Severed Mother-Daughter Ties novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Recusal
Kristen asks the ethics committee to take her off Lacey Pemberton's case, then finds her own face on the family's missing-child poster and meets her mother.
At ten on Tuesday morning, I asked the ethics committee to take me off a dying woman's case.
Six people sat around the conference table, and I slid Lacey Pemberton's chart to the middle of it.
"I'm requesting recusal," I said.
The director of medical affairs looked up from his coffee. "Dr. Shirley, say that again."
"I won't be her lead surgeon. I won't sit in on any decision about her treatment."
The ethics representative frowned at me. "She has a complex congenital heart defect, Doctor."
"Three other hospitals have already turned her down. We were the last place her family could try."
"Almost nobody in the country can do this repair," the director said. "You're the one who can."
"I know."
"Then hand off your findings in writing, and name the doctor who takes over."
"I'll do that," I said. "But I won't be the one operating."
The director lowered his voice. "I need a reason, Kristen."
I opened the folder, took out the committee's form, and uncapped a pen.
In the box for the nature of the conflict, I wrote: Severe personal conflict with the patient's immediate family.
The director read it upside down. "You know the Pembertons?"
I didn't answer him. "I'll send the supporting documents through the proper channel."
"For now, I'm formally requesting recusal."
My friend Dustin Dray, the anesthesiologist, sat across from me with his mouth half open.
"Kristen, Lacey doesn't have much time," he said.
"Nobody knows that better than I do."
"Then what are you doing?"
"I'll go through her imaging with anyone who asks. I'll talk about the case at any academic meeting."
"I won't hold the scalpel, and I won't decide her treatment."
A murmur ran around the table.
"This isn't like her," somebody whispered.
"What could the Pembertons possibly have done to you?" the director asked.
I said nothing.
I was seven again, on my birthday, at a mall food court that smelled of sugar and floor cleaner.
My mother had bought me a strawberry ice cream.
She knelt in front of my chair and clipped a pink barrette into my hair.
"Annie-Rose, Mommy's going to buy something," she said. "You wait right here. Don't wander off."
I waited for a long time.
Then a woman with a dark mole on her cheek sat down beside me and said my mother had sent her.
A cloth pressed over my mouth, and it smelled like a hospital hallway.
I woke in the back of a truck, and the city was gone.
The road got emptier with every mile.
"Dr. Shirley." The director's voice pulled me back. He had put his cup down. "The Pembertons aren't just another family."
"I know that."
"They paid for the building we're sitting in. Forty million dollars, and it carries their name."
"If you can't give me a clear reason, I don't know how this hospital explains it to them."
"Then let the committee review it," I said.
I picked up the form and pushed it toward him.
"I'll provide everything the protocol requires."
Then I stood up and walked out.
I took the long way to the elevators.
It went through the Pemberton Pavilion, past the family waiting room I had never once walked into.
I had come in through the surgeons' corridor for six years.
On Lacey's chart, the line for her mother had listed a maiden name.
Hancock.
I would know it anywhere, because it was mine.
The waiting room had soft chairs, a fountain in the corner, and a donation box on a stand by the door.
A framed poster hung behind it.
It read: BRING ANNIE-ROSE HOME. MISSING SINCE HER SEVENTH BIRTHDAY.
Beside the words was a girl in a pink barrette, and next to her was a drawing of a grown woman.
Someone had guessed at my face from a school photo and gotten the hair wrong.
My mother had never lost me.
She had told the police I was taken, and then she had told a whole city.
A woman in a cream coat stood at the box, folding a bill into the slot.
She was in her fifties, with careful hair and a thin gold chain.
She turned around.
I had not seen that face in twenty-eight years, and I knew it before she finished the turn.
She looked at me for a long moment.
Her hand stayed on the box.
"Have we met?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"I'm sorry. You looked like someone." She smoothed her coat. "Are you one of the doctors upstairs?"
"Yes."
"My daughter is up there. They say you're the only one who can save her."
Her eyes filled.
"I've already lost one child," she said. "Please."
I looked at the poster, and then at her.
"Then you know what that costs," I said.
I pressed the elevator button, and she caught my sleeve.
She was still holding it when the doors opened.
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