Chapter Text
In eight years of medical school, the one thing they forget to teach you is to how to tell a patient that they're dying.
Of course as an intern, I'm just observing for the most part; learning the routine of rounds, check ups, and tending to whatever Attending's service I get put on for the day. I don't get to tell the patient that they're dying, I don't get to diagnose them without a surgeon present, but what I do get to do is meet my very first patient today. However, I wished it was on better terms.
I stepped into the small hospital room, clipboard in hand and Attending by my side.
"Hi, Lucille, how are you feeling?" Dr. Nasser asked with a smile.
"Oh, sweetie, I'm fine." She assured him, but then frowned once her husband spoke up.
"She's not fine. She just doesn't like to burden you people. I can assure you that she's not fucking fine." Her husband practically snarled, causing me to forget what I was supposed to be doing.
"Her chart, Doctor Greene." Dr. Nasser reminded me after the brief moment of silence.
"Oh, yeah," I mumbled. "This is Lucille. She's forty years old."
"And?"
"And she has stage four melanoma." I looked up, noticing the man I presumed to be her husband glaring at me as I spoke.
Since we're taught to be professional, I couldn't react to the words on the clipboard, but if I had been able to, my heart would've broken for these two. The man's glare said it all; she was the love of his life and he was losing her.
"Lucille has been in and out of Virginia Regional Hospital for months now." Dr. Nasser informed me. "Today we're gonna go in and see if it's spreading anywhere else."
His words were so simple it almost felt robotic. Here was a woman with a disease that was taking away the tone of her skin, her strength, her life, and Doctor Nasser seemed dismissive. I knew we weren't supposed to get emotionally attached to patients, especially in our field, but I guess once you've seen enough death, you get used to the routine. There's still hope for cases like these, but not as much as there used to be. That was one thing I needed to remember.
"Doctor Greene, can you show Negan to the waiting area while I take Lucille up to O.R. One?"
I nodded at Dr. Nasser, then turned my attention to the man in the chair. "I'm assuming you're Negan?"
"You'd be assuming fucking correctly." He muttered as he stood, placing a kiss to Lucille's forehead while she was being carted down the hall.
We didn't say much on the walk to the waiting area. What was there to say? Hey, sorry your wife is dying, I know it must be hard on you. There was nothing I could do to comfort this perfect stranger, and as a surgeon who was supposed to be able to help, I felt utterly useless.
When we finally reached the waiting area, I offered him a faint smile and turned on my heels to leave, but was stopped by his voice before I had even gotten to take a step in the opposite direction.
"Do you." He cleared his throat. "Do you think there's anything else we can fucking do here?"
I turned back to look at him, my expression faltering some.
"Sir," I began.
"It's Negan."
"Negan, we're going to try our best to save your wife." I assured him, but my face didn't match my tone.
"I just... I should've known, right? I mean she was complaining about aching and being tired. She lost a lot of weight and..." He breathed. "If I would've brought her in sooner, she would be fine."
It wasn't fair for him to blame himself. This wasn't his fault, it wasn't anyone's fault. These things happen and there's no rhyme or reason for it. I could see that this had been consuming him since the moment he found out, and I wanted to ease his mind even if it was just for a moment.
"What do you do for a living, Negan?" The look on his face was enough to let me know he wasn't expecting that question.
"I'm, uh. I'm a teacher." His brow furrowed. "But when Lucille got sick, I picked up a second job selling used cars to cover the hospital bills."
I nodded, sitting down in the chair across from him now.
"What do you teach?"
"I'm just a gym coach." He shrugged and after a while spoke up again. "Do you think if I had more money I could pay for her medicine and treatments and shit? Would that even make a fucking difference at this point?"
I forced a small smile at his painful question. The distraction was nice while it lasted, but then I found myself shaking my head at his question.
"With cancer this aggressive..." I sighed. "We try our hardest when it comes to chemotherapy and radiation."
"But?" His eyes narrowed at me.
"But in the end.. we look back on things. How bad we wanted them to pull through."
I stopped for a moment. This wasn't my place to be telling him these things. This wasn't my professional opinion anymore. It was my personal experience.
"And we see how these treatments destroyed the person we love. How they contorted them into an unrecognizable shell of who they once were. We see how weak they were in their last moments. How sunken in their face was, how sallow their skin looked. And we still think it was worth it. We think that these treatments gave us more time with the person we loved, but really, it didn't. If we stopped treatments or never started them to begin with, yes, it would've shortened their life, but it would've been their life. Not the cancer's. Not the treatment and the chemo. As humans, we're wired to have compassion. We love, and we love hard, but we're never really taught how to let go. And I think that does more damage than an illness ever will."
I could see him carefully thinking over my words. In no way was I trying to sway him to stop Lucille's treatments and I know he could see that. Here was a man asking a stranger for advice and in need of someone to cling to even though I could tell he wasn't a vulnerable person unless it came to her.
Before Negan had a chance to say anything in response to me, my pager went off. It was a 911 from Doctor Nasser and my heart sank in my chest. However, I suppose my poker face had gotten better already, because Negan didn't sense anything.
"Looks like you're needed somewhere else where a sorry piece of shit isn't." He chuckled light-heartedly.
"I'm needed in O.R. one. I'll be back soon, okay?" I offered a soft smile as I stood up.
Negan nodded and waved me off as I headed out of the waiting area. I found it hard to breathe and I couldn't feel my body. It felt like I was walking on air because this couldn't be real.
My first patient was dying.