As they say in the vernacular, I got called out the other day – by my roommate Jenn, of course, who is particularly good at detecting inconsistencies in people's behavior. We were talking about homophobia, and I was relating a recent incident which had disgusted me, in which someone had said something I found offensive and medieval.
I related the story. I was on call at the hospital and admitting a man with acute kidney failure. He was sick: emaciated, with awful radiation burns from a bout with cancer a few years ago and lingering weakness from a mass in his brain. We weren’t sure what the mass was, but it was undoubtedly related to his AIDS. His nurse and I worked together to get his vital signs, listen to his lungs, make him comfortable in bed. I was impressed by how gentle she was as she turned and lifted him – I followed her lead. As I was writing his admission orders – IV fluids, cream to his burns thrice daily – his nurse joined me again.
“Is he gay?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch as she drew out the last word. I was shocked: was she serious? Did she really care?
“So what did you say?” Jenn asked me.
I had tried to remain neutral. “I really don’t know,” I’d said in what I hoped was an irritated voice. I was more than irritated: I was shocked – this was, in my experience, something out of bad TV. This was morbid curiosity, plain and simple, her brush with the exotic, with the other half, with those people.
“You missed an opportunity,” Jenn observed pragmatically. What I should have said was, “Why do you care?” or “Why does it matter?”
I should have told her that his sexual orientation was immaterial. I could have gone a step further and said that the way he acquired HIV – was this why she was asking about his sexuality? – was irrelevant to his kidney shutdown, that he was very sick right now and what mattered was that we treat him, not that we probe into his personal life.
Instead I said nothing. My approach was completely passive-aggressive: I hoped my irritated tone would convey some of my disapproval. But really, was a nurse going to be surprised by some doctor-in-training being snippy? Probably not. People give nurses crap for far less important things all day.
About a year ago I missed a similar opportunity. A relative of mine said, upon hearing that I wanted to move to
Why do I remain silent in these situations? In the hospital, it was mostly shock – I was thrown off-guard by the disconnect between the tender care the nurse displayed and the callow fascination underneath. But the only reason I said nothing when it came to my family was the desire not to rock the boat, the abstract goal to All Just Get Along. I gave him a temporary free pass for being a 19-year-old boy. I repeated the story to friends, always with the parenthesis of, “Can you believe he said that?”
It’s one thing to be a card-carrying member of the HRC, but a little confrontation goes a long way sometimes. If I never speak up, then I can’t be surprised that people do say these things.
