Page 93 of Broken Dream

He nods and leaves.

“Tomorrow?” I ask. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”

“Yeah. Uncle Joe insisted I come. He said it’s important that I still do my job for people who need me.”

“What job do you have here?”

She takes another sip of her martini. “I recently resigned my position on the board of the university hospital, as you may know.”

“Yeah, you resigned all of your positions that you were still holding so you could be there for Uncle Joe as he goes through treatment.”

“Yes, but the hospital board gave me a call a couple of days ago, asking that I do a psychiatric evaluation for a potential patient who’s about to undergo an experimental surgery.”

“Oh, I see. What kind of surgery?”

She frowns. “I can’t really talk about it. HIPAA and all.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course I understand.”

“All I can say is that the potential patient has a history of trauma, and the board is concerned about whether he may be able to handle the experimental surgery, especially if something were to go wrong.”

“I see. I’m sorry you had to come all the way here.”

She gives me a melancholy smile. “Joe is in a good spot. He’s between treatments and is feeling pretty good. Plus, it was a chance to see you. To take my favorite niece to dinner and find out how everything’s going.”

I laugh. “I know you call all of us your favorites.”

“True.” She chuckles. “I don’t play favorites. None of your aunts and uncles do. But I do feel particularly close to you, Angie. Neither of my children followed in my footsteps, so it’s wonderful that you are.”

I nod. “I’m convinced now more than ever that I want to go into psychiatry. Anatomy lab has me freaked.”

“Yeah, like I said, I didn’t like it much either. But it is very important.”

I bite my lip. “I made my first cut yesterday.”

“Congratulations!” She raises her martini glass. “Was it as bad as you thought it would be?”

I clink my glass against hers. “No, not really. I have a great lab partner who wants to go into surgery, so she’s really into it and helps me get into the vibe. I’m happy to let her take the lead. And, of course, the person I cut is dead.”

“Well, if you go into psychiatry, you’ll probably never have to cut a live person.”

I widen my eyes. “Probably?”

She shrugs. “I mean, never say never. But it’s good to have skills, just in case you’re in an emergency and they’re needed.”

“Have you ever been in an emergency like that?” I ask. “Where you had to cut?”

“A couple of times, actually,” she says. “One time when I was in my last year of my residency, we were short-staffed at the hospital because of an outbreak of the flu. So I had to insert a chest tube into a man who came into the emergency room.”

“And it went okay?”

Her eyes brighten. “It went perfectly. Because I had been trained to do it. Psychiatrists are still medical doctors, Angie.”

I resist an eye roll. “Aunt Mel, I know that.”

She reaches her hand across the table, squeezing mine. “So we need to be able to handle basic medical emergencies. Another time I was on a flight. I was coming back from New York to Colorado. This was before I met Uncle Joe and got married. A woman on the flight passed out and wasn’t breathing, so I had to do an emergency crike.”

“Crike? You mean a cricothyrotomy?” I ask, my eyes widening.