The Zadeh Scenario

Excerpt

“I beg of you, Doctor, please don’t let Dr. Moore see my mother again. My sisters and I do not want him talking with us anymore.”

So concluded my first conversation with Samir Zadeh. Our meeting had been purely accidental; as I walked onto the elevator going down from the Surgical ICU, he and one of his sisters (her name, I would learn, was Nadira) were already on, coming down from another one of our hospital’s ICUs, from a floor above. Samir was a man in his early 50s, and his sister, whom I would learn was actually a few years older, appeared younger than he. They were talking quietly when the doors opened, but as is often the case in elevators, especially in a hospital, as soon as I entered, their conversation stopped. We rode down to the bottom floor in silence. As we exited, I let them go first, a courtesy I had been taught by my parents, and they both thanked me, in the usual social way, and walked out into the lobby and then out of the building. I walked the same way.

It was when we were about 25 feet from the building that Mr. Zadeh and his sister stopped, so that I caught up to them. As I did, Mr. Zadeh, a large man, maybe 6 feet tall and 250 pounds, with thinning hair and a well-groomed mustache, turned and said my name aloud, “Dr. Finder, may you be so kind as to talk?”