Bedeviled by John Vanek

Author:John Vanek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Epicenter Press Inc.
Published: 2021-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Thursday, April 3, 2:00 p.m.

My Thursday morning shift in Urgent Care was routine. Then came the afternoon. To paraphrase Forest Gump, life and practicing medicine are both like a box of chocolates—most patients are sweet and a delight, others present unexpected surprises, but a few are just plain nutty at their core. Sometimes it boggles the mind.

The afternoon transformed into one of those days at the hospital when patient folly reached new heights. I should have known I was about to hit the “patient daily double” when Nurse Ochs handed me a chart, chuckled, and walked away.

I opened the chart and read the last entry. This middle-aged man had presented a week earlier in the emergency room with a scrotal abscess, but had left before the surgeon arrived because he had “important shit to do.”

I sighed, entered the examination room, and greeted my patient. A biker sat on the examination table. He had removed his pants and underwear but was wearing his leather jacket. All his visible skin had been heavily inked, resulting in a high tattoo-to-tooth ratio. He was gently massaging a scrotum the size of a softball. I briefly considered a career change, then slipped on gloves, performed a quick exam, and telephoned Dr. Glade. He was a semi-obnoxious human being but an excellent surgeon, and over time we had reached something approaching friendship.

I explained the need for an emergency operation to my patient and said the surgeon was on his way and would arrive any minute.

“This crap didn’t help.” My patient tossed me an empty antibiotic bottle, stood, and picked up his underwear. “Ain’t got time to hang around. Give me something for pain, Doc. Somethin’ strong. I got shit to do.”

Apparently the shit requiring his immediate attention was an ongoing crisis. His abscess had doubled in size since his last visit, and I didn’t want to be on duty when he returned again next week. His breath suggested that he had already made an unsuccessful attempt to self-medicate with booze, and by the way he wobbled, his alcohol level had surpassed his I.Q.

I wondered if he was making the rounds at all the hospitals, stockpiling narcotics. “Give me somethin’ strong for pain” probably meant opioids. But the terror in his eyes at the word “surgeon” suggested that his bad-ass biker demeanor was a ruse to cover the fear of an operation on his manhood.

He was putting on his briefs when Dr. Glade charged in. He took one look at my patient’s groin and said, “I’ll take it from here, Jake.” I walked to the nurses’ station shaking my head, certain that I had now seen it all. I was staring at the wall clock, willing it to jump to the end of my shift, when the second of the “daily double” arrived.

A man dressed in full camouflage carrying a garbage bag ran past the receptionist and up to me. “What kinda snake is this? I was splitting logs when it bit me.”

His left hand was swollen to the size of a catcher’s mitt with a pair of puncture wounds near the wrist.

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