Year Four
Chapter Thirty-Three
July
I was thirty-three years old. I had twenty-seven years of education behind me. I had friends, guys my own age, who were halfway to their pension—and I was still in training. But the end was in sight. On July 2 I began my final year. I was back on Antonio Romero’s service, this time as the senior resident. This was it, the last lap.
But Barlow’s grocery store, and Jensen’s Standard station, and Northwest Bank didn’t care how many laps I had left, or how many years of education I had behind me. They wanted to be paid. And for the thirty-third year in a row, I was broke, still living paycheck to paycheck. If it hadn’t been for moonlighting we never would have made it.
I was nearing the end of a thirty-six-hour moonlighting stint at St. Joe’s: 7:00 P.M. Friday ’til 7:00 A.M. Sunday. Although I had managed a couple hours’ sleep each night, I was running on empty. I finished the admission orders, scribbled a signature, then leaned back and ran both hands slowly through my hair.
My last patient had been a seventy-two-year-old lady who had pricked her hand on a rosebush ten days earlier. Although her hand had been infected for a week, she waited until three o’clock in the morning to get it checked. I opened the wound, drained the pus, and discovered a portion of the thorn still inside her.
“Why that little devil,” she said when I showed her the thorn.
By the time I finished dressing her hand, starting her on IV antibiotics, and shipping her upstairs, it was time to go home.
I trudged back to the call room and took a quick shower. Jim Leone, who was taking over for me, was already in my bed when I came out of the bathroom.
“Jim,” I said, toweling myself dry, “glad to see you’re hard at work.”
“Leamme alone.” He rolled over, pulled up the covers, and faced the wall.
I finished dressing, turned off the light, and said, “Later, Jim. Hope it’s quiet.”
“See you, Mike,” came the muffled reply as the door closed.
As I passed the desk one of the nurses asked me if Dr. Leone was in the call room.
“Yeah. What’ve you got?”
“An old guy with a painful, red toe.”
“Get a CBC, sed rate, uric acid level, and an X-ray and don’t wake Dr. Leone ’til they’re back.”
She nodded and picked up the phone.
As I turned to leave I fell in with the night nurses. They were going off shift, too. We walked to the parking lot together.
“Don’t they teach you guys how to shave at Mayo?” Connie Fritz asked, nodding at my unshaven chin. “You look like a bum.”
“I’ll shave on the way home.”
“You’ll still look like a bum. Why don’t you take a nap before you go?”
“Can’t. Gotta meet my wife and kids at Mass at nine.”
The nurses laughed. Like everyone else, they thought it was hilarious how we kept having kids. “How many kids do you have now?” Connie asked.
“Three.”
“And how old is the oldest?”
“Three.”
“God,” she said, shaking her head, “your poor wife.”
My poor wife. I heard stuff like that every day. I had been up most of the last two nights, had been working roughly forty-nine straight hours, and all I ever heard were things like “your poor wife.”
Ah, well, I thought, they’re right. Patti does have a pretty hard life—and she deserves better.
Me? Hell, I was just a mule. I was born to work. I slept when I could, then got up and worked some more. And it honestly didn’t bother me. I was too pragmatic to let it bother me. Whether it bothered me or not I had to do it. It was better to concentrate on the task at hand.
It was a warm July morning so I didn’t have to worry about the car starting. I tossed my books and shaving kit in the backseat. It felt so good to sit down. Maybe a nap wasn’t such a bad idea. Just for a few minutes, that’s all. I yawned and closed my eyes.
As my head nodded forward, I snapped open my eyes. Bullshit! If I fell asleep I wouldn’t wake up until noon. I took a deep breath, and started the car. The old Battleship rumbled into life and I swung her out of the parking lot.
I sped down the silent Sunday morning streets, flying in and out of the dark shadows of the old elm trees. When I got to Highway 14 I turned right—directly into the rising sun.
Oh, great, I thought. I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open as it is.
The sun was too low for the visor to do any good. I crept eastward through the city until I reached the last stoplight in Mankato. When the light turned green I opened up the Battleship and headed into open country, cruising along at about seventy. As I neared Janesville I blew past a mile-long string of railroad cars stopped next to the tall Harvest States grain elevator.
I continued to squint as I headed into the rising sun, and I couldn’t stop yawning. With each yawn, my eyes filled with tears. This wasn’t good. I had to do something. I rolled down my window and turned up the radio full blast.
“Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun,” I sang at the top of my voice. “I fought the law and the law won.” I kept my left hand out the window, slapping a beat on the side of the car as I sped past undulating fields of corn.
A few miles from Waseca my head nodded and the car swerved onto the shoulder. The bumping of the tires on the gravel snapped me awake and frightened the hell out of me. Jesus Christ, I thought, I’m going to kill myself.
I stopped the car, got out, and ran in place for half a minute trying to get the blood flowing again. I flapped my arms across my chest and did some deep knee bends.
My brothers had recently warned me that if I got myself killed “driving around in that shit bucket of yours” they weren’t going to raise my kids for me.
“We’ll sell ’em to the Gypsies, take the money, and go to Vegas,” Tim told me.
“Yeah, we could probably get three, four hundred bucks apiece for them,” Denny added.
“Maybe more for the little fat one,” Jack said, rubbing his chin and staring appraisingly at Patrick.
I rolled down every window in the car this time, then took off my shirt and drove bare-chested. I decided to leave my pants on, though. I didn’t want to risk getting arrested by the Rochester police when I got to church: “PERVERT ARRESTED ON WAY TO MOLEST LADIES OF ALTAR AND ROSARY SOCIETY—Naked doctor arraigned on charges of indecent exposure.” How would I explain that to BJ Burke?
I pulled the Battleship back onto the road, my head bouncing to the throbbing music. “Gloria! G-L-O-R-I-A. Glo-ri-a!”
I was supposed to meet Patti at church at nine. She was going to get a ride from Mrs. Flaherty whose daughter, Mary, often sat for us. It was ten after nine when I swung into the St. Pius parking lot. Unfortunately, an elderly couple arrived at the same time and parked right next to me.
“George, that man is—”
“This way, Margaret, quickly,” the man said, hustling his wife away from the demented, bare-chested drug fiend as quickly as he could.
I put on my shirt, ran a hand through my hair, and walked into church. Patti, as always, was sitting in the back row. The girls were sitting next to her. Patrick was squirming on her lap. I whispered hello to them all and squeezed in the pew with them.
During Mass I could hardly keep my eyes open. At the Kiss of Peace, Patti said she hoped I didn’t get whiplash from the way my head kept dropping down on my chest.
When Mass was over we gathered up the kids, the toys, the sandwich bag of crushed Cheerios, and the parish bulletin. I had Patrick in my arms and a diaper bag slung over my shoulder. Patti had each of the girls by the hand.
“Why is that couple looking at you like that?” Patti asked.
George and Margaret, grasping each other’s arms, were plastered against the wall of the church staring at me with wide eyes.
They seemed like nice people. I knew I should apologize to them, but what would I say? How could I make them understa
nd why a thirty-three-year-old man would show up for church with no shirt on? “Well you see I’m a resident at Mayo and I want to be a good doctor but we have all these kids and we have no money so I have to moonlight and I don’t get much sleep but I still want to go to Mass with my family because I want to be a good father even though I’m hardly ever home so I drive ninety miles into the sun but I can’t keep my eyes open because I haven’t been to bed for two days and my car almost goes off the road so I take off my shirt and turn up the radio and…” I stopped. How could I explain my life to them when I didn’t even understand it myself?
“Come on, sweetheart,” Patti said, tugging my arm. “You look beat, you poor thing. Let me get you home to bed.”
To bed. Yes. That much I did understand. I needed to go to bed. I handed Patti the keys and followed her to the car.
Chapter Thirty-Four
September
The whole thing started with an innocent remark by Frank Wales.
“You know,” he said, studying the flock of geese that had just landed at the other end of the lake, “if a man had a mind to, he could get himself one of those big old birds.”
It had been an unseasonably warm September—a long, lingering month with warm fields of corn glowing in the sun against a backdrop of yellow, orange, and red trees. Frank and I were lying crosswise in a rubber raft on the old flooded quarry a mile west of Rochester. Frank’s legs were over the right side, mine over the left. A cooler with the remains of a twelve-pack was between us. Our fishing rods, half-forgotten, dangled over either side.
I was a city boy, born and raised on the West Side of Chicago. I knew nothing about farming or fishing or hunting. I had never driven a tractor or owned a gun. But Frank, and many of my fellow residents, had been fishing and hunting for as long as they could remember.
It was Frank’s idea to go fishing. It was my idea to bring the beer. I thought I was being innovative, only to learn later that alcohol is an indispensable part of the fisherman’s armamentarium.
“If you ain’t drunk, you ain’t fishin’” is the Minnesota fisherman’s creed.
Frank and I had parked my car behind a large bush, hoping to make it less noticeable from the road. The quarry had the usual allotment of signs, all of which were peppered with bullet and shotgun holes: no parking, no fishing, no swimming, no hunting, no trespassing, no dumping, no boating.
We took turns pumping up the raft, then hoisted the cooler and fishing gear aboard and shoved off. It was a warm evening, the sun just setting. Frank brought his surefire bait: a can of Green Giant Niblet Corn. He fastened a piece to his hook, threw it into the water, and almost immediately felt a tug on his line. He reeled in a six-inch, angry-as-hell sunfish that flapped around in the bottom of our raft until Frank tossed him back. No sooner had I dropped my hook in the water than I caught one, this one pushing eight inches.
Within ten minutes we had caught and released fifteen fish. At first we couldn’t believe what great fishermen we were, but after the fifteenth fish had committed suicide by impaling itself on our hooks, Frank said, “I’ve never seen such stupid fish. They’ll bite anything”—an opinion that was borne out a few minutes later when we jumped in to swim and felt little fish mouths gumming our toes. After that we just tossed our lines and unbaited hooks into the water, leaned back, drank beer, and watched the stars come out.
“You ever gone goose hunting, Mike?” Frank asked.
“No, I grew up in Chicago, remember? People are more civilized there. They don’t shoot animals—only other people. Anyway, isn’t there a law against shooting geese around here?”
“Well, yeah,” Frank said. “They’re protected within a six-mile radius of town. But still, I’d love to shoot one of those fat things. It sure would taste good.” He reached into the cooler and took out another beer. “And I know how you could do it without getting caught.”
“How?”
“With a twenty-two.”
“A twenty-two?” I didn’t know much about hunting, but I knew you hunted birds with shotguns, not rifles.
“Yeah,” Frank said, “a twenty-two. A shotgun is too loud, attracts too much attention. You snuggle up in the weeds with a twenty-two, wait ’til those suckers land, ’til they’re sitting real still, and then”—he sighted along his index finger—“pow! Fresh goose for dinner.”
Two weeks later, an hour before sunset, I was limping down the side of the road, heading toward the quarry. I had Frank’s .22 shoved down my right pant leg.
“Are you out of your mind?” Patti had said when I was leaving. “Poaching is against the law.”
“Relax. I’m not going to get caught.”
“That’s what every crook thinks until he gets arrested.”
“Well, this is not a good law. Ask the farmers. They’re always complaining about geese destroying their crops.”
“So how many farmers do you think are going to get out of bed to bail you out of jail at three o’clock in the morning?”
“I told you, I’m not going to get caught.”
“Yes, you are, because I’m going to turn you in. I’ll get a hundred bucks for it. Ever heard of T-I-P?” Patti was referring to the Turn In Poachers ad on TV sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Conservation.
“Come on, hon. Frank says it’ll be a piece of cake. I’ll plug the thing and be home in a couple hours. Have you ever tasted fresh goose?”
“Have you ever tasted SOS in the county jail? Because that’s where you’re going.”
I found a spot in the thickest part of the weeds along the western shore of the quarry, hunkered down, and waited. Just as the sun was setting a flock of twelve geese circled once, banked, and landed with a soft splash on the opposite side of the lake. They fluffed their feathers, settled down, and began slowly drifting toward me.
I waited until they were almost to my side of the lake. I carefully pushed aside a couple weeds, lifted my rifle, took aim at the closest goose, and fired. There was a sudden furious honking and flapping of wings as the panicked flock took flight. They rose into the dusk, and in twenty seconds were scarcely visible a quarter mile away. I stood up, my rifle dangling in the crook of my left arm. With my right hand I brushed the damp dirt and twigs from the front of my jacket. It was growing dark now, but on the smooth surface of the silent lake, forty feet offshore, I could see the white breast of the goose I had just killed.
It was the first time I had ever shot another living creature. I felt no elation, no triumph, just a feeling that I had done something wrong, a feeling very close to shame. I had killed something.
I tried to reason with myself. Do you feel shame every time you eat a hamburger?
No, I didn’t.
So other people can kill animals for you to eat, but you can’t?
It just didn’t seem right to kill an animal like that—when I really didn’t have to. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t exciting. It was just…wrong.
It was darker now, and growing cold. The goose was forty feet offshore, and it was too cold to swim for it. I would have to go home and get the raft.
Thirty minutes later I had pumped up the raft and rowed out to retrieve my goose. I grabbed it by the neck and dropped it into the raft. I was surprised how heavy it was.
When I got back home I walked in the back door, goose in hand, and called Patti.
“Woman of the house, your big hunk o’ man is home with food for the family.”
Patti came into the kitchen, took one look at me, and immediately held up her hand. “Oh, no you don’t. Get that filthy thing out of here.”
I was shocked. Is this how the alpha male, the provider, is welcomed back to the cave? “Pat, it’s a fresh goose. It’s meat.”
“It is not meat! Meat is something you buy in a grocery store, and it comes wrapped in cellophane. That,” she said, pointing at my goose, “is a dead animal. Now get that thing out of here before the kids see it. They won’t sleep for a month.”
“What about the dead skunk
and raccoon I have in the trunk?”
She folded her arms and glared at me. “I left my mother and father and a perfectly good home—for this? Some nutcase who thinks he’s Conan the Barbarian and brings roadkill into my kitchen?”
“Let me clean and pluck this goose and then let’s see what you say.”
I went out to the garage and laid the goose on the floor, then went back to the basement and got my Buck knife and my dissection kit from first-year Anatomy.
I had never cleaned and dressed an animal before, but I was a doctor, so I had a rough idea what needed to be done. First, I thought, I’ll have to pluck it. How hard can that be?
An hour later, a half-bald goose rested on a newspaper in the center of the garage. Feathers were strewn everywhere. I pulled out a pair of latex gloves from my suture laceration kit. Now I would have to clean the damn thing.
Well, I thought, I’ll do a midline laparotomy incision followed by a total gastrectomy, duodenectomy, ileectomy, jejunectomy, and colectomy. And if there is anything else left in the abdominal cavity I’ll take that out, too. Oh, yeah, the neck and legs, they’ll have to go, too.
After another hour I had filled a plastic garbage bag with enough offal to keep every raccoon in Rochester happy for a week. It was ten o’clock. Patti should still be awake. I carried my prize up the back steps only to find the latch was on the door. An oversight on Patti’s part, no doubt. I knocked gently on the door.
“Pat,” I called. “Patti.”
A voice from the hallway answered. “If you have that thing with you, you’re not getting in.”
“Patti, come on, let me in. It’s cleaned and plucked and ready for cooking. Just come and look at it.”
She came around the corner in her bathrobe, undid the latch, and quickly stepped back. I opened the door, and held out the goose. She took one look at the gory mess resting on the soggy newspaper in my hands and gagged.
Hot Lights, Cold Steel Page 23