Why White Coats Will Never Protect Black Women (for Nakita)
I did not personally know Dr. Nakita Mortimer. However, her name & face will now forever be imprinted in my mind. When I learned of her becoming an ancestor at the age of 32 from suicide, I could hardly breathe. I didn’t have to know her to see her; as a Black woman physician myself, there is a version of her pain and struggle that lives inside of me.
In her photos, the first thing I see is her smile, likely masking so much pain. From what I have learned about her story, I see her love of our people and her ferocity for justice for patients and providers.
Yet, it was what I didn’t see that took my breath away. It was that weariness of carrying her role of healer so much each day, that over time it may have been difficult for her to remember her right to humanity or demand that others see it.
The disclosed mental health struggles she endured did not shock me but instead bound me even tighter to her story. The fight against anxiety and depression as a clinician is not just hers- it is also one that I battle with in silence, along with many of my sisters in medicine.
We will never see the enormity of what Nakita walked with each day. The heaviness of the unspoken duty to make those she cared for the central focus of her life. “Patients before personal” was the training I remember, a hidden but ever-present curriculum we learned alongside anatomy, pathophysiology and biochemistry. We also will never understand the potential trauma she endured as an anesthesiologist, daily sitting with the balances of death and life, quite literally in her hands.
As a Black woman who chose to pursue a career in medicine, I wonder if she knew beforehand how lonely she would be. I don’t know if she fully realized how few people would genuinely ask or care how she was doing. We are always deemed strong. Moreover, if we aren’t at times, it is believed that we need only rely on being superhuman and use the magic that everyone claims we have access to.
When she worked each day, was she also suppressing the painful moments where racism and sexism stop so many of us in our tracks?
When we write an urgent order and find out it was delayed because those who were supposed to perform it wanted to check with another physician, usually white and male, just to “make sure.”
When we walk into a patient room to introduce yourself, and we're handed the food tray before you can say anything.
When we explain the treatment plan, and our patient looks to the white medical student for confirmation and reassurance because they believe he is the attending physician.
I think about her family and their pride in what she had accomplished. As she transitioned into this new reality of becoming a Black woman doctor, was it difficult to maintain deep connections with those she had previously relied on?
Was she seen as the one who was always “fine”?
Was she seen as the one who could do no wrong in her community?
Was she shouldering the need to be perfect at every moment?
Did she painstakingly work to ensure there were no mistakes, knowing that if they occurred, they wouldn’t be attributed to her being human but silently to her race & gender, instead?