Walter Herzog was in his sixties, thin, bald, and very nervous. He was in bed, clutching his groin, when Paige walked in, carrying a bouquet of flowers. Herzog looked up.
“Nurse…I want to see a doctor.”
Paige walked over to the bed and handed him the flowers. “I’m the doctor. I’m going to operate on you.”
He looked at the flowers, and looked at her. “You’re what?”
“Don’t worry,” Paige said reassuringly. “You’re in good hands.” She picked up his chart at the foot of the bed and studied it.
“What does it say?” the man asked anxiously. Why did she bring me flowers?
“It says you’re going to be just fine.”
He swallowed. “Are you really going to do the operation?”
“Yes.”
“You seem awfully…awfully young.”
Paige patted his arm. “I haven’t lost a patient yet.” She looked around the room. “Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything to read? A book or magazine? Candy?”
He was listening, nervously. “No, I’m okay.” Why was she being so nice to him? Was there something she wasn’t telling him?
“Well, then, I’ll see you in the morning,” Paige said cheerfully. She wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to him. “Here’s my home number. You call me if you need me tonight. I’ll stay right by the phone.”
By the time Paige left, Walter Herzog was a nervous wreck.
A few minutes later, Jimmy found Paige in the lounge. He walked up to her with his wide grin. “Congratulations! I hear you’re going to do a procedure.”
Word gets around fast, Paige thought. “Yes.”
“Whoever he is, he’s lucky,” Jimmy said. “If anything ever happened to me, you’re the only one I’d let operate on me.”
“Thanks, Jimmy.”
And, of course, with Jimmy, there was always a joke.
“Did you hear the one about the man who had a strange pain in his ankles? He was too cheap to go to a doctor, so when his friend told him he had exactly the same pain, he said, ‘You’d better get to a doctor right away. And tell me exactly what he says.’
“The next day, he learns his friend is dead. He rushes to a hospital and has five thousand dollars’ worth of tests. They can’t find anything wrong. He calls his friend’s widow, and says, ‘Was Chester in a lot of pain before he died?’
“’No,’ she says. ‘He didn’t even see the truck that hit him!’”
And Jimmy was gone.
Paige was too excited to eat dinner. She spent the evening practicing tying surgical knots on table legs and lamps. I’m going to get a good night’s sleep, Paige decided, so I’ll be nice and fresh in the morning.
She was awake all night, going over the operation again and again in her mind.
There are three types of hernias: reducible hernia, where it’s possible to push the testicles back into the abdomen; irreducible hernia, where adhesions prevent returning the contents to the abdomen; and the most dangerous, strangulated hernia, where the blood flow through the hernia is shut off, damaging the intestines. Walter Herzog’s was a reducible hernia.
At six o’clock in the morning, Paige drove to the hospital parking lot. A new red Ferrari was next to her parking space. Idly, Paige wondered who owned it. Whoever it was had to be rich.
At seven o’clock, Paige was helping Walter Herzog change from pajamas to a blue hospital gown. The nurse had already given him a sedative to relax him while they waited for the gurney that would take him to the operating room.
“This is my first operation,” Walter Herzog said.
Mine, too, Paige thought.
The gurney arrived and Walter Herzog was on his way to OR Three. Paige walked down the corridor beside him, and her heart was pounding so loudly that she was afraid he could hear it.
OR Three was one of the larger operating rooms, able to accommodate a heart monitor, a heart-lung machine, and an array of other technical paraphernalia. When Paige walked into the room, the staff were already there, preparing the equipment. There was an attending physician, the anesthesiologist, two residents, a scrub nurse, and two circulating nurses.