by Randy Alcorn
Jake awoke again three hours later. He told the doctor he felt like eating and wanted to get up. He asked to have the IV and catheter removed. To his surprise, the doctor agreed. Thirty minutes later Jake tried to get up, but felt woozy, falling back on the bed. He tried again after a few minutes, and this time walked around the room until he could do it without buckling or grabbing the bed rail. He was practicing his best “I’m really okay” walk. He had a reason.
Once he sat and rested a few minutes, Jake rang for the nurse. He waited for what seemed like too long, then rang again. Twenty seconds later a busy but cheerful figure came sweeping into the room.
“Yes?” It was white dress, still on duty. “Did you have a good nap, Jake?”
This time he read her name badge, determined to prove his mental faculties. “Natalie,” he said in his strongest voice. “I’m feeling really great now, and I’m getting claustrophobic in here. The doctor said it would be good to take a little walk in the hallway when I feel up to it. With your permission, that is.”
The nurse looked at him skeptically. She checked the chart. “Well, your contusion doesn’t appear to be severe. No sign the concussion’s getting worse. You must be awfully sore. The doctor said it was okay to take a walk?”
Jake lied with a nod, and she shrugged her shoulders. “Sure you can handle it?”
Jake put forth his best effort, slid out of bed and stood there convincingly, posing as if he had just run the 100 meters in world record time, winded but fit, so how could anyone even think he might not be able to handle it?
“No problem, Nurse Natalie. I won’t go far. Scout’s honor.” Jake the charmer. A page out of Doc’s book.
“No, you won’t go far. Just around this nurses station here,” she pointed outside. “A lap around that main desk is a hundred feet or so. Don’t go any further. If you get tired, there’s plenty of chairs. Just sit down. I’ve got other patients. Be back in ten minutes. Walk very slowly, okay?”
“Sure, Nurse Natalie. Take twenty minutes. In fact, I’ll give you the rest of the day off.” Natalie gave Jake an uncertain look, not sure yet how to read him. Just as she was reconsidering, a gray-haired nurse stuck her head in the room.
“I need your help with Mr. Sonfeld.”
“Coming.” With one last look at Jake, she said, “Behave yourself. Don’t go far.”
“Aye aye, Colonel,” Jake said, saluting, but with no intention of obeying. Once out in the hall he looked for a floor plan. There it was, a cut-out in several colors. On the left side was an alphabetical list—Administration, Ambulatory Care, Anesthesiology. Jake skipped down the list. In-Patient Admissions, Infectious Diseases, Inhalation Therapy. Ah, now we’re cookin’. Intensive Care Units. Third floor, east side of the building. Perfect. He was in 2294, east side. Only an elevator ride and a few hallways. Piece of cake.
Jake walked to and from the elevator with all the aplomb of a man who must have had a perfectly good reason for walking around at will wearing a hospital gown. He strolled cautiously yet naturally, or so he supposed, into Intensive Care’s family waiting room. He expected to see Sue and Betsy. Neither was there. They’d probably stepped out for lunch. What remained in the waiting room were just a half dozen worn-out people with lots of lines on their faces, pretending to read magazines, while they hoped for miracles and waited for bad news.
Jake sat down and eyed his target, the door that said “Intensive Care Units.” Garamond. Beneath were imposing block letters. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Helvetica Bold, Jake thought, and chuckled at himself. Who but a newspaper man would ponder the typeface of a sign he was about to disobey?
Jake pretended to read a Modern Maturity magazine, while running reconnaissance on the room and door and figuring out his entry strategy. A doctor came in, pushed the red button on the panel next to the door, heard a voice over an intercom, identified himself, and entered. Just before the doctor opened the door, Jake stepped over to get another magazine. The doctor swung the door open wide enough that Jake could see the hallway leading to a hub of activity at the far end. The door shut quietly behind him and locked itself with a soft click. The doctor never looked back. Jake wished he’d followed right then, but knew it was better to survey the situation and figure out his tactics in advance. So he took his seat and bided his time.
Suddenly a doctor came out the locked door and went over to one of the mascara-smeared magazine readers, then in hushed tones explained her loved one’s condition. Jake buried himself in the magazine, looking perfectly natural, other than being in bare feet and wearing a thin sissy dress that blew around every time a door shut or the furnace turned on. As the doctor headed back to the door, he flashed a suspicious look at Jake, followed by an atoning “have a nice day” smile when Jake looked him straight in the eyes. Jake’s air of confidence won the moment.
As the doctor walked through the door, Jake covered the eight feet between them and grabbed the handle just before it clicked. He paused a few moments, peeked in, and saw only the doctor’s back, receding down the hallway. Then he walked through. As he did, one man in the waiting room stared curiously, but Jake smiled and gave him a reassuring look. A background in investigative journalism paid off, especially when it came to sheer audacity and a penchant for faking it.
Jake walked near the right side of the wall. Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, Chest Surgery Intensive Care Unit, Dialysis Acute Care Unit, Respiratory ICU, Neonatal ICU. Good grief, whatever happened to plain old ICU? Jake eliminated dialysis and neonatal, and decided to start with the general sounding “Medical Intensive Care Unit,” mostly because he could enter it without first parading by the nurses station at the hub. If it came to that he could try crawling under their line of sight, but the difference between combat fatigues and his flimsy gown made him hope that wouldn’t be necessary.
He did wish he could have a quick look at the nurses station to find out his friends’ room numbers, but any attempt to do so would guarantee a quick ticket out. He started room by room down Medical ICU. After six rooms with unfamiliar names and faces, Jake hit the jackpot. The name on the chart, plain vanilla Courier 12 pitch generated by a dot matrix printer, was “Gregory Victor Lowell.” Otherwise known as Doc. Jake’s heart raced as he stepped inside.
He expected to see Doc’s familiar face, a face that always looked straight off the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly—sculptured, poised, tanned, confident. But what Jake saw was a pale plastic looking face, a mannequin with tubes coming out of it, a practice dummy for medical students. Obviously this was the wrong room. If this was a human being, it certainly wasn’t Doc. And yet…
It was Doc. Head of the neighborhood, head of the class, head of the team, head of his squad, head of surgery. The head of everything, now shrunken and hollow. As helpless as a newborn child, as frail and dependent as an unborn. The tube coming out of his neck was his umbilical cord to life, attesting to his lack of viability. His life was utterly dependent on the will and expertise of others. Jake drew closer, looking at the pale skin with blue penciled veins. The thought that the spinal column injury could be permanent seemed more believable now. It hit Jake like a freight train. That would be worse than death for Doc. He’d be so embarrassed to see himself like this.
The chair near Doc surprised Jake. Doctors and nurses didn’t sit, he thought, and visitors weren’t allowed. He sat down gratefully, needing the rest. His hospital gown embarrassingly displayed some of his white parts. He pulled and tucked it, barely enough to avoid arrest for indecent exposure. Tentatively, with slight embarrassment, he reached out his hand to Doc’s. Slap Doc on the back, kick him in the rear, punch him in the stomach, grab his hand to get up from the basketball court, yes. But Jake didn’t ever remember holding Doc’s hand, not like this. It felt cold and clammy, drained of life. None of Doc’s strength was in this hand. It frightened Jake.
The face in front of him slowly resolved into Doc’s face. Gazing at him took. Jake back forty years to a younger, more pudgy face, with all
the cuts and bruises of careless little boys. Jake eagerly recalled Doc’s youthful escapades, knowing he deserved to be thought of in ways different than this.
Doc had been a Type A personality before anyone knew what that was, goal oriented and highly motivated. If Ulysses S. Grant High School had voted “Most Likely to Succeed” (it didn’t), Doc would have won. Finney might come away with the silver, Jake maybe the bronze. But the gold medals always belonged to Doc.
One memory led to the next, like beads on a chain. Jake grunted out loud as he thought of Doc’s homework. It had always been neat as a pin, rows lined up as if designed in drafting class rather than scrawled out early that morning. A left hander with an impossible wrist-breaking upside down writing posture, Doc produced manuscripts worthy of framing. Mr. Fieldstein, their seventh grade English teacher, joked that Doc’s homework should be put in clay jars and set aside in a cave so future civilizations would be as impressed with mid-twentieth century America as scholars are with the Dead Sea Scroll community at Qumran. The kids didn’t know anything about Qumran, but they were impressed. Everyone was always impressed with Doc. His handwriting remained meticulous, surviving the ultimate challenge—twenty years as a doctor. Doc was one of a kind.
Jake looked again at the chart hanging next to the bed. “Gregory Victor Lowell.” The few who called him Doc were those who knew him long before he was a doctor. Jake remembered the day in eighth grade when Mr. Bailey asked everyone in the class to write down three possible future vocations in order of preference. Jake wrote down professional basketball player, ambassador to Australia, and writer. Beautiful blonde Joanie Miller, Jake’s first girlfriend, wrote gymnast, teacher, and dress designer. The rest of the class spouted similar combinations of wishful and unlikely professions. But Gregory Victor Lowell simply wrote “Doctor.” When Mr. Bailey pointed out he must write three vocations, Gregory promptly wrote “Doctor” two more times. Old man Bailey acted indignant, but Jake saw the corners of his mouth turn up in a suppressed smile. Teachers always seemed pleased with Doc. He always knew exactly what he wanted to be, and no more doubted whether he’d be a doctor than the rest of the class doubted whether they’d ride the school bus home that afternoon.
From that day forward Jake and Finney called their best friend “Doc.” Students who wouldn’t remember what they wrote down that day would never forget what Doc wrote. By taking home every academic award, as well as the “all around” awards because he was a great athlete, Doc reminded himself and everyone else he was the best. Jake and Finney collected a few awards themselves, but Jake always thought this was only because those in charge felt they couldn’t give everything to Doc.
Jake straightened the top sheet on the hanging clipboard. Doc would want his little room here to look just right. He was meticulous not only in his homework, but—and this was most shocking to anyone who knew adolescent boys—his room was always immaculate. Every sock was matched in his drawers, and not because his mother did it. In fact, he had told her not to do it because so often she got it wrong. (At least, Doc recited two occasions when she had.) Jake and Finney always ribbed Doc that he didn’t do a lick of work around the rest of the house, inside or outside, but poured all his efforts into his own room. Doc unapologetically said, “I don’t care about the rest of the house. I care about my room.” Once when Finney and Jake trashed his room as a joke, they found out the hard way how much he meant it.
Jake’s own room had been such a pigsty it now left only a general nondescript image in his mind. He remembered what happened there, but it was all in the form of snapshots with no depth of field, where he didn’t recall the details of the room’s appearance. But Doc’s room was so clean, the angles so sharp, everything so perfectly in place, it was forever etched in Jake’s mind as a still picture, an ageless Ansel Adams photograph.
Jake remembered Doc walking tall, back straight, years before the military. He was always trying to stretch his 6’1” to 6’2”. That posture made every step he took look purposeful. There was a measured and almost mechanical sense to his stride. Doc was a man of discipline and purpose. He was also a man who knew how to party. Doc once told Jake, “Put that on my tombstone, ol’ buddy—‘He knew how to party.’” No, Doc. You’ll make it. Hang in there—you’ve got to make it.
The three musketeers went together to Bosworth College. Small college, high standards, great pride. You could play two sports. You had to be good, but not great. It was the Vietnam era, and something drew Jake and Finney to join ROTC. It wasn’t just the rightness of the cause, though as America’s brightest and best they cherished freedom and hated communism. They were competitors, fighters eager to stand for something, to test their mettle. Doc was in pre-med and figured to go straight to medical school from college, continuing his student deferment status. Their junior year Doc saw Jake and Finney’s attentions move more and more to an exciting four years of proving their manhood in the military. Doc quietly weighed the fact that even with scholarships he’d have to work his way through med school, and face the distractions. He secretly talked to a recruiter. When he found out the GI Bill would help with medical school, he surprised and delighted his friends by joining them in ROTC, preparing to enter the army as an officer.
Initially they were stationed places far apart, one in the U.S., one in Germany, and one in Korea. They stayed in touch, any two of them intersecting on their leaves whenever they could. And then came the year in Vietnam. All three had gone in as second lieutenants, received the customary one-year promotion to first lieutenant, and were given their platoons of some thirty men. All three had excelled, each making captain by the time they left the army.
Jake’s thoughts hovered a moment, then landed squarely on Finney. He always looked like a farm boy, strong and disciplined, built like a fire plug, but quick and agile. His 5’10” frame carried 190 pounds like it was 150. He knew how to drink, how to fight, and he knew all about loyalty. In Nam you had to trust guys with your life. Jake often wished he could pull Finney into his own company, and Doc too. Yet coming together to share their stories and out drink each other a few times at Division headquarters—and above all that glorious week in Bangkok—was somehow even better. It was a way of proving themselves, each as leaders in their own right, as equals understanding the responsibilities and privileges of command.
Finney and Doc. Doc and Finney. Finney! Suddenly Jake realized he’d been daydreaming, forgetting part two of his mission. He had to find Finney. He felt like the plate spinner at the circus, hoping that if he could go back and forth between his friends perhaps he could keep either from dying.
Jake squeezed Doc’s hand. He could almost hear him say, “Don’t get weird on me now, Buddy,” or, “Save your affection for the ladies, will ya?” Jake smiled the numb smile of crisis, and quickly left the room to find Finney. His head spinning, side aching, and feeling nausea at his sudden movement, Jake turned into the hallway from Doc’s room and ran straight into a man in surgical blues, nearly knocking both of them to the floor.
“What’s going on? Who are you? What were you doing in there?”
“Sorry, doctor.” Jake didn’t feel repentant, but overtures of repentance seemed the best strategy to accomplish his goal. “Doc, I mean Greg Lowell, is one of my best friends. I just had to see him.”
The doctor studied Jake’s face. Then the light turned on.
“You’re Jake Woods, aren’t you? Greg introduced me to you at Halley’s Bar and Grill a few years ago, remember? Barry Simpson. We had some drinks together. I read your column.”
Jake didn’t remember, but then, Doc had introduced him to lots of people in lots of bars over lots of drinks, and bar memories were usually the most vague. “Sure, I remember you, Dr. Simpson.” Maybe Jake could trade that one night of bar bonding for a ticket to see Finney.
“I heard you were in the accident with Greg, you and another guy.”
“Yeah, that’s Finney. He’s in here too. He and Doc and I have always been thick, since we
were kids. Played ball together. Same college. Same battalion in Nam.”
“Listen, I won’t say anything about you coming in here unauthorized, but you’ve really got to get out. You don’t look that great yourself. I’ll have you taken back to your room in a wheelchair.”
“Doctor, look, I know I’ve overstepped the boundaries, but I’ve got to ask a favor. Could you let me go see Finney just for a few minutes? Then I promise I’ll go right back to my room.”
“No way. I can’t let you in there.”
Jake tried to look pathetic enough to change the man’s mind, but he was already making plans to sneak back in if he had to. He’d borrow some surgical blues and come in undercover, if that’s what it took.
“Please, doctor. Only for a minute. It’s killing me not to see him.”
The doctor’s face softened. “Well, Greg was a colleague—I mean, is a colleague. And I suppose he’d bend the rules to let you see your friend.” Simpson said it as if Doc’s rule bending was legendary. “I guess I can do it, but let’s be quick about it. I think your friend’s in the next hall. Let’s go.”
Dr. Simpson started to escort Jake from the room, just as a nurse came around a corner to check in on Doc. Simpson stopped suddenly in front of the nurse, whose badge said “Robin.”
“Dr. Lowell’s fine, nurse. I just checked him. This guy was in his room. I want you to get on top of security in this whole unit! If he could just walk in, anybody could come in off the street!”
Nurse Robin gave a wide-eyed, “Yes, doctor” and marched to the nurses station to pass on his lecture on ICU security.
As they walked to Finney’s room, Jake now remembered Simpson. He’d come into the bar after Jake and Doc’s second or third beer. The three had swapped stories, impressed each other and complained about women. Especially about complaining women. And about how a lot of women seemed madder at men now than back in the seventies before men started trying so hard to please them. It went from what was it women wanted, anyway, to who gives a rip, to let’s have a few more beers. A typical happy hour with three modern professional males, as Jake recalled.
