Page 5 of Healing Her

“Plastics?” she guessed.

“Plastics.” He led her to the checkout, where she picked up a container of melon and pineapple from the big ice bin. Taking everything from her hands, he scanned, paid, and handed her items back to her. “You’re a lot more conscientious about your diet than I am.”

“I’m not Chief of Surgery, you are, I think you’ve earned coffee and a cinnamon roll.” She smiled as she followed him to a table. “And I’m not that conscientious; I do still eat red meat more than occasionally, I drink, and I’m probably going to grab street tacos on the way back here after my apartment viewing.”

“Smoking?” he asked.

“Never, but especially not…” She pulled out a chair and sat, turning her container of fruit over in her hands. “You know I’m a widow?”

“You mentioned it during your interviews. I didn’t want to pry.”

“Thank you.” Jen swallowed hard. Talking about Nina’s death hadn’t gotten any easier in five years. “My wife, Nina, wasa pulmonologist. She became one because her entire family is full of heavy smokers. She lost so many of them to emphysema and lung cancer.”

“Oh. That’s rough.”

“Yeah. Nina never smoked in her life. Not once. She hated the smell, their coughing, the phlegmy tissues they all left in their wake… It got to a point where even the smell of mint mouthwash made her sick; they’d gargle so much of it to try and hide the smoke on their breath. Not to mention the strong colognes they all liked.”

“Jesus.” Steve’s eyes were round.

“But my lovely, wonderful wife, who only wanted to give the world the gift of how to keep their beautiful lungs healthy… cancer came for her. Because she’d grown up around so many smokers.” She looked at him soberly. “You know that secondhand smoke kills. Well, it killed Nina. She loved her family, she tried so hard to educate them, but they still smoked. And they smoked around her whenever she visited.”

“Were new lungs an option?”

“Surprisingly, they were, she was the rare prime candidate at first. But you know how that works, Steve. There are somanyprime candidates. And just not enough lungs. So we pursued aggressive treatment while we waited.” Blinking back tears, Jen could barely see the cafeteria, the bowl of fruit in front of her, anything. “Unfortunately, the cancer was more aggressive. Transplantation had to be taken off the table. Chemo, radiation, it stopped helping. So, one day, Nina sat me down by her hospital bed and told me she was stopping the treatment. Stopping everything. She signed a DNR and went on hospice.” Despite her best efforts, a tear fell on the table. She was grateful when Steve tucked a paper napkin into her hand. “Within a month, my beautiful Nina was gone.”

He placed a hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Jen dabbed away her tears and sniffed. “Thank you. It’s still hard. Because it was such a senseless death, it took so much away from the world, and it waspreventable. But her family, the people who were supposed to love and protect her, set her up for a death sentence from childhood.” She sighed and looked up to the ceiling, trying to slow her beating heart. “Sorry. Sorry. I still get so angry. They were my in-laws for over two decades, and they haven’t reached out to me since the funeral. That was five years ago. I was civil to them the whole time she was dying, but they seemed to know innately that I blame them.”

“I think it’s understandable.” He picked at his cinnamon roll. “So is Nina why you’ve gotten to be so ferocious about the world of transplants and organ donation?”

“In a roundabout way, yes. My goal is to save lives. I couldn’t save hers. I couldn’t prevent it. But itwaspreventable. And other deaths are preventable if we can get enough people to sign up for organ donation, if we keep pushing the boundaries of transplant research.” Twisting the cap off of her water bottle, she carefully sipped at the bubbly elixir. “I want my department to be on the cutting edge of research. Transplant methods, pharmaceuticals, the whole hog, Steve. I’m going to teach my surgical methods to the staff here. We’re going to save so many lives.”

“I’m on board, Jen. I have been since you gave me the rundown during your interviews.” Steve leaned forward and met her eyes with his earnest blue ones. “You know you’re going to have an uphill battle with some of our surgeons, though, right? You know that?”

“Ah, and we’re back to Doctor Ashley Proctor, Never Ash.” Jen cracked open her plastic bowl of cut fruit and popped a triangle of pineapple into her mouth. “You remember what else I told you during my interviews, Steve?”

He stared at her for a moment with a frown of concentration on his face. It was quickly replaced by one of apprehension. “Oh, no.”

“I do love a challenge.” She grinned sunnily. “She’s a challenge.”

Steve rubbed his head. “Please don’t make me regret this.”

Jen twirled her fork in her fingers. “I promise nothing.”

With a sigh, Steve rolled his eyes to heaven. “Oh, my ulcer. My gastroenterologist is going to have a field day.”

5

Ashley sat in the very back of the hospital auditorium, eating roasted pumpkin seeds and seething.

“…that’s the first stage, the most basic stage, of my plan to make our organ donation and transplant program here at Oakridge Hospital a big, beautiful success,” Doctor Colton said, a big, optimistic smile on her face. “We’re going to actively discuss organ donation with patients at all stages of their care with us. Even if they’re just here for a septoplasty to correct a deviated septum, we’re going to at least mention organ donation as something important to consider, and we’ll include a new pamphlet in their paperwork. We want to get them thinking about it.”

Ugh. It made Ashley think about the times sales associates had pitched her credit cards when she went shopping. It never failed to drive her away from the offending store for months at a time.This is what we’re reduced to? Shilling for organs? She shuddered.

“We all know that a new entry is made to the transplant waiting list every eight minutes,” Dr. Colton continued. “We also know that 90% of Americans support organ donation, but only60% ever sign up. Here at Oakridge Hospital, we want to get them to do it. But I don’t like being pushy any more than you all do. And I don’t love that many hospitals don’t talk seriously about organ donation until they’re trying to get a grieving family to let us cut up their recently deceased loved one for parts, as they see it.” Her smile faded. “It’s a hard enough time for them. If we improve the educational process ahead of time, so that the donation is seen as the gift it is, rather than as a horrible added trauma, my hope is that these initial small steps, imbued with information and generosity, will be as fruitful in their own way as our later larger steps should prove to be.”

Three rows down from Ashley, a general surgeon whose name she never could remember raised his hand. “Do those larger steps include any kind of campaigning for presumed consent? Countries like Singapore and Brazil have made organ donation more of an opt-out thing, what do you think of that?”

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