“I’ll see what I can do about the smell,” Piers said, smiling. “I’m sure if you came closer, you’d get a big whiff of my cologne.”
“Come on, doc, you don’t wear no cologne.”
“I do, it’s very smoky. Want to smell?”
Mr. Swanson cackled. “No, thanks, doc.”
“All right, your loss. Any other questions?”
“I don’t think so.” He hesitated, glanced at me. “Who’s the girl?”
“That’s Dr. Court, she’s my resident. She’ll be watching your procedure, but I’ll be handling everything.”
“Right, right, that’s good, nice to meet you, doc. Not a lot of lady docs around here, I noticed, well, maybe not many lady doc surgeons, I don’t know.” He laughed, and I realized it was a nervous laugh.
From the start of this conversation, I thought Mr. Swanson was a cranky old asshole, and Piers was going to rip him a new one. But as Piers smiled down at Mr. Swanson and flipped through the chart one more time, I realized something.
Mr. Swanson was terrified, and all the babbling was his way of coping. Piers didn’t take it out on him, because Piers clearly understood that fact already. Instead, he’d done everything to make the man laugh, to try and calm him down a little bit.
I should’ve seen it from the start. I knew what sort of surgery he was getting later, and of course he’d be afraid. Getting a pacemaker placed was a serious thing, and he must’ve been terrified.
“Okay, Mr. Swanson,” Piers said. “If you have any questions, you tell a nurse and she’ll come find me.”
“And don’t forget the pillow,” he said.
Piers laughed. “I won’t. Promise.” He put the chart away and we left.
In the hell, he flagged down a nurse, and had her go get a pillow. She didn’t look happy about it, but she listened. He started walking again and I hurried to keep up.
“What did you notice in there?” he asked.
I chewed on my lip. “He was nervous,” I said. “Afraid. Distracting himself with crappy TV.”
“Good. What else?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t see his chart.”
“Next time, ask to look. Some of his labs were elevated, so we’ll have to be aware of that moving forward. I’m going to check again before we get started.”
“Right, got it.”
“What else?”
I hesitated. “You tried to joke with him, tried to calm him down.”
“Always try to make them laugh if you can,” he said.
“You don’t strike me as a funny guy, you know.”
He gave me a deadpan stare. “I’m hilarious.”
I smiled a little. “Seriously, you don’t joke around very often.”
“Patients like it when you come down to their level. Don’t act like you know all the answers, but make sure you show them that you’re confident. It’s a hard line to walk, but you’ll get it sooner or later.” He glanced at me, frowning. “There’s one more thing.”
“The pillow?”
“No. He was alone.”
I sucked in a breath. Of course, I should’ve noticed that. Mr. Swanson was about to undergo a serious procedure, and it was hospital policy to allow at least one other person to wait in the room with the patient. Normally, it was a wife, or a child, or a close friend or other relative, but Mr. Swanson had nobody.
No wonder he was so nervous. “I didn’t see that,” I admitted.
“That’s always a red flag,” he said. “Especially when it’s a big operation. For something small, maybe not a huge deal. But a big one? There’s got to be someone around, and if there’s nobody, that’s not great.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that he’ll go into this more stressed, and a stressed patient is more difficult to deal with than a relaxed one. It’s strange, but I can almost feel it when I do the work. A calm body is loose and responds more eagerly, but a stressed one fights everything.”
“Nobody taught me that in med school.”
“They wouldn’t. It’s maybe a little too esoteric for a medical textbook, but it’s the truth.” He glanced over at me. “I understand I have a bad reputation around his hospital. I’m not easy to work with, I’ll readily admit it. But bedside manner is incredibly important, because if your patients trust you, and are more relaxed, then you’ll have higher success rates.”
“Have there been studies about that?”
He made a face. “Of course not.” He glanced at me. “Coffee is good, by the way.”
We parted at the elevators. He rode up to his office to prep for Mr. Swanson and I went off in search of the other residents.
While wandering, I thought back to that brief meeting. I expected something else from Piers, expected him to be short, maybe a little angry, and instead he gave me an entirely new way of looking at bedside manner. Most doctors thought of it as simple professionalism, a way to make your patients feel happy, to get better reviews, to get sued less frequently. But Piers saw it as a medical necessity.
I understood that, to some extent. Maybe it was a little esoteric and out there, but he was the best, and if he said it helped—then I’d listen.
What impressed me though was how easily he handled Mr. Swanson. I wasn’t sure I would’ve been as patient, or been able to make so many jokes. I worried about my own bedside manner sometimes, but maybe it didn’t have to be such a big thing.
Like all skills, it could be learned, and if an asshole like Piers could smile and joke around, then I could too.
I waited for the elevator to ride down, figuring I’d start in the lobby and move out from there, when a nurse came over. It was the same young girl Piers had roped into grabbing a pillow for Mr. Swanson. She gave me a smile then looked at her phone, but looked up at me again.
“You’re Dr. Hood’s resident, right?”
I nodded. “Lori.”
“I’m Kirsten. Nice to meet you. Dr. Hood’s on our block a lot, you know. Lots of cardiac patients coming through.”
“Do you know him well?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know him know him, you know?
