and wrote a number on the top of the work schedule attached to the board. Then he dug in a zippered pocket, removed his wallet from a Ziploc bag, and handed Brecht his physician’s license card and his Minnesota driver’s license.
“Call Ron Rosenbaum, he’s the senior surgeon at Timberry Trails Medical Group where I’m on staff. Now, how are you set up?”
“We have an operating-room suite on the lower level for scheduled elective surgery when a surgeon is available, usually from Virgina, sometimes Duluth or even the Cities.”
“Can you do general anesthesia?” Allen asked.
“We’ve got a Narcomed II.”
“What about the anesthetist?”
“What about her? We’re paging her.”
Allen forked his index finger and thumb, pressing his eyes and reminding himself not to be patronizing. Get focused. “Let’s assume the worst and she doesn’t show, who does that leave?”
Brecht grimaced, “If nobody makes it in before the patient arrives-it’s you, me, and,” he pointed to the woman in jeans, “Judy, which leaves Nancy on her own to cover the emergency room and two other wards. But we can’t handle the anesthesia machine.”
“Your anesthetist should have an adult intubation tray,” Allen said.
“We
“Ketamine?”
“It’s there.” She narrowed her eyes. “Will that hold him if you open his abdomen?”
Allen shrugged; he’d operated with it on worse trauma cases in Bosnia in very hairy conditions. “It’ll have to work if there’s no alternative.” Then he cleared his throat and gestured with his arms, indicating his bedraggled clothing and wet boots. “Look, I need a cup of black coffee, some scrubs, and some comfortable shoes, if that’s possible.” He took a deep breath, exhaled. “If there’s a room where I could be alone a few minutes and use a telephone. Then I need to see the OR.”
“Sure,” Brecht said. “I have to call the state licensing board and your hospital-just, you know, going through the motions to satisfy our administrator. He’s, ah, gone sort of apeshit on the subject of emergency surgical privileges. Judy will fix you up.”
Which Judy proceeded to do. Allen took off his wet clothing and cat-washed in the men’s lavatory, then changed into a clean smock and trousers and a pair of somebody’s worn Nikes. When he came out of the john she was waiting with a cup of hot black coffee and then she showed him to an examining room. He thanked her, smiling stiffly, as she pulled the door behind her; then he turned his back to the door and planted his shoulders against it.
Allen carefully sat the coffee down on the small nurses’ table, wrapped both arms across his chest, clasped his shoulders, and hugged himself. The notion of him operating to save Hank’s life brought a slight tremor of irony- he recalled Hank’s tough-guy pontificating yesterday morning. Well, Hank, it looks like the situation is now slightly reversed.
His eyes fixed on the telephone sitting on the desk, next to the blood pressure monitor and the coffee cup. He took a moment to clearly remember a time when he was totally satisfied with himself. .
He remembered Jolene Sommer at that party a year ago at Milt’s river place. She had playfully mussed his hair and had told him it was too perfect.
Her touch had left him permanently tousled. Like a warm breeze it had carried hints of foreign vacations and easy laughter. After meeting her he’d returned home to his life and discovered it was a colorless shell furnished with brand-name cliches.
But she hadn’t said anything remotely like that. It was a wish on his part. It wasn’t that he thought Jolene could change. He thought
Change into someone less wooden, more with it. .
He rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling and reminded himself:
As always, there was refuge in his work. So he sat down at the small desk and sipped the strong, familiar, bad hospital coffee from the familiar generic Styrofoam cup. The room’s furnishings were also familiar-the whites, grays, and tans of the examining table and the cabinets, the strident biohazard logo on the Sharpes disposal box.
Allen took a deep breath to steady down. He used diaphragmatic breathing as part of his pre-op checklist to enhance visualization. But this deep breath was to prepare him for the phone call to Jolene.
As he exhaled, he visualized the sprawling house tucked on the shadowy pine bluff overlooking the St. Croix River, south of the Hudson Bridge. His watch said 9:18 A.M. He had an idea of how she spent her days. He did not think of her at night when she was with Hank. The idea of her touching his gnarled old body that smelled of cigarettes. .
At 9:18, depending on the weather, she’d be settling into the Mission oak rocker in the sunny corner of the kitchen with a cup of coffee. She’d be listening to the morning show on public radio. She followed the current events program every day to build her vocabulary and deepen her range of subjects. She’d have a pen and a notebook in her lap. She’d be taking notes.
Hank was proud of the fact that Jolene had never graduated from high school.
She’d be wearing the white chenille robe that complemented her green eyes and brought out the ruby highlights in her dark hair. Her smooth skin had an olive cast and she joked that she’d deliberately ordered it a size too small, like a pair of jeans, so that it would fit snug. That damn gray cat he despised would be curled on her lap.
When Allen shut his eyes he was startled by the abyss of fatigue that met him in the dark behind his eyelids. The sound of the window shuddering in the wind brought him up sharply on task and he oriented himself on the serious fact that five lives were suspended inside a tiny airplane somewhere in that sky. All to bring Hank Sommer back here.
What if the plane crashed? Suddenly he saw himself comforting Jolene, winning her over. He’d take her to Florence.
Allen killed the fantasy with a stab of concentration. He was gifted with the highest utilitarian virtues; he was meticulous, he was thorough, he’d memorized a Latinized medical library with almost total recall. His steady hands were capable of tying almost invisible knots in synthetic, absorbable Vicryl sutures.
He could not afford an overactive imagination.
So it bothered him when he couldn’t control the adolescent excitement that speeded up his heart as he dialed the area code and the number and counted one ring, two, three. .
“Hello,” the voice came on smooth and tight and to the point.
“Jo?”
“Allen, well, that was quick; who got the big Bambi?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the kitchen looking at the Weather Channel, you guys must be really catching it.”
“I want you to sit down and listen carefully; something happened.” He spoke in the available, but guarded, professional tone he used with the families of critical patients. He was not a hand-holder but he didn’t stand in doorways with his own hands in his pockets, either.
“Oh Christ, Hank didn’t fall off the wagon, did he? The way he was yelling on the phone. .” She paused. When she resumed talking, first fear stiffened her voice. “Allen? Is everything all right?”
“Jo, it’s Hank. He ruptured himself. Bad.”
“Oh, Christ. I told him to have that taken care of.”
It sounded like she did sit down from the rush of concern in her voice. Succinctly, he explained the storm, the rupture, leaving Milt and Hank in the winter camp, the paddle out, how the guide and the cops were going back with a floatplane, and how he was now stranded in this one-horse hospital with a skeleton staff in a blizzard, anticipating
