The Texas Ob-Gyn Exodus

[hatrack]

17. I don't see red easily. I did after these three paragaphs.

That night was Ogburn’s last time on call at D.H.R. He put on scrubs and toured the hospital’s corridors. At the fishbowl, he waved to the residents, who would also be gone the next day. He and his wife had just put their house on the market. He planned to take a yearlong break, then move to San Antonio, where his daughter was doing a residency in orthopedics. He would work at a hospital there part time, caring for women who came to deliver—his version of an easy schedule.

His cell phone rang: it was Kornberg, who was also on call. A patient had come in through the E.R. with severe bleeding and cramping, but, when Kornberg asked a nurse what her cervical check had shown, she got a blank stare. The nurse admitted that she hadn’t examined the woman. Did she feel comfortable doing so? Kornberg asked. The answer was no—so Kornberg took over the patient’s care. Ogburn thanked her warmly. Neither mentioned that in twenty-four hours they would both be gone.

Close to midnight, I caught up with Kornberg. There were three women in the antepartum unit whose amniotic sacs had ruptured before the fetuses were viable, she told me. Their babies had little chance of surviving, and elsewhere the women would have been given the option to terminate their pregnancies. “I can’t do that in this state,” Kornberg said. Instead, the women were all told, “We’re going to give you these medications, to give the baby the best chance, though it may not survive.” The reality, Kornberg added, was even bleaker: “You have a baby that’s probably not going to survive, and we’re going to keep you here. And you’re going to sit alone in this room for three, four months, and maybe you’ll die of sepsis.”