OCR Text |
Show 98 Lisa is thinking of something. "You can ask to have someone else do it," she is saying. "You have that right." The papers for my signed permission to perform the surgery arrive. I am requesting that a resident, not an intern, perform the surgery and I write this in red ink at the top of the form. I circle the red request in black ink. This will exclude the boy. I make an additional request in black ink to speak with the anesthesiologist prior to the surgery. He will at least need to be forewarned of the possibilities. The clock is ticking evening into night and still no one else is coming into my room to speak with me concerning the surgery or the anesthesia. It is the next morning and I am scheduled to go into surgery soon. The door bursts open and standing there is an attending surgeon dressed in his green surgical garb - the shoe covers, the mask dangling down from his face, the hair cap. His darkly mottled face tells me he is angry. "Why are you refusing this surgery?" he is yelling. I am trying to explain but he is not listening. He is muttering prevarications concerning my surgical intentions and nothing I can say can penetrate this verbiage. His anger is a curtain of rage between us. He leaves, huffing and slamming my door. |