“Yeah, well how to die and let live wasn’t one of them, ya bastard.”
“At any rate, that’s one of the reasons I haven’t appeared to Monica. This place is always rather dark and I didn’t want her to get frightened off. I know she’s been having, shall we say, troubles . . .”
I pushed my hat back on my head. They say . . . and who exactly is this “they” that everybody keeps talkin’ about? I had an idea once that it was the Van Patten family, but that still didn’t seem right. Anyways, they say that when you die, your whole life flashes and you see the error of your ways and all the choices you coulda made that would have let you do things a little better. I was bettin’ Spooky Quartermaine had a black silk eye-mask over his peepers when the big moment hit. He hadn’t learned diddley.
“So you thought you’d just frighten her to death? Hang on a second,” I said. “She’s gotta hear this for herself.”
“Where are you going?” Alan said, getting nervous.
“Where do you think?”
“I won’t let her see me!”
“You stay right there, shady!”
I walked over to the bathroom door and yanked on it. Spooky Q didn’t want to open it at first, then I yelled that I would just tell her everything from inside the loo anyway. And that if he kept me there long enough to starve me, or if he managed to kill me in some way, I would be headin’ to Heaven, but I’d arrange to make a stop at Heaven-Lite and settle his hash, but good.
“Doc,” I said to Monica . . . she was standin’ a little ways back from the door. “You need to see this.”
I marched her back to the mirror.
“What?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”
“I told you,” Alan said.
She obviously didn’t hear anything either.
“I ain’t surprised, you coward,” I shouted at the mirror.
“Is he there? Can you see him? Oh, Alan.”
“Yeah, well before you go all Niagara on me, you should hear the deal.”
I told her everything. What her doornail hubby wanted and why. She kept her upper lip stiff, I’ll say that for her. For about two minutes. Then she turned to the mirror and let Alan have it.
“Alan Quartermaine, I am a vital, vibrant, warm . . . fairly warm-blooded woman, who still has many years left in her . . . and if the Botox keeps working, no one will ever know that I’m not still in my forties! How dare you, you self-centered brute! I may be a little worse for wear these past few months, I may have crawled into bed with a bottle on my nightstand, but that was only in response to losing you, you pig . . . and now I see that you’re behaving just as reprehensibly on the other side as you did here. If you think I am going to touch another drink, another ounce of whiskey, brandy, gin, or vodka in mourning over you, you disgusting lout, you have another think coming. In fact, I’m hereby off the sauce . . . Spinelli, you’re a witness!”
“Got it.”
“Thank you. And get out of my bathroom mirror, you pervert! My answer to you is a no . . . a big, fat NO! In fact, I am going to start doing so many good deeds, God will have no choice but to put me with your mother in Heaven . . . and you and I will never see each other again. You can just rot in Heaven-Lite.”
She was all outta juice by the time she was done. She kinda fell onto my shoulder.
“Nicely done, Sawbones,” I said, puttin’ my arm around her. “Nicely done.”
I looked back at the mirror. Alan had his arms folded across his chest. He looked like a little kid who just found out that Santa Claus is a big fat lie. Finally, he puffed his chest out like a rooster, then let all the air out again.
“Well,” he said. “Then just ask her if I can date.”
Chapter 7
Damian Spinelli
and Yes, Sometimes It Really IS Brain Surgery
They say . . . the Van Patten family, that is . . . that everything happens for a reason. Everything from gettin’ a parkin’ ticket that you know you didn’t deserve to marryin’ the wrong dame two, maybe three times over. Sometimes we get to know what that reason is, like when I see Billy “Bag o’ Donuts” Ludelski from sixty paces away walkin’ into Domingo’s Grocery for a cup of lemon ice and suddenly, bingo-bango, I remember I had a set-up date with his sister once about seven months ago and I sorta never showed . . . and this is God’s way of tellin’ me that I don’t really need to walk by Domingo’s on my way to get a bratwurst on raisin bread and that He let me see Jimmy to keep me alive.
And sometimes, you don’t get to know the reason. At least not right away. If ever.
Like when the stoplight goes haywire at Eighth and Central and a busload of kids on their way back to school from a field trip . . . to a dairy farm, no less . . . slams into a car with one guy on his way into town to see his granddaughter . . . for the first time.
There ain’t no reason for that . . . not that I can see.
I was at General Hospital donatin’ my monthly pint, when suddenly there’s a ruckus at the nurses’ station.
I grabbed my cup of OJ and a coupla oatmeal cookies with the striped frostin’ on top and started for the door.
“Now, Mr. Spinelli,” said the nurse, with a wink . . . she was a looker all right, the kind that could make you forget you already had a looker back home. “I know Nurse Johnson has told you before . . . only one cookie per pint.”
“What can I say, doll . . . I’m delicate. Besides, Michelle, you do things to me, know what I mean? I need my strength.”
She hurried past me, also on her way to check out the fuss.
“See you next month?”
“If I ain’t dead.”
When I got through the door, Michelle had disappeared in a sea of GH uniforms and I knew this was no ordinary emergency. I headed for the nurses’ station, where head nurse Epiphany Johnson was barkin’ orders from on top of a chair.
“I need all available personnel on deck stat! Anyone with ER experience, get down there in the next sixty seconds. I need as many OR prep teams prepping every available room. And I need everyone else to scrub up and get ready or stay out of the way. Don’t make me kick anyone’s ass!”
My curiosity was eatin’ away at me, but I knew she’d chew me up like spittin’ tobacco if I made a peep.
I didn’t have to wait long.
“What are we dealing with, Epiphany?” asked Dr. Patrick Drake, walkin’ up. He was one of the best blood-letters in the business, just like his old man, and equally good at breakin’ hearts as puttin’ ’em back together again.
“There’s been an accident,” Nurse Johnson answered. “A passel of kids, the bus driver, and a single adult male. They’re all on their way in. And it’s bad. Bus flipped over twice . . . We’ve got multiple fractures, EMTs say there’s a lot of internal bleeding and two severe cranials. No fatalities . . . yet.”
“Don’t talk that way, Epiphany . . . this is General Hospital,” he said, straightening his white coat. “I’ll handle both the cranials . . .”
“Doctor Drake,” Epiphany interrupted, “I know you’re the best neurosurgeon on the East Coast . . . maybe in the country . . . but one victim has a massive brain injury with a possible subarachnoid hemorrhage and the other is . . . is the youngest Corinthos boy. The EMTs say there’s extreme pressure and swelling on the right side. Are you sure you want to tackle both at once?”
Drake put his head in his hands for a second.
“Dammit! Call McKinsey at Rhode Island Mercy and O’Leary at Long Island Good Samaritan.”
“It may take them a while to get here.”
“Just do it, Nurse!” he shouted. “I’ll call my wife. Robin will handle the cuts and broken bones. She can take our baby to the police department; her uncle Mac promised to sit with Emma if we were ever in a pickle. She can be here in twenty minutes.”
What I didn’t see was Nurse Johnson lookin’ at me sideways; otherwise I woulda scuttled out, but fast.
“We need more than just one extra set of hands for this one, Do
ctor. I think I might have an idea . . . but if I were you, I’d start praying.”
“Will do.”
Suddenly, the television in the waiting room next to the nurses’ station blinked with an interruption of late-breaking news. The mouthpiece with the microphone was already on the scene of the accident, gettin’ it all on film. The chaos, the bus on its side . . . and the used-to-be nifty blueberry-colored Fiat rag-top . . . upside down and flamin’ like a Baked Alaska.
“No! Dear Lord . . . no!” Drake said, putting one hand on his forehead; the other he used to steady himself against the counter.
“Doctor?” Epiphany said. “Are you all right?”
“I’d know that car anywhere. Oh . . . no. And he said . . . he said he was coming back to Port Charles . . . to see Emma . . . for the first time.”
“Doctor?”
Drake pounded one fist into another.
“That’s . . . that’s my father’s car.”
“Oh, Doctor . . .” Epiphany began.
“I’m fine, Nurse!” he said, straightening his coat again, and squarin’ up his shoulders. “I’m fine. Let me know when his ambulance arrives.”
He walked toward the stairwell and didn’t look back. Epiphany clutched her hands together for a moment, shook her head, and started giving specific instructions to a coupla interns that looked like they were gonna hit the pavement.
I had all the information I needed; time for me to amscray or find my derriere on the business end of Epiphany’s white shoe.
The nurses’ station was now almost clear. I was nearly on the elevator, and I swear Epiphany had her back turned away from me, but suddenly, outta nowhere . . .
“Where do you think you’re going, Mr. Spinelli?”
It was like I gotta shock; like when Maxie uses one o’ them special toys on me she likes so much, the ones that need batteries. I turned back and Nurse Johnson was standin’ in the middle of the corridor, given’ me the evil-eye. I had to give it to her: she moved fast for an ample dame.
“Don’t think for one second you are walking out of this hospital. Not today, sir.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” I lied.
And it was a big lie. I knew exactly what she was talkin’ about. But there was no way . . . not after what happened. Not after . . .
“You know damn well, and that’s all we’re gonna say about it. Now get scrubbed.”
“Epiphany,” I said, feelin’ my stomach do a few somersaults on its way to the floor, “I can’t.”
“You can and you’re gonna . . . if I have to sit on you, you’re gonna.”
“These doctors . . . they know what they’re doin’. I don’t know my way around anything anymore.”
“You gonna turn your back? Huh? You would walk away when this hospital and those kids need all the help they can get? I don’t give a damn what those newspapers said. You got the goods, and now you’re gonna deliver. Come with me.”
Normally, I don’t let myself get tossed around, except by Maxie, but Nurse Johnson was stronger than she looked. And besides, if I didn’t go with her, I had the feelin’ she’d personally be drawin’ my monthly pint from then on.
We were alone on the elevator. Epiphany wasn’t even lookin’ at me, that’s how much she meant business.
“How did you find out?” I asked, watchin’ the floor indicator lights blink on and off.
“I’m extremely well informed . . . Jackal. I read as much as possible; not just the newspapers, but medical journals as well. Hell, I read twice as much as any of the big-shot doctors around here. How do you think I get away with talkin’ to them the way I do? They know that I know more than all of them put together. You think I didn’t recognize you when you first got to town, huh? Graduated top of his class at Johns Hopkins, and he doesn’t think I’ll recognize him; one of the top neurosurgeons in the U.S. of A.”
“Was, Piffy. Was.”
“If you didn’t need to be alert for the next few hours, I’d smack you upside so hard. It’s not ‘Piffy’ . . . it’s Nurse Johnson.”
“You know so much about me? Then . . . you must have read about . . . what happened.”
“I did indeed,” she huffed. “And I think those papers gave you a raw deal. I went over all the facts and the testimony. Way I see it, there was no way you could have saved all those lumberjacks in that camp . . . especially that boy . . .”
Suddenly, Piffy’s voice faded away and I was right back there: the Northern Pacific Logging Camp, Flume, and Sawmill. I’d only been out of medical school for a few months. I’d been workin’, literally, under a microscope for years and I’d got a tooth-on to get my hands around some big things for a while before I started my residency. Big . . . like trees . . . even if I was, kinda, killin’ ’em. One day, a rogue log came down the chute too fast and the flume broke close to camp. Seventeen loggers were either killed outright or pinned under the wreckage, water pouring down on the poor sons o’ bitches, some of ’em shot through with splintered boards and such. I was tending the vertical boiler in the sawmill, but when the cry went up I raced to the scene. I worked my keister off that day . . . the camp doctor was drunk as usual and nobody else had any kind of medical know-how. Three men were already gone, but the others . . . the others all had a chance. I handled the worst first and had worked my way through everyone in a few hours. I thought I had set the last broken bone and sutured the last internal bleeder, when all at once, they brought in . . . Kenny.
Kenny . . . the slow kid. The camp favorite. Fascinated with trees all his life. Just wanted to be a logger, but nobody would let him near a chainsaw. He’d stare at the forest for hours until somebody needed something—then Kenny was the go-to guy.
They’d missed him at first under all the wood of the flume, but somebody saw the toe of his work boot and started digging. But they got him too late. There was already a swelling of the brain. I tried . . . I tried. Damn it, I tried!
Turns out Kenny’s parents had a load of dough. That’s how Kenny got to stay at the camp . . . his folks basically paid the management to keep him there. They had a lawyer on me so fast it’s like they were doin’ a rhumba and I was standin’ still . . . said I shoulda treated him first. And they saw to it that I never picked up a scalpel again . . . again . . . again . . .
“Anyway,” Epiphany was sayin’ when I snapped out of it, “I don’t think anybody’s been harder on you than you’ve been on yourself. You saved fourteen men that day, Spinelli. You musta had a . . . a faith in yourself back then. And I have that faith in you now.”
The elevator doors opened.
“It’s not Spinelli,” I said, staring at the big mess in the ER.
“What?”
She’d done a good job on me, all right, and I felt like I could handle anything; just like one of those fightin’ guys back in old Rome, the ones that wore the little skirts and tangled with the tigers.
“It’s Doctor Spinelli . . . Nurse.”
Epiphany got a grin on her face the size of the crazy cat in that kids’ book.
“Very good . . . Doctor.”
She took me to the ER nurses’ station and filled them all in. Not the whole history, mind you . . . just the savin’ lives part. Next thing I know, I’m in full scrubs.
“Spinelli!” called Dr. Drake, as I walked into the operating room. “Who do you think you are, Jackie Kennedy?! Get out of here. It’s restricted, for hospital personnel only.”
“Just a minute, Doctor Drake . . .” Epiphany started to say.
I was gettin’ uneasy with how much explainin’ she was havin’ to do . . . about me.
“I’ll take it from here.”
I held my hands up for the OR nurse.
“Gloves, and step on it!”
Then I turned to Drake, as the latex slid over my grabbers. I flashed on Maxie . . . just for a second.
“Johns Hopkins, graduated . . . well, let’s just say I graduated pretty high up . . .”
“Top,” sai
d Epiphany.
“Thanks, Nurse. Now look, Drake, I know I haven’t been slicin’ and dicin’ for a few years, but I was damn good with the cutlery and these two cases that are comin’ in . . . they won’t be askin’ any questions, see? I’m here and I’m good . . . I’m better than good. But I guess you’ll have to put a scalpel in my hand to really find out, won’tcha? So are you gonna wait until McKinsey or O’Leary decides to show up? Huh? Are you gonna stand there with a bright light and a rubber hose to see if I know leukodystrophy from a lumbar drain or are you and I gonna go save some lives?”
Just then, the two head injury cases were wheeled in. One was little Morgan Corinthos . . . and if it was one thing that family didn’t need, it was another kid with a bum thinker. The other . . .
“Oh, sweet Lord,” said Drake, looking down at the gurney, then looking up to the ceiling. “It’s my dad.”
He stepped back. His hands started shakin’ slightly.
“Which one?” he started mumbling. Before, during, and after, it was the only time I ever saw Drake lose his cool . . . and his cool was pretty damn sizable. It wasn’t a choice I would have wanted to make either. Sonny Corinthos ever found out that Drake had chosen his pop over Sonny’s kid, there wouldn’t be enough of the doc to pick up with a blotter.
“Stand back, Drake,” I said, kinda shovin’ him aside. “I’ll handle your old man. You work on the midget.”
“But . . .”
“But nothin’. The decision’s been made,” I said. “Let me see those x-rays! Uh-huh. Now, gimme the MRI . . . I didn’t just order a Tom Collins, nurse, I don’t have all day . . . hit the gas! Okay, now we’re gettin’ somewhere. Scalpel! I’m gonna have to cut through the leptomeninges. Then I have to relieve the pressure . . . that’s it. Now, where’s that bleeder . . . ?”
About three hours later, McKinsey shows up, pickin’ some prime rib outta his teeth.
“How can I help?” he asks, like he’s Jesus comin’ to touch the poor or somethin’.
I looked at Drake and he looked at me.
“Thanks for coming, Scott,” he says, without even turnin’ his head. “But we’re doing just fine in here. Be a pal, would you, and go see if Robin needs anything? Thanks.”
The Secret Life of Damian Spinelli Page 8
