The Shadow Wife - Diane Chamberlain [49]
“You have to find a way,” Lisbeth said. She knew her sister would never be able to live with herself unless she did.
“How?” Carlynn wrapped up her sandwich, probably saving it for later. Lisbeth’s was already gone.
“What about during those rounds you were talking about?” Lisbeth asked. “Can you get near her?”
“Only if the teaching physician chooses me to listen to her lungs. But that would only take a few seconds.”
“Not if you can’t seem to hear well. Maybe your stethoscope is broken, or for some other reason you need to listen harder and longer than the other students.”
Carlynn rolled her eyes. “They’ll kick me out of med school,” she said. “They already think I’m weird.”
“Let’s see.” Lisbeth lifted her hands, palms up, in the air. “On the one hand, you’ll be seen as weird, but the girl might live. On the other hand, you’ll be seen as a good and normal doctor, but the girl will probably die.”
“Ugh.” Carlynn wrinkled her nose again. “Don’t say it that way.”
“I’m sorry.” Lisbeth felt contrite, but only to a degree. “I don’t mean to put more pressure on you, honey,” she said, “but you went into medicine because you wanted to use your gift. Medical school has been relatively easy for you. You whizzed through all the chemistry and biology courses and whatnot. The hard part for you will be finding a way to combine all that training with what you have naturally. What you never had to go to school to learn.”
Carlynn stared at her a moment, then let out her breath.
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re the only person who really understands me, Lizzie, do you know that?”
Carlynn and her fellow medical students, all of them men, made their rounds with Dr. Alan Shire, the teaching physician on the pediatric floor, that afternoon. Although there were a couple of other female medical students in Carlynn’s year, the group doing their pediatric rotation was, except for her, composed entirely of men, and that was enough in itself to set her apart from them.
The flock of students moved from patient to patient, and Carlynn grew increasingly anxious as they neared Betsy’s room. Although she was still not certain what she would do when they got there, she knew Lisbeth was right: She had to at least make an effort to help the little girl in a way none of the other physicians would even know to try.
Carlynn did not for a moment believe she was any smarter than her twin, but Lisbeth’s intelligence was far more down to earth, more in the realm of common sense, than her own, and sometimes she actually envied that. Carlynn could solve complicated mathematical equations, but when it came to the simpler matters in life, she was often stymied. She wondered if her sister knew how much she depended on her counsel, on the wisdom Lisbeth barely knew she possessed.
Working for Lloyd Peterson had been wonderful for Lisbeth, and Carlynn had loved watching her sister’s confidence grow over the past few years. If only her body had not grown with it. Her obesity—for that was, she had to admit, the word for Lisbeth’s weight problem—had become an armor around her, protecting her from…Carlynn wasn’t sure. Rejection? Love? Even Carlynn’s psychiatric rotation had not given her answers to Lisbeth’s situation. Whatever the problem, Carlynn had never spoken to Lisbeth about it. Lisbeth got enough negative feedback from their mother and the rest of the world. Carlynn wanted to be her one safe harbor, and she prayed she was not actually doing her sister a disservice by ignoring the problem.
Finally, Carlynn, her fellow students and Dr. Shire reached Betsy’s room, but they did not go inside right away. Dr. Shire turned to the group outside Betsy’s door.
“This eight-year-old female’s condition has deteriorated markedly since our rounds this morning,” he said. He discussed the little girl’s most recent vital signs and lab results, none of which held out much