Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat - By David Dosa Page 0,38

own first encounter with the unexplained. As a young resident at the University of Pittsburgh, I had gone into a hospital room one morning to see a patient who had been admitted with what appeared to be a mild case of pneumonia.

Even at her worst, my patient was a beautiful woman. Young and vital, with long blonde hair and striking blue eyes, this thirty-something woman could have graced the cover of a fashion magazine. But on that morning she looked pale and frightened.

“So, how are you doing?” I asked, with forced bonhomie. I was new at this doctor thing and trying to make up for my lack of experience with what I thought to be a winning bedside manner. In reality, I probably just looked like a cad.

She had looked at me as if she were trying to decide whether or not to trust me. She was fidgeting, shifting her weight on the bed while nervously twirling her long hair between her thumb and forefinger.

“To be honest,” she said after a moment, “I feel okay. But I woke up this morning dreaming that I was going to die today. I keep trying to tell myself it was just a dream but frankly, I’m scared out of my mind.” I thought she might cry. “I know it’s silly,” she said.

I tried to remember what, if anything, they had taught us about completely irrational fear. I put my hand on her shoulder. I was doing my best to impersonate a doctor.

“You really don’t need to worry,” I told her. “You’re so much better. In fact, I think we’re going to be sending you home today. The antibiotics should take care of the rest and you’ll be back to normal in a few days.”

She acknowledged the news with a nod, but there was no expression of relief.

“That must have been some dream,” I said. “Let me take a look at you.” I might have been new to doctoring, but I knew that listening to my patient’s fear was the most likely way to break the tension. I mean, don’t we all want to be heard, to feel that our fears—no matter how apparently outlandish—are taken seriously?

Doing something seemed to help. As I examined her I felt her relax. I took her blood pressure and listened to her heart and lungs. At each step of my head-to-toe exam, I told her that I could find nothing wrong save for the now faint signs of pneumonia lingering in her left lower lung. By the time I was done she was smiling again.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said at the end. “I guess I just need to get out of here.”

I left the room feeling quite pleased with myself. What a good doctor I was turning out to be.

Three hours later, I received a 911 call.

“Who is it?” I asked the nurse, my heart leaping into my throat.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m just relaying the message from the patient’s nurse. But you better hurry.”

As I raced to the same floor where I had visited my young patient, I tried to convince myself that it couldn’t be her. There were so many sicker, older patients on the same floor. The eighty-five-year-old woman with lung cancer. The brittle diabetic with the recent heart attack.

I ran toward the nurse’s desk where an aide directed me down the hallway, away from my young patient’s room. I had a perverse sense of relief: It was somebody else. I left the aide behind and rounded the corner at high speed. Like a football player shedding tackles in his opponent’s backfield, I raced past the parked EKG machine and a dietary cart filled with the remnants of that morning’s breakfast. As I passed the last obstacle I could see someone lying on the ground at the far end of the hallway. Slowing my pace to allow my heart to stop racing, I approached the patient.

It was her.

She was crumpled on the floor in a fetal position, facing the wall. Though I couldn’t see her face, her long blonde hair was unmistakable. I stood there, paralyzed.

“Doctor, do you want me to call the rescue team?” a voice asked.

It was Judy, an experienced nurse of many years, racing down the hallway toward me, wheeling an oxygen container behind her. I didn’t answer. I was still in shock.

“Doctor!”

I snapped back. “What happened?” I asked.

Nervously, Judy began filling me in. “We told her to take a walk this morning, to get some exercise before going home. All