A Second Opinion
Paul went early to meet the captain when he called, parking
blocks away so he could walk. The cold damp wind stung his face
but he didn't mind. He liked the way it made him pay attention.
He was hatless, hands deep in his pockets, his new black leather
jacket snapped to the top. He was hoping for the first big
snowfall of the season. They said it might start after midnight
or maybe miss them entirely. Everything depended on the wind.
Paul pulled open the heavy outer door. He went up a narrow flight
of stairs in near-dark to the warm bar, into a scent of wet
hardwood floor, liquor and heavy coats. A bartender was shaking a
shaker, two cold glasses waiting before him. A middle-aged guy in
an overcoat, still cold, apparently, leaned on the counter,
talking non-stop. Paul watched his lips move, overhearing his
words now and again, and became aware of a fuzzy filter of white
noise from numerous conversations going on at tables, sofas,
conversation pits in the corners, punctuated with bursts of
random laughter. A large window framed a building across the
street and Paul watched a woman walking through what must be her
apartment in a light blouse and slacks. Her face was pale,
indistinct, and she carried a drink. He guessed that she might be
listening to music, the way her head was tilted, lips maybe
moving to lyrics he couldn't hear. There was music in Butch's
too, barely perceptible. Butch kept the sound down nicely. Ella
Fitzgerald, he thought. In the Still of the Night. Then
laughter and chatter was back in the foreground, making the music
diminish.
"Are you waiting for someone, Sir?" said a playful little filly
in a leather vest, a short leather skirt and a straw hat with
leather fringe.
"Yes, I'm meeting a friend."
"How about over there?" she said, pointing with her face toward a
table for two along the front window.
"Sure," he said, letting her lead him.
A cold draft filtered in from the window and he kept his jacket
tight. He pressed his fingers to the glass, watching them make
marks, then rubbed his hands together above a candle in a squat
yellow pot.
"Like to order? Or would you prefer to wait?"
"Bring me something hot, an Irish coffee, OK? No whipping cream."
She went to fetch it and Paul looked down on the traffic and
pedestrians below. The traffic light changed and refugees from
daylight and work and what they called normal surged across the
intersection. A cocoon of warm solitude suddenly descended and
surrounded him like a mother's love. The voices from the
barstools and booths along the wall diminished, the office girls
looking for pickups' shallow laughter vanishing into silence.
Suddenly, he was inside. He did not want to move, ever. He did
not want to break the spell of the inexplicable slowly expanding
soporific bliss.
But the coffee came. The waitress set down a great steaming cup,
pulling him back into the room. He smelled the Irish whiskey, saw
the whiskey slick on the black skin of the aromatic brew. He
lowered his lips, sipping the hot liquid from the edge. The
coffee was delicious.
Even hell can be paradise, he thought, apropos of nothing at all,
if you really feel it.
Then for no real reason at all, he wanted to cry. He felt a tidal
surge of sobbing breaking from an ocean of grief, making him grip
himself tightly and hold on, biting his lip. The needling
prickling in his head, his eyes, now in his throat, intensified
for a moment before going away. It left him a headache, the raspy
friction of sandpaper somewhere inside where he couldn't reach.
"Hey, soldier," Frank said, arriving at his side, punching his
buddy's shoulder. Paul made himself get up and shake his friend's
hand.
"Captain, hey," Paul said, sitting back down. The last time he
saw the doctor he was in uniform. Now he was wearing a beautiful
suit and a really nice expensive tie. He unbuttoned his copious
overcoat, pulling buds from his reddened ears, and pressed
himself and the bunching coat back into the tight chair.
"Damn but it's cold. Why do you live in such a god forsaken
place?"
Even across the table, Paul heard serious music playing faintly
from the buds. He cocked his head but couldn't make it out.
"It's a Schubert string quartet," Frank said. "Recognize it?"
"No," Paul smiled. "I wouldn't unless it was in a movie."
"Actually, it was," he said, tucking the buds in his jacket
pocket. "I forget which, one of the serious Woody Allens."
"I remember when you found a fiddle and played for us all night.
Sitting outside on a moonless night, looking up at the stars.
Your music kept us sane."
"I'm back in my old quartet now. We play together every week.
They waited for me, thank God. You're right, the music keeps us
sane."
The doctor scanned a menu as Paul said, "I like seasons. That's
why I'm here."
"Yeah, bullshit you do," he closed the menu, looking across the
table with a smile.
"I do. You know what it was like, always hot and sunny. I hated
it."
"Yeah, so did we all, so did we all, but it wasn't just the
climate, was it?"
"Not entirely, no."
"No, it wasn't just weather," Frank said, a little too cheerful.
"You seem jolly. What's the occasion?"
"It's been a good day. I did a tutorial on setting up a practice.
We just did that, back home, and judging from the feedback, we
did it right – you know, how to incorporate, do the taxes,
buy the building," he rubbed his hands briskly, Paul noting that
his hands were long and unblemished.
"Are you a surgeon, Frank? I never thought to ask."
"A surgeon? No. I'm a cancer doctor. I'm an oncologist. I try to
keep people who are dying alive – for a little while,
anyway."
"Huh," Paul said. "Like over there."
Frank smiled. "In a way."
"That's quite a deal. If they live longer, you did it. If they
die, it couldn't be helped."
"That's the racket," Frank admitted. "No argument from me on
that."
"Would you like to order, gentlemen?" said a frisky pretty girl
with a little pad in her hands. The edge of fringe on her straw
hat gave her face a mildly wild frame, getting Frank's attention.
He looked at her maybe a little long before looking back to the
menu.
"Bring us some artichoke dip, and hummus. And I'll have a
manhattan."
"Thank you," she took the menu from his hands. "Anything more for
you, Sir?"
Paul shook his head.
Frank watched her walk away, maneuvering through the men at the
bar by touch, parting them gently with a smile.
"Nice," he said. "See how she does it? Very slick."
"That's how we should have done it," Paul said.
Frank laughed a laugh that sounded more like coughing. "Different
schools of thought on that." He examined the younger man's face.
"You can't put it down, can you, Paul? I wondered if ... you were
able to move on. Not have to talk about it all the time, the way
those crazy docs at the vet say you should."
Paul looked back to the street and fewer walkers below in the
cold. A yellow taxi began honking when the light turned but there
was nothing for the next car to do. A guy on a walker was taking
his sweet time crossing the street against the light. His white
hair was blowing in the wind, his lightweight jacket was too
thin. What was the Camry supposed to do, hit the
cripple?
Frank followed his gaze from the traffic back to his friend's
eyes. "The rules are different here, Paul. You understand that,
right?" He sat back as she set down a plate of dip and another
plate of pita pieces. Then she turned to retrieve a platter of
hummus ringed with garbanzo beans. She asked did he want to
refresh his drink and Paul said no. Again Frank watched her move
through the small crowd staking out the bar. She was friendly but
nobody touched her. He admired her style.
He dipped a little pita piece in the hot dip and chewed with
obvious relish.
"Has it been difficult, getting back into a practice that's ...
more normal?"
Frank was eating compulsively, his hand reaching for the next
piece before he had finished chewing. Paul helped himself to a
little hummus while it was still there, scooping up a few beans
too. Frank replied through his nonstop munching.
"It's not as different as you think."
Paul sort of laughed. "Are you putting me on?"
"No. Think about it. I mean, think about it really. What I do all
day, every day, is deal with dying people, Paul, people in
extreme pain. Now, let's go back to first causes. Why does anyone
do what they do? For a living, I mean? Not just doctors, anyone.
Most people if they have a choice do what they like to do. Isn't
that obvious? So think it through. Boy scout leaders, Catholic
priests, school bus drivers – why do lions go to water
holes, Paul? Because the antelopes are there."
"So ... I don't see what you're getting at, captain."
"Stop calling me captain, will you? I'm not a captain
any more. I'm just a doctor, Paul. And a lot of my patients are
dying. But I'm not. You see what I mean? I get to be strong. I'm
a reassuring presence. I am alive."
Paul wanted to nod but wasn't sure. It must have shown on his
face for his friend sighed as if he were explaining to a slow
child.
"Things are often the opposite of what they seem, Paul. Being
nice is a way to be powerful. Take our waitress," he gestured
with his jaw toward the young woman engaging in flirty banter.
"She's a master manipulator, isn't she? Well, so are we. You
think doctors or cops feel strong and secure, deep down? Hell,
no! We feel powerless, Paul, maybe more than most. So we need a
role that makes us feel invincible. We get off in our own way on
the pain of our patients, on their weakness, their need, their
fear. I don't cause their cancer, Paul, any more than I created
the pain in that room. Neither did you. They created their own
pain, over there, doing what they did. They thought it was a
game. Well, it wasn't. The sources of the pain may differ, but
how different really is what I do here from what I did there?
People are in pain and I try to keep them alive for as long as I
can."
Paul didn't move.
"You asked about surgeons. OK. What do surgeons do, Paul? They
cut people. If they did on the street what they do in the O.R.,
they'd call it assault. You think they just happened to fall into
that profession? They had better love to cut people, Paul,
because that's what they do. You think they don't love the rush?
So I'm just saying, I like my rush, too. I look compassionate,
sure, but compassion means pity and pity means power. Isn't that
how it was, over there? The job is to prevent untimely dying and
manage pain. Over there, we kept it within limits, if we could.
And it served a higher purpose, when it worked, didn't it? We
found out things and put them to use. Sure, we made mistakes,
just like here. To err is human. But when you stand back and look
at the big picture, the biomass seems to be indifferent to the
loss of a few people, don't you agree? Do you weep when you shed
a few flakes of skin?
"So don't make yourself nuts. Binary thinking destroys your peace
of mind. It's all on a continuum. There's nothing to judge."
"Gentlemen? Refills?"
"Sure," Frank said. "One more for the road. You?"
"Yes, thanks."
When she set down the next round, she leaned over the table,
letting Frank catch her scent, letting him think about her a
little before figuring the tip.
Paul watched the doctor slide a piece of pita through the last of
the hummus and scoop it up. But it dripped on the way to his
mouth.
"Damn!" Frank said, grabbing a napkin. Paul shut his eyes,
hearing a roar like the ocean in a shell. But the storm passed,
and when he opened them again, his companion was blotting his tie
which had bunched on his belly like a paisley snake. One button
of his fine white shirt was unbuttoned above his belt.
"Frank, why did you call?"
The doctor shrugged. "I wanted to see how you were doing. Nobody
here can understand what it was like. They don't understand why
we did what we did. We have to stick together, bud. We have to
shore each other up."
"I'm doing OK."
"You got a job you like, you back with that girl?"
"The job's a job. It's not a career. No, I don't like it a lot.
Terri is still around, yeah. She's adapting, she tells me, to how
I changed."
Frank leaned closer, his face an earnest, caring invitation. "How
did you change?"
"I wish I could tell you. I don't know. I have more trouble than
you seem to, getting the different worlds to connect."
Frank spoke softly, confidentially, like a good friend. "I don't
see it as two worlds. That's the difference. It's a sliding
scale, like I said. It's a difference in intensity, mass, maybe,
not a difference in kind. We have what we have here because we
did what we did there." He looked directly into the younger man's
eyes. "How much do you tell her?"
"About what we did? Nothing."
He turned over the check and fished out a couple of twenties.
When she took it, he told her to keep the change. "Oh, thank you
so much!" she said with a wonderful smile, knocking a decade or
two from his age.
"See?" Frank said. "Everybody gets what they want."
"Thanks for the drinks."
"Yeah, better get back. It's good to see you, man. Just stay
steady and get back into your life. Call me if you need to talk,
OK?"
They rose, the doctor brushing crumbs from his coat. He started
to shake Paul's hand but said "hell, man," and embraced him
instead. He held him for seconds, letting him know that what they
had done was OK.
When he stepped back, Paul had tears in his eyes.
"Oh, buddy. Buddy, buddy, buddy." He gripped Paul's upper arms in
his strong hands. "Don't worry about the maybes. I read the
papers too but they won't get to us. The colonel has our backs
and the general has his. It won't get any higher than this," he
extended his hand above the tabletop maybe a foot. He lowered it
then, making it more like eight inches. Then six. "Everything
conspires against it getting bigger. When everybody does it,
nobody does it. Right?"
Paul tried to smile. "Yeah. Right, captain."
Frank gave him a final hug and stomped off down the stairs,
plugging his buds into his ears, humming before he hit the
street. Paul went into the restroom. The last guy in there had
stopped it up and water was all over the floor. The floor was a
mess of paper towels, toilet paper, and stinky liquid. Paul
straddled the mess on tiptoe and pissed into the full bowl,
making it even worse. Then he stepped carefully out and around
and scraped his boots on the hardwood floor until they were dry.
He saw the waitress and told her there was a mess in there. She
said she would tell someone to clean it up.
"Was everything else satisfactory?"
Paul looked at her smile and saw how thin it was, how fragile she
seemed, but he couldn't, he wouldn't believe his friend. The
young woman's warmth was authentic. Her delight in life was real.
She liked people genuinely, and she loved being of service. She
was transparent; she meant what she said.
"Everything was fine," he replied, putting his hand on her
shoulder and giving her a thank you squeeze. The feel of her warm
flesh was elemental, an irreducible fact as basic as her pleasure
in waiting on tables, flirting with everyone, getting good tips.
She smiled and said," Thanks," Paul growing suddenly aware of the
dreadful accessibility of her flesh. His hand flinched from her
shoulder as if he had burned his fingers. She had no idea how
soft skin is, Paul thought, how easily torn.
"Stay warm," she said, turning to another customer, moving away.
He wanted to say something else but it caught in his throat. He
hurried downstairs and into the cold.
The walk back to the car seemed twice as long as the walk to the
bar. There was no snow so the wind must have shifted. Maybe a few
flakes in the air, paper blowing around. The wind was fierce,
giving him a good reason to blink away tears and giving him
something to think about besides the rising decibel level of the
woman's screams, how the captain had said "Oops!" when he
couldn't find a pulse.
by Richard Thieme
... who is a professional author of books, stories, and articles,
which are indexed at Thieme
Works online. His Richard Thieme's Islands in the
Clickstream (July 2004) is a collection of past works, while
"Entering Sacred Digital Space", New Paradigms for Bible
Study: The Bible in the Third Millennium (June 2004) and
"Identity / Destiny", Prophecy Anthology (vol 1, 2004)
were anthologized. His "The Changing Context of Intelligence and
Ethics: Enabling Technologies as Transformational Engines"
appeared in Defense Intelligence Journal
(January 2007). His stories have been published in Analog
Science Fiction, The Puckerbrush
Review, Timber Creek Review,
Porcupine, Pacific Coast
Journal, The Potomac Review,
Red Wheelbarrow, Heartlands,
The Circle Magazine, The Listening
Ear, Words on Walls, Nth
Degree, Down in the Dirt,
Golf, Rogue, and elsewhere. His
articles have been published in Forbes,
Salon, Information Security,
Secure Business Quarterly, Village
Voice, Wired, Counter
Punch, Common Dreams, Internet
Underground, National Catholic
Reporter, Asia Times Online,
The Witness, and elsewhere. This short story has
been excerpted from The Room, a forthcoming book.
|