PART
ONE
1
THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH MANSCAPING
Most women did not begin their days by stabbing a man in the scrotum, but Georgia Brown was not most women. She’d risen as she always did at five o’clock, prepared her usual concoction of coffee and medium-chain triglyceride oil, and gone for a run. She loved the predawn streets of Charleston: absent the cacophony of tourists and the nuclear blanket of the sun, the air was usually quiet and cool, laced through with the tang of the sea. Afterward, a quick shower, a moment of meditation to try to tamp down the endorphins, a grooming blitz—hair in a twist, a smear of bright red lipstick—and she was ready to work.
Stab was the wrong verb, of course, but you didn’t become a female urologist without a strong sense of humor. In any case, there was little humor in the scenario currently confronting Georgia in the OR, but at least she felt good about her role in it. Well—she felt good about saving a guy’s life, not the unfortunate surgical procedure she’d been drafted to perform.
At first glance, the man splayed on the table in front of her appeared to be the kind of diabetic who, in another era, would have perished from a gruesome case of groin sepsis before reaching the age of forty. But now, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, this man would live to fight another day. Granted, he might be fighting with only one ball—assuming at least one of his balls survived the infection currently encompassing his manhood—but surely losing a testicle or two was a small price to pay for regaining a life.
“Suction,” Georgia said, as a geyser bubbled up from the incision she’d just made. “Thanks. Okay. Hand me the Bovie.”
Though only his eyes were visible above his mask, the scrub tech—a dour, bearded guy in his twenties—communicated unmistakable, if silent, alarm. A floater, he usually staffed orthopedic procedures, but this patient had come in through the ER and wasn’t on the schedule, necessitating a rearrangement of the ORs.
“I cannot believe I’m assisting in this mauling,” he said finally, rolling his eyes as he placed a cautery wand in Georgia’s outstretched hand. “Even on a fool like this guy.”
“What?” She pointed the cautery in Evan’s direction. “Why would you call him a fool?”
“C’mon, Dr. Brown. I guarantee he smokes, ignores his insulin regimen, doesn’t fill his prescriptions, and probably doesn’t even check his sugars. What did he think was going to happen?”
“Well, it’s a safe bet he didn’t think he’d lose his scrotum to necrotizing fasciitis,” she remarked mildly. “That probably didn’t even crack the top one hundred on his list of fears.”
“Reap what you sow, though, Doc.”
“I talked to him before the case,” she said. “He’s a night-shift manager at a convenience store, and he can’t afford insulin, let alone glucometer sticks, which are about fifty dollars a box. So, you’re right: he hasn’t been checking his sugars in a while.”
An uncomfortable silence ensued, broken only by the sizzle of the cautery and the fwoompy sound of the ventilators.
Evan retreated to familiar ground. “I can’t believe I’m assisting in this case.”
“Evan, if you drip sweat in my surgical field, I’m going to remove your balls too,” Georgia replied, as cheerfully as possible. “Forceps.”
“Omigod—are you actually going to remove—”
“No, just the skin and tissue around them. But a few of these guys do wind up with later removal of the testicles too. And he’s going to need skin grafting for sure.”
“Omigod. I can’t believe I’m—”
“Suction,” she interrupted. Best to nip this in the bud. Men could be so touchy about things like excision of the scrotum.
The room in which they stood was a nice one, as far as ORs went. Square and spacious, it boasted state-of-the-art equipment, everything gleaming like a TV hospital. Georgia had operated in some exceptionally dumpy ORs during her time, so she appreciated the clinic’s facilities; everything was new, from the gargantuan office complex to the operating suites. The clinic, part of a large hospital complex founded by a church, combined doctors from more than twenty different specialties. It had been challenged in its initial days to attract patients to this budding suburb so far outside the city. But they’d offered good salaries, pulling physicians away from long-established practices in Charleston, and eventually the patients had followed. Now it had more business than it could handle.
“Dr. Brown,” said the circulating nurse, a reedy, nondescript woman whose name always slipped Georgia’s mind. “Your phone is blowing up. Do you want me to look at any of these texts?”
“Please do,” she said, forcing her voice into false calmness. She’d left the security code off her phone for the explicit purpose of having the circulator answer texts and calls since Dobby, her rescue mutt, was at this moment at the animal hospital recovering from surgery. The irony of his particular ailment—a kidney tumor resulting in a nephrectomy—was lost on no one, save Dobby himself, of course. Waggy and loyal to a fault, he greeted each day with an exuberance bordering on mania. He wasn’t perfect: at age three, he still occasionally gave in to the longing to chew on furniture legs, and he shed so much hair on the floor of Georgia’s nine-hundred-square-foot house, it looked like an unswept beauty salon. Worst of all, he fetishized the smell of feet to the point where he couldn’t sleep without cuddling one of her shoes, usually an expensive one, as nice shoes were one of the few things she was willing to buy brand-new. But, like every good dog, he loved unconditionally and enthusiastically. Georgia needed him in her life.
The circulator frowned, clicking through the messages. Georgia waited for at least five seconds before giving in. “How is he?”
The nurse didn’t answer, so Georgia risked a look at her. Her expression had changed: it was, without doubt, the face of a person who did not want to answer the question she’d just been asked.
A ball of grief thudded into her stomach. “Just read it,” Georgia whispered.
“Dr. Brown,” said the woman, “I really think you should wait until later.”
“Knowing is better than dreading,” Georgia said stoically. “I’m done here anyway. It’s fine.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s fine! It’s fine. Tell me.”
The circulator cleared her throat. “Dear Georgia,” she read. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s over.”
Everyone stopped moving. Across from her, Evan stared at the wall with the suction tube held aloft as if he were a flash-frozen orchestra conductor in a blue gown; even the anesthesia people had gone still behind their curtain.