Christmas again in sunny California and the air is brisk, the sky is clear and the day is good.   As darkness closes in at Bacon Way a gold Cadillac Coup de Ville eases towards the brick walkway at the Wracker house. 

Help Sallie out commands Father Wracker and the Wracks walk down to the curb, open the car door, and give a hand to a small, demur blond with her hair in curls.  She gets out of the car and the Wracks assist her to the door of his abode.   Earl. His thick light hair follows her in.

Take her mink off commands Father Wracker and hang it in the front hall closet.

The Wracks oblige. Sallie stands about five feet two inches tall is very slim and dresses in an immaculate evening gown.  Earl sports a dark grey suit and matching cumberbund.    

Merry Christmas says Earl.   Where is my Scotch?

The Wracks saunter to the makeshift dry bar above the family room television and make Earl his favorite: Cutty Sark Scotch Whiskey on the Rocks.  So, Earl is happy, Father Wracks stocks a bottle of personal scotch for Earl if he ever comes over.

I’ll have a Manhattan, says Sallie, whatever whisky you have.

The Wracks hands Sallie her drink, with a maraschino cherry dropped inside.   The guests sit in the living room and savor their beverages.  Father Wracks joins them while Mom is frantically fixing the dinner for the Texans.   As to why they are in California is beyond the Wracks, and they live in the second biggest house in Brentwood, only after the other.   They had a huge Japanese Samoyed, but it became vicious and had to be destroyed.   Now they own a silver German Shepard that is almost as big as a wolf.

Dinner is ready says Mom.  Everyone to the table.

The Texans sit down at the table where the Fonz used to sit but now he lives in his refabricated Volkswagen van somewhere in San Diego.   Grandma is helping Mom in the kitchen prepare the dinner. She had a stroke and her personal physician put her on piroxicam and Indocin she looks pale, swollen, and unkempt but she works in the kitchen tirelessly.   Tonight, the fare is beef Wellington, green beans steamed in olive oil with garlic and butter, baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, and Yorkshire pudding.  Beef Wellington is a large round rump roast, coated with goose liver and enveloped in a bread-like crust designed to keep in the moisture and flavor.   Yorkshire pudding is an English relish, fit for only a king and his court.  It is a quick bread made with meat drippings, flour, and egg and cooked in a pan at a high temperature. The technique must be concise or the pudding will not rise and it is a loss to be discarded.   But tonight, it works and the guests line up at the buffet passthrough and fill their plates.  Grandma sits in her usual place and the Wracks brings her a plate before he fixes his own. Sallie sits opposite the Wracks and a glint that shines through the whole room occupies his attention.  On her right hand is a blue-white solitaire square diamond that must be at least five carats in size.   The square-cut perfect gem dazzles brilliantly and the Wracks estimates that the gem alone is worth more than a whole house. 

Father Wracks raises his glass, filled with a luxuriant red cabaret sauvignon, and toasts, Merry Christmas to all and God bless us”,   

Everyone eats and the Guests have seconds grandma puts her serving of meat on the Wracks’ dish and smiles.  For dessert, a takeout from the House of Pies appears.    Everyone gets a choice of either a blueberry or peach pie with vanilla ice cream.   Father Wracks does not smoke because it bothers the Texans.   The guests move to the living room, where scotch whiskey is served with shot glasses and the Wracks bring back grandma to her room, she sits in her green reclining chair, smiles at the Wracks, and waves goodnight.   Earl talks animatedly about his boat.  He bought a fifty-foot cabin cruiser with twin inboard turbo diesel v8 engines and the yacht outfits to go anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.   Why anyone would have such an elaborate contrivance lurks behind Wrack’s pecuniary imagination. He moves to the kitchen and as is customary fills the dishwasher, turns it on, and begins to hand wash the sterling silver flatware and custom Mikasa China.  

Wracks, yells his father, “Could you get Sallie her mink, they are leaving soon.”

The Wracks open the hall closet, examine the coat and notice how thick, and opulent it is.   It must truly be very warm he thinks and he helps Sallie put on the coat, opens the front door, and the Texans file out.   They want to get home early because it is Christmas.   The gold Cadillac rolls off.   The seven-foot-tall artificial tree gleams and blinks.  Mother had the Wracks and his father put on five strands of blinking, multicolored lights. The white living room with the green and white shag carpeting and the tree look beautiful.  The Wracks returns to the kitchen and continues cleaning the implements.   He pours himself a cup of coffee from the nearly empty decanter and sits down at the dining room table with the Christmas centerpiece and woven settings.  It is truly nice to have a home to spend the holidays with a family and he hopes that all Americans can share in the bounty afforded by the country.  He didn’t receive many gifts for Christmas but his grandmother pays for his education and the world seems vast open and boundless at this point.  America truly is God’s country and the Wracks hopes he lives long enough to enjoy it.   Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.  

Beautiful Mary, mother of perfection

beg our maker for forgiveness

plead for mercy in our behalf

as few can see the light in the distance

We, his begotten children

refrain from entering his kingdom

which is our only salvation

in the world to come

For an instant in time, Wracks is a medical doctor.    They keep him in surgery from 8 to 1 P.M. Rounds begin at 7 am. Then he gets to take his lunch.

We need you in surgery to assist says Clancy. 

I have been there all morning says Wracks

We do debridement in the afternoon and we need someone to scrub in and take the specimen to Pathology.   You cannot say no or they will send you back to Mexico.

Okay says Wracks.  I will see you at two.

The Wracks scrubs in and they take off the leg of a diabetic.  The Wracks noticed that the veins and arteries of the amputated leg were filled with clots.   The drugs doctors prescribe for diabetes make your blood clot.  He scrubs out.   He takes the foreleg over his shoulder to the back elevator and into Pathology.   The two pathologists tell him to set the leg on the dissection bench and stand behind them without saying a word.   He will then take the note back to surgery, scrub in, and hand the note to the surgeon. He did two of them and proceeded after ten weeks to his elective in Radiology. He delivers the note to the surgeon, the surgeon is satisfied, the patient wakes up without a leg and the Wracks gets to take his lunch.

Part of the Wracks’ job in surgery is to ferry specimens to the pathology lab.   The Wracks scrubs in, the surgeon removes the tumor or growth, puts it in a stainless-steel urinal with a cloth cover and Doctor Wracks brings the specimen via the back elevator to pathology.    Freezing the specimen, microtoming, and staining the gross sample require thirty minutes, then the pathologist reads the slides and the Wracks brings back a sealed envelope to surgery, scrubs in, and delivers the note to the surgeon.   This scrutiny has a duration of at least an hour and the patient with their body cavity torn open lays in total anesthesia the whole time.  One of the tasks given to the Wracks during his sojourn in surgery is to learn how to work the anesthesia apparatus should the anesthesiologist have a heart attack or pass out and the general anesthesia book stipulates; that the longer a patient stays unconscious, the greater their chance of dying on the table.  No one seems to care or realize the gross danger a patient receives when he or she undergoes cancer surgery.  

As a surgical resident, the Wracks’ main jobs are to hold open the incision with his hands, hand hemostats to the doctor, aspirate blood, bring specimens to pathology, and close after the surgeon is satisfied with his or her position. By law, a board-accredited surgeon must suture the omentum and fascia with black surgical silk suture when closing and the Wracks does the rest.   Most abdominal surgery closes with staples and the Wracks is the stapler.  The surgery begins in the morning with rounds at seven AM and closes usually by 2 PM.   A surgical resident is on call three days a week, including weekends and the wracks spends his nights looking at incisions and prescribing benzodiazepine tranquilizers to patients in pain.  The Wracks is sure he doesn’t want to be a surgeon, but the hospital staff assures him that this will be his career.    Harvard Cushing relayed to the Wracks that the most rewarding practice in Medicine is working as a general practitioner, and in this the Wracks is assured but it never came to pass.  Brain surgery is even worse.   To spend one’s life as a surgeon is not what the Wracks envisioned but the staff tells him this is what it is to be.  This could be the reason why the Wracks is now a gardener and house painter in south central Los Angeles and he wears a painter’s hat and tattered paint-spattered jeans and smokes Marlboro red filter cigarettes and drinks Coca-Cola.  It seems a merciful killing that the Wracks never earned his medical license because the brain surgeon at NYU picked him to assist in brain surgery for cancer.   The new revolutionary technique was to insert a hollow probe into someone’s head and inject liquid nitrogen to cryo-kill the tumor.  Everyone in surgery likes the Wracks because he can tie knots with both hands.  He can cut with scissors with his left hand too. 

This is a long time ago.  With time everything changes, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.   The Wracks is now studying for a new career as he has failed in the previous two ones.   Maybe he will end up in the Arctic in a small office space doing bookkeeping work for Indian fur traders and petroleum engineers who exploit the environment and spend their retirement in Florida.   Now the Wracks is in Christmas, and he prays to God for a spoonful of mercy in a world full of snow.   He has an Xbox series S, a new controller a 4k monitor, and a laptop to write on and I guess this is all a human need to exist and be happy in a big, snowy, interconnected world.  Hope to see you next year from a cell with a window in the winter in the grand old United States of America.   It could be worse.  

Heavenly father

maker of everything good

protect your children from evil

favor us as we forged a covenant from your words

that they might endure

forever and ever

amen