Page 105 of The Plus One
“And I hope this doesn’t come off as rude, but there are other people that are better points of contact than myself when it comes to issues of this type. But you’ve been with GHCO long enough to know that many aspects of assignments are beyond our control. Sort of occupational hazards, if you will.”
Jude blinked rapidly. She was talking so fast, he couldn’t keep up with her, couldn’t get his fuzzy brain and thick tongue to push out all the things he wanted to say.
“In fact, let me give you the coordinating associate’s name. He should be able to help you with—”
“I’m sick,” Jude blurted out, his voice a bit too loud. A bit too rough. It did at least get Dr. Prince to look at him.
“I’m sorry?” she said, head tilting and eyebrows furrowed.
Jude closed his eyes for a moment, sucking in a rattling breath that didn’t do much to calm his racing heart. He looked at her again.
“I am mentally very ill,” he admitted, saying the words slowly, enunciating every syllable. “I am unwell and hurting and I worry that sending me on another assignment would be a massive liability fornot only myself, but those I’d be there to treat. I need—” His throat clamped tight, sweat pricking his skin.
He could do this. He could say the words. Admit the truth.
“I need help.”
CHAPTER 36
Jude
Jude had his first therapy session a few days before his official hearing with GHCO’s board regarding his future.
“Yay, therapy buds,” Indira had said that morning, giving him a high five and a kiss when they realized they had sessions at nearly the same time. He’d felt something close to excitement when he’d talked about it with her earlier.
But now as he sat in the therapist’s office, Jude felt more like a bundle of nerves and knots shoved into a human suit than he did an actual person, but if ever there was a time to learn to talk about his feelings…
“What are you thinking?” José, Jude’s new counselor, asked.
Jude had given a rather thorough overview of the amount of trauma he’d witnessed over the past three years, and had dissolved into a contemplative silence as he relived some of the moments.
He ducked his head, staring at his shoes as he forced out the next words.
“I’m thinking that I’m kind of dumb.”
There was a beat. “What makes you say that?” José asked, his voice soft. Genuine.
Jude let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “I truly believed I wouldn’tfeel any different going from an operating room at a public hospital here to one in active conflict zones or areas devastated by disasters… Isn’t that fucking stupid? How was I so fucking stupid?”
Jude paused, finding the courage to glance up. He was genuinely curious for an answer.
José looked at him, letting the silence linger for a few seconds. “I don’t think there’s anything stupid about that,” he said at last. “You were young and facing the reality of enormous student debt. No one wants to be burdened by that for the rest of their lives. And then you were trained for your medical career in a certain environment that offered you a great deal of control. Granted, there’s always uncontrollable aspects to surgery, and medicine in general, but your formative training in standard teaching hospitals helped to minimize barriers.”
Jude glanced away, leg bouncing.
“Of course being in the field was a shock,” José said, leaning forward in his chair. “It’s not something you could ever fully prepare for. Even conceptually understanding the kind of trauma you would witness wouldn’t have prepared you for the emotional impact of that.”
Jude nodded, knotting his hands together in his lap. “There’s—I don’t know how to explain it—a fundamental difference between cutting open a body to save it, and seeing one opened by a force of war.”
There was that silence again. Jude never expected therapy to be composed of so much silence. Jude glanced at José, who gave him a soft nod of encouragement.
“The memories that haunt me the most, the ones I can’t get over,” Jude continued, the words pulled from the very center of his chest before his mind could even fully process them, “are the people that landed on my table from some sort of human-inflicted cruelty. All that pain and suffering wasn’t by chance. Those injuries weren’t from a random car accident. An unfortunate but uncontrollable embolism. None of it was some designless cosmic cruelty. It’s war. It’s humans fighting each other. Hurting each other. And people in nice suits sitting at desks in nice offices in safe cities get to decide when andwhere to send people to hurt each other, for purposes none of us ever get to know.”
Jude didn’t understand what was happening to him. These weren’t cognizant thoughts he’d had before. They were shadows of doubt and anger that he’d never allowed to fully form in his consciousness. Scared that putting words to the truth would break him entirely.
“And I feel like such a fucking asshole all the time,” Jude continued, his voice rough but strong as he dragged his hand through his hair. “Who am I to make it out of those places alive? Why do I get to enjoy food or a comfortable bed or laugh with my girlfriend when I failed so many people on their last day on earth?”
“That’s your guilt trying to tie you down,” José said after a few moments of silence. “Surviving, like so many other aspects of life, isn’t a meritocracy. Someone’s good deeds or their bad ones don’t determine when or how they die. Your internalized perception of your worth, or lack thereof, doesn’t change the fact that you are here. You are now. And you have the choice to do with it what you will.”
