The Don's Doctor

Dr Ricci

Chiara's POV

Blue apron, surgical boots, face mask, gown and gloves are stuffed inside the yellow plastic bin bag. I peel two sets of gloves off my hands. They are slippery from the blood that is already liberally coating them. Walking towards the sink, I wave my hand around the sensor and watch the alcohol loaded gel cover my hands. The scent is sharp, yet comforting. Processing every step I have just taken during the five-hour operation calms the adrenaline that has been elevating my senses and reactions. I’m planning what to conclude in my notes. Through the glass, I see the porters wheel my patient to the recovery room. It was a successful procedure, with only a few surprises. The music of Puccini that I need to have playing while I make the necessary cuts is softly sounding out. Even after I have left the theater, my team know not to turn it off. Call it superstitious, but there’s nothing sadder than a song not reaching its natural end. It is one of the many things that life and music have in common.

Recently, I have been performing too many surgeries that were caused because of unprecedented violence in the city. This procedure to remove a gall bladder has been a much-needed relief from the onslaught of brutality that I have been immersed in lately. I knew the nature of the injuries I was repairing was starting to take its toll on me. Eighteen months ago, I experienced my most traumatic night as a surgeon. It was the type of night that happens once or twice in a physician’s career. It was the only time that I had ever doubted if this was the right job for me. When a surgeon calls the time of death on more people than booking an OR to save them, it would be inhuman not to feel hopeless. An explosion had happened at an opera house. Gas leak they had claimed, although I don’t know why I was pulling out bullets from a gas leak. There was an older couple who were brought in on two separate rigs. I had been the on-call trauma surgeon, so I was working on the first arrival. A woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in an elegant, lilac, ball-room gown was lying on the table. Cutting through the fabric, I was horrified to see the damage that continued to reveal itself through my examination. Ordering for more morphine to be administered, I desperately tried to locate where I could pack the wounds until I could get to an operating room, but I knew that I was fighting an unstoppable process. Focusing on each new conundrum of care that was needed, I barely noticed her gentle hand on mine. I paused.

“My…husband”. She whispered, with each syllable causing immense pain.

As if he had been summoned, a tall man, in a torn and burnt suit burst through the doors. His eyes were fixed on my patient. Immediately, I went to stand in front of her, to shield her from his view, but he didn’t even notice me, his eyes were fixed on the woman lying on the gurney. I soon realised he was staring at her with a devoted desperation to fix her. Despite all my instructions that he should be seen by his own doctor, he was deaf to all of them. Lying on the bed next to her, he held her in his arms.

“I failed. I’m sorry. They will come.” He called out between sobs, until she stopped breathing, and he was silent.

I continued to try to administer care to the husband, but he continuously batted my arm away, as if I was an irritation to him. He wouldn’t accept any pain medication, but it was obvious that his broken heart hurt more than his body.

Kissing her lips, he said something in Italian, then he too was no more.

I felt it would be too cruel to separate them, so I put the cover over both of them, and kept them side by side, hoping to speak to their family as soon as they arrived. I continued to work, but I felt hollow. I knew I had seen the end of something magnificent, but I hadn’t had a chance to learn the start of their story. Sometimes a trauma surgeon only ever sees the end of the tale. Unfortunately, the rigs were bringing patients all night. An hour after I had pulled the cover over the couple, I was being wheeled to operating room two, while straddling a patient who was receiving CPR from me. In the madness, I noticed four men arrive, wearing long black coats, and oozing a dangerous charisma. They headed for the triage desk, and as the elevator was closing I saw the nurses lead them to the room where the couple I had tried to treat lay. Cold had chilled my blood that day, and every day after I had failed to feel the warmth again.

Since that dreadful night, the injuries caused by weapons had quadrupled, and I could see the pattern even if no-one else was willing to acknowledge it. The lowlifes of this city need to be collected and incarcerated. If they had, that couple, who had lived together for longer than some of my patients had been alive, would have been planning their retirement now. I think if I melted down all the shrapnel, bullets, and metal that I had pulled from my patients’ bodies there would be enough to build a cell for each of them.

Gray clouds seem to press against the locker room window, and the sixteen-hour shift has the tiredness weighing me down more heavily than usual tonight. An uneaten lunch is pulled from the fridge. It is the same every day, but I live in the hope that one day a quiet night will come along where I can enjoy a lunch break. Determined not to be hooked by an interesting case, or a ‘quick evaluation’, I keep my eyes fixed on the automatic doors.

“Doctor Ricci!” The receptionist calls me, and I hope it’s not to ask for a shift change or extra cover. I don’t want to spend another night in the on-call room.

“Your father is here, he’s in bay two.”

“With a patient?” I ask.

“No Chiara, they think he’s had a heart attack.”

I run.

Federico Ricci. His name is written on the board above his bed. I know it doesn’t really matter, but I get the board pen and made the amendment of doctor before his first name. Exhaustion surrounds him like a flock of black crows and his pallor is gray, the same shade as the sky-scrapers that I can see from the window. Above all these details, what worries me the most is his flickering eyes that fight against the tiredness that is attempting to trap him into sleep.

“He’s been asking for you.” The nurse at the foot of the bed said.

I hadn’t even noticed that she was there.

Reaching my hand out, I clasp my papa’s hand in my own, and it seems to alert him to the fact that I am here. He repeats my name in his Italian accent, even though he has lived in New York since his late teens, his roots had remained in Italy. Torn between reassuring him, and desperately wanting to read his chart, I settle on the former, and make him comfortable. Mistakenly, I think he has been lulled to sleep, until the nurse leaves, and he re-animates with sudden urgency.

“Go into my pocket, you will find a mobile in there. If it ever rings, you must answer it and do what you are told, do you understand?” My father rushes out, and I’m nodding, careful not to upset him.

“Underneath my bed, in my home, you’ll find a black leather bag with everything you need.” He finishes and finally, the frown in his forehead smooths out as he sleeps.

Taking off my coat, I look over his chart. Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow with Doctor Harris. I wish I could ask for a different practitioner. His arrogance knows no bounds, and his team are constantly looking for openings on another surgeon’s roster. I’ve only operated with him a few times, and I thought his aftercare was poor. Not that it would matter in this case, because I would be looking after my papa. In an ideal world, I would be able to perform the surgery myself, but hospital policy was very strict about treating our family. It was very strict about a lot of things.

Despite my earlier exhaustion, my eyes refuse to rest, and I watch for the slightest change in my papa’s condition. Soft snores assure me he is stable for now. I have only been back home for two years to complete my residency and fellowship at Provence County Hospital. I will be an Attending before the year is out, and it has been a challenging transition. Although I love my papa, and I knew I was his entire world, we had spent most of our years apart. When I was eight, my father sent me to a private school in England, and I stayed there until I completed college. I returned to Harvard University to start my medical studies. Since then, I have moved to a number of hospitals at my father’s recommendation, until finally, after completing a year of charity work, I came home. Initially, I had planned to move back into my family home, but my father had bought me an apartment across the street from the hospital. I feel like we haven’t had enough time together, and nothing brings it closer to home than seeing the person you love most in the world in a hospital bed.

Unable to sleep, I pick up his chart and read through the exam. He had collapsed at work, his secretary had come into his office, before she left for the night, to leave him his cup of coffee. The fuel that burned till midnight, he called it. She found him clutching his chest, and struggling to speak. The ambulance had arrived promptly, and he had been given blood thinners, which he responded well to. When I move back in with him, he will be having a healthier diet and strict no-coffee rules for the foreseeable time.

Sunrise calls at the window sooner than expected. Grumbling, my father tugs at the cannula that wakes him fully, and he curses at it in Italian. His agitation wakes me from the uncomfortable position I had fallen asleep in on the hospital chair. His hospital chart lay open across my chest.

“Your surgery is today, papa. I’ll be in the gallery watching, so you don’t need to worry.” I console him.

The ECG beeps rapidly, and I’m scared he will have another heart attack, but instead he pulls me towards him with surprising strength.

“Did you get the black bag from beneath my bed like I asked?” He whispers at me.

Shaking my head, I want to cry at the disappointment that oozes off his expression.

“Take the phone, drive to my house, and keep the bag in the boot of your car, do you understand?”

It was rare for my papa to shout at me, it had only been the two of us for so long that upsetting him was more painful than any physical injury I had yet to encounter. I know that if I speak, I will cry, so I nod to show that I understand. He is the only person in my life that has this power over me. Rummaging through his coat pockets, I find the phone buried under the sherbet lemons that he loves so much.

“I’ll be back soon, papa. Before you wake up from surgery, I’ll be back. I promise.” I tell him as I kiss his forehead.

“Not if that phone rings!” He disagrees, and the prophetic tone chills me.