Comfort Zone

Chapter 8

The next morning Miriam ate oatmeal while reading an article about a doctor in India who played matchmaker to her HIV positive patients.

Why can't I do that? she thought. She immediately thought of all the other ways she could be a better doctor: make house calls, clean more ears, call patients more. I could do more indigent care and level the playing field, she thought, remembering the hematologists comment about the rich the day before.

JK used to call me Wonder Woman. He'd regale her with tales of her supposed counterpart's compassion and strength, not to mention stubbornness and curiosity. Miriam remembered laughing it off, even being a bit annoyed, knowing how far from reality it was. In truth, though, the compliment sometimes made her feel more powerful.

I should talk to my patients today and get hospice consults for both Lisa Phillips and Ms. V. If they chose hospice, they would get extra help to make their remaining time more comfortable. It would be the end of aggressive measures that sought to cure them, an end to their struggles.

You just don't know when to quit, her ex used to say.

She pushed away the remembered sneer. Well I finally quit my marriage, she thought, getting up to construct a salad for lunch. At least she'd refrained from the donuts, the M&Ms and so on. Give the girl a gold medal, she thought. She was on track, sticking to the diet she espoused.

Tearing apart Romaine (dark green is best!), cutting up tomatoes (vitamin C! Lycopenes when cooked!) and crisp carrots (vitamin A!), and toasting pine nuts (omega-3!) she constructed a multicolored mound of health that would inform and impress any patient.

An ant was crawling up the counter toward the salad. Damn ants, she grumbled. It was an ongoing battle to rid her kitchen of the little critters.

Miriam had made an ant colony for a childhood science fair and knew how industrious they were, not to mention intelligent, learning that that their seemingly random search for food was in fact highly organized. They even valued the expertise of their elders, who, using pheromone trails, found the shortest route to the food.

Worthy of respect they might be, she nevertheless went to Walgreens when they first appeared to buy a killer liquid that would entice them to take in poison with the sweet. How cruel, she thought while paying, picturing them going home to their mounds deep in the recesses of her cabinets, bringing the toxin to their family.

The first time she used it, the ants came, drank and left, and Miriam thought she would never see them again, but several weeks later they were back. She put the liquid down again. Weeks later they reappeared.

She finally realized she was feeding them, culling the weak, allowing resilient superants to emerge. Evolution rules! What doesn't kill them was surely making them strong, she thought. Maybe the poison was the Big Mac of the ant world.

"Hey it's not healthy but it's cheap and available, good for large parties. We all need some sweetness. Why worry about the long-term effects?

"Carpe diem!"

The lone ant was approaching the salad, and she squashed it with hardly a second thought.