I stood up and hugged her, even though her hugs were stiff and awkward. “You’re a cold fish, Olivia, maybe the coldest fish I know, but I still love you, too, and respect you. Now go back to L.A. and save some lives. I’ve got a ten-year-old patient waiting for me.”
As she walked through the sliding doors, she waved over her shoulder without turning around and shouted, “I have a full heart for the first time, Dr. Meyers. See ya around.”
Shortly after, I met Noah, a ten-year-old with aortic stenosis, which would require a procedure similar to the one I had attempted on Lizzy. I went over the chart with one of the nurses as we stood at the end of his bed. Freckle-faced, energetic Noah listened in.
“Dr. Meyers, my mom said you’re going to put a balloon in my heart?”
I always tried to take the honest approach with kids. “Well, when your parents come back I can explain it further, but basically we’re going to open up one of the valves in your heart with something similar to a balloon.”
“Okay cool. You seem really smart.”
The nurse left the room and I approached the boy to observe the monitor above his head. “Thanks, Noah, you seem really smart, too.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“You know how my heart is messed up?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Well . . .”
“I have a heart problem. Don’t worry, I know all about it.”
“Okay, go on.” I let him proceed but felt a bit of trepidation.
“Do you think I’ll be able to feel love?”
“Well, of course,” I answered quickly; then realization set in. “We don’t really love with our hearts. I mean, the heart is an organ that we need to stay alive.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “So do we love with our brains?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“It’s just that Emily at my school is really . . . well, she’s a know-it-all, you know?”
“Yeah, I know someone like that.” I wondered if Emily had red hair and a fiery personality like Olivia.
“Well, she likes me and my mom says she’s smart and pretty.”
“So you think you should like her back?”
He frowned, looking conflicted. “I guess, but it’s just that I know this girl, Grace, and every time I’m around her my heart beats super fast. I think I might be in love with her.” He looked me right in the eye when he said the last part. His face was serious, like we were discussing business between men. “So if you don’t love with your heart, then why does it do that?”
I had a physiological explanation, but it somehow didn’t make sense anymore. “That’s a good question. Maybe we do love with our hearts.”
“So if I have a broken heart, then . . .”
“I’m going to fix your heart, Noah, so you can love all you want with it.”
He smiled. “Really?”
“Yes.” I felt more determined than ever to deliver on my promise.
“Are you in love, Dr. Meyers?” His eyes widened.
“Yes,” I said instantly.
“How do you know?”
“Because my heart beats super fast when I’m around her.” I smiled and dropped my pen into my lab coat pocket.
He smiled back. “Cool.”
In the operating room, as I ran a line from Noah’s femoral artery to his heart, his pressure began to drop suddenly. I stayed calm, ordered the anesthesiologist to administer a certain type of drug, and then watched his blood pressure stabilize. There’s a balanced connection between fear and success. I had to regard each one of my patients as real people. That’s what I learned after Lizzy. I had to feel the fear of their mortality and push through it.
Facing the impossibly painful truth that people die all the time doesn’t make it any easier to accept, but learning from it can make the rest of your life less arbitrary and more meaningful. My career would be dedicated to saving as many people as I could, but my life would be about living. What good was repairing a heart if I was sacrificing my own in the process?
As I operated on Noah, the fear I felt about losing another patient fell away, only to be replaced by the fear that any hope for my future had flown across the Atlantic Ocean days ago.
I went to see Noah in recovery just as he was starting to wake up from his anesthesia. He was very groggy but his mother rubbed his back and encouraged him to wake up slowly. As soon as Noah realized his mother was there, holding him like a baby, he said, “Hey Mom, my mouth is dry, can you get me some water?”
His mother went for the water while I wrote some notes on his chart and observed the monitors.
“How’d I do, Doc?”
“Very well, Noah. I think you’re going to be feeling a lot better.”
“I was thinking about what we talked about.”
“Okay.”
“What do you know about sex?”
I burst out laughing and rocked back on my heels nervously. “Well, I think that might be a conversation for you and your dad to have.”
“I don’t have a dad. He bailed.” This poor kid.
Just then his mom entered the room. I turned away from Noah and approached her. She was a very sweet-looking woman with a heart-shaped face and full lips. I knew Noah had to have inherited his candor from someone, so I approached the subject directly.
“Noah is asking me about”—I cleared my throat—“sex.” I looked back at Noah, who watched me expectantly.