“Honest to God,” he whispered almost to himself. “A wife and four kids.” He sat there, looking out the window into the rain, a faint smile on his face.
We were quiet then, each of us looking from a different perspective at the direction my life had taken. As we splashed on through the night I noticed him squirming around in the backseat. I thought I knew what might be the matter.
“I see a rural men’s room up ahead,” I said, pointing to a large bush on the side of the road. “Looks like I’d better pull over.”
The car grated to a stop on the shoulder, next to the bush. He pushed the door open, then leaned forward and held out his hand. As we shook hands he thanked me for the ride and said, “You take care of Patti and those kids, okay?”
I laughed. “You don’t even know Patti,” I said.
He stepped out of the car, then put his hand on the door and leaned back in. “You heard what I said. I don’t care about all your doctor shit. That stuff’s fine, but you take care of Patti first.”
He eyed me steadily. I knew that look. And suddenly I knew I was the one being judged.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I will.”
“Good.”
He was still looking at me, but was shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“Go on,” I said, pointing to the bush, “get out of here before you have an accident.”
He stared at me for a few seconds, as if he wanted to remember all this, as if he were afraid that if he didn’t hold on to this moment it would turn out to be a dream. Finally, he slammed the door, raised his hand in farewell, and began to trot away. As he rounded the corner of the bush, I could hear him break into a familiar song: “For freedom comes from God’s right hand, and needs a goodly train—”
“And righteous men must make our land a nation once again,” I sang with him.
I pulled away, glad for the vote of confidence; glad at least someone thought I had turned out all right.
Chapter Forty-One
June
The annual Orthopedic Residents’ Farewell Dinner was held in the Banquet Room of the Holiday Inn. There was a cocktail hour (that stretched into two), a steak and baked potato dinner, and lots of speeches by the junior residents about what great guys the departing residents were. We lifted our glasses and said, “Damn right.” The juniors even put on a slide show, a take-off on The Odyssey complete with a Cyclops who bore a striking resemblance to BJ Burke, and the Sirens whose faces had been changed to those of the ortho nurses.
The bar stayed open before, during, and after dinner. Everyone kept buying us beers, and slapping us on the back, and saying how much they were going to miss us. Jack Manning came back from the bathroom with a top hat he got from a guy at a wedding. Bill Chapin left and came back wearing a tiara he got from a girl at the state baton convention. “It goes with my tie, don’t you think?” he asked Patti.
Patti said it looked very nice, but she hoped he wasn’t driving home. “In fact,” she said, “I hope none of you are.”
When the night was over I solemnly shook hands with Jack and Frank and Bill. Then I told them all to shut up. I had something important to say. I was swaying a little as I began. I said I would never forget all the times they held my beeper while I was moonlighting. “Patti and I couldn’t have made it without you,” I said. “You guys are like brothers to me.”
Frank said thanks, but he didn’t need any Irish Catholic brothers with twenty kids.
Linda gave Frank a slap on the shoulder and said, “Mike and Patti don’t need any wisecracks from you.” Alice Chapin gave me a big kiss and told me to “take good care of Patti or I’ll kill you.” Sue Manning said she loved me, but there already were enough Irish Catholic babies in Chicago and would I please leave Patti alone?
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Like Groucho Marx used to say: ‘I like my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.’”
Sue told him he was crude and should keep his mouth shut.
Then Jack started blubbering that we were the greatest bunch of guys in the world, and would we sing “The Ballad of the Green Berets” with him? We did, even though no one knew the words except Jack.
Frank, who had a beautiful voice, sang some sad cowboy song where everyone gets killed except the horse. When he finished he said he would have a place for us back on his ranch anytime we wanted to visit. “Any one of you,” he repeated, “anytime. Even you and your twenty kids, Collins,” he said, putting his arm around me. Then he walked over to Patti, kissed her, and said she should come—without me.
Since everyone was singing, I gave them “A Nation Once Again” Jack said it was a stupid song and what was the point since Irishmen were always going to fight no matter what and it was better they fought each other and left the rest of the world alone.
Bill adjusted his tiara and said we were a bunch of bums, and he wouldn’t let a single one of us operate on his dog. Then he bought another round.
We were going our separate ways. Bill was joining a large, multispecialty group in Missouri. Frank was headed back to Wyoming to a three-man practice near Jackson Hole. Jack Manning had been asked to stay on staff at Mayo.
“They took Manning, but I’m really the one they wanted,” Bill said.
By now our wives had managed to get us as far as the parking lot. They stood there, arms folded, waiting. “Yeah, the big shots at the Clinic were on the phone to me every damn day for a month,” Bill went on. “But I know my old buddy, Jack, can’t find a job. So I go to BJ Burke. ‘BJ,’ I say, ‘we need to talk. Me and you. Mano y mano. It’s about Jack Manning. He can’t find a job. No one will hire the dumb son of a bitch. We gotta do something, BJ. As a personal favor to me do you think you could find a spot for him here at Mayo?’
“Well, old BJ hands me a big, honking Cuban cigar. ‘Bill,’ he says, holding a match to my stogie, ‘never mind this Manning character. You’re the brightest star in the orthopedic constellation. What will it take to get you to stay on staff here?’
“I put my arm around him. ‘BJ,’ I say, ‘you got a nice place here. Very nice. I’d love to help you out, but I’m a ramblin’, gamblin’, Vegas kinda guy, and I gotta be movin’ on. I would take it very kindly if you gave Manning a job, though. He could see all the infected, hypochondriac, workman’s comp cases.’
“BJ shakes his head sadly. ‘Manning!’ he says. I can see the disappointment in his eyes. Finally he straightens up, sighs and says, ‘All right, Bill. I’ll do this for you—but you owe me, big time.’”
“Chapin,” Jack said, “what did you do before they invented bullshit?”
The farewell dinner was over, but no one wanted to say good-bye. We stood silently under the soft glow of a light in the parking lot, four guys trying to make time stand still. We didn’t want this night, this chapter in our lives, to end. We stared at the ground or looked off into the dark night, unable to look at one another. Gathered at the exit of the Holiday Inn, our wives waited patiently, watching us with amusement and exasperation—but they didn’t want this night to end, either. Like us, they knew that when we said good night and piled into our cars we would be calling an end to a lot of things.
We stood there feeling like the patient who thinks he has cancer but refuses to let his doctor do a biopsy, reasoning that he can’t have cancer unless the biopsy proves it’s cancer, so if he refuses to allow the biopsy he won’t have cancer. If we didn’t say good night, if we just kept standing there in the parking lot, we could stay friends and residents forever. We, who had been grumbling for four years about ortho dogs and lousy pay and scut work and ignominy, now couldn’t bear to see it all come to an end.
Finally, our wives came over.
“Come on, Jack,” Sue said softly, “we should go.”
Jack nodded but said nothing. He stood with his head bowed, gently kicking at an invisible spot on the asphalt.
Patti laid her hand on my shoulder. “Mike,” she said, her eyes gently pleading, “it’s quarter to three
.”
I looked at her and smiled. “You sound like one of the old bartenders at O’Dea’s,” I said. “Next you’ll be asking, ‘Have yez no homes to go to?’”
I let out a long, slow breath and then turned to Frank Wales. “Well, cowboy, I guess it’s time to saddle up and get out of Dodge.”
Frank nodded. “Four years,” he said slowly. “Well, it’s sure been a pleasure, Mike, a gol dern pleasure.”
I clapped Bill Chapin on the back. “Take care of that pudendal nerve, okay?”
Bill cracked a smile and told me to screw off.
It was time, and we knew it. I set my bottle of Grain Belt on the hood of the car next to me and shook hands one last time with Bill and Frank and Jack. I kissed and hugged Alice and Linda and Sue.
Then Patti took me home.
Chapter Forty-Two
The end of June
It was my last day as chief resident. There was no graduation ceremony, no cap and gown, no pomp and circumstance. There wasn’t even a diploma. We were just supposed to pack our things and leave. I met a couple residents in the hall. They were too busy to stop and talk but they clapped me on the back and wished me well. I went up to the residents’ lounge to clean out my locker and mailbox. Next to the mailboxes, in an old, overstuffed armchair, a resident in a rumpled blue sport coat was sound asleep, his head lolled to the right, his mouth slightly open.
I had handed my beeper to the operator at St. Mary’s earlier that afternoon, and for the first time in four years, was not given another to take its place. The educational odyssey that had begun in high school seventeen years before was over. The most prestigious medical center in the world had signed off on me, had told the world I was ready.
I didn’t feel ready. Oh, sure, I was a god to the junior residents—just as the graduating chiefs had been gods to me when I was a junior resident. But I still had so much to learn. When was I going to feel the equal of Cuv or Tom Hale or Antonio Romero?
Patti and I were sitting next to each other on the swing set in the backyard, not saying much. We had just come from the closing. Tomorrow night another family would be sleeping in our house.
“The raspberries should be ready to pick in another week,” I said, nodding at the patch in the corner of the yard.
“We won’t be here in another week.”
I could tell without looking she was crying. She was digging around in her pockets for a Kleenex. I don’t know why. She never carried one. I passed her my handkerchief.
She wiped her eyes and then said, “Can I have a hug?”
We each stepped off our swing and I put my arms around her.
“This is so nice,” she said, her head on my chest.
This is how I want to leave the world, I thought. I don’t care if I’m rich or famous; just let me die with my arms around Patti.
We were silent for a long time. I knew what was on her mind, though. “I hate to leave, hon,” I said. “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I cried because we had to come here, and now I’m crying because we have to leave.”
She looked at me and smiled. That was Patti, putting on the brave face and doing what needed to be done. I never told her how it broke my heart to see her with that sad smile. I guess no one ever told her that smiles and tears don’t go together.
“Well,” I said, kissing her on the forehead, “I guess I’d better get going. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
“Yes,” Patti said, “we’ll be fine.”
It was Friday night. The movers were coming the next morning. But the movers wanted money; and as usual, we had no money. The movers said if we didn’t have a certified check waiting for them on Monday morning when they got to Chicago they would not unload the truck.
We had no money, but we had a plan. Patti would supervise the move, and then drive to Chicago in the station wagon with the kids. Meanwhile, I would borrow a car, drive to Mankato, and do a marathon moonlighting session: 7:00 P.M. Friday night until 5:00 A.M. Monday morning. When I finished, I would drive back to Rochester, drop off the car, fly to Chicago, go to our new bank, deposit my moonlighting check, get a cashier’s check, and then meet the movers at our new home.
And that is just how it happened. Patti supervised the loading of the furniture the next day. Then Mrs. Flaherty, whose daughter, Mary, had been our babysitter ever since we moved to Rochester, came over and sprinkled the car, Patti, and each of the kids with holy water, praying for a safe trip.
They arrived safe and sound at Patti’s parents’ house at eight o’clock that night, after four bathroom stops, three dirty diapers, and one episode of vomit—Patrick never liked the backseat.
I, meanwhile, was moonlighting in Mankato. At 3:30 Saturday morning an ambulance brought in a guy with a cervical spine fracture. I stabilized him, then called Mayo to arrange a transfer. Steve DeBurke was the ortho resident on call. He had just finished Basic Science and was a senior resident now.
“Is this the Dr. Collins, formerly of the Mayo Clinic?” Steve asked.
Formerly. It felt strange to hear him say it like that. But he was right. I was no longer one of them. A new group of residents, fresh from medical school, would start that morning. All my friends, all my fellow residents, were gone. Bill, Frank, Jack, and all the others had packed up and moved on. Their days as residents were over. But I was still there, still working. I was the last of us, the last resident.
“You know, I just thought of something,” I said. “I am no longer employed by the Mayo Clinic. I don’t start my new job ’til next week. I’ve sold my home and don’t close on the new one ’til Monday. So, right now I’m thirty-four years old. I’m married. I’ve got four kids, and I have no job, no home, and no money.”
Steve yawned loudly. “Did you call me at three o’clock in the morning to tell me this sob story?”
“No, I didn’t. I’ve got a guy with a C-5 burst fracture. He’s neurologically intact, but the fracture is unstable.”
“No problem. Just ship him over.”
When Connie Fritz came on duty on Sunday night she said, “You know this is sick, don’t you?” Connie had been working the night shift at St. Joe’s for twenty-seven years. She and I had become very close over the past four years. “I worked with you Friday night,” she said, “then I went home and slept, did some shopping and visited the grandkids. I worked with you Saturday night, then I went home and slept, went to church, and had dinner at my sister’s. Now I come back on Sunday night and you’re still here. You look like shit, you know. What the hell is wrong with you to work like this?”
I told Connie it wasn’t so bad. I had slept a little here and there.
“Slept a little my ass. Have fun dying when you’re forty,” she said.
“If I do, will you come to Chicago and raise my kids?” I asked.
“I’ll come to Chicago and piss on your grave.”
By Monday morning at five I had been working fifty-eight straight hours. I had managed a few hours of sleep, but was coasting in on fumes, stubble-chinned, bleary-eyed, and working by instinct. I was neither awake nor asleep, neither alive nor dead—a condition not unlike that in which I had spent much of the past four years. I shuffled dumbly from one task to the next: peering in infected ears, palpating painful bellies, auscultating ischemic hearts, repairing jagged lacerations.
I liked repairing lacerations the best. I could turn off my brain, and function at some simian, subcortical level, frowning in concentration as I slowly, deliberately placed each stitch, the delicate twist of the wrist bringing the needle into and out of the edges of the laceration. There was a numbing rhythm to the ratcheting click of the needle-holder, the snip of the scissors, the silent daub of the gauze. There was something comfortingly bourgeois and reaffirming in suturing lacerations: mindless, repetitive steps proceeding to a defined goal; the edges of the laceration slowly coming together, stitch by stitch.
When I finished the repair, I wiped away the last bit of blood, caref
ully dressed the wound, then stood up. I was suddenly lost, out of focus. What now?
With nothing immediately demanding my attention, I found myself incapable of attending to anything at all. I desperately wanted to be done, to close my eyes, to rest, and yet I was painfully aware that I actually liked this, and in thirty minutes it would be gone forever.
When the last drunk was stitched, the last chest pain admitted, the last antibiotic prescribed, I tossed the prescription pad on the counter, threw my lab coat in the laundry basket, and kissed the nurses good-bye. I was swallowing the anchor.
Connie handed me a cup of coffee and said, “Now get out of here, you big lunk.” Then she and the other nurses gathered in the doorway and waved to me as I drove out of the parking lot. “Drive carefully, Doctor.” “Take care of those kids.” “Come back and see us sometime.”
I rolled down the windows, unbuttoned my shirt, turned up the radio, and headed east, into the rising sun, going back to Rochester one last time. In a dreamlike, sleep-deprived state I drifted along, flooded with memories. Eagle Lake, Smith’s Mill, Janesville, there wasn’t a town along the way that didn’t have someone I had stitched up or casted or repaired or resuscitated. I felt a fondness for them all, and a sense of gratitude that I had been able to help them. It had been a lot of work. At times it felt like I was killing myself. And yet the only thing I could recall at that moment was how much fun it had been, and how wonderful it was to do this for a living.
I managed, barely, to stay awake on the ride back to Rochester, but almost missed the flight.
“You’d better hurry,” the lady at check-in told me. “The plane’s about to depart.”
I tried to sprint down the gangway, but my legs wouldn’t do what I told them. The flight attendant was starting to close the door to the plane as I stumbled up to her. She looked at me curiously, checked my ticket, and motioned me in. I mumbled my thanks, staggered down the aisle, dropped into my seat, and finally closed my eyes.
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