for a breath to hear the uppermost-hush — and onward, down the hallway in his scrubs and white coat, knocking once before barging in her door.

By the time they were dragging him back through the lobby, eyes bloodshot from shouting, a madman in scrubs, he’d forgotten entirely about the Museum of Fine Art class and Kehinde three train stops away.

So almost choked to find the child now appearing in the lobby having waited thirty minutes for his father to turn up before figuring that his father had gotten tied up in the surgery so he’d foot it to the hospital and wait there instead. Until this very moment Kweku would’ve bet money that her younger son couldn’t have said where he worked — not the name of the hospital, one of several in the vicinity, nor the location of the entrance hall — but here Kehinde was: appearing calmly in the lobby at precisely the same moment two men dragged a madman across it.

• • •

“Get your hands off me!” he was shouting at the security guards.

And Ernie at his colleagues, “He’s a doctor here! Stop!”

And Dr. Yuki at Ernie, “He’s not a doctor here, excuse me! He was fired! Last year!”

Just as Kehinde appeared.

Just like that. Out of nowhere. As only he could, without sound, with leather art portfolio tucked underarm.

• • •

The guards, who were white, looked at Dr. Yuki, who was pink, little hands and mouth trembling with rage beyond words. She nodded to them once, a Hong Kong mobstress to her henchmen, and was smoothing down her skirt to go when Kehinde caught her eye. She drew back the curtain to squint at his eyes, as if drawn to some dangerous light source, too bright. Kehinde, squinting back at her, could feel what Dr. Yuki felt, the barrenness, so sad for her. He bit his lip with worry. Dr. Yuki saw his pity, and he felt her stomach fill with shame.

Spinning on her kitten heels, she click-click-clicked away.

• • •

The guards looked at Ernie with genuine regret and shoved Kweku, without, to the sidewalk outside. Kehinde sort of stumbled next — too stunned to speak — through the revolving door, surprised to find the world, too, revolving.

Late afternoon.

Orange sun.

They were still for one instant, Kweku catching his breath with his hands on his knees and his eyes on his knuckles, and Kehinde beside him, portfolio to chest like a float, eyes wide with silence. The very next instant a Brewster pulled up, all assaulting red lights and assaulting red noises, and true to its nature the machine sprang to life as if nothing had happened (nothing important). Paramedics poured out of the back of the ambulance, emergency department residents from the building, en masse, even Ernie had his function: clearing visitors out of the way to let the stretcher (screaming woman, crowning son) come rushing through. From the curb where he stood, Kweku made out Dr. Yuki waiting, stone-faced, by the elevator as the stretcher passed behind her, either deaf or indifferent to the cloud of pure chaos that blew past her back. Getting in, going up.

Out of habit, without looking, he took Kehinde’s elbow. He did this — touched his family when there was chaos in their midst, just to feel them, feel their body warmth, to keep them close as best he could, as close as he came to physical affection — but the gesture felt preposterous now. He in his scrubs, beard unshaven, eyes wet, having been “fired last year!” and now forcibly removed: comforting Kehinde, so collected, spotless shirt tucked in neatly, pressed, always so impassive? Preposterous. He let go.

• • •

So many things Kweku wished in that moment: that he’d spent more time with Kehinde trying to learn to read his face, that the boy was watching him spring to life outside the hospital, saving lives and playing hero through the chaos in their midst, that he’d vetoed the art class (better yet, could afford it), that he’d parked a little closer to avoid this walk of shame. He was burning with the desire to say something brilliant, something wise and overriding, a burn behind the ears. But all he could think of was “I’m sorry you saw that.”

“Sight is subjective. We learned that in class.”

Kehinde looked at Kweku, his head slightly sideways, his brows knit together. An upside-down smile.

• • •

They got in the car.

Kind of Blue.

He turned this off.

He drove around the pond, the sun beginning its descent. He drove without looking, without needing to, from memory. Seeing instead of looking. He drove home by heart. Past the little public school, abandoned in the evening time, seen instead of looked at looking lonely somehow. Past the sprawling mansions — were they always this massive? Their house seeming suddenly so modest, compared. Past the teeming trees — were there always this many? Like ladies-in-waiting along the side of the road. Around the third of four rotaries (the pride of Brookline, gratuitous rotaries). Past a man and dog jogging. Past some point of no return.