By Dena Pruett
He tells us he is like that boss, you know, the one from the movie.
“That’s all.” He’ll trill as he flutters past in a mockery of the boss, the movie, us.
We can tell how a surgery went by the particular way he wears his white coat. On good days the coat is on, collar crisp, the sides flapping up and out as he strides forward, fast and sure. On bad ones, the coat is in his hand, tight and bunched, ready to throw at a chair as soon as he steps into his office.
The rhetoric is as fluid as his fashion. God works through his hands. It’s all divined, preordained. He is but a vessel, an instrument of something higher, more profound than him. Or, it’s everyone else’s fault. The residents are lazy. The nurses and P.A.s slow. The tools not sharp and swift, just out of reach. The patient—too weak. We forgive him these days. He just cares for his patients, the practice. We imagine that deep down he holds himself accountable, feels too much, and this is all mostly bluster.
There are two of us—the assistants. One personal. One for business. The business side is all meetings, speaker events, pre- and post-op notes, and manuscript reviews while the personal side helps the surgeon’s wife—dinners, parties, children’s schedules, vacation plans, and dentist appointments. Behind closed doors we joke that we are a variety pack of condoms. One for his pleasure. One for hers. We each sit at our own desk across from the other but close enough that we can side eye when our space is invaded by anyone other than him.
Every morning, he sweeps in, tossing us each a full audio recorder that he has filled throughout the previous day into the night. They teem with his voice. His sighs fill our headphones, our ears until we are surrounded by him. We type most of the day that way unless he is in the office, and only then do we remove our headphones on the off chance he might shout for one or both of us to dictate to in real time. This, we dread. Perched on the edge of the chair, we scrawl fast but never fast enough on yellow legal pads missing every third word while he paces back and forth or leans back in his chair feet crossed and propped on the corner of his desk. These are the only two modes of his we know.
He calls us “Sweet Caroline” and “Holly Holy.” These are not our names—not exactly—but he says them with such affection that we feel endeared to him. After we finish dictation, we compare notes and piece together what we’ve heard. If we miss an email, a date on the calendar, his eyes turn dark and flinty. His words become harsh. Instead of crying in the bathroom or pointing fingers, we work harder. He is not handsome and yet he has a hold.
Sometimes he pauses in between emails and gives us a directive, directly. Caroline, Holly, please be sure to . . . be a love and . . . This, we do not share with the other. We sit at our own desks, quietly pressing our thighs together, tightening around the heat and intimacy of hearing our names. Rewind. Play. Again.
Then comes the day when he dictates two emails and walks away, forgetting to pause, to stop, so we hear her. We take turns listening, deciphering, decoding.
“They don’t like me. I can feel their eyes on me every time I walk in the office. Why do you hire them so young?”
“Ask anyone at the hospital,” says the surgeon, “and they will tell you that those girls are the kindest, most hardworking. You’re being–”
“I’m not. Don’t say crazy. Calling me crazy makes me crazy. I know they’re making me miss appointments on purpose.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice thins and grows reedy. “I don’t know.”
“Have you taken your medicine today?”
“Yes. I’ve taken my medicine. It’s not that.”
She rustles past the recorder, and it goes silent. He makes a sound that is neither sigh nor grunt but something in between that is soothing to both him and us.
“Hello, Dr. Giotti. It’s me. Checking in. Yep. Yeah, I know. She’s been a bit more high- strung. Paranoia. Slightly manic. Lots of shopping, cleaning. Just on all the time. The kids? I don’t know. Andrew carved ‘Mom is a psycho’ into the inside of his closet door, but you know, kids. I can’t be sure. Is there anything stronger you can prescribe? No self-harm that I know of. No threats. No, that’s fine. I get that you don’t want to do it. No, thanks. Bye.”
A pause here. He picks up the phone again, this time to a pharmacy calling in a scrip for lithium. From there the tape is dead air until it runs out, clicking off.
We know more about the surgeon’s family then we do our own—their ages, their weights and heights, social security numbers. One of the sons had tubes put in his ears at age two. The surgeon maintains a standing appointment at a local nail salon to keep his cuticles smooth. His wife suffered a cancer scare a year prior until it turned out to be benign. We scheduled the surgery, the nail care, and the scan ourselves. We know their food likes and dislikes, intolerances, and allergies. But this we did not know.
A week later, surgery runs long. He can’t make a lunch date. She’s not picking up. Will we go meet her instead? In person, the surgeon’s wife is slight. We’ve heard tell of assistants and nurses, who marry the surgeons. She is one of them, one of us. She sits at a table on the patio, head tilted back taking in the late afternoon sun, her movements drowsy and slow.
“He’s not coming, is he?” she says without bothering to look our way.
We take seats opposite her. She orders salads and waters for all of us and two glasses of wine for herself. There is an empty one already on the table.
“Here’s the thing,” she says, leaning in, beckoning us to lean in too as if this is the secret, the answer to a question we never asked. “When we were dating, he was obsessed with me. Obsessed.” She runs her tongue along her teeth. “There’s this spot high up on my thigh. It’s a birthmark in the shape of a heart. It’s so pink, he would say, and kiss it. Soft. Can you imagine?”
We try to picture the surgeon there between her thighs. The dark of his hair against her pale skin. His broad shoulders spreading her wide.
“I used to turn the water heater up high before he came over. Hold the shower head there in that spot until it burned red and was warm to the touch, waiting for him.”
She smiles. “Always waiting. There’s nothing there now.”
We can’t stop ourselves. We ask, what happened?
“Water heaters can go up to 150 degrees. Did you know that? I couldn’t stop. Each layer of skin peeled back to the next. Nothing but scar tissue now.”
She drinks too much, says too much. She is ungrateful and pitiable. We can’t see her sacrifice—only his. We think if we were her, things would be different. We would hold it together. Change him. Make him better. Smooth his edges.
We go back to the office and delete the recording. This is women helping women, we say. There is no law that specifically prohibits him from medicating her. He knows best. He is a doctor, licensed. This is what we tell ourselves, what we know to be true.
Dena Pruett lives and writes in Birmingham, AL. She holds a MFA from the Mississippi University for Women. Her work has appeared in After Dinner Conversation and is forthcoming in Allium and storySouth.
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