Free Subject to Change by Alessandra Thomas Page A

This would be a preview of med school. And of me in med school.
    Three people in white coats already waited in the patient’s room. Two guys and a girl who could have been me if her hair was a little lighter and a little curlier. The bed in the room was gigantic — or maybe it only seemed that way because of the size of the little girl lying in it. She couldn’t have been older than four or five, and her big, brown, watery eyes stared up at me, like maybe I could tell her something happy, somehow take her mind off the two IV ports that seemed comically large sticking out of her arm and hand. Her father sat next to her on the bed, his hand resting on her shoulder so lightly it looked like he was afraid of breaking her.
    I nodded my head and gave him a sympathetic smile when I caught his eye, but his lip just sort of trembled when he looked back at me.
    I knew that look. It was the look of fear. I had seen it on my mom and siblings the first couple weeks Dad was in the hospital, before we could see that the chemo was starting to work. I knew, from then, that nothing really helped, but a little bit of humanity from caregivers went a long way.
    Too bad he wasn’t going to get any of that from Doctor O’Donnell. She didn’t even make eye contact with him, looking instead to her group of students.
    “Go ahead, Miss Phillips. Tell us about the patient.”
    The girl in the white coat nodded, cleared her throat, and looked down at her chart. “The patient — her name is Kya — ” She snuck a glance up at Doctor O’Donnell before continuing, and I couldn’t help but smile. “ — presented three days ago with complaints of eye pain. Her mother had also noticed instances of crossed eyes and a cat’s eye appearance in a family snapshot. The diagnosis was retinoblastoma, which seems to be contained within the eye with no sign of vitreous seeds. An echoencephalogram is scheduled for two o’clock and should give us further insight into the spread of any disease.”
    “Thank you. And Mr. Stein, your recommendations?”
    One of the guys, tall and gangly with hair badly in need of a trim, cleared his throat. “Dependent of further testing, of course.” His eyes flashed up to hers. “But depending on how far the malignancy is spread, she’ll need eye surgery at the very least. Possibly radiation or even chemotherapy for the long-term. Removal of the eye is a distinct possibility.”
    The girl’s father made a strange choking noise, and Mr. Stein looked down at him apologetically, not daring to talk to him. Doctor O’Donnell glanced down at him briefly but then nodded to the students.
    “Thank you. I’ll see you in the next room.” They filed out, and she motioned me after them. Just before I turned to leave, she looked at the father again. “The nurses will be along to answer your questions. We’ll know more after testing.”
    And that was it. No smiles, no words of comfort, no soft hand on the child’s head.
    We stopped in eight more rooms just like that, except each was a different degree of horrible. An aggressive brain tumor discovered in stage three. Bone cancer discovered when a girl fell during gymnastics and couldn’t get up. Melanoma in a three-year-old. Four cases of leukemia. I wished I hadn’t spent time beforehand learning the difference between the acute lymphoblastic type and the acute myeloid type because then my brain wouldn’t have been working through which of the kids had the greatest chance of survival.
    The last room we walked into had the same huge bed with plastic-handled sides holding another little kid, too small to have to be in the hospital at all.
    Just like the rest of them.
    The girl was furiously manhandling a video game remote and sitting up straight, staring at the TV on the wall next to us intently. I don’t think I could have handled another listless, dying child.
    And then, I noticed that beside her was Theresa, the woman I’d sat with at Rowland House.
    Before I could stop