!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
In the first three weeks after my miscarriage, I threw myself into a job search and continued preparations for my orals. I knew I was suppressing my feelings about losing the pregnancy, but didn’t think I could put my life on hold while I dwelt on my conflicted feelings.
Once again, I dug Stephanie Seacrist’s card out of my desk drawer.
“Dr. Seacrist, it’s Sarah Stein.”
“Oh, Sarah, how are you? I didn’t see you at your two-week check.”
“Things have been so busy, I never even made that appointment. Everything’s fine, no cramps, no bleeding.”
“Well that’s great. What’s on your mind, then?”
A little awkwardly, I asked, “I know this might not be right, maybe it violates professional ethics, but…can I see you? Outside of the clinic I mean. Not about the miscarriage, more as a…I think we’re kindred spirits, you know what I mean?”
“Uh, sure. I’d love to get together, just chat. You’d probably have to find another doctor, but there’re plenty of us to go around. Maybe in the evening sometime, after work? The best time for me is always the clinic day, before I go on call. Say, this Friday?”
“Great. You know, our offices are so close, we can just go somewhere along Francis, near Brigham Circle?”
“Sure, about seven, all right? Oh, and Sarah…you can call me Steph, OK?”
Thursday evening, we talked for hours, and discovered the usual strange convergences in our lives. She’d grown up in Columbus, but headed west to Stanford, then UCLA for medical school before deciding the east coast was the place for her.
She allowed, “I’ll never know why Harvard took me, it wasn’t like I was the top of my class.”
“How many women in the residency, Steph?” I asked.
“I’m the only one, my year. And there was only one other, when I got here three years ago.” A bit sheepishly, she wondered, “Why, you think that’s why they took me?”
“They took you because you’re good. That you’re a women, that’s just a bonus for hospital.”
“What about you? How are you treated?”
“There have been women in clinical psych for a while now,” I began. “But I still find that, every time I’m looking for work, for a position somewhere, it’s always a man I have to convince.” I told her about the Child Development Unit, with Drs. W&B in charge, Lauren, Heidi and I doing all the work.
“And now, I’m meeting with David Goldman…”
“The med-ed guy?”
“Yeah, he’s trying to integrate the Psychiatry department into the hospital consultation system, and needs someone to direct the research they’re doing on how well it works, this consultation liaison program.”
“Consultation liaison? I’ve never heard of that.”
“Say a lady shows up in labor, full term, but she won’t cooperate? You quickly discover that she’s, as we say in my business, ‘crazy’, schizophrenic, maybe. And hasn’t been taking her meds. You’ve got no clue what to do, but you have to get her to settle down even if only a little, so she doesn’t destroy herself in labor or having the baby. And then what about taking care of the baby after? So you call the psychiatric consultant…”
“Like a cardiologist, if she had heart disease? What’s so special about that, we ask for consults all the time.”
“Right, but for some reason, shrinks have been shunted aside over the years. It’s like they’re not speaking the same language as the other MDs anymore. Anyway, he wants to study ways to help that communication happen better, faster, and more effectively. He thinks he needs a psychologist for that.” I smiled in anticipation. “I’m jazzed about it, hope I get it.”
“Sounds intriguing. Good luck!” She turned serious. “Did you think about what I said, the night of your miscarriage? About grieving?”
“You’re right, of course. I know all about the five stages of grief, that’s really become psych 101 by now.”
“Knowing about it and doing it are two different things, Sarah,” she countered.
“I don’t think, for me at least, it’s an orderly, step-wise process. I was angry at first, at the very first with…him, then I denied the spotting was important, then I bargained with the nurse, and you. And of course, I was very depressed the night it happened.”
“Acceptance?” she ventured.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever get there, at least I don’t see it yet. I do know I handle things like this not so much as feelings, but by thinking them through, and by just doing what I do. Which for now means, getting ready for that oral exam.”
The next day, Marcia called from New York, where she was finishing up her psych residency at Albert Einstein. “Sarah! Good news!”
“Did you get it?” She’d been looking for work back in Boston, and had narrowed the search down to the HMO where I’d been getting my care, HCHP.
“Yep. I start July 1st. I’m coming up this weekend, to fill out forms, talk to the admin people, that sort of stuff. You want to get together tomorrow?”
“Perfect. I’ve got a few things to unload on you.”
“Like what?”
“For starters, my orals are next week…”
It took over an hour to tell her the whole sordid Howard story, pregnancy, miscarriage. By the end, I felt better than I had since it all started, three months earlier. Crying with a friend I’d know for over ten years was literally what the Doctor, Stephanie Seacrist, had ordered.
As we gathered our coats and purses, Marcia pulled up short before I could reach out for another hug, this time to say good bye until July. “Oh! Something I forget. I meant to tell you. Are you still looking at the Boston Institute, looking into psychoanalysis?”
“They’re hesitant, about taking on a psychologist, but yes, I’m hanging around there.”
“Their loss if they don’t. What I forgot, this prof, my favorite attending, Petyr Cohen, he’s starting there this month. I think you’d like him. He’s very smart, knows so much, not just about medicine, psychiatry – he’s already an analyst – but his story, what happened to him during the war. You really ought to met him.”
I looked at her suspiciously. “Are you trying to set me up?”
“No, no. At least I don’t think I am. He’s married, two kids. OK, separated, but still in the middle of all that. Ugly.” She shivered. “It’s why he’s moving, leaving so he doesn’t have to be in the same city as his wife. Anyway, if you cross paths, tell him I told you about him.”
Intrigued, I pressed her. “During the war? How old is he?”
“Oh, maybe forty, I think. Very interesting story. He grew up in Switzerland. His parents were Jewish, Greek Jews I think, but they lived in Hungary. Somehow, when he was very little, they got him out, to stay with another family, hoping he’d be safe, while they waited out the war. The family in Geneva were American diplomats, and sent him to an international school, so he speaks perfect Brit-tinged midwestern. Anyway, he’s a charmer, like I said. Ask him anything, then sit back and be entertained.”
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