Saving Superman

Beep…Beep…Beep…

I listen to the rhythmic sound of relief and success. A smile of pure reprieve breaks out under my face-mask as I feel my heart continue to shoot adrenaline through my veins like bullets. Amidst the noise in my head and the cheers in the operating room, I hear myself whisper, “thank you.”

 I turn to the nurses on my team. “You can wheel Mr. Garrett to recovery,” I release a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding. I lift a still shaking hand and wipe a damp strand of dark hair off my forehead with the back of my gloved wrist. With tears gathering in the back of my eyes, I whisper, “He’s going to be all right.”

            In surgery, there’s a thin line between success and failure that it is barely visible. As a practicing surgeon for thirteen years, I find that I dance on that line often. Too often. Nearly twenty minutes ago, I thought I crossed it when Tom Garrett went into cardiac arrest almost immediately after a complicated brain surgery. I happened to glance at the monitor at the exact moment his heart began to fail him and called for the defibrillator just in time. I can’t say that God has always been there for me in this operating room, but He was with me today.

I stepped out into the blazing white lights of the hospital hallways for the first time in eight grueling hours. I glance at my watch. It’s one in the morning and now that this operation is finished, my shift is over for the night. As I walk back to my office to change out of my scrubs, another doctor passes me and gives me a friendly pat on my arm.

“Dr. Meyerson, heard what happened in there,” he smiles. “Nice work.” His tone is casual, but glancing at his face, I detect a hint of something else, pity? I politely nod, an unsettling feeling settling in my stomach as I walk down the hallway. I reach the one room that is my own in this big Boston hospital, an island of safety in the midst of a dark, dangerous ocean. I allow the serenity and security of the tea green walls and chocolate molding envelope me. My mind fills with images of the past few hours. As my thoughts start to wander into dangerous territory of could-have-been, an aggressive drilling noise shatters my reverie. I glance at the name on my phone that’s been sitting on my desk and quickly bring it to my ear.

“Hi, Mamma. Is everything alright at home? I ask through the receiver.”

I realize it’s not my mother on the phone when I hear the innocent breaths of a six-year-old little girl on the other end of the line.

            “Mommy?”

Before I had Noah, I didn’t believe people when they said love is a physical emotion. That you can feel it so strongly in every single part of you. An image of how she looked when she was born, pink and perfect, comes to my mind as I listen to her little voice through the phone and feel my heart physically swell with love.

“Hi, sweetie. Is everything okay? What are you doing up so late?”

A small whimper comes through the phone and I can hear my heart break a little.

            “I had a nightmare, Mommy. I ran to your bed but you weren’t there.” She’s crying now. “I went to the living room and Nonna was on the couch. She said I should call you and maybe you’ll tell me one of your stories about how you were a hero and saved people like Superman.”

            I couldn’t help but smile at that. Like any normal six-year-old, Noah developed a new obsession every month. It seemed that December’s chosen theme was super heroes, specifically superman. She would run around the house with her red cape and blue pajamas yelling, “Up, up and away!” One morning last week at breakfast, she asked me what I do at work. I tried my best to explain the drama that goes on in an operating room in a way that her six-year-old brain would be able to understand. I told her that people come to me with all kinds of boo-boos and I try my very best to fix them. I’ll never forget the look on her face when I told her that. Her enormous blue eyes grew even larger and her little dimpled chin dropped open.

            “Mommy,” she gasped. “You’re Superman.”

For a few seconds, I got lost in the memory, forgetting I was still on the phone.

            “Mommy? Are you still there?”

“I’m still here, Baby. I’ll tell you what. I think Nonna is probably very lonely and needs someone strong and brave to watch her. Why don’t you read her one of your superhero books and I’m going to try to fly back home as fast as I can. You think my big, brave girl can do that?”

My eyes travel to my desk where I keep an array of framed photographs. I pick up one with a simple, silver frame. Inside, a golden-haired man with a smile brighter than a hot summer’s sun is laughing, the orange glow of the beach sunset blanketing his face. His silvery blue eyes are identical to the little girl’s he is carrying on his shoulders. I can almost hear her little giggle and toddler voice saying, are you a knight, daddy? Cus maybe thas why you have shuch shrong arms.

“Mommy?”

I bring my attention back to the phone. “Yes, Honey?”

“When I grow up, will I be Superman just like you?”

I move my eyes from the picture on my desk upward to the walls of my office. I study the certificates and awards as if I’m noticing them for the very first time.

            “Noah, can I tell you a secret? You’re already an even greater hero than both Mommy and Superman. And one day, you are going to change the world.”

With that, I blew her a kiss good-bye and put my phone into my coat pocket. I slipped out of my scrubs and sneakers and began changing back into the black silk blouse and grey linen pantsuit that I walked into the hospital with early this afternoon. As I gather all my things, I take another glance at my honor-gilded wall. Rows of framed awards and covers of TIME magazine cover its neutrally painted surface. My eyes wander over the bolded print, that were once a source of pride for me.

Carter Meyerson, M.D.

Harvard Medical School, Neurosurgery

Youngest Female Brain Surgeon

“Dr. Carter Meyerson, Most Accomplished Female Surgeon with Over Sixty Successful Surgeries in Under Ten Years of Service.”

“Jeffrey Kuhner Interview with Dr. Carter Meyerson:  How We Can Inspire Our Daughters to Accomplish Their Dreams.”

            Noah’s voice floats back into my head, Mommy, you’re Superman. The words taunting me like a gold medal that is too far out of my reach. It’s not unlike the words I’ve heard for a long time from interviewers, journalists, colleagues, and even my family.

Carter Meyerson was not a name born overnight. My parents, Marie and Anthony Russo, immigrated from Italy to America in ‘55 and managed comfortable livings for themselves. After my father died bravely fighting a long battle with liver disease, Noah and I became the center of my mom’s universe. My career in the medical world became as much a priority to her as it is to me, and so spending nights, week after week with Noah not only turned into her accepted job; it became her life-support. For an Italian immigrant who had to fight for a place in a foreign land, having a daughter who accomplished the legendary American dream was the ultimate goal. This was her way of telling me that she’s proud.

            I wish I could say that my accomplishments in the medical world are a sole result of good work ethic instilled in me by my Italian roots, but I would have to attribute much of my achievement to an American writer who swept me off my feet. I married Derek Meyerson in the Spring of 1984. I can say with confidence that he was the only person I have ever known to weather the stormy seas of life to perfection. When his little sister died of Leukemia, it wasn’t an experience that left him emotionally crippled. It was an experience that produced a work, published in thirty languages that would remind people all over the world why they should take on every day as if it is their last. I can only pray that Noah has inherited his passion and deep understanding of life.

            Walking alone to the faculty parking lot, I allow the night’s piercing wintery wind to wash over me and my thoughts, wring them out like a blood-soaked rag. Driving down Comm Avenue, I listen to the sounds indigenous to a typical Monday night in Boston: laughter and bouncing balls from a group of teenagers coming home from late-night practice; the swift, rhythmic steps of a young woman on her mid-night run; cheering from a nearby sports bar; the distant sound of cars honking and sirens wailing.

I allow the cries of the siren to surround and overwhelm me. The noise is growing louder. I can see lights flashing as red as the blood that flows from a freshly-made incision. The howling is deafening now. It’s no longer the noise of the sirens permeating the air. The incessant screams breaking from my throat are earth-shattering. My head is swimming in a pool of dark memories. I’m drowning in them. I can’t breathe. My hands are so clammy, I can barely hold my grip on the steering wheel.

            Somehow, I’m able to pull my car over to the side of the road. My heart is pummeling against my ribs; I can’t catch my breath. With trembling hands, I reach into a zippered pocket in my bag. I haven’t opened this pocket since the last time I closed it. Maybe it was the call from my daughter; maybe it was the sirens, or maybe it was the fact that tonight is December 17^th, but whatever the reason was, I found myself reading the article that I swore to myself I’d never look at again. Unlike the articles hanging in my office, this one was more recent, dated only two years ago. And it didn’t make it to the collection on my wall.

Derek Meyerson, rising American author and modern poet, terminated his writing career upon developing unexplained seizures and amnesia. After multiple tests and procedures, a golf ball-sized tumor was discovered resting on his frontal lobe. The thirty-eight year old writer had his grave dug for him when no qualified surgeon was willing to take on the risk of the necessary operation. In August of 1996, Meyerson was told that without an operation he had three months to live. Just when he was ready to give up hope and Meyerson began to say his good-byes to his family, one daring doctor was bold enough to take on the challenge. Dr. Carter Meyerson, thirty-six-year-old neurosurgeon, graduated from Harvard Medical school in 1985, has been able to uphold a successful surgical record to date. On December 17^th, at 7:00 am, when Dr. Meyerson took a knife to her husband’s brain, she wasn’t aware that three hours later she would walk out of the operating room a widow.

Are you a knight, Daddy?

Mommy. You’re Superman.

I kept hearing Noah’s words echoing in my head. How ironic, I thought, that Noah lost her knight in shining armor at the hands of her superhero.