7 comments/ 16115 views/ 2 favorites Still Life in Shadow By: Still Life in Shadow A few minutes later I heard the helicopter arriving nearby, and our patient came in a few minutes later, followed by Maria Louisa. "What's the procedure? I asked. "And who's doing it?" "I am," Maria said. "Oh, come on! What kind of doc are you, anyway?" I asked incredulously. "I was trained in Zurich, in cardiovascular surgery. I came to Horta afterwards." "Alrighty, then," I said as I looked at her to see if she was serious. It wasn't unheard of, really. A top gun who opted out of the bright lights and the big city to get away from . . . what? "So, what's the story with this guy?" "His mitral valve is failing. We're going to replace it." "No shit! Who's going to assist?" I asked, knowing this was a grueling procedure for two well trained heart surgeons. "You are, Doctor Patterson. You are." Kinda like when you're a kid, you know better than to argue with your mother. You know there is no way you're getting out of whatever it is she wants you to do. I just hoped to God this woman was the best heart surgeon in the world. She sure as hell wasn't my mother! _____________________________________ Well, four hours later I was just about convinced Maria could walk on water if the situation warranted it. And that was after finishing the heart then taking out the appendix of a nine year old girl who was screaming in agony when her father carried her into the hospital in the middle of the afternoon. I went to the lounge to get some coffee and put my feet up for a minute, and was just dozing off when Maria came back in. "I have a laryngeal growth to remove next. You are ready?" She was looking at me like I was a complete idiot. "Uh, listen doc, I was up all night sailing a boat and trying to take care of that kid in there," I said, pointing to the post-op ward down the hall where David Latham was laid-up. "I'm a little tired." "Alright, doctor. I'll go explain to Mr Vasquez that we can't operate on him today because you're tired." She turned to leave and I got up to follow. She walked right into the scrub room and started in on her hands, and I stood next to her while we scrubbed in. I think, but I'm not quite sure, that she was smiling at me. _____________________________________ I might have slept in the Doctor's lounge that night, but wouldn't swear to it. I woke up there the next morning, that's all I can say with certainty. I had been wearing the same shorts and t-shirt now for four days, and I was pretty sure I must have stunk like a pile of dead fish out in the sun. I sat up and took a tentative whiff of my armpits. Yes. Dead fish. Time for a shower. But all my clothes were on the Sea Witch. On the table in the middle of the lounge was a neat stack of green surgical scrubs and a couple of towels, along with a bar of nondescript soap. Wasn't that cute?! There was a little map pinned to the towel indicating where I could take a shower, and a reminder that there were about ten cases lined up for the day. I stood in the shower and let the water beat down on the back of my neck; I thought about Harry and Trina, and of course, the problem with Jennifer that I'd created. Was I just middle-aged-crazy, just another balding cliché? Granted, I was married to one of the world's meanest women, and yes, granted, we'd been talking about divorce for more than a few years. The simple fact remained: I was married, and I had screwed my best friends daughter. Let's just ignore for the moment that I had really enjoyed it, and wanted to continue the relationship. Sea Witch and Bolero would arrive today, unless something untoward came on them, and with their arrival there would come a showdown. Another gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Harry was just too parochial to let this slip, and Trina was just too flaming mad to let me live another day without giving me a really nice piece of her mind. Maybe what I needed was to bury myself in the O.R. and forget about all this crap for a few days. Yeah, that was what I needed! Escape! _____________________________________ We finished the third case, a tonsillectomy on a six year old boy, right before lunch. Maria and I walked to the cafeteria and had a bowl of seafood soup that was simply wondrous. Not American hospital food, that was for sure. I could see the breakwater and the harbor down at the bottom of the hill, and tied up there I could just make out the Sea Witch. "What's wrong?" Maria asked. "Hmm? What makes you say that?" "Your jaw is clenching, and your eyes hardened." "Ah! My friends arrived. The boat is tied up down there." "Oh? Which one is she?" "There," I said, pointing to a black-hulled ketch along the middle of the breakwater. "That big black monstrosity there, by the flag pole." "I can't see anyone down there; do you?" "No." "So, why are you so tense." "Because it is my best friends' boat, and his wife and daughter are on-board. I, ah, was indiscreet, with his daughter." "Yes, I suppose that would make me tense, too. Do you need to go and clear the air before we begin the afternoons' cases?" "No. I suspect it'll wait." "I suppose. But might that not be inadvisable? You need a clear mind, do you not?" "I haven't had one of those in years, Doctor." I looked at her; she was looking me directly in the eye. She knew me, I could see it there in her eyes. She knew exactly what I'd done. "You know, Pete, we each make our own prison, and we alone hold the key to our release. It is such a simple thing to tell the truth, isn't it?" "I suppose . . ." She reached out and put her hand on mine. "You told me the truth, Pete, right now. And the pain in your eyes left you for a moment." She squeezed my hand once, then stood and took her tray to the waste bin and left the room. I could feel where her hand had rested on mine. My skin burned with electric impulses, like I had been touched by fire. What the hell was that all about! I looked back at the harbor, saw Harry and Trina sitting in the cockpit, and suddenly I knew. Knew what I had to do. I left the cafeteria and walked out the front door of the hospital and made my way down to the harbor. I saw Harry and Trina looking at me from a long way off. _____________________________________ I walked up to the Sea Witch and looked at my erstwhile friend, and he looked tensely at me. "Well, come on aboard if you're comin'!" I hopped onto the deck and stepped into the cockpit. "How was the sail in?" I asked, wanting to ease into this slowly. "Oh, fine, fine. How's the boy?" "Cancer. Bad one." They nodded their heads and looked sad for a moment, then Trina looked at me. "You want to get your stuff off now?" she asked. "I've been, ah, they've had me working round the clock since I got here. Done about ten surgeries since yesterday. Haven't had time to get a place to stay yet." No reaction to that, but Harry began again: "Well, we've got your stuff all packed up," he said. "Why don't you take it with you now." He was having a hard time looking at me, acting like this wasn't really his decision, but that didn't matter now. Almost thirty years of friendship down the drain. It hurt, but I should have thought of that before I let my hormones run away with with me like that. But I thought our friendship had been stronger than that. Oh well, that was - as they say - too bad. Water beneath the bridge. I went below and got my bags and walked off the boat. I never looked back . . . never said goodbye. They remained silent as I walked away. I have to admit, it hurt. Badly. _____________________________________ I dumped my duffels in the lounge and went to scrub in for the next case. I was on automatic pilot now; when I hurt inside I usually just bury myself in my work, do the next case, keep on keeping on. Maria came in and started in on the next case, a hysterectomy, and she talked to the scrub nurse in Portuguese while I monitored the woman's vitals. "So, how did your visit go?" she asked me out of the blue. "Oh, it went." "That good? Well, I'm sorry for you. Wish it would have worked out better for you." "I'm gonna need a place to stay, and need to find a way back to the States." "That's not a problem," she said. "We can take care of that after we finish up this case." Later that afternoon we walked to a nice little hotel and I checked in - Maria insisted they give me a hospital discount - and after dropping off my bags in the room we told them I would be working at the hospital for a few days, then we walked down to a little travel agency, which was closed, and thence up a hill to the town library, where I could check my e-mail. Trina had, bless her heart, already communicated all my sins to Sara, my wife, and the message in my in-box from her indicated that she would be forthwith filing for our too-long postponed divorce. Another note from a colleague at work telling me that news of my affair was all over town, and there was talk of suspending my privileges at the hospital. Oh, this was just too good to be true. Maria came over and sat next to me at this point. "Must be bad news," she said. "I swear your face just turned scarlet." "Oh, let's see. My wife, she's filing for divorce, the people at the hospital are going to dump my privileges, and that's just the first two emails." "Are you sure you want to go back?" she said with a chuckle. "Not sure where else I could go." I opened up the next email, from my bank. All my accounts were frozen. Well, I had some travelers checques with me, enough to get by for several months at these prices, but until I challenged this I was not liquid at all. I could see Maria reading my email over my shoulder, then saw her shaking her head out of the corner of my eye. "Would you like me to see about getting you on staff here?" she asked. "The pay isn't the best, but you're a very talented physician, and we could use you. I think we could get around the legal obstacles." "Hmm," I said, now very clearly distracted, "what did you say?" "Stay here, Pete. Work here, work - where you're needed. That's why I came; the world back there didn't need one more high-priced chest surgeon, but I was needed here. So I stayed, I came here on vacation once upon a time, and I stayed." "Uh, yeah, sure. Might as well," I said, but I was in a daze, felt like I was drifting in a cloud of unreality. "Come on," Maria said after she looked at me for a while. "Let's go get you some dinner." _____________________________________ We walked away from the library up a long hill, winding through narrow winding streets as we climbed, then we took off down a long, narrow road that led to a small village in the distance. We walked for about ten minutes, and I looked at the sun as it sped toward the western horizon. The sun even looked lonely to me. All alone up there, no one to talk to, no one to love. She opened an old wooden gate and a dog about the size of the house behind her came bounding up and stood on his hind legs and licked Maria once on the cheek, then noticed me and dropped back to the ground. He looked at me with his head cocked to one side, like he was taking my measure, and after a moment he came over to me and sat in front of me, blocking my way. He sniffed my legs, and I felt his cold nose on my hands as he sniffed there, too. He circled me, sniffed at my feet, then moved away as Maria led me into her house. I sat where she told me and watched the sunset as she moved off to start a fire, then into the kitchen to prepare dinner. I sat quietly, and Max, her dog, sat between me and the kitchen. I was clearly still an unknown to the old boy, and he didn't, apparently, like unknowns in his house. "That's okay, Maxie," I said as I looked at him curled up there on the floor. "I wouldn't like me much either if I was in your shoes." _____________________________________ I walked back to town after dinner, and I was pretty certain I could find my way back to the hotel on my own. It was very cool out, and the sky was clear. I looked up, could see Saturn overhead and the smoky band of the milky way rising out of the eastern sky. What did I want? Did I want to go back, back to the innuendo and recriminations? Was money so important now? I looked around as I walked into the village, and as the sea came into view, and I could look down on the harbor below. The lights of the village gave the scene a fairy-tale quality of luminous expectancy, and I could just make out a huge volcano across the water on the next island. I could see the twinkling of lights in a small village, there, across the water. This was a simple world. For simple people. People like Maria. And perhaps people like me. Did these people need me? Could I really settle here, leave my complex world behind? I felt like I had damaged my world beyond repair, and felt totally helpless as I turned a corner and my hotel came into view. Someone was sitting on the front steps of the building, under the pale yellow light of the entrance. I walked toward the building, toward the light, and saw a girl sitting there quietly in the shadow. She looked like someone in a painting I had seen once, she looked like a still life in shadow. As I walked onward, as the hotel grew steadily closer to me, I could see Jennifer sitting there in the cool night air. I could see her gently crying, and I could see a duffel bag by her side. She heard my footsteps, I guess, because she looked up, then stood and ran up to me. "Oh, Pete, I love you. Don't let them take me from you. I want to stay with you forever." I felt her tears on my chest. Or were they mine? A simple life, indeed. Part II forthcoming.