Chapter Eleven
December
“Don’t you ever return phone calls?” my brother Denny asked. “This is the third time I’ve called you.”
I told him I was sorry and mumbled something about never being home.
“Yeah, well listen,” he said. “My right shoulder’s been bothering me, and it’s getting worse. I know you’re only a resident but I thought maybe you could tell me what’s the matter.”
I didn’t like the “only a resident” crack. “Shoulder? What’s a shoulder? Hold on. Let me look it up in my medical dictionary.”
“Come on. I mean it. The damn thing’s been killing me after hockey and now it’s even keeping me up at night.”
“Have you tried warm milk and a pacifier?”
“Hey, dickhead, are you going to help me or not?”
“All right. Go ahead.”
He told me he had injured his shoulder playing football in college, and that “the damn thing has never been right since.” He had some free time next week and would come up to Mayo if I could get an appointment for him.
“But I don’t want to see some resident,” he said. “Make sure you line me up with someone good.”
Oh, so we’re back to insulting residents again, huh? Okay. “I know the perfect guy for you,” I said. “He just got his license reinstated. He finished rehab and is living in a halfway house with his old lady who is sixteen. He hardly ever uses acid when he operates now. And you’ll love his tattoos—but at least he’s not a resident.”
This wasn’t the best time for us to be having visitors. Patti had just given birth to our second daughter, Mary Kate. The delivery went smoothly, but Pat was tired and sore. I tried to get her to look at things philosophically.
“Look,” I said. “Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has decreed the manner by which babies are brought into this world. I did my part willingly and cheerfully. I think you should do the same.”
She mentioned something about “willingly and cheerfully” performing an operation with a rusty knife that would allow me to sing in the Vienna Boys Choir.
Four days later, Denny arrived in his beat-up Jeep. He tossed his suitcase on our bed. “This’ll be fine,” he said, “but where are you and Patti going to sleep?”
“Get that roach-infested thing off our bed,” I said, kicking his suitcase onto the floor. “You’re going to the basement.”
The two of us went down to the basement where we cursed and kicked open the couch-bed. Denny pushed on the musty lump of petrochemicals we had just unfolded into his mattress. “The hell with my shoulder,” he said. “I’m gonna need a spine fusion by the time I get out of this place.”
“No, please,” I said, holding up a hand. “Don’t thank me. Just seeing that look of brotherly affection in your eyes is all the thanks I’ll ever need.”
He gave me the finger and yelled up the stairs, “Patti! Why did you ever marry this loser?”
I didn’t see Denny again for four days. I was on call the day after he arrived. The following night I came home at six and went to bed at seven. On the third night I was on call again.
When I came home on the fourth day, Denny was sitting at the kitchen table holding Mary Kate on his lap and drinking a beer. He had seen Mayo’s shoulder guru, had an X-ray and an MRI scan, and was scheduled for surgery in the morning.
Patti had told me how great it was having him around—“since you never are,” she said. In between clinic appointments, Denny fed Eileen, helped with the shopping, shoveled the sidewalk, fixed the kitchen faucet, and generally did everything a real husband would do. And now he was sitting with my infant daughter on his lap. She sat there contentedly chewing on her knuckle and drooling all over the front of his shirt.
“Want a beer?” Denny asked. He was very generous with my beer.
I opened the refrigerator. I had purchased a case of Grain Belt the week before. There was one left. I popped the top of the last beer and sat back down. “What happened to the rest of the case?” I asked.
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Patti,” he whispered, nodding slightly toward the sink. “I think you may have a little problem on your hands there.” He made a drinking gesture with the thumb of his right hand.
“Has she been pouring them on her Cheerios again?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s tragic, simply tragic. God knows I’ve tried to help.” He looked at Mary Kate playing on his lap, and shook his head. “My heart goes out to these poor children.”
“What are you two whispering about over there?” Patti asked. She turned off the faucet and wiped her hands on the front of her apron. She came over, put her hands on my shoulders, and kissed the top of my head.
“Your boozehound brother-in-law is trying to bullshit his way out of responsibility for the fact that we are out of beer.”
“Out of beer?” She opened the refrigerator and stared incredulously. “Out of beer?”
I turned to Denny and flashed a smug smile. Now he was in for it.
Pat swung the door shut and turned on me. Me! “How could you?” she said. “The only job I gave you was to make sure we had enough beer for your brother. I can’t believe you ran out.”
I ran out? I, the guy who had been working almost four days in a row? I, the guy who barely had one sip of one beer? I ran out?
I turned and looked at Denny who was gazing innocently out the window, the same faint, shit-eating grin on his face as when he used to get me in trouble with Mom. I looked back at Patti who was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring at me.
Okay.
I stood up, belched loudly, and began swaying back and forth, beer in my right hand. “All right, I ran outta beer. Whassa matter? Can’t a guy have a coupla beersh around here?”
Patti rolled her eyes. “Knock it off and go to Barlow’s and get some more beer for your brother.”
“C’mere, baby,” I said, staggering forward. “I’m just a lonely truckdrivin’ man.” I groped for her and started singing, “Six days on the road and I’m a-gonna make it home tonight.”
She laughed, pushed me away, and looked over my shoulder at Denny. “Take this lunatic to the store and have him get you some more beer.”
We got the beer and returned home to a chicken and mashed potatoes dinner (Denny’s favorite). I asked why we never had my favorite dinner, pot roast, and was promptly told to shut up, that I wasn’t the one having surgery the next day, and besides, I didn’t exactly look like I was starving to death. That was a low blow. I was going to start working out again as soon as things slowed down a little.
Since it was the night before his surgery, Denny had been told not to drink alcohol, so he said he would have only four more beers—which was just as well. It was 8:30 and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
His surgery went well. They kept him in the hospital overnight and sent him home the following morning. Patti talked him into staying in town for a week until they took his stitches out. Even with his right arm in a sling he was still able to rock the baby and play with Eileen.
I didn’t see much of Denny after surgery. I was on call a lot, and even when I was home I didn’t have much gas left in the tank. I would drag myself in the back door, halfheartedly pick at dinner, and then drop into bed.
Four days after Denny’s surgery I got home about 6:00 P.M. Denny was in the living room rocking the baby. She was sleeping peacefully on his shoulder.
“Let me hold that sweet little thing,” I said to him. I reached over and lifted Mary Kate from his shoulder. She immediately started fussing and squirming.
“Not like that,” Denny said. “She doesn’t like to be held that way.”
I shifted her around but she continued to cry.
“Never mind,” he said. “Just give her back to me. She doesn’t like strangers.”
I was her father. I wasn’t a stranger. Nevertheless, stunned and crushed, I handed her back to Denny. He laid her on his shoulder, and patted her on the
back. She snuggled a time or two, gave a contented sigh, and was still.
“Did Mister Stranger-Danger try to hurt you?” he cooed. “Don’t worry. Uncle Denny won’t let that bad man hold you again.”
His teasing hit too close to home. What the hell kind of life am I leading? I wondered. I hardly ever see my wife. My kids don’t even know me. My brother is more of a father to them, and more of a husband to Patti than I am. Is this what I want?
I felt frustrated and guilty—for about two minutes. An hour later Patti woke me up and said I should just go to bed. I wasn’t any use to anyone passed out on the couch drooling all over the front of my shirt. I staggered to my feet. My guilt was forgotten. Everything was forgotten. I hung my pants on the top of the bathroom door, dropped my shirt on the floor, and fell into bed.
Denny left three days later. I never got to say good-bye. For weeks afterward Eileen would look at me when I walked in the back door, frown, and ask when Uncle Denny was coming home.
Chapter Twelve
January
On January 3 I started on Antonio Romero’s service—one of the busiest services at Mayo. On my first night on call I managed only one hour’s sleep. I came home tired and hungry—and it was snowing again, five inches on Sunday, three inches on Tuesday, six inches so far today, and three more on the way.
Why, I wondered, did the Mayo Brothers have to start their clinic in Minnesota? Hadn’t they ever heard of Hawaii? At this very moment some guy is doing an ortho residency in Honolulu. He is running a clinic for surfing injuries. A voluptuous young thing approaches. “Doctor,” she says, with a little pout, “I’m getting chafing from my halter top. Can you help me?”
Back in Minnesota, though, it was fifteen degrees and dumping—but at least I was prepared. I had made two extravagant purchases with my first paycheck in August. The first was a pair of Sorrel boots from the local Feed and Seed Store. Sorrel is the Canadian manufacturer of a legendary rubbersoled, felt-lined boot made to withstand the most extreme winter conditions. Minnesota ice fishermen swear by them. No matter how drunk they get, no matter how many other body parts become frozen stiff, their feet stay warm.
My second purchase had been a heavy, goose-down coat from L.L. Bean. The coat was a drab tan color with a dark brown corduroy collar and a detachable hood. It was supposed to keep you warm “in any kind of weather.” So far it had.
It was only five o’clock but already it was pitch-black outside. Snow swirled around the light over the back door. I hated to leave the warmth of the kitchen, but if I didn’t shovel the driveway I wouldn’t be able to get out in the morning. I laced up the Sorrels, then zipped and buttoned my coat. I slipped out the back door and clumped through the drifting snow to the garage where I kept the heavy, cast-iron coal shovel I had inherited from some long-forgotten construction job.
I pulled down the garage door, then turned to face 140 feet of driveway that stretched to the street. I picked up the shovel. The sooner I started the sooner I’d be back inside where it was warm.
Back in Hawaii, my counterpart was treating his second patient: a college girl with second-degree sunburn from her first visit to the nude beach. “Hold all calls, Nurse,” he said from behind the curtain. “This may take a while.”
But in Minnesota there were no nude beaches, just snow-covered driveways. I started by shoveling a narrow swath down the middle of the driveway. Within five minutes I started to feel warm. I was wearing a wool hat so I pulled my hood back. The cold air on my neck felt good.
The shovel was indestructible. It could chop ice and drive through the most hard-packed snow. I literally made sparks fly with it. I stood at a right angle to the driveway, my feet wide apart as I drove the shovel into the snow. The shovel grated against the concrete, and I exhaled sharply as I hurled the snow to the side. I started to get into a rhythm, the numbing iamb of labor:
Shhhk-humpf!
Shhhk-humpf!
Shovelin’ snow
Don’t mean jack.
Lord I want
My baby back.
Shhhk-humpf!
Shhhk-humpf!
Every ten minutes I straightened up, leaned against the shovel, and stretched my back. I was sweating heavily. My coat was unzipped, and I had crammed my wool hat into one of the pockets. A layer of snow coated my hair as I shifted the shovel to my left hand. Another sixty feet to go.
In ninety minutes I was finished, but I looked with dismay where the drifting snow had already started to reaccumulate against the garage.
Back in Hawaii, the resident yawned. He had been working for almost three hours and he was exhausted. Sunset was still another four hours away. He wondered if he should have mahi or wahoo for dinner. He opted for the former. “The Vouvray is so much nicer with mahi, don’t you think?” he asked Bambi.
Bambi was an exotic dancer who doubled as his cast technician. She giggled and said, “Oh, Doctor, I love it when you talk dirty.”
The snow was bad, but the cold was worse. All through October and November blizzards and cold fronts gathered strength in the arctic reaches of northern Canada, biding their time until they swept across the frozen lakes and plains of Manitoba and the Dakotas to hurl themselves on us in a demented frenzy.
I awoke one Saturday to the coldest day I had ever seen. All night the wind had howled from the north, tearing a thin flume of snow from the drifts piled on either side of the road. Patti and I spent the night huddled next to each other under four covers.
Harley Flathers, the morning radio announcer on KROC, read a statement from the governor’s office. “The National Weather Service has issued a severe weather warning for the entire state of Minnesota. Temperatures from minus twenty to minus forty with high winds are anticipated. Wind chills are estimated to be a hundred degrees below zero. The governor has declared a state of emergency and asks all citizens to remain indoors.”
All over the city, cars wouldn’t start or, worse, started only to die in the middle of nowhere. Water mains burst, deliveries ceased, gas pumps froze.
Mac Self, who had been on ERSS with me, was from Florida. I ran into him in the doctors’ lounge as I was finishing rounds. Mac was not having a good day. He told me he had never seen cold like this. He felt like a damn Eskimo. He said a person had to be nuts to live in this godforsaken place.
“Why in the hell did I ever leave Ft. Myers?” he asked.
He told me the lock on his back door froze, the gas line in his car froze, the bottle of scotch in his trunk froze, the pipes in his basement froze, the cup of coffee on his dashboard froze, and his dog’s penis froze.
“Listen to this.” He was reading from the chapter on “Frostbite of the Extremities” in the ER Manual: “In the field, the initial treatment of severe frostbite is to warm the frozen digit by cupping it gently in your hands.”
He dropped the book as if he had been stung. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said, “if I am going to take that dog’s johnson in my hand. I don’t care if it does fall off.”
I was home by noon. Patti put the kids down for their nap and made a couple grilled cheese sandwiches for us. When we were done, she noticed I was pulling on my Sorrels. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
“I have to bring that chair back to Eamonn’s,” I said.
Eamonn O’Sullivan was an Irishman who had come to Mayo to do a fellowship in Neurology. The poor man had never seen a temperature below twenty degrees in his life. He was appalled when I called to say I would be right over with the chair we had borrowed.
“Are you daft, then?” he asked in his thick West Cork accent. “Have you not seen the weather outside? Sure, Jaysus, it’s colder than bedamn.”
“Hell, Eamonn, I’m only bringing over a chair. We’re not going to play softball.”
He begged me not to come, swore he didn’t need the chair, said he would pick it up himself later in the week. “I don’t want your death on me conscience,” he said.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,�
�� I told him.
But first there was a car to start. The Ponch had started for me that morning, but only because I had gone out to start it during the night. I had become so attuned to its idiosyncrasies that I could tell almost instinctively how long to try, how long to rest between tries, how much to depress the accelerator, when to put it to the floor.
I bundled up in my L.L. Bean coat and went out to start the car. The garage door was frozen again so I backed up and threw a shoulder into it to break it loose. The two front doors of the car had been frozen shut for the last two days, so I had to get in through the back door and then climb over the front seat. The car coughed into life on the second try. I revved the engine a time or two and then left it running. I climbed out and sprinted back to the house to warm up. When I returned ten minutes later, the interior of the car had warmed up to about five below. I opened the trunk, tipped the chair into it, and set out for Eamonn’s.
I headed up the hill next to the country club and then wound my way through the deserted streets to Eamonn’s house. I left the car running, clambered over the seat, got out the back door, ran up to his apartment, and rang the bell. The wind was roaring out of the north, driving snow into my face, under my jacket, up my sleeves. I missed sitting in the car, not so much for the heat, but just to be out of the wind.
Eamonn opened the door, grabbed my arm, and yanked me in. He slammed the door behind me and began flapping his arms across his chest. “By God,” he said, “it’s colder than a Protestant’s tit out there.” Poor Eamonn and his wife, Moira, had shifted their baby, the TV, and a couple chairs into the kitchen—the only place in their basement apartment they could keep warm. The oven was on, the door open. Eamonn threw on several sweatshirts, two hats, and a coat and came out to help me carry the chair.
Afterward I sat in the kitchen with them having a cup of tea. While we watched a John Wayne movie I told them about Mac Self and his dog.
Hot Lights, Cold Steel Page 9