Daniel Wagoner, a resident in his second year of training, ushered her in to see her daughter. She drove to Syracuse, caught the next flight to New York City, and drove to the sprawling academic medical center on Long Island. Why didn't you go to the doctor sooner? the trim middle-aged woman scolded her daughter silently.īarbara had gotten a call from a doctor in the emergency room of this suburban hospital the night before. For the next week she'd felt like she was coming down with something. After that her mouth felt better - but she didn't. The dentist gave her a week's worth of antibiotics and then another. "Call your dentist," she'd urged her daughter. She'd called her mother halfway across the state just about every day to complain. But even after the teeth were gone, the pain persisted. Crystal had had a couple of impacted wisdom teeth taken out the month before. The young woman had been in the Nassau University Medical Center ICU for two days she'd been seen by a dozen doctors and had scores of tests, yet no one seemed to have the slightest idea of just what was killing her. Her daughter, Crystal, barely twenty-two years old and healthy her entire life, was now - somehow - dying. She looked at the slender figure in the bed. The afternoon sky was dark with yet more snow to come.
Barbara Lessing stared out the window at the snowy field behind the hospital.
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