Synopsis
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Rose is in her medical residency, taking care of an 80-year old African-American woman named Nancy who’s non-responsive due to dementia and multiple strokes. Nancy’s husband, Bodie, visits her every day and stays by her side, insisting to Rose that his wife can hear and understand him. When Nancy gets pneumonia and worsens considerably, Bodie blames the hospital and Rose, saying that Black patients always get biased care, and that Rose herself is racist. Rose has been aware of inequity in heathcare, and hates the idea that she might be perceived as racist, and goes out of her way to show Bodie that she’s not, largely by giving him complete control over his wife’s care even when she knows in her heart his choices are going to be emotional, not logical. Bodie wants Nancy to have a feeding tube, and surgery, and all attempts at resuscitation, not comprehending that she’s never going to wake up, recover or go home; Rose knows that ethically she should be telling Bodie that these aren’t wise decisions, but she can’t get herself to do it. Two days later, Nancy stops breathing, and, as Bodie has directed, Rose and the doctors try heroically to save her, and fail, leaving a horrific, bloody scene behind for the grieving husband to witness. Rose understands fully, then, that she sacrificed Bodie’s understanding of his wife’s condition in favor of trying to prove herself to be racially unbiased…which probably meant that she was, in fact, racially biased. She vows to never let a situation like this happen again.
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