Bedside Manners Read online

  We got out of the car and stepped into that recognizable frenzy in the air that rings of danger: someone running, someone stopping their car, a boy in a helmet backing away.

  I told Duston to stay by the side of the house and ran forward, picking up in my sharpening field of vision the crumple of a boy and a bicycle on the pavement, someone leaning over him, blood shining up underneath.

  I looked at Duston. He was standing still, looking at me. His hands were over his ears to block out the screams that now were starting from the semiconscious boy on the pavement.

  The person leaning over the boy was unsure whether to move him or not. I made a quick assessment: He was conscious, his eyes were open, pupils equal, he was moving all his limbs, trying to pull off his helmet and sit up —probably, I thought, in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain in his head.

  I disengaged the bicycle, took the helmet he was handing into space.

  Hit and run, someone said. White van. Just kept going.

  A lady with a Russian accent came from across the street, bringing a cold wet towel. Place this against his head, she said. Light pressure.

  Just light pressure.

  I was holding his head, not minding the blood streaming. I worried it might be a sign of skull fracture. I took the towel and placed it on him. The boy pulled it away.

  Just light pressure, the Russian lady was saying.

  I never know when to identify myself. Now, somehow, it seemed important. I’m a doctor, I said.

  Light pressure, she said. Just . . . light. And stepped back.

  The boy was restless. It was hard to do anything. I, we, just contained him in his frantic space, allowing room for him to thrash without injury. He was going to need sedation, and soon.

  The fire truck came, the firemen began to do the things they are trained to do: neck brace, head bandage, asking the right questions —what is your name? What day is it today? I noticed his answers were getting less accurate, perhaps from agitation, or pain, or that darker current that runs unseen for a while — deterioration. Everyone was on a cell phone. I was thankful, for once, for the intrusion of technology.

  His father arrived and I stepped back. And felt, for the first time, the clench of a sob in my throat. The policeman wanted to know if anyone had gotten a good look at the white van. The Russian lady was standing next to my son, asking who he belonged to and if he shouldn’t go home now.

  He’s mine, I said. And then to Duston, You okay?

  Yeah, he said.

  I said, It’s time to go. And for the first time I had a chance to wonder how this would read out in my son, my son who’d never seen anything like this.

  He took my hand, then dropped it. And we realized there was blood all over it. I smiled, wincingly, and then lied a little. I think he’s going to be all right, I said.

  But the evidence of serious head trauma was written all over him. The boy was starting to show the raccoon eyes that warned of blood welling up somewhere you didn’t want to think about. He was confused. I hoped there would be a good neurosurgeon nearby.

  I turned to Duston. That’s why— and I checked myself.

  I know, Dad, he said. That’s why you look both ways.

  The ambulance drove away. We were back to the lives we had been living, which now would be different. The music teacher asked if we didn’t want to postpone. What a way to start, she said.

  He’s been looking forward to this all week, I said. He’s pretty psyched.

  Duston nodded.

  And, secretly, I thought it was a good thing to return to the ritual we came to perform.

  It went well. He and the teacher liked each other. The lesson ran over fifteen minutes. It was hard to turn the key and start up the car when we were done. I drove gingerly, slower by ten miles an hour. It seemed the other drivers were taking too many chances, driving with more insanity than usual. I wondered about full moons, the alignment of stars, phenomena we appeal to when faced with the unfathomable.

  The day propelled itself. In the afternoon I called about the boy. Serious but stable, they said. I would call again tomorrow.

  In bed that night, I asked my son if he had anything he wanted to talk about. He said no. But I didn’t know how much he was thinking about the boy, his mind so filled with peanut butter cookies and the story of Pumpernickel Pop-cap. I had witnessed his tears, his bravery, to stand within the circle of trauma and say nothing. I’d seen him block out what he could, and deal with what he could not. It was he who discovered the blood, and became neither horrified nor unglued. He knew more than I could tell him if I tried. As for the rest, he would work on it in the mysterious way we all work on horrible things, bringing them up into the light, turning them over and over.

  Then putting them back down again, the imprint still with us. Learning to live with that.

  PERMISSION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Advance Directive,” “Flu Shot,” and “Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word” have been previously published in the Bellevue Literary Review. “Circus” and “The Girl in the Painting by Vermeer” have been previously published in Taking the History (La Plume, Pa.: Nightshade Press, 1999).

  National Public Radio’s All Things Considered has broadcast earlier versions of the following stories: “Circus,” “The Doctor with Food on His Shirt,” “Evening in the Two Worlds,” “Flu Shot,” “The Gift of Nothing,” “The Girl in the Painting by Vermeer,” “Her Language,” “Hospital du Jour,” “Lunch at the Stereotype Café,” and “Piano Lesson.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DAVID WATTS, M.D., is a poet and a regular commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered. He has published three books of poetry and organized the “Writing the Medical Experience” workshops at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and Sarah Lawrence College. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

  Copyright © 2005 by David Watts

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the

  Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of

  Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Watts, H. David.

  Bedside manners : one doctor’s reflections on the oddly intimate encounters

  between patient and healer / David Watts.—1st ed.

  1. Physician and patient—Anecdotes. 2. Medicine—Anecdotes.

  3. Physicians—Anecdotes.

  [DNLM: 1. Physician-Patient Relations—Personal Narratives.

  2. Empathy—Personal Narratives. 3. Physicians—psychology—

  Personal Narratives. W62 W359b 2005] I. Title.

  R727.3W38 2005

  610.69’6 —dc22 2004016241

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-41987-3

  v3.0