***
Following an all-nighter, my chief summons me to ask after Mr. Corrigan, a fifty-something-year-old with COPD who’d presented at 2 A.M. with a bowel obstruction. Touch and go, I tell him, surprised by his interest.
Can I get him off the ventilator and out of here quickly? he wants to know, because my patient isn’t Mr. Corrigan.
The unshaven guy with bad teeth and a big gut, not Mr. Corrigan, then who?
Don Marino of San Jose’s cheese mafia, he informs me, with an arm reaching from the Rockies to the coast and a mob that evades the law. Last time one of his racketeers died after surgery, the anesthesiologist disappeared. My chief’s furrowed brow suggests he’s not kidding, as he tells me to get some rest—but to lock my doors.
Before leaving, I hustle back to the ICU to tweak Marino’s airway pressure in hopes of weaning him today.
Instead of going home, I head south, skirting Lake Vasona, whose murky waters are rumored to house mob victims. On arrival at Point Lobos, the wind is swishing over the water like an exhaling ventilator. I pick my way over the slippery rocks to the sanctuary of the tide pools.
Nestled among the anemones and hermit crabs, a sea star—a biblical and mythological symbol of regeneration, resilience, and protection: Stella Maris creating safe passage for those in troubled waters; Isis, a friend to those in need. Despite missing one arm, it breathes effortlessly, sending oxygenated sea water through the channels of the four intact ones. Remarkable creatures, these leathery echinoderms are commensalists, living in harmony with worms, sponges, and corals, but are simultaneously predators, tearing apart clams, oysters, and mussels. Occasionally, they themselves are snatched by the arm of a larger star.
The tide turns, the sea readies to envelop my ephemeral pool. Before returning to the ICU, I plunk the broken star in a bottle of tidal water and slip him in my pocket. A borrowed talisman for me, my Don–both of us? Strange, my concern for a predator who should be behind bars. Because he’s struggling to breathe? Because he can’t regenerate his resected gut like the star can regrow its arm? Part of me wants nothing to do with him, but I’m sworn to give him my best. Our lives, now, inextricably entwined, his relying on my care, mine, on his survival.
Whether credit lies with the altered ventilator settings or my new talisman, I can’t say, but the capo is now sending oxygenated blood through his vessels as easily as sea stars pump water through their arms. Fingering the bottle with the star, I ask him to squeeze my other hand. When he obliges, I remove his breathing tube. He takes a few raspy breaths, then extends a leathery hand. An offer of a commensal relationship: I help him breathe, he leaves me be? A comfortable arrangement, as it turns out, until the long arm of the law reaches out and indicts him for murder.
Lorraine Comanor is a former U.S. figure skating champion, U.S. team member, and board-certified anesthesiologist. A graduate of Harvard University, Stanford Medical School, and Bennington Writing Seminars, she is a co-holder of a medical patent and author-coauthor of 35 medical publications. Her personal essays (2 notables in Best American Essays and 3 nominated for the Pushcart Prize) have appeared in the New England Review, Boulevard, New Letters, Little Patuxtent Review, Consequence, Joyland, LitMag, and The Rumpus, Newsweek, and others. Her memoir has recently been accepted for publication.
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I enjoyed this very much! I am struck by the metaphor of "the wind swishing over the water like an exhaling ventilator, " so organic to this story and skilfully linking that scene to the first one. I hope to read more of your work!