Shortness of Breath

Chapter Four

Hallie - April 22nd, 2011

I'd known Casey for a month and change the first time she really got me alone. It started when we were standing in the hospital cafeteria, waiting for coffee, and idly discussing the most intimate of topics - subcuticular sutures.

"You can practice on anything, but you probably know that," she said, her eyes downcast as she shelled out enough singles for both of our coffees. I held out my card, but she pushed it away. Not wanting to interrupt her words, I didn't say anything and silently vowed to pay her back. "When I was a surgical intern, an attending peeled a banana and asked me to suture it back together like the fruit was still in there."

I laughed, wishing she'd just keep talking. "That's not possible," I coaxed.

"Well, the world may never know," she admitted. "I couldn't do it."

"Something Casey Kenny can't suture?" I questioned. "I don't buy it."

"Well," she shrugged, pulling a banana out of the fruit bowl on the counter and placing another dollar down. "Do you have a suture kit with you? Let's give it a shot."

Before I could assent to that, she was walking outside to the small courtyard behind the hospital and I was blindly following. I tensed at the thought of a one-on-one suture workshop with my surgical muse, but tried to absorb the calm expression Casey wore in her eyes and take a little bit of that onto myself. Casey always appeared at ease, and I wished I could have simulated her ability to be relaxed and comfortable in any situation. If she only knew, I thought, that every time we were alone like this, standing just feet apart, I was constantly thinking up the right thing to say and just praying she couldn't hear my heart beat. She sat down in a far corner and took a plastic knife to the fruit, the way I'd seen her do a million times to human flesh, but it was never any less of a religious experience to watch.

Her hands were so impeccably still. I had my eyes trained on her right index finger, and waited for even the slightest tremor to come. It never did. She stitched expertly, but I already knew that. There was just something about watching it up closer than ever before that was chilling, inspiring. It was more than admiration that I had for Casey, and I knew that. I wondered if she knew that. Sometimes I thought she could feel it just radiating out of me. That attraction, that reverence, that honest to God longing that found itself so intermixed with all my feelings of veneration toward her surgical skill. It had taken me a while to sort out what I felt for her. Sometimes I'd wondered whether I wanted to be with her or simply to be like her. But it only took one moment like this - a moment where she was so close, and so human, so perfect and yet so real - for me to know that the answer was both. I could have done extremely well to be anything like Dr. Kenny - but I knew that to be with Casey would have been nothing short of a dream.

After several sutures, it looked as though Casey had attached two sides of the skin. Never failing to be impressed by her clean work, I just stared at it, making sure not to be too obvious or too lingering in staring at her.

"Here," she said. "Do one."

I just laughed in self-deprecation and looked at my hands. "I could never."

Surprising me, she laughed too. "Could never? You're going to have an interesting career as the surgeon who could never make a suture."

"I mean, I could never follow you," I found myself saying. "To be honest, Dr. Kenny, even being in the same OR as you is really, really intimidating."

She made a face like it was the first time she was hearing this. She was genuinely confused, and I had no idea quite how she constantly failed to recognize her own greatness when it was so obvious to everyone else. "It is?"