Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [219]
The morning of the conference I could no longer lie to myself. I skipped the transplant meeting and walked the six blocks to the hospital in which Thomas Stone had worked all these years. After wearing scrubs for almost a year, my suit and tie felt strange, as if I were in fancy dress.
“Send them to Mecca” was an expression we used when we dispatched patients to places that offered what Our Lady of Perpetual Succour could not. It was a common medical expression in hospitals all over America, when sending patients to any of the top referral places in the country—Id even seen it in letters to the editor in the medical journals. Now I was going to Mecca.
“MECCA” CONSISTED OF a spanking-new hospital tower, weirdly shaped and shining as if it were made of platinum. It was the kind of structure architects compete to build. From a patient's perspective, it didn't look welcoming. The tower hid the older brick sections of the hospital, whose architecture felt authentic and aligned with the neighborhood.
“Good morning, sir,” a young man in a purple jacket said to me. I glared at him, thinking he was being sarcastic. Then I realized that he and two others stood there ready to park cars and assist patients into wheelchairs.
The revolving doors led to a glass-walled atrium, the ceiling extending up at least three stories and accommodating a real tree. A grand piano played itself by some mysterious mechanism. Around it were plush leather chairs, lamps. Beyond this was a waterfall trickling gently over a slab of granite. Then a reception desk where a concierge, one of three, looked up, smiling, eager to help. I followed the blue line on the floor to the elevators of Tower A, which took me to the Department of Surgery on the eighteenth floor, just as she said it would, but I made no promise about having a nice day. I found it difficult to believe I was in a hospital.
When I emerged from the elevators I was met by five men and one woman of my age, all dressed in dark suits, chests labeled with visitor tags exactly like mine. “We're supposed to wait here,” the woman said to me, helpfully.
Just then a young man, a white coat covering his blue scrubs, approached. “Sorry I'm late,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “Welcome to the Department of Surgery. My name's Matthew.” He grinned at us. “God, a year ago I was in your shoes, interviewing for my internship. Time flies! Love the suits! Okay, we have about twenty minutes before morbidity and mortality conference. I'll give you a quick tour of the Department of Surgery. After M&M you'll have lunch with the house staff, then your individual interviews begin, and then the grand tour of the hospital. When I get you to the conference room, I'll break off. One of my patients is being presented at M&M. I have to go strap on the body armor.”
In the year I'd been at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, I had yet to take any potential intern recruits around. Indeed, I'd never seen anyone come to be interviewed. At Mecca this was a weekly event. I tagged along.
The individual on-call rooms had a television on the wall, a fridge, a nice desk, and an attached bathroom; it was a far cry from Our Lady's solitary on-call room crammed with bunk beds, with just one phone and interns from all the specialties expected to bed there; I never used it. Next, Matthew showed us the “small” conference room where the Mecca surgical team held their morning report. It looked like a corporate boardroom with high-backed leather chairs around a long table. Oil portraits of the past chairmen of surgery stared down from the walls, a who's who of surgery.
“Check this out,” Matthew said, pushing a button. Screens came down behind the curtains to black out the room, and a projector rose out of what I took to be a coffee table. Constance, the woman in our group, rolled her eyes as if she thought this was so gauche.
When we arrived at the auditorium where morbidity and mortality conference was to be held, Matthew excused himself. “I have