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.