Part 16

Joe Quinn was talking to Zander Smith about the Bristol 500. "That car of Gordon's gets tight on the long runs. Too many accidents in that one."

"It gets very wild out there," Zander agreed. "Strange track."

"Hard to pass on," said Joe. "Trouble will find them if they aren't patient."

Dr. Monica Quartermaine come in with an orderly and a wheelchair. "I can give you an EKG, at least. How would you like to get out of this room for awhile?"

"It's something I've always dreamed of," was the answer.

"May I wheel him down, or does that go against the regulations?" asked Joe Quinn.

"Well," Monica shrugged, "I don't see why not," "Just go with them, please," she said to the orderly.

The orderly got Zander into the wheelchair.

"Everything looks different from over here." he said. "Thanks," he added, to Joe, a little shyly.

Joe wheeled him to the elevator and to the lab. After they had finished the test, he asked the orderly if he could wheel the patient outside for a little while. The orderly went to a desk phone, called and returned, saying that Dr. Jones said it would be all right to take 10 minutes out in the garden.

"Nothing like a little fresh air," Joe said. "We used to take the kids camping up in the mountains. They got more energy. Course, they already had plenty. Even we got some more, though."

Zander smiled. "Kids. You mean Nurse Questioner and her two little brothers, like you usually do?"

"The very ones."

"But didn't you have your own?"

"No, I had a stepson for awhile. Don't know where he lives now, though."

"You were married, then?"

"Yeah, a few years. Then my wife left me, sudden-like. She was from Korea, originally. I don't know what she didn't like, she didn't say. Now she lives in a cabin up in Maine. So it wasn't the country," he grinned.

"I'm sorry."

"It wasn't too bad. Dear John letter, you know. I always wondered why she had to leave first and then write a letter."

"I know all about that."

"How so?"

"I got one of those. But it's not my wife, so it can't be as bad as it was for you."

"Now that's the last thing you need. Well, I wish that had not happened just this week, at least. Want me to read it out loud for you and make fun of it? That's what Danny and Kathleen did with mine. Sounds bad. But they got me laughing, actually. It helped. But her English was bad, and that made it easy for them. Not that they generally make fun of people's bad English. It was just that they didn't like her much and they didn't like her letter; and they didn't like her leaving, even though they didn't like her. Hard to explain."

"I was going to put her through college and everything. I've got a good job, though everybody says it is bad, it is good compared to what I've been used to before. But I can hardly laugh anyway, or my stomach kills me. Maybe in a few weeks."

"OK. Just call me."

"It is great to get out of there. Your fresh air theory is good."

"It's a good thing it's summer, and not raining."

"Yeah. Nice to get away from the questioners. I mean, I don't mean anything against Nurse Connor. It's just I realize I've let more slip than I have in years. I can't think of a way to get them to understand they're just getting themselves into stuff they will wish they hadn't."

"They just don't know what they are getting into. Like Todd Bodine at Bristol."

"Yeah."

"If you told them the whole thing, they'd know. They'd back off then. Then again, some of them won't. But at least they wouldn't stumble into it."

"It's just not worth it. I've never felt bad that I can remember. How those squiggly lines in the machine can say I feel bad when I don't? Not from that, at least."

"If something happened, those doctors would feel worse than you, just because they saw that something could happen. If they could have done something about it. I see you're worried about the trouble they'd get into. But there's also the trouble you could get into. Worse than heart trouble. "

"Worse."

"Too bad for you that you're not Irish. You have the worst luck I've ever seen. Where is this young lady? I would like to go and give her a lecture."

"I don't know where she is," Zander said. "But thank you. Picturing you giving her this lecture does almost as much."

"Save that letter," Joe advised, starting to push the wheelchair to go back in. "Someday you are going to think it is funny. I promise."