13
First I go up to Medicine to get my antibiotics and antivirals, which my med students have thoughtfully placed in a urine sample cup.
“Sir, you may want to check—”
“No time,” I say. I use a random patient ID number to open up a fluids cabinet and take out a bottle of water with 5 percent dextrose.* I bite the cap off and slug down the pills.
And if my students are wrong, and I overdose?
It probably won’t shorten my life by all that much anyway.
My watch keeps scaring the shit out of me on my way up to the visiting surgeons’ office.
Outside the office door, Dr. Friendly’s resident is leaning sullenly against the wall. He gives me a look, then stands and walks away.
The interval between my knocking on the door and Friendly finally saying “What?” makes me want to bang my forehead on the wood. I don’t answer, just go in.
The visiting surgeons’ office is meant to look like someone’s real office. There’s an oak desk you can sit behind to deliver bad news, and the wallpaper has a repeating pattern of diplomas on it that from a distance looks better than you would think.
Friendly’s behind the desk. Stacey the drug rep is sitting on the edge of it, right near him, surprised to see me. Friendly, noticing me looking at her, leans and puts his hand on her thigh just below the hem of her short dress. Which I can see up.
“What is it?” Friendly says.
“I’d like to scrub in on your procedure on Mr. LoBrutto.”
“No. Why?”
“He’s my patient. I’d like to help if I can.”
Friendly thinks about it. “Whatever. If it’s not you, it’s my resident, so it’s no loss either way. I’ll leave it to you to tell him you’re taking his place.”
“I’ll go find him,” I say.
“I’m starting at eleven, whether you’re there or not.”
“All right.”
Stacey shoots some kind of facial expression at me, but I’m too grossed out to try to decode it.
I just leave.
In order to make it to Squillante’s surgery I figure I’ll have to do about four hours of work in the next two hours, then another four hours of work in the two hours afterwards. I realize right off that this will require draping my med students with a bit more responsibility than is usual or legal, and also keeping at least one Moxfane under my tongue at all times. To balance things out ethically, I don’t give my med students any Moxfane.
We start. We see patients. Oh, f*ck do we see patients. We see them and wake them up and shine lights in their eyes and ask them if they’re still alive so fast that even the ones who speak English don’t understand what the f*ck we’re doing or saying. Then we replace their IV bags and tap their arteries and shove medications through their veins. Then we slash through their paperwork. If they’re in a tuberculosis tank, which you’re not supposed to enter without suits and masks, we f*ck the HAZMAT procedures and just get in and out as fast as we can.
Speaking of HAZMAT, we dodge the two hospital teams— Occupational Health and Safety and Infectious Disease Control—that are trying to run me down and ask me about my needlestick with the Assman sample. Right now the injection site barely hurts, and I don’t have time for that shit.
As we move we get reminded, again and again, of what a fascinating mix a hospital can be of people in a huge hurry and people too slow to get out of their way.
We even save a couple of lives, if you can call correcting a medications error saving a life. Usually it’s just some nurse about to give someone milligrams per pound instead of milligrams per kilogram, but occasionally it’s something more exotic, like a nurse about to give Combivir to someone who needs Combivent.
A couple of times we get asked to help people make difficult decisions, the outcome of which will affect whether they live or die. We do this quickly too. If there’s a clear solution, it would have presented itself up front, and since it didn’t, there’s not much we can say to these people. That’s what crackpots on the Internet are for.
“Go home,” I tell my med students when we’re finished. We’ve got, like, ninety seconds to spare.
“Sir, we’d like to watch the surgery,” one says.
“Why?” I say.
But I can use the help.
We all race down to Prep.
The anesthesiologist is there, but Friendly isn’t. The nurse asks why, and whether I’ll do the paperwork and get the f*cking patient down here already.
I “do” the paperwork with the speed and legibility of a seismograph. Then I send my students to look up some shit about abdominal surgery, and go myself to get Squillante.
“I screwed you, Bearclaw,” he suddenly says as we’re waiting for the elevator. He’s still in his roller bed.
“No shit.”
“I mean I screwed you a little more than I meant to.”
I press the button again. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I thought Skingraft was in Argentina.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s here in New York. Right now. I just found out.”
“No. I mean, who the f*ck is Skingraft?”
I figure it’s probably one of Skinflick’s two younger brothers, though as people to be afraid of they’re both a bit lacking.
That or it’s more bullshit with the nicknames.
“Sorry,” Squillante says. “Skinflick. I forgot you guys were friends.”
“What?”
The elevator arrives. It’s packed. “Hold on a second,” I tell Squillante.
“Everybody out,” I say. “This patient has rabbit flu.” When they’re gone and we’re on board with the doors closed, I use the same button Stacey did to stop the elevator.
“Now what the f*ck are you talking about?”
“Skinflick,” Squillante says. “They call him ‘Skingraft’ now because of his face.”
“Skinflick’s dead. I threw him out a window.”
“You did throw him out a window.”
“Yes. I did.”
“It didn’t kill him.”
For a second I can’t say anything. I know it isn’t true, but my guts don’t appear to be so sure.
“Bullshit,” I say. “We were six stories up.”
“I’m not saying he enjoyed it.”
“You are f*cking with me.”
“I swear it on St. Theresa.”
“Skinflick is alive?”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s here?”
“He’s in New York. I thought he was in Argentina. He was living there, learning to knife-fight.” Squillante’s voice drops even further, embarrassed. “For when he found you.”
“Well, that’s f*cking great,” I finally say.
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I figured you’d have a little time if I died. But now you probably won’t, is what I’m saying. If I do die, you’ll probably just have a couple hours to get out of town.”
“Thanks for the consideration.”
To keep from hitting Squillante I palm-strike the “stop” button, and speed us toward surgery.