Chapter 54
"Shit or Get Off the Pot!
THE YEAR 2016 ENDED ON A CALM NOTE.
MY GOD … I'VE BEEN HERE OVER A YEAR! I KEEP HOLDING OFF MAKING A DECISION ABOUT MY LEG. DON'T KNOW WHY. ED KEEPS ASKING AND I KEEP MAKING EXCUSES. THAT IT HURTS CONSTANTLY DOESN'T MATTER.
YES IT DOES. THE THOUGHT OF LOSING IT SENDS SHIVERS OF COLD APPREHENSION DOWN MY SPINE. SO I GUESS "SCARED TO DEATH" IS AS GOOD A REASON AS ANY. IT'S ALSO THE TRUTH.
I WORK FOR ED THOREAU NOW: MONDAYS, WEDNESDAYS AND FRIDAYS. HE INSISTS I RIDE THE WHEELCHAIR WHEN I'M SEEING PATIENTS, BECAUSE HE DOESN'T WANT ME TO GET KNOCKED OFF MY SHAKY FOUNDATION BY SOMEONE IN PAIN … OR ANGRY AS HELL AND LASHING OUT … OR JUST SOMEONE WHO IS BUSY AND DISTRACTED, OR SIMPLY NOT WATCHING WHERE THEY'RE GOING. I CAN UNDERSTAND ED'S REASONING AND I DO AS HE ASKS. IT IS GOOD TO BE MAKING A CONTRIBUTION AGAIN. BETTER THAN SITTING AROUND ON MY ASS AT HOME.
JOE GARRETT SEES ME ONCE A WEEK, MAINLY TO KEEP AN EYE ON THE STATUS OF MY LEG, AND TO DO THE ONGOING TESTS NECESSARY FOR TRANSITION TO THE BIO-ELECTRONIC PROSTHEIS COMPONENTS. HE IS STILL WORKING ON THEM. THOSE THINGS ARE FITTED PRECISELY AND METICUOUSLY ADJUSTED WITH AS MUCH SKILL AND CARE AS A NASA TECHNICIAN WOULD INSERT COMPONENT MODULES INTO A ROCKET ENGINE. THEY'RE ALSO AS DIVERGENT AS THE INDIVIDUALS THEY SERVE, AND JUST AS EXOTIC. HE KNOWS IT WON'T BE MUCH LONGER BEFORE SOMETHING DEFINITE HAS TO BE DONE ABOUT SCHEDULING MY SURGERY, AND I CAN'T PUT HIM OFF FOREVER. HE KNOWS I'M SCARED SHITLESS … AND HE 'GETS' IT. HE HASN'T BUGGED ME ABOUT IT THAT MUCH YET, BUT I KNOW HE WILL. TIME IS GETTING SHORT.
ED AND ERNIE STAND PATIENTLY BY AND TAKE THEIR CUES FROM JOE. I HAVE TO GET MY ACT TOGETHER … JUST NOT YET …
THE TRUTH I NEVER TALK ABOUT … I'M WAITING FOR WILSON.
A new president will take over the White House in a couple of weeks, and the town is all abuzz about it. I stay away from speculation as much as possible. It makes no difference to me who the next Bigwig in the Oval Office is. We always manage to muddle our way through, no matter which bullshitter gets to sit in the catbird seat.
And so it goes. I'm pretty much settled in. The apartment works for me very well. Lots of room to maneuver the crutches and the wheelchair. I'm not a half bad cook, and I've whipped up some pretty good stuff on the little apartment-size stove. Once in awhile I invite Jake and Vern over for supper, and somebody will call Bill Perry to see if he wants to play poker. Some of those nights get pretty wild with the competition between the four of us and the quick way we can destroy a case of beer and a couple of large pizzas with 'everything'.
I think about Wilson a lot … where he is, how he's doing, who he's 'getting it on' with. I have to chuckle about that. He's had more crappy luck with women than anyone I know … and it's his own damn fault. He just needs to find the right hooker, I think …
Me? I found a local cat house in one of the small towns close by, (whose name shall go without mention, just like the 'Scottish Play'.) Anyhow, I've gone over there a few times when I can convince my leg to allow me a small dalliance …
It's all good. I'm not quite the man I used to be. Sad to say, but true.
The week between Christmas and New Year's we had six straight days of virtual standstill in Etna. It began to snow on Christmas night about midnight, and by morning there was a ten-inch accumulation, and the snow didn't stop. By that evening there was twelve inches of white stuff covering the entire town. Snow plows and cinder trucks trundled up and down the streets all day, every day, but barely kept up with it. Every time they cleared a path, the snow would start again. It blew up onto my front porch and I couldn't even get the damned door open. I was glad I didn't need to go anywhere. No way could I get to my car to go to work.
I snuggled on my fancy leather couch armed with a thermos of coffee … (laced with brandy … yummy!) and a blanket, and propped myself on the handsome tapestry pillows that came with it. I spent a lot of time watching an NCIS marathon on the USA channel, and a Blue Bloods marathon on ION. That's a cool damn TV … and Mark Harmon and Tom Selleck are larger than life. (Of course Cote DiPablo and Emily Wickersham and Bridget Moynahan look pretty damn good too.)
For the next three days it snowed almost continuously, and I was very glad I'd stocked up on groceries. There's a place in Lebanon that offers delivery service for "people like me" (ha ha) and I began to take advantage of it about once a week. So I was fed and medicated and entertained. I ignored the hell out of the snow.
I found out that two of the other three tenants in the Sylvester House used the store's service also, so the three of us got our heads together one day and decided to pool our resources. Everybody would order in at the same time. Handy for us; convenient for the store owners. I got to know the tenants … and we all ignored the hell out of the snow.
Chauncy (upstairs, rear) told me that he had dealt with the store for years. Eleanor next door to him, said she had too. Chauncy is older than me, and so is Eleanor. I've never asked them, but I'd say they're both in their seventies. Chauncy's bald as Mr. Clean, wears thick glasses, and walks with two arm canes. He told me he was on a reconnaissance mission with four team members in the La Drang Valley in Nam. They walked into a VC Sapper ambush and he was the only one who survived. He was reluctant to say more than that, and I didn't push. I knew exactly how he felt.
Eleanor (upstairs, front) has Parkinson's Disease, and it's difficult for her to get around because of the tremors. Her daughter visits most days and helps with household stuff. Eleanor looks like a shriveled Bette Davis, but has a great sense of humor.
They asked about my leg, and I just said: "blood clot, embolism, muscle death …" all that shit. They made sympathetic faces, hissed through their teeth and didn't ask again. We totally understand about each other's hangups.
Mildred, who lives in the other ground-floor apartment, is a recluse who opens her door to no one except her Rabbi … and we respect that and leave her alone. She is in her nineties …
The weather finally cleared on New Years' Day. The sun came out and the streets were finally cleared. You couldn't see most of the houses along the street because the plowed snow hid them from view. Wow! Winter in New England. Jake and Vern and Jerry came over to shovel me out that night, and I began to feel a little less like a shut-in. I could walk around in my apartment without having to keep all the lights on. We were just lucky there were no power outages to throw us completely into the dark.
Working at the hospital got easier after the weather warmed up.
New Hampshire is absolutely beautiful in the winter. Sometimes when the roads were clear, I would get into the Dynasty and just drive somewhere to get out of the apartment and breathe the cold winter air. One Saturday I drove along Route Four, crossed over U.S. 93 and went all the way to Laconia … the longest drive I'd attempted since I came here. I stayed overnight at a Hampton Inn and ate like a king in their dining room overlooking snowy mountains and a mirrored lake that somehow reminded me of the years we spent in Japan when Dad was stationed there.
Now it's almost a year later; early autumn again.
My work at DHMC is challenging and rewarding. I stop by Ed's office on the third floor to check on the day's schedule, and if nothing is particularly pressing, I go on back to the lab where Joe and Ernie are usually working with at least two or three amputees … some of them being prepped for the new biotechnical apparatus; some not.
Sometimes I do X-rays, run the MRI and CT Scanning equipment. Sometimes I will get called to the Nephrology lab to oversee a patient there, or I'll be paged to consult on a difficult case or diagnose and offer input among a group of doctors who conduct what they call a "diagnostic huddle". These people come together in The Garage to read case histories, look at scans or X–rays, peruse charts, and sometimes consult with the patients themselves. Sometimes the discussions get lively and loud, and often end up with the correct diagnosis, simply by bouncing theories and symptoms off each other and running tests until the correct approach seems to jump out and hit us over the head. I had never done it that way before, and it struck me as amazing that these sessions were not only good for a rapid and accurate diagnosis, but a good learning experience as well.
I immersed myself in the medicine and the discussions with enthusiasm, and I think that my disability may have tamed down during this time. At first the others treated me with kid gloves … everyone around me by now was well aware of my history, and my probable prognosis. Some of the younger ones were deathly afraid of hurting me; afraid of upsetting me or doing something that would worsen my pain. The wheelchair and elevated foot-on-the-pillow inevitably became some kind of clarion call that made me a pariah and untouchable; to be protected and kept away from harm.
Until the first time I blew my goddamned top and told them in no uncertain terms that I was not made of Ivory or bisque or bone China, and I would not break into a thousand pieces if someone spoke too loud in my presence. By then I was yelling my head off and shaking a fist in their startled faces.
That was the last time I was treated like a cripple. After that they all tried to out-yell me. No one ever did …
The word got around the hospital that you didn't mess with Doc Calloway. ("He's not as fragile as he looks!") Music to my ears.
During that time I received word that the Cuddy house had been repaired and someone from Delaware had bought it. No word of Cuddy or her whereabouts, and I was too busy to care.
Not long after that, I was finding out that most everyone on the staff knew who I was, and I was earning a 'reputation'.
But let me caution you: I was no longer the bastard that Gregory House used to be. I found that I was able to make friends hand-over-fist, and I liked it. A lot. Actually I was becoming the happiest horse in the race, and for the umpteenth time I decided I had made the right choice in selecting New Hampshire as my home.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Lily and I struck up a rather unique and beneficial deal that would be helpful to both of us. We were sitting in the restaurant of the Watson Inn one Saturday morning after breakfast, and we were doing some whining and complaining about the things we had to do that were just a product of life, but also a pain in the butt.
My pet peeve was housework. Very difficult to do from a wheelchair or crutches. I lost things, dropped things, knocked things over, and inevitably made more work for myself than I actually made cleaner or neater or put away in the same place every time. Changing and remaking my bed always turned into a complicated nightmare. (Or a disaster of gargantuan proportions.)
Lilly giggled sympathetically at my bitching and whining, but she also understood when I complained that most of the time I seemed to get in my own way. She said she felt exactly the same when she had to do the monotonous chore of chopping vegetables and salad ingredients for the week's menu. She was so short that getting on and off the high stool in front of the prep counter became a physical burden. Her arms were also short, and many of the vegetables were round, and skittered away from her on the butcher block. She always ended up more tired and sore from getting them into containers to keep them handy, than actually chopping them.
I think we both had the same idea at the same time. She looked at me and I looked at her, and we both laughed our heads off. So I offered to peel and cut and chop vegetables for her in the restaurant kitchen in exchange for her assistance with bed making and dusting and mopping at my place. Once a week ought to lighten the load for both of us.
That's the way we did it. Saturday mornings I go over to the Watson Inn and report to the kitchen. Happily, I sit on the big stool in front of the butcher block, prop up my leg and chop what needs to be chopped … or peeled or diced or minced or sliced, and shoot the shit with the kitchen staff and catch up with town gossip whether I want to hear it or not … and Lily's most hated chore gets done with dispatch.
And Lily Chamberlin … all four-feet-ten of her … crosses the street to my place. She wipes down the kitchen, unloads the dishwasher, mops the floor, dusts the furniture, and … oh glory … makes my bed and does my wash with the expertise of a cadet in basic training; squared corners and everything. Once in a while she bakes me a cake, or bakes cookies, and I am in heaven for days. But the thing is: it works! For both of us.
Cold weather is making its way into the air again. Another winter approaches, and inevitably I see the street crews climbing around on ladder trucks, putting up Christmas decorations. It hasn't snowed yet, but it will. Soon.
I almost forgot to say … the town of Etna has done something so nice that it almost brought tears to my eyes. Yeah me … old hardass Greg. I didn't know what to say at first.
There came a knock on my door, late on a Friday afternoon in September. I was in the recliner, laid back, heat on full. My leg and foot had been especially painful all day at work, and I found myself cramping to the point that I was throwing back too many pills and afraid I might be heading for a bout of breakthrough pain. The wheelchair stood beside the chair because I didn't trust myself to the crutches.
When the knock came, it startled me. I'd been dozing. "It's open. Come on in …" (I seldom locked the door when I was home in the daytime.)
It was Lewis Harbauch, the town supervisor, a man I'd had only a passing acquaintance with. He stood awkwardly in front of me with hat in hand … an old fashioned courtesy. "Dr. Calloway, I'd like to talk to you about the place where you park your car out back …"
I thought, *Uh oh … are they going to make me move it?* I gawked at him, uncomprehending. "Is there something wrong?"
"Oh no … but at the council meeting the other night …" He hesitated to the point that I wondered what the hell he was getting at.
"Yes?" I buzzed the chair up to sitting position and stared at him.
"Well, with your permission, we'd like to build you a parking space right outside your front door. We agreed that since you don't have garage space of your own, it would be far safer for you if you didn't have to walk all the way down to your car in ice and snow … since you use crutches or a wheelchair every day. Is that all right with you? The work will take two days at most, and it won't obstruct the sidewalk. Are you all right with that? We got a variance, and it's good to go. We can start on Tuesday …"
My mouth was hanging open. "Seriously? You would do that for me?"
"Yes sir. The boys at the hotel tell me they'll keep the walks shoveled, like they've been doing. No one wants to see you get hurt … and you seem to be the only one who drives anymore."
I shifted from the recliner to the wheelchair and looked up to face him. "Jeez, Lewis, this is great. I don't know what to say … Last year was pretty difficult getting my car in and out. Of course you have my permission. You have my undying appreciation."
He nodded. "My pleasure." He then bowed awkwardly and turned and left.
And now I have this great parking space on the street, about ten feet from my front door. Wow! Etna is almost like living in Disneyland. In the spring I should check to see what's in the garages …
It's November. Getting on toward Thanksgiving. The Christmas decorations around town are up. Thanksgiving night they'll turn 'em on.
Today I made a decision.
When I go to work Monday morning, I'm going to tell Joe that it's time. I've been experiencing a lot of pain. Too much to endure any longer. I have fought like a madman to keep a diseased leg that is no longer viable in any sense of the word. I'm not gaining anything by keeping it, and Wilson has not showed up. The surgical team has been more than patient with me. No one has bugged me to make a decision one way or the other, and I think I owe them more than half-assed promises and vague excuses. They know how scared I am, and they realize that my fear is based on that odd assumption that I will be less of a man if one of my body parts goes noticeably missing. I know it's crap, but I can't help it.
It is time to fish or cut bait … shit or get off the pot.
"Shit" it is! The leg goes. The sooner the better.
Now I have to tell them.
Convince them I mean business.
God, how I wish Wilson was here … I need him, but he has not picked up on the clues …
358
