Trauma by James Cole

Author:James Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

15

The Illegal Alien Problem

Everyone Has an Angle

My family and I enjoy watching old movies and one of our annual favorites is the 1954 Bing Crosby classic White Christmas. There is a scene in the movie where Bob Wallace, played by Bing Crosby, chuckles at Rosemary Clooney, telling her that he has figured out her “angle.” Clooney, playing one of the two Haynes sisters in a singing-dancing duo seeking their big break into the show-business world, invited Crosby and his show partner played by Danny Kaye to watch the girls’ performance under the false pretense of an alleged favor to the Haynes sisters’ brother, who had served with Crosby’s character in Europe during World War II. In the movie, Crosby’s character figures out the girls’ ruse, and when gently confronted by Crosby, the mildly disturbed Clooney retorts that she and her sister certainly did not have an angle. But Crosby, neither upset nor disappointed by his being lured to the performance hall by two girls just wanting to become noticed, simply cozied up in his chair, lit his pipe, and told Clooney not to worry because “everybody’s got an angle.”

One person who I remember having a very mischievous angle was Mr. Jumoke Okuwa, the estranged husband of Kapinga Okuwa, both immigrants from Nigeria, and in America on an unauthorized, self-extended traveler’s visa. Both visas had been expired for more than six years.

I barely knew Mr. Okuwa, as he rarely made visits to the hospital and he never answered his phone when we attempted to call him. One morning an extremely well-dressed, black man with a heavy African accent came to our Trauma Services office and asked to see one of the trauma surgeons. I was in-house and on call that day. When notified of the visitor, I came down to meet him. He introduced himself to me as an attorney representing Mr. Okuwa, and he requested that I sign a document stating that his wife, Kapinga, was mentally incompetent as a result of her brain injuries. The attorney also asked that I might render the medical opinion that the husband should have full power-of-attorney rights over all matters pertaining to Mrs. Okuwa.

Immediately smelling a rat, I asked the attorney why his client had suddenly taken an interest in his estranged wife’s well-being. He answered me by stating that his client eagerly wanted to get his wife all of the government benefits entitled to her—financial benefits the attorney would see got paid to Mrs. Okuwa.

Flash backward about six months when Mrs. Okuwa, the forty-four-year-old driver and sole occupant of a car, crashed into a tree at a moderately high rate of speed. Paramedics found her unconscious at the scene, but she partially regained consciousness in the field, and began to vomit multiple times. She would not open her eyes, she could not speak, and her arms and legs extended and rotated inward when the paramedics poked her skin when starting her intravenous line. She was comatose when she arrived at our trauma center.

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