The Eve of the Dragon

by Michael Dunn

  “I mean, she had a smoking hot body, but a real butter-face. She was not hideous or anything like that, and she had a fantastic personality, but she was unfortunately plain looking. She had a huge nose and trophy ears. I wish I had my surgical skills back in high school to help her out and make her more dateable. Once I became a plastic surgeon, I offered to help her for free; but when I did, she threw a drink in my face. So much for gratitude. I don’t understand why she did that. I just want to make the world a prettier place.”

  “Oh, you are such a saint,” she said.

  “I know, right? Oh, look. Here come my two closest friends.”

  John and Steven rolled their eyes hearing Dan’s bullshit.

  “Are they doctors too?”

  “Not just doctors, we’re surgeons.”

  “Wow, you’re all handsome young surgeons!” The flight attendant said. “This is a dream come true.”

  “Thank you, and you’re right. Like attracts like.”

  The flight attendant was beaming and staring at the young, handsome doctors and then her phone dinged. She checked it and frowned. She told her new surgical friends, “I have to go now. I have a flight to catch.”

  The surgeons groaned in disappointment.

  “I know. Me too,” she said as she stood up and collected her things. “I would have liked to stay to chat with y’all, but I gotta go. Here, let me text you and call me when you get back.”

  Once the flight attendant left, Steven said, “Dan, because of your extreme generosity for funding this trip, all the drinks are on me. Drink up.”

  “Cool. Thanks, guys.”

  Both John and Steven bought Dan as much as he could drink because no one wanted to be on a twelve-hour flight with a bored Dan, who would drive everyone crazy, possibly even the pilot, and that was dangerous for everyone. They would probably be arrested when they landed, placed on the No-Fly list, and labeled as terrorists.

  John pointed to one approaching woman and said, “Hey Dan, check her out.”

  When Dan craned, John drugged his drink. Instead of taking the drink, Dan jumped out of his chair and followed the blonde, tanned woman who had smiled toward the table of doctors. She was enjoying a red slushy as she walked, dragging her wheeled, carry-on bag.

  “Hi,” Dan said, walking next to her. “My name is Dan Carter, and I’m a doctor. A plastic surgeon. Not that you need one, but it’s always nice to know one.”

  John and Steven were embarrassed. However, the woman laughed and smiled, brushing her hair behind her ear.

  “Did you know that those red slushies can cause large breasts?” Dan feigned shock with his hands on his face. “Oh dear Lord, I am too late.” She laughed harder.

  Steven shook his head and whispered, “How… how does he do it?”

  “It helps that he’s good looking,” John said, without irony. “He knows how to make them laugh and gets them to drop their guard. He disarms them by being funny and charming. Most guys who approach them are not.”

  “So, what’s your name?” Dan asked the woman he was pursuing.

  “Maxine.”

  “Dr. Dan Carter.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  They shook hands.

  “Where are you off to?”

  “The Bahamas. You?”

  “My friends and I,” Dan pointed to his friends at the table at the bar. “We are going to Italy for vacation.”

  “Oh, really, why?”

  “For shoes.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  He laughed, and she did too.

  “Would you like to join me for a drink before your flight?”

  She laughed, shook her head, and said, “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, how about joining my friends and me for a drink before your flight?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do I have a chance?”

  “Zero chance.”

  “None?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am flying out to meet my husband and kids, who are already in the Bahamas.”

  “Oh. I had no idea you were married. I didn’t see a ring.”

  “I don’t wear one.”

  “Ah, okay, well, it was nice meeting you, Maxine, and you have a safe and fun trip in the Bahamas,” and then he headed back to his friends.

  “It was nice meeting you, Dr. Carter.”

  She was not sure he heard her, but she was on her way feeling better about herself than she had minutes ago.

  Back at the table, Dan sulked. It was momentary. He chugged down his drink in one swallow.

  “How often have you used the ‘I’m-a-doctor-let’s-fuck’ routine?” Steven asked.

  Puzzled, Dan inquired, “You mean today?”

  Steven mumbled, “That’s what I thought.”

  “Why don’t you ask a realtor or a car salesman? It’s a numbers game like everything else. Once you understand that you can go in with your so-called ‘sales pitch’ without any emotion or expectation one way or the other of the outcome,” Dan said as he dipped his french fries into a glob of ketchup.

  “You don’t seem too disappointed.”

  “Because I’m not. She showed interest, and I pursued. She just liked to flirt. I had no idea she was married because she was not wearing a ring, which might mean the reason she was meeting her husband instead of going with him to the Bahamas was that she had already met her side guy and she was on her way to join her regular family and she forgot to put her ring back on.”

  “How did you get that?” John asked.

  Dan shrugged. “It’s just a guess. I don’t care if I’m right or wrong. The best thing to do after a rejection is to forget about it and move on. Don’t let it hurt your feelings.”

  The waitress came by and asked, “Y’all want another round?”

  “Oh, God, yes,” John said.

  The other two agreed on another round.

  Dan said, “I want to get so drunk that I sleep like a baby on the flight. Twelve hours with nothing to do but just sit there. It will drive me nuts.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” John said.

  After the next round, Dan got sleepy. “Oh God, I hope I can make it through boarding.”

  “You’ll make it,” John said.

  Chapter Six: The Flight to Italy

  The doctors waited for their turn to board when their flight was announced. They crossed the jet way and greeted by another flight attendant who smiled at the surgeons. Dan, barely able to stay awake, wore the goofy smile of the happily drunk.

  “He’s had a few too many at the bar,” Steven explained. “He should be fine once we get him seated.”

  The flight attendant smiled nervously and greeted the other passengers behind the surgeons.

  Dan fought the sleepiness until he fastened his seatbelt in first class and then he was out like a baby.

  John and Steven sighed when they heard Dan sleeping.

  “After all he drank, do you think the pill was necessary?” Steven whispered.

  John shrugged, “Maybe or maybe not. I didn’t think he would drink so much.”

  Steven shook his head. “Let’s just hope for the best.”

  John and Steven worked on the endless hours of paperwork doctors have to complete. They slept for a couple hours. They read and listened to music to cancel out Dan’s snoring.

  John’s last vacation occurred a couple months after Lisa died. They visited Disney World and Universal Studios in Orlando, for two weeks. He remembered his Mom and Dad weeping at the happiest place on earth.

  During those two weeks, his mom became pregnant again with their replacement child, Chrissy. He did not know his baby sister well because he was out of the house when she was in diapers and he could never get past her role as the replacement child and therefore chose not to be close to her. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he had no time for anyone outside his career.

  He prac
tically lived at the hospital and, because of the long hours he had spent over the years, he had no idea what to do with himself when he had days off, except sleep. There never seemed to be enough time for sleeping. He ate in the hospital cafeteria. He showered in the hospital. He slept in the hospital and sometimes he made love in the hospital. He had a friends-with-benefits relationship with an older nurse in obstetrics. When Dan offered John an all-expense paid vacation to Italy, the prospect scared John, whose initial thought was, What would the hospital do without me?

  He realized that was ridiculous. What would he do with himself on the beach with nothing to do except read airport gift shop novels (like the ones he used to write himself) and work on a brilliant tan? He had been in medical-mode for so long that he did not understand when his friend handed him the keys to paradise; that was the moment John realized he needed a vacation - otherwise he would burn out. He had witnessed burnout happen to promising colleagues and it was never a pretty sight.

  He considered writing again. A couple ideas swirled in his head, a couple of weird fantasy types of stories — one where Nero Wolfe and Sam Spade team up to fight Dracula. Another story followed a naïve, young man who is seduced by a succubus who then falls in love with the young man, and offers to make him immortal. The last one was a crime story where a Don Corleone-type figure was actually a warlock fighting other magical crime families.

  John contemplated creating notes on those stories when time permitted. Now that his board certifications were behind him and he had a month to himself with nothing to do except lie on the beach and perhaps revisit writing.

  Who knows? John thought. Maybe now is the time.

  There was no itinerary for the vacation, because Dan never had a plan for anything. Getting a definitive plan from Dan for almost anything was often painful and exhausting. To John’s recollection, Dan had no other ideas beyond drinking on the beach, ordering from room service every night, and trying to get laid as often as possible.

  Dan showed no interest in seeing anything more of Italy — no Colosseum, no Pantheon, no Sistine Chapel, just beaches, booze, and boobs.

  Who knows? John thought. Dan might get bored and choose to absorb some culture. John thought that if he got bored or suffered writer’s block, he would go visit those places by himself.

  *

  Steven was not sure he should have left for this vacation. Much like John, Dan, and every other newly minted surgeon, Steven all but lived at the hospital.

  “Is there anything you are bad at, Steven?” One of his mentors once asked.

  “Relationships,” Steven answered.

  Up to a point, almost everything came easily for Steven. However, sharing his life with a person not from his family, often led to uneasy compromises. Now, he agreed to live with two people for a month. The only person Steven successfully room with was John Miller, whom he met during their first week of medical school. Two days later, they met their wacky sitcom-esque neighbor down the hall; the guy snoring in the seat in front of them, who had paid for this trip.

  John had one girlfriend throughout medical school, a beautiful, thirty-something doctor who worked in the same hospital. Steven bounced among sporadic, short-term girlfriends during medical school. He would keep them around until one of them grew bored. Dan shacked up with the next available hot woman at the moment. Dan did not know how to handle relationships either, but then again, Dan seemed to neither care nor try too hard.

  *

  The lowered cabin pressure made sleeping on the plane easier and nearly everyone else in first class, including the three doctors, slept for a couple of hours while the plane cruised over the Atlantic Ocean.

  John awoke first and surprised him to find himself on an airplane. He had a weird dream about a dragon rescuing him or something like that. He did not remember much, and the dream was slipping away from his memory with every second. He thought about putting it into one of his books.

  At the airport gift shop, he had picked up a book reminiscent of his own previous works. However, the story was too thin and uninteresting, and John believed he could have done better; almost every book he read like this was a learning experience. The book inspired John to open his notebook and jot down some notes.

  Maybe over this break I’ll be able to read again for fun, John thought. Who knows?

  *

  Steven slept with his head tilted back, mouth agape, and lightly snoring. Steven dreamed he was a guest at Mycroft Holmes’ Diogenes Club seated in a private room, which allowed men to speak and a room the elder Mr. Holmes used for after-hours business. The famous detective’s corpulent brother berated Steven for not retrieving a missing item.

  Dan, who was sitting next to Steven in the Diogenes Club, was not helping the situation with his smart mouth. Mycroft grew increasingly frustrated by Dan’s impetuousness and his face turned an unhealthy shade of scarlet, which any modern doctor would recognize as hypertension. Mycroft stormed from the room coughing and wheezing.

  Once the informal head of the Victorian British government had left the room, Dan said, “You know you killed me, right?”

  “What?” Steven asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sitting in front of you two asshats who poisoned me to keep me asleep on the plane. Well, you two Doctor Feelgoods did a bang-up job, because I am not only asleep, but I will keep sleeping for eternity. Now, unless you dickheads want to play a real-life Weekend at Bernie’s for a whole freaking month, I suggest you wake the fuck up and resuscitate me.”

  Steven snored loudly enough to wake himself up. Steven wiped his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” John asked while scribbling notes.

  Steven shook his head. “No, I dreamt Dan was in danger.”

  “He usually is.”

  “No, not like that. Has he awoke since you’ve been awake?”

  John shook his head. Steven leaned forward and shook Dan’s chair.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” Steven patted Dan on the shoulders.

  He did not wake up. He was not moving.

  “Dan, come on. Wake up.”

  Nothing.

  Steven and John became horrified. Steven checked for a pulse while John checked to see if Dan was still breathing.

  “No pulse.”

  John whispered, “He’s not breathing either.”

  “How much did you give him?” Steven whispered.

  “Not enough to do this,” John whispered. “I’ll do the breaths. You do the chest compressions.”

  Steven nodded.

  The doctors pulled their friend from his seat and laid him on his back in the aisle.

  “Is everything okay?” A flight attendant asked.

  Steven placed his hands on Dan’s chest, whispering in a desperate, maddening prayer, “Please, God, don’t let Dan die here. Dan, if you can hear me, don’t die, and wake the fuck up.”

  John told the flight attendant (a different woman than the one Dan endeavored to seduce at the bar before boarding), “Our friend stopped breathing. We’re doctors. Bring us the med kit.”

  The flight attendant nodded.

  To Steven, John asked, “Ready?”

  Steven nodded and said, “On 3… 2… 1.”

  Dan’s body jolted and he snored and coughed. John closed his eyes, shook his head, and sighed. Steven laughed to release his tension and fear. John shook Dan awake.

  The flight attendant returned with the med kit. She asked, “Is he okay?”

  John took the med kit and told her, “We’ll let you know.”

  Dan opened his eyes, blinked several times, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. He sat up, looked around, and realized he was still on the plane. “Oh, yeah, Italy.” Dan said and yawned.

  “You guys, I just had the strangest dream,” Dan said, and he pointed to John and Steven. “And you were there, and you were there.”

  The passengers and the flight attendants applauded when Dan awoke.

  Steven and John sighed. Both of them felt as though they were about to have hea
rt attacks.

  “Are we almost there yet? I’m hungry.” Dan pretended he was a whiny little boy. Some other passengers laughed, but John and Steven shook their heads.

  “We’re an hour away,” Steven said and sat down. He was sweating and his heart pounded.

  Dan’s momentary ‘death’ had scared John, not only because he would have lost a close friend (who both irritated him and made him laugh), but there would be an autopsy which would show trace amounts of the drugs in his system, along with the copious amounts of alcohol.

  *

  The plane landed in Naples on time. The American doctors stepped off the plane and retrieved their respective luggage. John and Steven’s bags were nondescript and common travel bags for wealthy American travelers, while Dan brought two My Little Pony suitcases and received the weirdest stares from the other passengers when he grabbed them.

  “Why do you have them?” Steven asked.

  “I need trunks to carry my clothes and things like everyone else.”

  “I meant why did you choose ones meant for little girls?”

  “If your gear gets lost, how do you guys describe it? Your bags resemble every other traveler’s bags in the world. If that happens I can tell them that I am missing two My Little Pony bags, one is pink with the character ‘Pinky Pie’ on the front, while the other is purple with the character ‘Twilight Sparkle’ on the front.”

  “I am embarrassed you know that,” Steven said.

  “Also, if a thief wanted steal luggage, do you think they would choose the bag of a well-to-do tourist or a little girl? Which one would you assume has more monetary value?”

  “Wow,” John whistled. “You have a point.”

  “Come on, let’s get through customs,” John said, leading the way.

  “Anything to declare?” The Italian customs agent asked.

  Almost everyone shook their heads and were allowed to pass through. Dan snickered and opened his mouth to say something as John and Steven glared at him. Dan shut his trap and shook his head.

  Outside the airport, Steven hailed a cab and the three doctors headed to the hotel where more than their suite was waiting.

  *

  At the front desk, a comely, young Italian woman in a pressed hotel uniform greeted them. Her nametag read Bella.