Not a soul in the cafeteria after the seven A.M. surgical rounds. Dr. Wracks savors his cup of coffee with a cinnamon bun on a bench in a chair in the corner of the lunch hall.
Get to surgery says the fifth-year resident. Dr. C liked the way you helped him put a new hip in the egghead yesterday and now Dr. Lick wants you to assist him now. There is a Saudi in the ER who went off the Brooklyn bridge in a limousine and he is all broken up. They have given him 3 units packed and he is being prepped and get up to the floor and scrub in.
Dr. Wracks downs his bitter cup of coffee moves to surgery and enters the secret combination on the pad at the door at the entrance to the surgical suites. He goes to his locker, puts on a clean set of green scrubs, hat, and paper shoes, scrubs his hands in the huge stainless steel surgical sink just like the surgeons taught him in Mexico, and walks backward into room 4. The patient is suspended in an ortho rig over the table, and his dark eyes and bushy black hair stair upwards into nothingness
He got packed three, and his heart rate and blood pressure were stable according to the surgical nurse.
Dr. Wracks moves to the table. Dr. Lick is a tall, lanky, Anglo-Saxon doctor with huge glasses and long hair slicked back under his surgical mask.
Glad you made it he says. Hold up his leg while I make the long incision on a femoral axis. He has a comminuted fracture on x-ray and the bone is broken in several places. We will insert a pin in the boned shaft, staple it with surgical steel bands, and close it. Monitor his vitals. He might have internal bleeding and we have to watch the hematocrit in case he needs more blood.
Vital tissue is pink and glistening all the wounds are closed and the heart rate consistent. This person is a survivor thinks Dr. Wracks. The patient is in the rig, suspended over the table and the breathing is slow but stable. Blood drips onto the floor and in a soundless operating room the drops impact with an unearthly drip. Fresh blood when it pools on the ground, turns brown and clots into a gelatinous mass. When the blood doesn’t clot, the liver has failed and the patient dies. Dr. Wracks looks into the patient’s eyes and they are sightless but they haven’t clouded over like dead people’s eyes do.
I think his pupils are reactive says Dr. Wracks
Stand there and watch my patient, because I have some business to attend to says Dr. Lick. He pulls off his surgical gloves, drops them in the bin grabs the red wall phone present in all the operating rooms, and calls his financial consultant.
The doctor proceeds to buy and sell stock over the telephone in the operating room and Dr. Wracks stands over the Saudi patient and counts the blood drops hitting the floor. He crosses himself and says a novena. The surgeon is on the phone and intent on the stock market index. Dr. Wracks begins his second novena and the patient hangs motionless in the rig, and the blood stops dripping onto the floor.
Dr. Lick says time is money, how is my patient doing Dr. Wracks?
His vitals are stable and he is not bleeding that much now. No tachycardia and the oxygen pressure is normal. Good, says Dr. Lich. We can move him to recovery now and you will sit with him until his internist arrives to take over. Thank you very much for assisting me in this rigorous case of femoral break with associated lacerations and possible internal bleeding. I think he is a hardy soul.
Dr. Wracks and the surgical nurse disengaged the patient from the rig and gently lay him on the gurney.
The anesthesiologist removes the intubation tube from the patient’s throat and he coughs and spits up a huge bolus of bloody phlegm. His eyes momentarily blink, and he breathes, and his life is his and the earth revolves another day. The Wracks waits in the recovery room with the patient, and his vital signs are stable and blood pressure good. He does not need any more blood. His internist arrives, an older man with a beard and glasses and an expensive suit with a stethoscope around his neck, and Dr. Lick is on the phone in the nurses’ station with his bookie. Some hot sporting events are going down for betting in the Big Apple. He waves at Dr. Wracks. Dr. Wracks waves back. The big clock on the wall, tick-ticking ceaselessly, signifies almost eleven thirty, time for lunch if he can sneak away unnoticed. The procedure took nearly five hours. Dr. Wracks runs to the dressing room, takes off his dirty scrub suit, hat, and shoes, redresses, and runs down to the cafeteria. The cheapest thing on the menu, the fricassee chicken is red and stewed with peppers and piping hot and Dr. Wracks buys a plate. The black cook smiles at him, he smiles back and then he digs in. Freshwater never tasted so good.
The curly-haired chief resident has found him. I knew you would be here he says. Dr. Cantacion is giving a lecture on the surgical floor about thyroid surgery and you should be there. I have a lot to do. See you later.
The world outside is a bright green and the glorious spring changes to summer in the temperate deciduous forest biome attributed to New York. Dr. Wracks cannot see it. If another procedure comes up in the late afternoon, he will assist, then he will try to get a nap on the call floor for he is on tonight and he will be up all night. Dr. Wracks does not know why he is here, and he is not the right person for the job, but you will have to convince the employers otherwise.
Dr. Lick saw him on the floor and he says the word. “Butazolidin”.
The days go on and the nights are long and so it goes because “The sun also rises”.