Short Story Archive

(This is the first short story I wrote - in June, 2012.  People encouraged me to keep writing, and so I have.)

“From now on, ending a sentence

with a preposition is something up

with which I shall not put.”

                                      -Winston Churchill

Trust. Confidence. Faith. Call it what you will, how can I have it in a man who is sloppy in his diction!? “Calm yourself, Marie, calm,” I murmur like a mantra. When I start to worry my blood pressure goes up and then...

“Will someone please get that elephant off of my chest!”

I  know I am going to die.

           *          *          *

Today started normally enough. After twenty-one years as one of the top litigators in the country, depositions are as routine as breathing. Doctors are my favorite. Particularly surgeons. Those pompous, self-righteous ego-maniacs think they are better and smarter than everyone else, particularly those of us in what they consider the lying, weaseling, blood-sucking profession. Well, this is my turf, my rules, my chance to fillet you open and watch you bleed.

It is not so much that I enjoy the suffering I inflict. It is that it rejuvenates me, fills me with power, keeps me young. Squirm, you worm! Let's see if even you can read that ink-blot of a medical note. No? Not sure? It was three years ago, you say? It was to help you at the time, not something to be quizzed on years later? The jury will love this. 

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is obvious that Dr. Savage is simply unable to pay attention to detail. No wonder Mr. Victim had a complication. Look at his notes! Listen to him stammering! It is hard to believe he ever graduated from college with his poor control of the English language! 

Of course, there are good (or at least satisfactory) doctors. Even surgeons. When I am faced with a calm, well-spoken, articulate opponent, particularly one of those tall, handsome, imposing, matinee-idol types, I know I have an uphill battle. My job is to make them look bad, and it helps if they look the part of the slimy charlatan.

My younger brother, Bart, is one of the good ones. Harvard educated, residency at Columbia, author of a dozen papers on the somewhat obscure topic of nephron toxicity, he is my source whenever I have a problem that would lead me to require the services of the medical profession. A phone call to Bart, with my panicked “I have a junctional nevus on my forehead! Am I going to die?” leads to a reassuring chuckle, then a return call in a few minutes with an appointment to be seen by THE expert in the field, who never disappoints, and is always someone with whom I can share not only my fears, concerns, and forehead-freckle, but with whom I can also enjoy the witty and refined repartee that is the mark of an educated man. Soon I am restored to mental and emotional, as well as physical, health. 

Before Bart finished school, I was fortunate to have been young enough, and healthy enough, that I rarely needed a physician. On the one occasion when I did, however, I was forced to take physician pot-luck at an emergency room in southern Delaware, and the hulking, ham-handed, hayseed quack that attended me illustrated my thesis. Not only were his antecedents repeatedly unclear and his sentences punctuated with “um”s, “er”s, “like”s and “you know”s, but his white coat was rumpled and had some sort of blue stain (Blueberry? Ink? Bile?) on the right mid-chest. Needless to say, what should have been a simple throat culture turned into a throat laceration requiring cauterization under anesthesia. He claimed at trial that it had been due to me grabbing the swab and thrusting it into my throat myself, but the jury agreed that any reasonably competent physician would have been able to prevent the catastrophe, and that I had been delirious with untreated fever and pain.

But I digress. This particular morning, I had a live one on a skewer, and was just getting animated in my questioning when I felt something. Curious. Whenever I started to get red-faced or yell, even just a little, I felt a mild pressure in my chest. Not really pain, more like I had just done my yoga class after slacking off for a few months (and really, who has time for yoga? All that breathing through the nose and chanting. It really cuts into my manicure time). It went away if I took a couple of deep breaths. I did have to take it down a notch, but with this moron, half of my wit was clearly more than a match. His attorney was begging for a settlement as soon as we were done. Completely proved that it was worth having me flown in to Boston for the event. First class. Limo from the airport. Four-star hotel. Massage, manicure, theater tickets, PLUS $1000 per hour for the work, meaning from the moment I left my home in San Francisco until I walk back through my door. I love the American justice system.

In any case, during my afternoon massage, before the theater and after my three-martini celebratory lunch, I felt that little something again. A little stronger this time. Certainly could have been in response to Sven's attention, but it was emphatically not comfortable. Also, it was not precisely the usual fluttering feeling I get while watching the muscles rippling on the chest of a working masseur. Something, well, different. No matter, a few more deep breaths and again it went away. 

Really, I blame the limo service. If they had avoided the mob around Copley Square, as I suggested, I would not have been forced to practically run up the steps to the theater, and would not have ended up lying on my back in the lobby, barely able to breathe. With my chest in a vise. I will definitely be filing a lawsuit on this one. Incompetent driving is one of my pet peeves. These people are supposed to be professionals.

The paramedics seemed nice enough- a freckled red-headed Irish stereotype named O'Leary or O'Hara, or O'Something, and a spunky ultra-fit-looking apparent escapee from the Borshoi with the name Stroganoff on her pocket. 

“What a tasty dish,” I muttered. 

No laugh. Probably heard it before. They were not interested in my claim that the pain had gone away just as they arrived. They insisted that I needed to ride to the hospital with them. 

“You are cyanotic and diaphoretic,” said O'Toole. 

“Huh?” I replied in an uncharacteristically inarticulate moment. 

“Da, djou are blue ant sveaty,” explained Natasha. Okay, fine, off to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Halfway there, the radio squawked that Mass General was not accepting any more patients. It would seem that the riff-raff at Fenway had managed to get into a pre-game brawl with the Yankee fans in the parking lot, and most of the emergency rooms in the city were occupied with suturing lips and knuckles on inebriated Sox fans. We were re-directed to Roxbury East Community Hospital. Never heard of it. Couldn't get Bart on the phone. Couldn't get Google to work--should have gotten Verizon. I was powerless, in the clutches of the Boston public medical system with no way to control my destiny. Not to worry, I told myself, we are in Boston, after all. Home of Harvard, MIT, Tufts. Land of the articulate, educated Brahmin. Surely I will have competent medical care anywhere in this fine city. I started chanting softly into my oxygen mask, tapping my ruby red stiletto heeled slippers together, “There's no place like Boston, there's no place like Boston.” 

“Just breathe, ma'am,” said Sean.

Due to the miracle of modern communication, the Emergency Room at Roxbury East (referred to as “Retch” by the ambulance driver, to dark looks and head shakes from my captors) was well aware of my imminent arrival, and a sharp looking young MD was waiting for me, a print out of my EKG in her hand. 

“I'm Dr. DuPont,” she said in a blessedly refined accent, “I am with the cardiology service and will be taking care of you tonight.” 

I immediately relaxed. With deft, precise movements and curt orders, Dr. DuPont orchestrated my installation into a high-tech cubicle and got me hooked up to a comforting plethora of complicated instrumentation. The paramedics had already started an IV and drawn blood, which was sped off to the lab. 

By now I was resting fairly easy, and was starting to feel like I had won the lottery. “Must be a boutique hospital for the privileged Bostonian aristocracy,” I thought. Dr. DuPont radiated competence, and also was dressed, under her immaculate white lab coat, in a very tasteful Burberry skirt. 

At this point, I was feeling fine. No pain, not sweaty or blue, happy to be alive and lying on my comfortable stretcher in my cozy cocoon. 

“EKG looks good,” chirped the nurse. “Blood tests show mildly elevated enzymes.” 

“Good, good,” murmured DuPont. “Tell you what, let's try standing you up.”

I was game, and hopped down off of my stretcher, at which point some bastard hit me in the chest with a baseball bat (probably one of those jerks from Fenway). Dr. DuPont calmly noted that my T-waves were elevated and my S-T segments were depressed. 

“Back in bed,” she said. I was in agreement.

A few minutes and two nitroglycerin tablets later, I was fine again.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Marble, but it looks like you have a partial blockage in one of your coronary arteries.” 

I immediately put that idea to rest. “Not MRS,” I said, “MISS. Do you really think any man would be up to this challenge?” Much as I liked Dr. DuPont, I simply could not let that one go.

She looked at me a little quizzically, then repeated her statement, this time with the correct salutation, and added that we needed to do an emergency angiogram and possibly place a stent in one of my coronary arteries. She added that the emphasis was on EMERGENCY, in order to stave off a possible heart attack and permanent damage. Still no answer from Bart. He was probably with that floozy he keeps flaunting all over Seattle. 

“Fine,” I say, “first thing in the morning, then?” 

“Actually, I am calling in the team now,” she replied firmly. Such reassuring competence. “We should be ready in forty-five minutes. I will stay with you while we wait.”

The next three quarters of an hour went by smoothly. Charlene DuPont turned out to be one of the most intelligent, amusing, and quick-witted people I had ever met. As she described the procedure, which entailed poking a giant needle into an artery in my groin (such an unrefined word--couldn't they think of something better?), and threading a wire up to my heart, she precisely explained how it worked, and actually showed me a short video on her iPad. She also explained all the bad things that could happen, from bleeding in the groin (oh, that word again!), to accidentally knocking a plaque off the artery and causing a stroke, to stabbing the side of the vessel and causing an immediate and potentially fatal heart attack. It sounded like all you really needed was a well-trained, meticulous, careful cardiologist, and you would be safe. Charlene inspired the utmost confidence. Which was good, since any time I felt the least bit anxious, the chest pain started up again.

Soon they were wheeling me up to the angio suite. What a quaint name, suite. Charlene excused herself, and slipped out to change into scrubs. Pink, pressed, starched scrubs, in her case. She looked like a TV star. They transferred me to the angio table, and soon they were scrubbing my leg (I simply refuse to say groin again), and covering me with sterile drapes. I was ready.

At this point, a new face appeared, with giant unruly eyebrows that looked like they needed to be combed out and braided. And a bobbing Adam's apple the size of a kiwi.

“Hi,” it drawled from behind the mask (which only partially spared me from the unmistakable aroma of Creole cuisine), “I'm Dr. Dupree. Rufus Dupree. I'll be, um, doing your procedure, Miss Marvel.” 

“What about Dr. DuPont,” I asked, suddenly petrified. 

“Oh, she's just the resident. I am the attending she is working with. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to be afraid of.” 

I was doomed. Three times, right in a row. From DuPont to Dupree. For this, a deadly serious procedure requiring meticulous care and attention to detail, I was in the hands of a lazy prepositionalist. 

I knew I was going to die.