The Surgeon's Wife by Kieran Crowley

Author:Kieran Crowley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2001-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

MAGIC CITY

BOB reached out and gently pressed the mole on the stranger’s face with his finger, without first introducing himself or asking permission.

The husky man in work clothes with the mole was startled. In Minot, North Dakota, men did not touch other men—especially strangers.

“Hey, buddy, don’t touch me,” he said, recoiling from Bob’s probing.

The man in the dark Italian suit quickly introduced himself and explained that he was the new plastic surgeon in town and he was simply checking the mole to make sure it was not cancerous—and it was not. No charge. The exchange ended with the man thanking Bob—but thinking he had just met a strange man, one who did not fit in, and stood out in the remote, rural town of 35,000 souls like a tuxedo at a taffy-pull.

It was not the only such encounter and soon the little burg was buzzing with anecdotes about the quick-walking, quick-talking doctor with the bullet eyes and a city-dweller’s disregard for the personal space of others.

“That guy is nothing but strange,” one local said to another after meeting Doctor Bob.

Some residents felt better about Bob when they heard he was from New York, as if all New Yorkers were like that. They also liked his casual manner and the fact that, for the first time in their lives, they were on a first-name basis with a doctor. The more they heard about him and his charity work and the way he put himself out for his patients, the more they liked him.

Others continued to think he was weird. But in a harsh and un-peopled landscape like Minot—which rhymes with why-not—people accepted newcomers and helped each other.

Even though the population density of the state was just two people per square mile, the little city had its own Minot International Airport because of the US Air Force base 13 miles north of town. The base was home for decades to a Strategic Air Command wing of B-52 nuclear attack bombers. Concealed among the far-flung wheat fields outside town were the hidden underground silos that housed America’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles—the unused weapons of Armageddon.

Another New Yorker by the name of David Berkowitz had spent some of his time in the Air Force at the Minot base many years earlier. The carcasses of horribly mutilated animals had mysteriously appeared around town at the time. The puzzled residents did not know they had a killer in their midst until years later—when Berkowitz was arrested in New York for the “Son of Sam” slayings and the press came to Minot to talk about his sadistic habits.

Bob was happy to escape managed care in Las Vegas and was not unhappy to leave behind the dark rumors that had started circulating there about him and his first wife. He was attracted to Minot because of the unique opportunity and because it had the lowest percentage of managed care patients in the nation. That promised a better living and less interference from outside care managers and insurance companies. In many ways, North Dakota was a perfect state and they were moving from Sin City to Sinless City.

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