May 27-29, 2022
It was a little more than 24 hours before Mrs. Parker became aware that word had spread about her husband’s condition. She receives a text message from someone she and Anthony barely know, a middle manager in Phoebe’s human resources department. But somehow the woman heard that he was in critical condition and sent a message saying she was praying for him.
“How does she know?” Mrs. Parker wondered. “Was there any news about Anthony?
If that wasn’t disturbing enough, a woman stopped by the room. Don’t you want to move him to Emory or somewhere? she whispered. Shouldn’t we get him out of here?
It seemed like an inappropriate question on so many levels, not the least of which was how little they knew about each other. Still, Mrs. Parker was polite. “We’re fine,” she answered. “I appreciate your concern, but we’ll be fine.”
Others may not have thought highly of Phoebe, but Mrs. Parker did. She was confident the staff would save Anthony. She thought back to when President Donald Trump contracted COVID-19 and had to be rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. It was an emergency that required all hands on deck, and Phoebe’s staff, including senior executives who came in and out of Anthony’s room, made it clear that this was also an emergency that required all hands on deck.
The Parker family’s middle child, Andrea, a 43-year-old Coast Guard commander, had arrived late the previous evening from a Washington, D.C., suburb. So did Richard, a long-distance driver for UPS based in Atlanta, who was 39 years old and the youngest sibling. None of them doubted that their father was safe. They supported their mother, and her mother was going to stick with Phoebe.
Anthony always did that when others had questions about the hospital. When doctors shared concerns about staffing issues leading to poor patient outcomes, Anthony, not Phoebe, questioned the appropriateness of their actions. When friends complained about loved ones dying under Phoebe’s care, Phoebe did not use her position on the board to force the hospital to investigate. He would say he was confident Phoebe had acted appropriately. When he asked Phoebe to invest in Albany Tech’s nursing program and instead gave money to a predominantly white community college, he secretly struggled but didn’t make a fuss. “They just don’t realize they need us yet,” he told his staff. “If they do, we’ll be here.”
Mrs. Parker’s loyalty also ran deep. When the spouse of a colleague at Phoebe who had a hysterectomy is dying from an infection, she asks Mrs. Parker to help deliver a letter to CEO Joel Wernick. Mrs. Parker didn’t do that. Who knew if Phoebe was responsible? she reasoned. That didn’t seem like something she should take to Anthony, much less what Anthony should take to Wernick.
Yes, many years ago he was being treated for lymphoma and was admitted to the hospital for a laparoscopic biopsy of a spot detected in one of his lungs. The doctor came out from the biopsy and told me that he ended up having to have major surgery. “Did you just say he opened Anthony’s chest?” she said to herself, feeling much like how she felt when Dr. Jose Ernesto Betancourt told her her husband had gone into cardiac arrest. Surgeons at the time explained that they had changed plans because they had difficulty reaching the part of the lung they wanted to test for cancer, but luckily they found no signs of the disease. But then Dr. Parker’s radiation oncologist complained that a biopsy was not necessary.
Why didn’t her husband’s doctors communicate with each other? Mrs. Parker wondered. The lawsuit was certainly on her mind, but not her husband. He would never have thought of that. That wasn’t the case with Phoebe. It will take longer to recover, but it will be okay. His idea was, “Let’s move on.”
She prayed that her husband would be fine this time, and that his faith in Phoebe would be corrected. On Sunday, three days after the ablation, it seemed like maybe that would happen. The cooling period has ended. Dr. Parker’s body was returning to normal temperature. His three children were in his room, singing along to a recording of the South Carolina game song: “Stand up for the Bulldogs. Everybody stand up!” — Just as he was hoping his father would hear them, he suddenly opened his eyes.
