Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

“What is it?” said Gwen. She was trembling now. “What’s wrong?”

A sudden, monstrous shift within, as she thought the unthinkable.

“It’s Telma… is it Telma? Did the cancer come back?”

But if it did, why are we here in Century City, why aren’t we at the hospital, why aren’t————

An attorney began to speak (there were 3 in the room), but Gwen stopped the world by imploring Dr. B with a beggar’s brutalized eyes.

“No — no! Nothing like that,” said the doc.

The eldest lawyer spoke up.

“Thank you for coming.”

What? He’s thanking me? Why he is———

“I won’t sugarcoat it, Mrs. Ballendyne”— Mrs. Ballendyne? Huh? — “this isn’t going to be one of your best hours. And it’s certainly not — not one of the hospital’s finest. Dr. Bessowichte will be the first to tell you that.”

Though it wasn’t a cue for him to speak, the restless doctor squirmed & broke free of the muzzle.

“I wanted to come to the house, Gwen. I wanted to tell you at the house but they said no, that wasn’t a good idea — the hospital forbade me. I didn’t want to listen.” He sighed, and repeated, “I didn’t want to listen.”

Gwen felt like she was watching a play.

“What is it, Donald, what’s happened?”

He didn’t seem to hear her.

“They tied my hands, Gwen—”

“What are you saying?”

“It has been a nightmare. Not just for me, but the other doctors on the team. On Telma’s team…”

“GODDAMMIT, DONALD, you tell me what you’re talking about & YOU TELL ME NOW.”

Two of the lawyers spoke up.

She turned to them with ferocity.

“No! Don’t talk! HE talks! Only HE talks.”

“There was an error,” said Dr. B. “A series of errors. 1 in 10,000,000. And I can walk you through it, when it’s time. We have already constructed a very specific timeline of events.”

He paused.

The air was brittle, frozen.

Everything got bigger and smaller (for Gwen), all at once.

“Gwen… Telma doesn’t have cancer. She never did.”

( Almost inaudibly )

( As if jarred from a private thought )

“What?”

“There was a mistake — a series of freak mistakes & switch-ups , on the clinical & the — on all levels.”

“You’re telling me that my baby never had cancer?”

“That’s right,” said the eldest lawyer, gingerly stepping in. “It is a terrible, tragic event based on both human and machine error . The hospital is heavily insured for this sort of—”

“This sort of thing?” railed the doctor at the men, as if suddenly, in the play, taking the rôle of the injured mother. “This sort of thing? This sort of thing? I don’t think you understand! ”

He pivoted toward Gwen in mid-monologue, as if to show her how eager he was to give voice to injustice, thus lending her a voice, until her own did come. As if seeking support for any effort he would make to redeem himself. As if asking forgiveness.

“ ‘This sort of thing’ just doesn’t happen , it doesn’t happen! In 45 years , I’ve never seen it — never! Never. ”

Indeed, with this last word, this remark, the ruined doctor spoke as if it hadn’t , that what they were discussing was a thing so far outside his and any other practitioner’s realm of possibility and experience that it would, with calmer heads, inevitably be acknowledged even by the most aggrieved parties as the supernaturally statistical anomaly that it was; and that Dr. Bessowichte (& Team Telma) could not, in the end, have had any way of avoiding its preordained inevitability… for a few tortuous moments, the defenseless, prideful physician, himself mutilated, freefloated in a sphere beyond denial, speaking from his ethical, frightened no longer as a preacher but as a child who wishes to think back together something precious they had dropped and broken.

“O God. O my God!”

Someone pushed a box of Kleenex at her.

Dr. B stiffened, bracing for blows, & the dangerous pelting hail of oncoming tears.

“Gwen, I’m so sorry—”

“Then what did she have?” She wasn’t fully comprehending. “If she didn’t have it, what did she have?”

“Something that looked like cancer,” said the doctor. He leaned bravely in, for the first time. “It’s not simple—”

“Not simple . . . . . . . ”

“Gwen, I don’t know how to express in words how sorry———”

“You’re SORRY . You’re SORRY! — O my God my God my God . What am I supposed to do? How can I—— what am i o what am i supposed to do to do o what o what what am i—— ”

( Her lamentations directed to the ether )

“First, you get a lawyer,” said the eldest partner. “There are a half-dozen the firm can recommend, all the best at what they do — medical malpractice. Until you’re represented, we ask that you keep what we’ve shared today in confidence. Disclosure at this juncture would potentially do both you and the hospital great harm.”

Dr. B, patron saint of bees & schoolchildren, of candlemakers, chandlers, & domestic animals, buried, as they say, his head in his hands.

“Great harm?” she said.

She stood, unwell.

The doctor rose along with her out of sheer clinical reflex, seeing/sensing even in his periphery that she was unsteady, she looked ill, she was a wounded human being, it did not matter that he had been her assailant, he was still a healer, by definition & by oath. In medical school they taught that given an existing problem, it may be better to do nothing, than to risk causing more harm———— She went flush, she had no rage, no stratagems, no emotions. They tried getting her to sit back———— primum nil nocere. . . . doctrine & principal of nonmaleficence reminding the physician he must consider the possible harm an intervention might do ————down, they tried giving her water, they tried to comfort. She struggled to keep the vomit from rising. They gave her a box of Kleenex that sat in her limp arms, her eyes like smidged windowpanes———— may thy rod & thy staff comfort you, rod of Asclepius, ancient symbol of medicine & healing, Hippocrates himself a worshipper of Asclepius—————— ———————and all she could do was