GoKawiilI remember standing outside an exam room, phone vibrating in my breast pocket, when the coroner’s call came through. I hadn’t wanted to believe the neighbor’s frantic text about a body bag removed from my husband’s condo, but the medical examiner’s office on my caller ID was unmistakable. I answered, and sounds fell out of my mouth into the phone: “Hello, this is Dr. Hardison.”
I am an emergency physician living in the U.S., and we had one of the top commercial health insurance plans. When my husband, Randy, became suicidal for the first time in his life, I thought I could find him the best care, our insurance would pay for it, and he would get better. Only one of those three things actually happened.
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The coroner confirmed it was suicide by asphyxiation. He asked if I could send a recent photo to help ID the body. “In a few minutes I can — I have a patient waiting.” I put the intrusive visual of Randy’s bloated face into a compartment of my mind that was sealed off from the task at hand.
On the other side of the exam room door was a toddler propped in her mother’s arms, coughing between guppy breaths. My face rearranged into calm, and I greeted the mother and child as my eyes darted to the monitor showing low oxygen and fast pulse — signs of respiratory distress. I put the child on oxygen and ordered a breathing treatment and a chest X-ray. The little girl gripped my index finger as I listened to her lungs, and we looked at each other with wonder. Each rise and fall of her chest seemed a miracle.
I felt safer in that exam room than in the outside world. I knew what to do in that room, and in that room, I could make things better. Outside of that room, all bets were off.
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“I’d like to test her for influenza and RSV,” I said to the mother.
“Will our insurance cover that?” She mouthed it to me so her daughter wouldn’t hear.
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