Sad Smile of Dr. Bradley Hillary - Essay Example

English April 28, XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Dr. Bradley Hillary walked along with hospital transport beside the bed as it was pushed towards recovery. It held a pale little girl, his little girl, Emily. . He had watched the surgery from an observation room, but did not participate in his daughter’s care, despite being the Head of Anestheology at Brettsburg General. Rather he had left it up to Oncology to make the decisions. She was only fourteen, yet she looked so much younger attached to all of the tubes and bags which were used for surgery. Dr. Hillary pulled the curtain around his daughter’s bed shut and sat by her side with her hand resting upon his. She opened her eyes and said, “Daddy, are you there?” “Yes darling, Daddy is here. You did well during the surgery and everything is going to be okay” he said as he gently stroked her hand. “Daddy, I saw Mommy…is Mommy here?” she asked as her eyes fluttered open And shut. Her voice was weak and slurred. “Yes honey, Mommy is here, I am here. And we all love you very much.” He said in a gentle tone as Emily drifted back to sleep. He then took out a small vile containing a clear liquid and added it to Emily’s IV. “That will help,” he thought to himself mournfully.” He kissed his daughter on the forehead and then left the recovery room. As he was leaving, he stopped to talk to the nurses and told them she was sleeping peacefully and to page him at once should there be any changes. “Of course Doctor,” said the nurse on duty with a warm smile. “We will give your little angel the best of care.” Dr. Hillary nodded and left the room, making his way back to the fourth floor to do his duties. He stepped into the sterile, stainless steel elevator and pushed the button marked “four”, he was alone. “Alone,” he thought mournfully to himself. “I’m always alone.” Emily’s mother, Robin, had died from cancer that had been induced by a fertility drug called DZT, which had been taken off the market due to lawsuits that proved it caused female cancer. She was convinced that she could both carry the baby and beat the cancer, but she was wrong. Brad had tried desperately to talk his wife, into terminating the pregnancy and save her own life. But she would hear nothing of the sort. “Catholics,” he thought to himself vehemently. “What kind of religion tells people to die instead of losing a baby when they have cancer?” They had had so many dreams, so many plans when they had first met in undergraduate school. He wanted to be a good husband and father, as well as a prominent physician. He had planned to do this with Robin, back home in Brettsburg, Indiana. However, after struggling through years of med-school and reaching many of his goals, Brad still wanted more. He wanted to move to Chicago or New York and accept one of the lucrative offers he had received to practice there. He even had an offer from Sloane – Kettering, one of the finest cancer hospitals in the world. However, he had promised Robin they would stay in Brettsburg and serve in a small rural hospital in the community where they had both grown up. “What was I thinking?” He thought to himself. Stuck in this one horse town with a first-rate education and close to half a million dollars in student loans. But he had kept his promise and worked at Brettsburg General in this crappy, little town as he had promised. It all changed when Robin died. Brad found himself a single parent, stuck in a nowhere town with an infant doomed to die. On reaching his office, Brad sat down and continued recounting his years of dealing with this debacle of a life, at least his student loans were paid off he thought to himself and at least he had sued the drug bastards for millions and won. Yet he still felt empty, bitter and alone. What did three million dollars mean without his Robin? Years had gone by slowly with his daughter Emily and himself. He thought about the string of girlfriends he had trifled through; he never wanted to feel that pain again, of deep love or of deep loss. He would never let anyone become that close ever again. Maybe if Robin had let him take that job at Sloane - Kettering, maybe she would be alive today instead of underneath a headstone. Nothing was left of her but that cold, gray stone. Maybe this, maybe that, who really knows? There is one thing that doctors all learn to accept, that people die, even children, even with the best of care. He thought of the surgery, watching them cut Emily’s little body almost in half. They had cut her open to remove female cancer at only the age of fourteen. He had participated in thousands of surgeries in his life-time, but none had seemed as barbaric as this one. Brad started doing his paper work, checking e-mails and reviewing files. Anything to get his mind off of watching them cut his daughter open as if she was nothing more than an animal at a slaughter house. Life and death were his business; he dealt with that every single day. The glamorous life he had imagined a doctor’s life would be simply didn’t exist. Brad thought about his Mother, who lay in the same graveyard as Robin. She had been a cleaning lady all of her life. He had heard some years ago that his father had died in a car crash, but he had been absent from the family for so many years, that he had not even bothered to attend the funeral service. In any case, his father had been a drunk bastard, who had cared more for his liquor than his own wife and children. Brad recalled how his mother had pushed him to achieve academically, “Your going to be a doctor someday Bradley, and you will be rich, drive nice cars, play golf and be in one of those country clubs with all of your doctor friends” she had said to him almost daily. He worked hard in school, he dreamed of not being poor, of having nice clothes and all the fancy parties he would certainly attend. “I worked day and night to become a doctor, “he said to himself, “I gave up my baseball dreams, even though I had a pretty good swing… I didn’t go to movies or hang out with the other kids. I never even had a girlfriend until varsity.” Brad vividly remembered leaving on the bus to go to university and his mother crying at the bus station. “You’re’ on your way Bradley. You be a good boy and make your Momma proud.” “I will Mom, I promise.” He hugged his mom and boarded the bus bound for Chicago. Bradley Hillary, son of a cleaning lady, was going to Northwestern University to become a rich doctor! Brad shuffled through a few more of the patient files on his desk but he was unable to concentrate with all that was plaguing his mind. He thought about how beautiful Robin had looked when he first met her in sophomore year at Northwest in the main campus courtyard; her midnight black hair was gleaming and the sunlight was gently peering through her white cotton dress, making her appear not only beautiful, but sensual. He found out she was from a small town near Brettsburg and the two had so much in common. Their life was a whirlwind in college, they were both idealistic and hard working; and both agreed to move back home and make Brettsburg a better place. “We were both so desperately in love,” he thought as he looked at the slowly ticking clock. Life was unimaginable without Robin, yet here he was, more than two decades after they first met, and he still longed for her. Sometimes he could barely look at Emily as she reminded him so much of his beloved Robin. He remembered their first little apartment near campus, not even a stove, just a hot plate. “We were so happy,” he thought to himself, “not a dime but so happy. How did all of this happen, how did I lose my Robin?” He remembered her going to work at a dingy little coffee shop in a horrible gold polyester uniform while he went to Medical School at Northwestern. “I wanted to make it all up to her.” Brad thought to himself, “I wanted to give her everything she ever wanted after med school, how could I have guessed that she would not live long enough for me to do that?” Brad dropped his head onto his arms on his desk and vaguely thought about his daughter in recovery. His mind then drifted off to that first little rental house with Robin. A picket fence, second hand furniture, a dog named Rusty from the pound and all they dreamed it was going to be. But it wasn’t. Not for Brad. He deeply loved Robin, but he was bored with Brettsburg after living in Chicago. There were no trains or busy streets full of traffic jams, no nightlife of any kind, not even one professional theatre. The fanciest restaurant in the town was an all you can eat buffet. Brettsburg General was small and underfunded. It was such a drop backwards from the gleaming halls of Northwestern and the top-notch physicians he had worked with there. He was bored. But Robin’s resolve to live there was firm. She was not going to leave her family and she was not going to raise her children in a place like Chicago or New York. He pleaded with her to re-consider but she wouldn’t budge. “Why!” he thought to himself in desperation, why? Why did she want to stay in this dump of a town when they could have had so much more? And then she ended up dying here and he had been left with the child that was her reason for dying? “What was she thinking? He thought to himself. “Of all the stupid things to do.” And then those bastards at the drug company. First they buried the evidence of a defective drug and then they buried his wife. And here he was for another day, stuck at Brettsburg General, a sub-standard hospital in the middle of nowhere, here he was, re-living the life he had with Robin as Emily struggled to survive the same cancer his wife had died of. “Those idiots at the drug company,” he thought to himself. “Profit over people, well, at least I hung them in court.” Brettsburg General did not pay very much and Robins pay as a social worker had been far worse. He really did not come into any money until Robin died. “I have a first class education and I don’t make crap until a drug company poisons my wife,” he thought to himself. He never understood how Robin had been so happy when they always seemed to be so damn broke. “How did she do that? I was never as good a person as she was, and I never will be.” He had hated small town life even with the woman he loved. All the time he was married, he longed to return to the city, to live in a high rise, to drive a silver Porsche and to have his suits made at a respectable tailor. “Was that asking so very much for an educated doctor?” he asked himself. A black-tie fundraiser now and then instead of the dreadful hospital talent show? Was that really too much to ask for all his years of hard work in school and the poverty he put up with? “No,” he whispered to himself, “it wasn’t. I am going to have it all now. I will not let anyone take all that away from me ever again, even if I love them.” His time had come, he thought as he paged through his calendar and tapped his pencil to the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the wall. Suddenly, an urgent page came over the PA and Dr. Hillary was told to rush to recovery. It was Emily! He ran to the elevator, but opted for the stairs instead, leaping down them two at a time. He burst into recovery and saw that a crash cart was already at Emily’s bedside as the doctors and nurse desperately worked to resuscitate her. “CLEAR!” The doctor shouted to his staff, he hit Emily’s little chest with the paddles. “CLEAR...” he hit her again. Her vitals were erratic, she was not responding to the recitation… “CLEAR” He bellowed desperately as he hit her chest once again. The doctor started compressing her chest with tears running down his face; the entire team cried “OH my god, OH my God!” we’re losing her…” Brad just stood at the end of the bed, holding his breath, unable to take his eyes off the tragic scene unfurling in front of him like some garish nightmare. “CLEAR!”, and the doctor hit her chest again in an attempt to defibulate her. But it was of no use. Emily’s little body would not respond. She died from “some sort of complication of surgery” they said. She just quit breathing. Dr. Hillary went to his daughter’s side and collapsed to his knees on the floor, weeping bitterly holding her now still little hand. “My God, why, my god why! “He cried, “My Emily, my baby, my baby. She is gone. Oh my baby. Come back my sweet Emily, come back.” But nothing happened; Emily was now in the land of the eternal sleepers. The staff unhooked her lifeless body and moved the equipment out of the room. They told him to take all the time he needed. Some hugged him; most were crying, their tears falling down in little glistening rivulets. It is hard to lose a child in a hospital under any circumstances but the child of one of their most beloved doctors? It was unthinkable. Eventually Brad left recovery and told them to take care of his little girl. He went back to his office and shut and locked the door. “It is over,” he sighed to himself. “It is finally over; she is at peace, asleep, like those little dolls in the gift shop, whose eyes will never open again.” He started to think about the arrangements that would have to be made and what he would have to do. He knew he could put on his strong face and get through it; after all, life as well as death was part of his business. He saw death nearly every day. As an anestheologist, he knew Emily had suffered no pain; she had simply drifted off into a deep sleep. He did the right thing he told himself. “I did what I had to do, now we are both free, free from this life I have grown to despise and free from her being so desperately sick.” He opened his calendar and made a note to call his attorney sometime next week. Emily had a trust fund from the DZT lawsuit which would now pay out double indemnity due to her pre-mature death. The settlement would be ten million dollars, more money than most doctors made during their entire career. “One little vial, it is amazing what just one little vial of drugs can do to a person,” he thought to himself, managing a small smile. Dr. Bradley Hillary left the hospital some time later, having given in his resignation, dreaming of New York, or maybe Los Angeles, or really, anywhere where he could earn the kind of money he was going to receive. Maybe he would take some time off and go to Paris. “I have always wanted to visit the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. I can always have more children if I want,” he thought, “but, I’ll never have this kind of money again, no matter which hospital I work at.” Slowly he made his way back to the two-bedroom flat he rented, thinking of the exciting life which lay ahead of him. He never saw the flashing lights; he hardly heard the screeching of breaks as the truck attempted to stop. The bright pictures of money and glamour faded from his mind as he was thrown to the tarmac in a crumpled heap. The last thing he saw before succumbing to the darkness which had come to claim him was the pale little face of Emily, smiling sadly at him. Read More