Une heureuse union
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* Paul Moorehead

*   © 2005 CMA Media Inc. or its licensors

I went into her room and was asked, “What's the French for ‘gallbladder’?” The nice francophone lady with the positive Murphy sign had been trying to explain her problem to her husband. He'd been at her bedside since she was admitted, wearing a look of tender concern the whole time. But he had less English than she did and had not understood our explanations of what was the matter.

Later I realized that if she couldn't name the organ in her first language, she likely hadn't understood what “gallbladder” meant, either. At the time, though, all I could think was, “What's the French for ‘gallbladder.’ I dunno ... *le* gallbladder?” Four and a half years of high school French, and this was my best guess.

Looking for an excuse, any excuse, not to go to the OR to watch one more laparoscopic cholecystectomy, I decided to find the answer. There was a francophone nurse on the ward, but she wasn't working that day. One of the custodial staff spoke some French, but not enough: he said he'd call his grandfather and ask him. I protested, feebly, that this was not important enough to bother anyone's Grampa about. But when the guy came back with his grandfather's answer, I happily thanked him for it.

On my way back to my patient's room, I practised pronunciation in my head. I delivered a pre-emptory apology for whatever injury I was about to do to their language and then told them how to say “gallbladder” in French.

The husband's face lit up with long-awaited understanding. “Ahhh ... *vésicule biliare*!” he exclaimed. He then turned to his wife, and his expression changed from happy comprehension to the sweet worry I was used to seeing. A moment later, though, his face changed again. I found his new expression to be strangely comforting; I guessed that it marked the return of some of the normalcy that had been taken from their marriage by her illness.

It was an apparently well-practised look of mild annoyance. It seemed to say, in French even *I* could understand, “Well, why didn't you just *say* that?”