Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart

9. A Heartful of Patients

93 9. A Heartful of Patients It’s hard to actually meet Dave. He doesn’t do email for fun and he’s not much for notes and letters and cards and he only returns phone calls about or from his patients or the parents of his patients and he only makes appointments about or with his patients and the parents of his patients. So writing about Dave, which entails, ideally, spending some time with him, and talking to him, and asking questions, and listening to stories, and eliciting anecdotes, and checking facts, and poking after his ideas and convictions and epiphanies—well, that approach presents an interesting little moral dilemma, for every minute Dave spends with me, answering questions and telling stories, is a minute he is not with one of his patients, or his wife, and inasmuch as Linda has much the better claim on what free time Dave has, and inasmuch as many of his patients hover between life and death, it would be a remarkably selfish writer who would pester Dave for time for what is, ultimately, a project that does not directly save or heal a child with a heart problem. You will say, as I have, to myself, does the man not have any free time? Does the man not savor the cinema and savor the wit and grace of his bride and climb mountains and run with the dogs and indulge in a bucket of beer here and there on a hot day and enjoy the theater and wade in a creek and catch a ball game and read a riveting novel and maybe once in a while for no reason whatsoever other than mammalian joy in being the wet engine 94 alive simply laze in the grass in the broad light of summer counting the sparrows who do not sow nor do they reap? And I report to you that he does these things so seldom that essentially he does not do many or even most of the things that you might expect your average fifty-year-old healthy American man to do. I mean, yes, of course he eats and sleeps, and he says he makes out with Linda sometimes, although that is not something you can politely ask for confirmation or documentation on, and he says he reads sometimes, and he says he takes a vacation for a couple days around a cardiology conference once a year though both he and Linda have to stop and think for a minute about where it was they went last year (o yeah, Colorado!), but most of the time Dave is Doctor Dave, that’s what he does, that’s who he is, he is what he does, and he does it, or is it, pretty much seven days and nights a week, many of those nights on call, many of those nights the sort of nights, as Linda says, when her conversation with Dave is a terse not going to make it home tonight message in the phone, and many of those nights the sort of night where Dave prowls the halls of the hospital with a heartful of patients. I wonder sometimes if Dave isn’t a sort of priest, really, and Linda a sort of nun—their lives turned wholly to service, given over utterly to other people, their talents and time and character placed on the altar of the communal good. Such an admirable endeavor, too, the commitment and dedication of the priest or nun, the doctor or nurse or teacher or mother who gives every ounce of her or his energy and creativity and talent to saving health and hope among his or her broken human cousins. But exhausting beyond articulation, no? Draining beyond measurement. Draining even beyond self-comprehension. How long could you pour yourself out before your self is dissolved? How much pain can you witness or carry? A Heartful of Patients 95 I think about this all the time. I find myself staring at the shoulders of counselors and priests and doctors and mothers, to see what the weight looks like. I find myself thinking that most people sure are extraordinary. I find myself thinking, as I get older and less cocky and less sure and more merciful and more hip to the fact that everyone has scars on their hearts or will, and everyone carries loads or will, and everyone carries their...