Death and the Intern

by Jeremy Hanson-Finger

  SJ: It’s across from Halifax and cheaper. Like, as Oakland is to San Francisco, Dartmouth is to Halifax. What about you?

  SO: Kilkenny.

  SJ: Like the beer.

  SO: Kilkenny ale is shite though. Ireland’s not exactly known for its ales. If I wanted to drink nitrogen I’d just steal it from work.

  SJ: Speaking of steal—

  ALEJANDRO MONDRAKER: Sir, can I get you something to drink?

  SO: Do you have Delirium Tremens?

  AM: Good choice, sir.

  Frig, Siri must have thought she heard her name in there somewhere and stopped recording. Quick recap while Shaughnessy is in the bathroom before I forget:

  Didn’t learn much in the first couple of hours. He wasn’t a stunning conversationalist. Went back to my J-school training and asked the open-ended questions that make people want to talk about themselves. His mom was really into gardening. Which maybe explains—no, Susan, don’t go there.

  After three pints of Delirium Tremens, I managed to get him talking about stresses at work. He was going on and on about surgeons before he excused himself.

  SHAUGHNESSY O’DEADY: Where was I? They just don’t understand the importance of anaesthesiologists. The anaesthesiologist is the most important person in the room, no matter what the surgeon or the patient says. A surgeon can fuck up virtually anything and the anaesthesiologist keeps the patient from pushing daisies.

  SUSAN JONESTOWN: Right.

  SO: Do you do anything besides drink?

  SJ: I’ve only had two beers.

  SO: That’s not what I meant. I was talking about drugs.

  SJ: I smoke a couple cigarettes a day, and I smoke pot maybe twice a year.

  SO: What about pills?

  SJ: No, no pills. But when I was a teenager, I enjoyed being mangled on codeine for a week after I had my wisdom teeth removed. And when I was recovering from my knee surgery and the doctor prescribed Oxy, it was a pretty good way to waste time. I like doing things, so I never felt the need to take downers for fun. I can see how other people could enjoy it though.

  SO: That’s good.

  SJ: Which part is good, that I like doing things, or that I enjoyed Oxy?

  SO: Forget it. I’m more used to asking for patient histories than small talk. I suppose it shows.

  SJ: Is it true that doctors in hospitals are all heavily into drugs? Like prescribing speed for themselves?

  SO: Not all doctors. On-call doctors are the ones who get hooked on amphetamines. Anaesthesiologists have a more regular schedule and don’t depend on uppers. Some doctors at the hospital take speed for sure. But not yours truly.

  [PHONE RINGS]

  SO: It’s work. Do you mind if I…?

  SJ: Sure, take your time.

  Update while Shaughnessy is on the phone around the corner: He’s on his fourth pint and his lips are getting more and more mushy. If I can keep him talking about Oxy, he might be drunk enough to give something away, especially if I suck it up and touch his arm from time to time. Too bad I’m not wearing my glove.

  SUSAN JONESTOWN: Bad news?

  SHAUGHNESSY O’DEADY: Just working through a stupid departmental conflict at the hospital. I forgot to do my part.

  SJ: Surgeons causing trouble?

  SO: No, within my department, with some other anaesthesiologists. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the donkey, the hospital is like a schoolyard sometimes.

  SJ: Do you need a hall monitor to step in? I handed out a lot of demerits when I was eleven.

  SO:…maybe you can help us out.

  CHAPTER 7

  Convenience – Babylon – The Creepshots – Mens Rea – Sirens

  Friday, July 11

  Janwar gets rid of Ajay and Garati in a few minutes. It seems like a matter of life and death to focus the conversation on them, heading them off every time they try to ask about him. Today Garati went to aquacize at the Oak Bay Rec Centre, and even though all the ladies were much older, she had a great time splashing around with them and they all went for coffee at McDonald’s after. And the coffee itself was surprisingly good, Garati says. Ajay test drove some different cars at Glenoak Ford with no intention of buying any of them and got his bimonthly haircut at Status Barber Shop.

  Like his father’s, Janwar’s facial hair is as thick as his head hair, so he shaves a second time before meeting Susan. He shaves against the grain this time without cutting himself or raising more than a couple of bumps. He flosses with precision, threading the floss through a blue plastic loop to get in between his front bottom teeth and the retainer that his childhood orthodontist said was supposed to fall out at some point in university, but which the university dental clinic told him needed to stay in forever and glued back on. Janwar has never had much trouble with the blue floss threaders, after a dental hygienist who called herself the Ayatollah of Tooth Care expressed several dire warnings about the consequences of not doing so.

  Soon his teeth and gums are broccoli-free and the clothes he is wearing are in order. Next up are his thoughts.

  He has determined that Shaughnessy is involved in something, although there isn’t anything to suggest Shaughnessy himself is responsible for the higher percentage of OR deaths at which he was present. That’s a lot of progress. Tonight he will devote himself to making progress with Susan—although, he remembers now, Susan already knew about the Pushers and Mixers. “Are you a Pusher or a Mixer?” she said, which means she might be involved somehow.

  Even if she is involved, he still wants to have sex with her. That’s why femmes fatales are so fatale, of course. He tucks in the sheets on his bed and makes sure the condoms in his toiletries kit haven’t expired (six months left). On second thought, he puts some of the condoms into a Band-Aid box and puts the Band-Aid box into his shoulder bag, which also contains earplugs, the book House of God, and his cellphone charger. Best to be prepared in case he goes to her house. It’s creepy to be prepared with condoms, but it’s only creepy if Susan doesn’t want to have sex and sees them. If she does, it’ll just be convenient.

  This reminds Janwar of the George Costanza test: if a good-looking man says something to a woman that would be creepy coming from shirtless George Costanza, it’s likely still creepy, no matter how good-looking the speaker is. Janwar’s not sure about the morality that drives the Costanza test. It sounds demeaning to women to assume they’re blinded by firm abs and chiselled features, and also demeaning to poor old George, who just wanted to find love and get a job with the New York Mets. But George does date way above his level, pulling models and so on, so, go, George, go.

  Come to think of it, Janwar hates when people talk about someone dating above or below their level, maybe because it’s a privilege belonging to the kind of people who don’t regularly go a year or more at a time without having sex.

  Babylon doesn’t have a sign; the entrance is an unmarked wooden door with a porthole, underneath a pool hall. Janwar has to ask the neatly bearded man at the end of the line if he is there for the Trillaphonics.

  He is. Janwar steps in line behind him.

  “Have you seen them live before?” the man asks, pushing up his glasses with excitement.

  Janwar admits he hasn’t.

  The man says he’s got something to look forward to. “This is my third—no, fourth—time. They were all part of an improv group together for years and they’re big on audience interaction. They’re like no other band touring these days. Superpositive energy. Not sure why the Creepshots are opening for them, though. Short notice, I guess.”

  “What are the Creepshots like?”

  “Really grimy rock and roll. They’re from Montreal, but they play here all the time, especially at Rock and Roll Ice Cream Tuesday.”

  Before Janwar can ask what Rock and Roll Ice Cream Tuesday is, his new friend has reached the bouncer and passed inspection, disappearing into the bar.

  The bouncer weighs a good 250 pounds and has a long stringy beard and a grey ponytail. He’s wearing a T-shirt that re
ads “Support Crew 81,” and on his leather jacket, which is draped over the tall chair behind him, Janwar can see a “1%” patch. A girl in line who is maybe nineteen addresses the bouncer as Daddy and touches him fondly on the thigh.

  Babylon is clearly a dive bar, nothing like the concert venues he’s been to in Vancouver. Though it is still a step up from Big Bad John’s in Victoria, where the floor is made of sawdust and peanut shells—Janwar’s Jewish friend Nick having joked that if his friends took him there, as he was allergic to peanuts, it would be like taking him to the gas chamber.

  The walls of Babylon, where they aren’t covered with posters from punk shows past, are flat black. A couple of pool tables are squirrelled away in the back, surrounded by bench seats from different models of minivans. A movie is playing on the old CRT television above the U-shaped bar. Janwar watches it for a minute. Some white men dressed as baseball players with carnival face paint are fighting a mix of white, Latino, and black men dressed as Native Americans, maybe in the 1970s.

  Janwar is glad that he decided to dress down, and that his Vancouver EMS T-shirt and paramedic-issue combat boots are black. He doesn’t fit in—everybody is wearing either logo-less shirts or shirts with the name of a band with “the” in front of it, including one that spells the with two Es—but at least he isn’t wearing a striped dress shirt and oxblood shoes, his usual date attire, or his taxi driver disguise or his scrubs.

  “What can I get you?” the bartender asks. She is short and well-proportioned and Janwar can tell that her voice is always this strident, sending sound waves crashing into your eardrums like a cheap radio turned up a little too loud. She is wearing a black T-shirt with the words “Kein Sex Mit Nazis” and, in a red “forbidden” circle, a pixelated swastika.

  “I have to ask. I can’t speak German—”

  “No sex with Nazis.” She holds out the image, and Janwar can see now that the swastika is not in fact pixelated but instead made up of drawings of stick figures enjoying various carnal positions.

  Janwar nods. “Story checks out. What do you have on tap?”

  She points at the chalkboard.

  “What would you recommend?”

  “Sweetheart. Beer is beer. This is what’s on sale.” She drums her fingers on the navy-blue tap.

  “Okay,” Janwar says. “A pint of that.” Buying beer that isn’t on sale doesn’t seem like it is a recommended course of action if he wants to fit in.

  The beer has a weird, sharp taste; not the sharpness of a Pilsner, but like something is wrong. Vitamin P tastes like nothing, so drinking it’s a neutral experience. This is actually bad. It burns the back of his throat. Maybe some kind of weird preservative. Beer isn’t just beer, but Janwar isn’t going to start an argument. He’ll drink his pint and maybe if Susan orders something else he’ll try that.

  Janwar leans against the bar and examines the crowd. Many people have packs of cigarettes in their hands as they file past him out the door. That’s something major he’s noticed about Ottawa compared to Vancouver and Victoria: most young people smoke here. He can understand the appeal of pot, but cigarettes don’t make you feel any better than a jolt of caffeine, plus you cough a bunch and can’t run very fast.

  A hand touches his back. He turns. Susan is standing behind him. She smells good and he can feel the heat of her body travelling through him, pooling in his thighs, where the major arteries are.

  “Hi, Susan,” Janwar says.

  “Oh hey there, Big Cat.” She stands on her tip toes and kisses Janwar on the cheek in the continental manner, her lips warm and soft, as lips often are, and his ear gets really hot.

  He kisses her cheek, also in the continental manner. He debates kissing her on the mouth but it doesn’t seem to be time for that yet, Mister Wolf. She relaxes her calves and returns her soles fully to the ground. She’s tall for a lady, but not as tall as he is.

  The sound guy turns the level of background music up, signalling that the concert will be starting soon. “I—I—I,” the singer’s voice slurs from the speaker pillars over a choppy guitar riff.

  “Want to get into a good position?” Susan says.

  “And how,” Janwar says, and then blushes.

  The singer for the opening band has a shaved head and a giant Victorian moustache, the kind a weightlifter in the 1890s might have. Though he is muscular, it is more ropy Clint Eastwood sinew than power-lifter bulk. All the band members wear black denim and leather and most have visible tattoos, the drummer even up to his neck. Janwar wonders if Susan has any tattoos. He doesn’t have any himself.

  “I’m Gizzard,” the singer says. “This degenerate behind me on the drums is Wrongo Starr, and this villainous monster on bass is Crash Testes, and together we’re the Creepshots.” He leers into the microphone. “All right, Ottawa, let’s fuck!” he shouts, “One, two, three, four!” And before his pick makes it across all six strings of his Flying V, the first five rows have become a roiling mosh pit.

  “That bass player is monstrous,” Susan screams in Janwar’s ear. “I can feel every note in my diaphragm.”

  Janwar thinks about asking “Which one?” but doesn’t. First, that’d only make sense in, like, 1940, when diaphragms were a popular method of birth control. And second, Janwar has learned that flirting, for him at least, is more complicated than just making oblique references to sex. The mosh pit is maybe 60 per cent male and 40 per cent female. Probably none of the women present use diaphragms, given that it’s the twenty-first century.

  A tiny girl falls and a giant bald man holds back the rest of the pit while she stands again and gets right back into it.

  “Martín is from Argentina,” Gizzard howls. “His apartment needs a cleaner / ’Cause the inside of his head / Sprayed right out, all grey and red.”

  The tiny girl has made it to the stage. Several leather jackets in the front row have boosted her up.

  “Anita, Martín, Fleming, Dean / It’s all part of the American Dream / Anita, Martín, Fleming, Dean / It’s all part of the American Dream.”

  The tiny girl spreads her arms and dives into the waiting arms of the crowd. Janwar and Susan put their hands up and pass her over their heads. Susan’s hands extend to almost the same height as Janwar’s.

  “That was ‘American Dreamer,’” Gizzard says. The crowd ceases its motion and catches its collective breath. The tiny girl returns to the ground.

  “Hey, Ottawa, what’s the Canadian dream?” Gizzard says.

  “Beavers,” some comedian in the crowd shouts.

  Gizzard nods. “For some, sure. But please dream respectfully. Just because you’re dreaming of beavers doesn’t mean beavers are dreaming of you. That makes a good segue, actually. Consent is really fucking important, you guys, so we wrote a song about it and it’s hard as fuck.”

  He chugs the rest of his beer and the crowd cheers.

  “All right, Creepshots, ‘The Bad Things That Happen to Women’—let’s go!”

  Susan leans into Janwar after the Creepshots bow and leave the stage. “What did you think?”

  “I’m really awake now,” Janwar says.

  “Nothing like punk rock to get your heart going.”

  “It’s the—what do you call it, the two paddles—zap?” Janwar’s mind is completely blank. He mimes using a defibrillator.

  “A defibrillator. Shouldn’t you know this?”

  Janwar feels his face heat up. “It’s been a long day. But yeah, punk is the defibrillator of musical genres.” A connection sparks in his brain. He’d been pretty drunk during their first conversation, and only now that he’s drinking has it come back. “Speaking of medical procedures, when we met, you asked if I was a Pusher or a Mixer.”

  “And you said you were a Mixer. And I was into it. I mean, not that I wouldn’t have been into you anyway.”

  Janwar rubs her shoulder. “And that’s why we’re here.” He chances it and kisses her hair just beyond her left temple. She is okay with it, because she doesn’t move away,
but she doesn’t do anything by way of reciprocation, which is a signal for him to dial it back, physical-contact-wise. His mouth keeps going.

  “But, yeah, no. I was invited to join the Mixers because of the way I blended drugs together before an operation. Some guy named Shaughnessy, another anaesthesiologist, was getting all up in my face, and pointing me out to others. They all give me dirty looks whenever they see me. Later I found out they called themselves the Pushers. And then, in the middle of all this—” Here Janwar is about to tell Susan about Diego, the closeness of this beautiful girl and the preservative-laden beer in his gut moving his real concerns further and further away, but that’s way too heavy a thing to drop on a first date. Now he’s thinking about Diego again, his covered body rolling out of the OR…

  “And what?” Susan is still looking at him.

  “Oh, nothing, lost it.” Not quite a lie. He can omit details far more easily than he can lie outright. “How do you know about the Pushers and Mixers?”

  “I have a friend who’s a nurse who told me about it.”

  Janwar could call her bluff, ask the nurse’s name, but he hesitates. “Why are you excited I’m a Mixer?” he asks instead.

  “Oh. She said the Mixers were the cool ones. Like the Mixers were the rebels and the Pushers are the establishment, the system, the Man.”

  “After that set, I have a pressing desire to go find the Man so I can burn him down.”

  “Like an anarchist Where’s Waldo?”

  “I guess the Pushers would be a good place to start.”

  Susan doesn’t respond.

  Janwar retreats into joke territory. “Also, when I take a break from burning down the Man, I’m thinking I should give myself a stick-and-poke tattoo.”

  “As an anaesthesiologist you’ve got access to all the clean needles you want, I’m guessing?”

  “Definitely. There’d be no risk at all. What should my tattoo be?”

  “A jaguar?”

  “Not bad. If I did it myself it’d probably just look like a kid’s drawing of a cat, though.”