House, M.D.

When Young Doctors Strut Too Much of Their Stuff - New York Times

2007-06-27T22:46:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I didn't see this when it first came out.

When Young Doctors Strut Too Much of Their Stuff - New York Times

When I was a new faculty physician, I worked with a resident doctor who was smart and energetic and took excellent care of her patients.

There was just one problem. As she delivered her thoughtful patient presentations to me and the other attending doctors, it was hard not to notice her low-cut dress.

“You two have to say something to her,” one of my male colleagues said to me and another female doctor one afternoon. But while none of us would have hesitated to intervene had she prescribed the wrong drug for a patient, we felt weird saying something to her about her clothes. So we didn’t.

Nearly a decade later, my impression is that more young physicians and students are dressing like that resident. Every day, it seems, I see a bit of midriff here, a plunging neckline there. Open-toed sandals, displaying brightly manicured toes, seem ubiquitous.

Midriffs, plunging necklines... so why is this a problem? This just proves what a great faculty member I am: I would never hesitate to say something about a low-cut dress. In fact, I should email this article to Cuddy.

And then I should email the author of this article and see if I can get that resident's CV.

your author isn't dead...

2007-05-01T16:32:00.000-04:00

Your author isn't dead...just buried. The demands of real life continue to suck up House-time. It's been weeks since I've even seen the show.

I haven't given up hope of resuming the blog, or of at least finishing the backstory arc. But it will be a while longer.

maxims

2007-01-12T17:32:00.000-05:00

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.

Some people are like a slinky - not really good for much, but you can’t help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

myrrh

2006-12-25T23:18:00.000-05:00

This can't be happening.

This can't be happening.

What's going to happen to me?

Am I going to lose my job?

Am I going to lose my license?

Am I going to go to jail?

It's not fair. I didn't do anything --nothing they didn't make me do. If they'd just left me alone, everything would have been fine. Everything would have been like it was.

Of course, "like it was" is short for "when my life sucked, but manageably."

And now... what am I going to do? They want to take away my license and send me to jail. How did it come to this?

I've been fired before. But they always come back, always, because I have what they need. I can do what they can't. It's only one thing, but it's a big thing, it's an important thing.

But they're not going to care about that any more. And I have nothing left to offer.

I'm almost fifty years old. I'm crippled, I'm alone, I spent Christmas morning with puke in my hair. Despair is clutching at me, pulling me down. There are six messages on my answering machine, three from Wilson and three from my mother. I played them but I didn't really listen to them. I didn't.

I couldn't.

I vaguely remember Wilson being here... sometime. All I really remember is the sight of his eyes hard with anger as something broke within him.

God, what was I thinking? It made sense at the time -- I was frantic with pain and nausea, I just wanted it to go away. I wanted it all to go away -- pain, nausea, Cuddy, Tritter, Chase, everything. And I was going to keep on taking that oxycodone until it all went away. Probably not the best prescription I've ever written.

Of course, it didn't do much good for Wilson's patient either; he's still dead. Still.

If I lose my license I might as well be dead.

Is that the only part of me that's still alive?

I got your diversity right here. On a plate.

2006-12-21T19:11:00.000-05:00

Wisconsin Man Runs Over, Eats Seven-Legged Transgendered Deer:

FOND DU LAC, Wis. — Rick Lisko hunts deer with a bow, but got his most unusual one driving his truck down his mile-long driveway.

The young buck had nub antlers — and seven legs. Lisko said it also had both male and female reproductive organs.

...John Hoffman of Eden Meat Market skinned the deer for Lisko, who wasn't going to waste the venison from the animal.

"And by the way, I did eat it," Lisko said. "It was tasty."

microbe stuffies

2006-12-11T17:38:00.000-05:00

One of the many things I hate about Christmas shopping is that when I find things to inflict on other people, they are often the same things someone might want to inflict on me. Exhibit A: GIANTmicrobes:

We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes -- only a million times actual size! Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, Stomach Ache, Cough, Ear Ache, Bad Breath, Kissing Disease, Athlete's Foot, Ulcer, Martian Life, Beer & Bread, Black Death, Ebola, Flesh Eating, Sleeping Sickness, Dust Mite, Bed Bug, and Bookworm (and in our Professional line: H.I.V. and Hepatitis).

I could just see some wag giving me the one for sleeping sickness. This one would make the perfect gift for a certain out-of-control asshole cop who's on a crusade because I didn't diagnose him with venereal disease. I should go down to the lab and nick a Petri dish with some of the real stuff to use as the gift tag.

Usually I'd be grateful to anyone who provided an ironclad excuse for not going up to my mother's for Thanksgiving AND Christmas. But somehow "sorry Mom, can't jump bail this year"... it just isn't the thing for squelching unwelcome conversation.

Speaking of unwelcome conversation, I need to go see Cuddy to beg for a Vicodin before she heads out. I wonder, will she give me a couple to take home? Or will I have to come ring her doorbell in the middle of the night?

Either way, there's going to be a whole lot of stuff she's going to want to talk about that I don't want to even think about. I don't want to think about anything right now. Not until she gives me my damn pills, until I know I can count on turning the pain down another few hours.

This is all Tritter's fault. Why is Cuddy being so weak? If only I could give him a nice Petri dish of flesh eating... of Ebola.

sometimes natural selection just doesn't work

2006-10-25T14:43:00.000-04:00

Gravity, entropy, action and reaction, and Murphy's: the laws of nature are pitiless. Sometimes technology lets you evade the laws -- like radar detectors or plastic surgery.

There's one law that should always be enforced, and that's the law of natural selection. Unfortunately, technology lets the wrong people get around that law as well:

Police said a lovesick teenager tried to kill herself but ended up killing someone else instead.Authorities in Atlanta described what they said was a suicide attempt by a 16-year-old girl, who they said sent text messages on her cell phone as she was about to drive into an oncoming car. They said Louise Egan Brunstead had told friends she was going to kill herself, because another female student at her high school had refused to have sex with her....

[B]efore driving her family's Mercedes into the oncoming car, she counted down, "Nine, eight, seven, six -- I'm going to do it" in a text message to the girl who had rejected her. Brunstead survived the Oct. 4 crash with just an ankle injury -- but the driver of the other car, Nancy Salados-Mayo, a mother of three, was killed.

The law of unintended consequences. It's a bitch, isn't it?

bread into stones

2006-09-28T10:43:00.000-04:00

This backstory post alludes to people and events in earlier entries, most importantly:

a favor for Dr Ball
while I looked around....
it's the springtime of my life

Thanks to Namaste for the beta.

PG-13 for language

I blink as I look around. It's sunny, a splendid early fall day, a bright sun in a perfect blue sky. The trees are picking up their first glints of color. And I have the perfect view. I'm alone, on the roof of the hospital.

It's like I'm in a dream. To be precise, it's like I'm in a dream at the exquisite moment when I've realized I'm dreaming and that it's a very pleasant dream and I'd like to keep dreaming it, right before it all dissolves into wakefulness.

Once I would have been putting the finishing touch on the moment by enjoying a smoke or a cup of coffee, or even Stacey's company. But I've had to give up those pleasures, addictive as they are. Stacey's gone. Smoking's out; I could bring a cigar, I guess, but that takes too much planning. Coffee's still an option, but not for the roof; I can't carry the cup up that last flight of stairs. I need both hands for the cane and the banister.

How long has it been since I've been up here? My rehab after the ketamine treatment didn't include jaunts to the roof, and I didn't come up here when I first came back to work. And now... well, there's a meeting going on downstairs, sponsored by the Committee for Graduate Medical Education. And since I have fellows, I'm supposed to be at that meeting. But G-Med is too cheap to buy doughnuts, so what did they expect? Especially when it's such a nice day outside?

I could have just gone out to the balcony, but my leg's feeling a bit better this afternoon. So even though I'm not pretend-hiding from anyone today, I decided to come back up to the roof while I still -- while it was still relatively easy. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to do this on impulse the way I used to.

I lean against the low wall. The trees start to rustle as the breeze picks up the first of the falling leaves....

Eileen looked down at her score, considering. “Maybe we could get together sometime. I don’t know when; I don’t have my calendar with me,” she hastily added.

“I’m waiting on some stuff myself," I said. "I could call you.”

I'd told Eileen the truth when I said that. The "stuff" I was waiting on was the results of my fellowship applications -- invitations to interview -- and, indirectly, the results of everyone else's applications, to see what my work schedule would look like after it was bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated to accomodate everyone else's interviews.

It was still a little early for those invitations to be rolling in, so I wasn't thinking about them when I headed back to work the Monday after I went bowling with Eileen. When Hirsch gave me a couple of weird, knowing looks during morning rounds, I figured it was because he knew I was In For It somehow about some thing. But what? It was well past my birthday, so I was safe about that. I couldn't recall having done anything in the last day or two that would land me in trouble. Maybe he'd gotten a peek at the next rotation schedule, and knew I'd soon be inflicted on one of his friends -- or one of his enemies. Or maybe one of my enemies.

It was a busy day: lots of flu and pneumonia, and plenty of E.R. and clinic admits as all the people who thought they were well enough to go to work found out the hard way that they weren't. Soon afternoon rounds were upon us, and as I half-listened to my first-year make it through report, I realized that Hirsch was still giving me the funny look -- and now so was Barras, the other third-year; and even some second-year from another service who'd shown up for cross-coverage.

It was annoying, especially since I was still smarting a little from the disaster with Eileen, so as report ended and people started gathering their papers I discreetly shot a rubber band across the table into Barras's sternum. He looked up.

"What's up?" I demanded.

"Haven't you checked your mail, House?" he asked.

"What? How -- " I started, and fell silent with the rest of the room as Hirsch stood up. Barras smiled broadly.

Hirsch looked around the crowded conference room. "Well, before we move on here, I have some great news. It looks like some of you have already heard it, but now I can say it officially: the nominations for Chief Resident have been announced. Congratulations to our own Dr Barras --" he held up a hand to hold the applause -- "and Dr House!"

The applause started as Hirsch pompously shook Barras's hand, then mine. Some more people stuck their hands out at me; I shook them, mechanically, trying to position myself so no moron tried to slap me on the back. I glanced across the conference room to Barras. He was getting the same treatment and didn't seem to mind it at all. Maybe it was because for him, the congratulations were sincere.

He looked up at me and grinned; I forced a kind of smile and nodded back. As the room emptied, he came around the table and slapped me on the arm. "Congratulations!"

"Thanks. You too."

He was still grinning. "Doesn't seem real, does it?" He chuckled at the expression on my face. "Well, maybe it does to you; I always figured you'd be nominated." He stared around the room as if he were so bewildered with joy that he couldn't figure out what to do next. Call somebody, probably; either that or make coffee.

The phone rang, making the decision for him. Barras snatched up the receiver. "Hello? Yeah! Thanks, man.... No, I had no idea.... Well, a little.... Komeda, Rosenthal, Tanner, and Coombs...."

So that's who nominated Barras. Not too shabby.

"....Yes he did. ...That's right." He looked up at me. My stomach dropped.

"It's Patel," Barras said. "He says congratulations."

"Thanks," I muttered.

"He says thanks," Barras reported. "....Sure!" He checked his watch. "Another hour or so?"

I decided it was time to escape before Barras felt obliged to include me in his plans. I slipped out of the conference room and headed as quickly as I could for the mailboxes.

As I threaded my way through the halls, I kept getting smiles and congratulations from the other residents and even some of the attendings. Finally I made it to the mailboxes. As usual, my box was stuffed full -- I usually only checked it a couple of times a week -- but I immediately knew that the envelope on top of the stack was the one I'd come to find. It was heavy, cream-colored, with my name handwritten on the front and THE COMMITTEE FOR GRADUATE MEDICAL EDUCATION engraved on the back flap.

I tucked the rest of the mail under my arm as I opened the letter:

Dear Dr House:

The Committee for Graduate Medical Education is pleased to inform you that you have been nominated to serve a fourth year of residency in the position of Chief Resident.....

I stared at the letter.

I should have been happy to receive it. I should have been throwing the rest of my mail in the air and whooping for joy.

But I felt none. The nomination was pointless. Who did this to me, anyway?

You were nominated by faculty members Lewis L. Roderick, M.D., Neurology, and Patrick Jennings, M.D., Ph.D., Nephrology....

Damn it. They meant well, they meant it as a compliment but...

But even though it was a huge honor, I simply didn't want to be Chief Resident. It meant baby-sitting all the other residents, planning events, booking speakers, working on the schedules, mediating disputes, sitting in on disciplinary hearings -- all the administrative and supervisory crap I hated. And even if I wanted to be Chief Resident, there was no way in hell G-Med would ever offer me the position.

I could always just not apply, but... Roderick and Jennings were two of my most important references for my fellowship applications. What would they say if I blew off this compliment they'd paid me?

No, I'd have to go through with it. I'd have to go through the motions, apply and be interviewed, knowing the whole time that it was nothing but a big waste of time -- and knowing that everyone else knew it was a big waste of time. Great.

I took the rest of the mail out from under my arm. The next item was also from G-Med: the general announcement, including a complete list of all the nominees. I scanned the list, frowned, and checked the pocket of my lab coat. Satisfied, I stuck the letter in my other pocket, jammed the announcement back in my box with the rest of the mail, and went to go find someplace to think.

January wasn't the most pleasant time for a smoke on the roof, and when I got up there it was almost dark. So I did what all the other smokers did in the winter and set up in the vestibule at the top of the stairs, propping the door for ventilation and an escape route. Some thoughtful person had even dragged an old chair up there. I pulled the letter, a book of matches, and my single cigarette out of my pockets, and settled in to read and think. Maybe I could just "forget" to turn in the application....

A door slammed, down on the next landing. I sat up to listen. Two men's voices: one speaking, one laughing. I couldn't make out what they were saying because of the echoes, but their voices didn't sound like nurses or orderlies and weren't weary enough to belong to residents. Footsteps, climbing up the stairs, with the flat footfall of dress shoes.... Oh, shit. Attendings.

They were getting closer. I quietly stood up and slipped out onto the roof, gently closing the door behind me and leaving it open a crack, blocking it so it wouldn't close in the wind and lock me out. I stepped away from the door and around the corner of the vestibule, out of the wind. Hopefully they wouldn't be jerks and pull the door shut.

They didn't. Instead, one of them decided to be an even bigger jerk and open the door again. "Anyone out there?" he called.

"Oh, just leave it," one of them said from inside. "Come back in and close the damn door, it's cold out."

"Hang on," said the first guy. "Smell that? Someone's out here, let me just see...." His voice grew louder as he came around the side of the vestibule. "Well, look who's here!" It was Ogilvie.

"I was wondering who'd be out in this kind of weather. Partying it up with your friends?" He looked down at my smoke. "Give me one of those, will you?"

"Sorry. My last one." It was the truth; I never carried more than one for precisely this reason.

"Liar," he said. "Don't worry, I won't stay long. I've got enough sense to come in out of the cold. Of course, I've got someplace to go," he sneered. "So: nominated for Chief Resident! Bet you never thought you'd live to see the day, especially considering how you started off here."

I took another drag on my cigarette and stared straight ahead, refusing to take the bait.

"But you've made it all the way up to now without getting thrown out...."

"I've still got five months to go."

"...and you even managed to impress Jennings and Roderick enough for them to throw their nominations away on you. You've done well for yourself, House."

I didn't say anything, but I wondered how Ogilvie knew who nominated me. That information was confidential, so I hadn't thought it would hit the grapevine quite that quickly.

"But what about your pal Foghorn Leghorn?" Ogilvie asked maliciously. "He didn't come through for you? Oh, too bad. I bet he even gave you the talk."

I kept silent, but gave him a quick look, pretending not to understand.

"No? I'm surprised," he said. I made a mental note to get him in a poker game the minute residency was officially over. "Apparently, every so often he invites some resident over for a mint julep on the veranda and a long chat. It's usually one of his pets, but sometimes it's one of the problem children. If you weren't on his pet list, I thought for sure you'd be on his shit list.

"It makes sense that he wouldn't recruit you. There was a lot of controversy about whether or not even to admit you, and Ball was in the 'no' corner. So was I. But G-Med voted to let you in, and here you are."

I'd heard enough, so I walked across the roof to the low wall at the edge. But Ogilvie was persistent as pinworms. He followed me over and stood by my left elbow, looking out over the wall at the panorama of the college town.

"There it is," he said, "the whole world spread out before you. You're smart, you're just starting your career, you've got the world at your feet.... and there's still only two faculty members who can stand the thought of seeing your face for a fourth year. You've been nominated for Chief Resident, yet you know you haven't got a prayer of actually getting the offer.

"You're in a real pickle, aren't you? It's a waste of your time to apply; I think you know that, even as conceited as you are. G-Med will never offer you a slot.

"But you still have to do it. You're going to have to send in the papers and sit in that interview and pretend that you can't tell that they can't wait to get you out of there. If you don't, it's going to look terrible. You've got fellowship applications out, you've got to show that you take opportunities and you're striving for excellence and all that future-doctors-of-America crap. And most of all, you can't take the tiniest chance of ticking off the guys who nominated you, because they're also your references, and they're the only ones you've got. So you're going to have to go through with it."

"Thanks for caring enough to point all this out," I said sourly.

"Oh, I don't care one way or the other. I don't even care if you stay. As of July 1, I'm out of here. Anesthesia," he bragged. "Starting a fellowship downstairs. So do what you want, as long as you stay out of my PACU.

"I just saw you out here and wanted to congratulate you. Only you could be so screwed up that a CR nomination's a trap instead of an honor."

"Aren't your shoes getting wet?" I asked.

"Roof's been clear for days, but thanks for asking," he said.

The door opened. "Hey! Are you coming?"

"Yeah, hang on," Ogilvie shouted over his shoulder. He turned back to me. "Well, enjoy your nomination, House. Take as long as you like. Don't worry, I'll leave the door open."

He walked back across the roof and rapped on the door. As the door opened, I could hear his friend complaining: "Jesus, Stan, what took you so long?" To my relief, I didn't hear the door slam shut again; Ogilvie must have kept his promise and propped it open. I gave them another minute or two to clear out of there before I went back inside.

How long ago that was. And now I'm a department head with three fellows (of whom one was himself a Chief Resident, as he loves to remind us.) I even have my own conference room, with a coffee pot, plenty of chairs, and a carpet stained with my own blood.

The trees quiver, and another couple of dried leaves skitter across the top of the wall. I check my watch and decide I'd better get back before my leg stiffens up. I take my cane and head for the door, back down to my little kingdom.

looking back to the path ahead

2006-09-15T20:21:00.000-04:00

Sitting up in bed, a pillow under my leg. There's a journal open on my lap, but I'm not really reading it. There's music on -- Mozart's 40th -- and I'm listening to that. Somehow the Andante makes it a little easier to think about the events of the day, lets me approach them from an oblique angle instead of crashing into them face-first. Like Cuddy, lying to me. Like Wilson, lying to me. About a patient! And all... for what? For my own good? They used to yell at me because I was miserable, because my successes didn't make me happy. Now they're yelling at me because I'm too happy, that if I'm happy and successful I'll think that I'm God.

I suppose it's easier to be miserable. At least they didn't think I was suffering from delusions of grandeur; they just thought I was an ass.

And now.... I glance to the side. Propped against the nightstand, my cane is waiting for me.

Just as it always was. Cameron probably took custody of it and then gave it to Wilson. Wilson brought it down to my hospital room; I used it for a day or two, brought it home with me, and stuck it in the closet. But I never really forgot it was there.

I don't know what was worse tonight: coming home and having to stop and think about how I was going to take the steps up to the condo door? Having to stop and lean on the desk before I could even make it across the living room? Feeling my muscles respond to the paresthesias by starting to cramp -- with all their newly regained strength?

Was it the moment that I realized I was going to have to get out a cane if I was going to make it to the bedroom?

Or was it that small ripple of relief at knowing that the cane was there? At seeing its handle and knowing those last steps down the hall would be a little more bearable?

Once I got myself the thirteen steps down the hall and into the bedroom, the old routine came back so easily it was like getting back on a bike: jacket over the small chair; watch, phone, and newly-filled pill bottle next to the alarm clock; make sure the remote's within reach; start the slow process of undressing and getting into pajamas. And then just wait for the relief brought by rest and Vicodin.

I become aware of the music again. The last movement is winding up, in all its sober, stoic splendor. The final chord sounds; a pause, and then the next playlist starts.

My stomach lurches as I realize what's coming up next, and I start to reach for the remote. But then I think better of it. Might as well face this too.

When I was in rehab, there were only a few hours a day when I wasn't thinking about rehab. Some of those hours were devoted to sleep and, sometimes, to meals; some of them were devoted to catching up on my TiVo; the rest were mostly spent on the Internet. I kept up with my journal habit, and then there was all that music to download. I also tried out a couple of podcasts and checked out the freakshow that is YouTube.

I also Googled a lot. Cuddy, Wilson... Not much on Robert Chase, but still plenty on Rowan (who is still dead.) Foreman's name is plastered all over the site for his medical school's alumni association. If Cameron has a MySpace page I couldn't find it. I tried to look up a few old classmates but it was difficult; I could usually remember a first name or a last name, but not both. Not unless they'd done something that had especially pissed me off, like old von Lieberman, who I discovered has a new clinical trial going. Something small. Even he should be able to manage that one.

I moved on through the select group of people whose first and last names I do know. It's a small group; some of its members got to join it the easy way, by being related to me. I looked up my mother and was amused to find her name in her retirement community's website, on the page for the garden club. Then I looked up my brother Mark. At first I couldn't find much on him, just a bland-looking page in some obscure federal agency announcing its assimilation into a bigger agency. I had better luck when I looked him up as M. House: I found links to his chess articles, including an archive of his columns for Chess Nerd News.

Chess Nerd News. I stared at the screen for a long moment.

And finally I looked up Eileen.

She has a website. I looked all around, clicked most of her links. She's in a couple of thousand different ensembles and I looked at them all. She has an "About Me" section; I skipped that one. She has a "Contact Me" link; I skipped that one too.

She has a page where you can buy CDs. Most of them are by her couple of thousand different ensembles; I didn't buy any, but I listened to all the sample clips. It was hard to pick out her voice.

She also has a page with a few complete tracks: early music, baroque music, folk music, opera. Solo tracks. Downloadable.

So I downloaded them all.

And that's what's playing now.

Her voice has changed a little without really changing: a bigger range, more power, but still Eileen. I make myself listen. It's dark out, and the only light in the room is the bedside lamp. The recording is of a Bach cantata.

I visited her site every night that week. It was out there on the Web, wasn't it? Like an invitation. Contact Me.

And I was feeling good, and I was feeling hopeful, and I was beginning to get my old life back, my life before the infarction, and if I could be the person I was in some ways, why couldn't I be the person I was in other ways? Why couldn't I turn the clock back?

And every time I clicked away from her site, I heard the voice from the hallucination -- not the fun ketamine flight hallucination, the other one, the exsanguinating-on-a-gurney one. The voice of the guy who shot me, whispering in the back of my memory: Would anybody care that the world lost that wit?

And finally, one night, I decided I'd do it. I'd get in touch with Eileen.

I didn't email her. Instead, I Googled again and found a couple of phone numbers. I called her work number first, in the middle of the night when she wouldn't be there, just to see if I'd really found her. I ended up calling it a few more times just to listen to her voice mail announcement, preparing myself for when I'd go live.

I thought about what I wanted to say, how I might say it. I thought about the best time to reach her. Finally I decided it was time.

It was around eight o'clock on a Sunday night, the day after I'd run my first mile. I stared at my handset for a long time and then started pressing the numbers.

The first ring, and it suddenly hit me: what if Eileen wasn't the one who would pick up the phone? The second ring: what if it was? I hung up before it got to the third ring.

A week or two later, I called again, and this time I even made it to three rings. But not to four. I hung up again.

I made it to five miles on a Tuesday morning, and that afternoon after lunch I called her. I held on until the answering machine picked up. But I did not leave a message at the sound of the beep.

I told myself I'd try it again. But it was easy to put it off as I got ready to go back to work. Six miles, seven, eight miles....

And now here I am, back where I was before. My gaze flits to the cane and to the pill bottle, and the assassin in my head starts to whisper again: ...they know that their actions have consequences, and they know that those consequences are their fault....

It's better that I didn't call her. It's silly to look back; there's nothing I can say to her anyway. She doesn't want to hear from me.

The cantata is over and the next track begins. Che farò senza Euridice? she sings. ...Che farò senza il mio ben....

Eileen isn't singing to me. This is just a recording of her singing for somebody else, and I'm just kind of eavesdropping. And that's enough.

I lean back into the pillows.

shuffle and replay

2006-09-14T09:44:00.000-04:00

A rainy morning. Coffee's hot, staff's on rounds, iPod's docked, and I'm looking over my playlists.

Seems like I've been doing this a lot lately, ever since Cuddy woke me up from the ketamine sleep. (Now why couldn't she have done it with a kiss instead of just a word to her anesthesia guy?)

That was weird: realizing in a detached way that I was flying, wondering how long I'd been flying, wondering if I was dreaming, wondering if I wasn't dreaming and flying was the reality, enjoying the sensation and then feeling the ground rushing up at me, faster and faster, and then Cuddy standing over my bed, her eyes huge and swimming in hope and anxiety...

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Like crap," I croaked. And then I thought about it. Yes, I felt tired and spent and sore, but I slowly realized I felt not so much sore but more the memory of having been sore, like the wrung-out relief you feel when you wake up the morning after a hard workout.

And then it occurred to me that it had been a long time since I'd felt that kind of exhausted relief -- a very long time -- and only then did it hit me.

My leg didn't hurt.

I checked myself mentally, hip to toe. No joint pain, no muscle soreness or cramping, none of that sciatic pain I was starting to get now and then from supination....

No nerve pain.

I "listened" again: nothing. No buzzing, no burning, no pinpricks.... nothing. My leg felt quiet. It felt normal.

I caught Cuddy's eyes again. "Ketamine?"

She nodded.

"How long?" I asked.

"Five days," she said. "So tell me. How do you feel?" And as she saw the answer on my face, she started to beam.

And then it was a flurry: my mother, smiling wearily as Cuddy whispered something in her ear and then covering her face with her hands as she started to cry; my brother Mark; Wilson, his arms crossed and a cautiously elated look in his eyes; the team fluttering in and out. Getting up for the first time, moving slowly because of my belly wound, realizing that even though my leg was still weak I could put a little weight on it without pain. Turning down Percocet when the nurses offered it to me, and laughing at looks on their faces when I told them that the pain from the wounds was no big deal. Walking out to the car on the day of discharge. Going home and getting the first good night's sleep I've had in years. Going to rehab and being able to do every exercise the physical therapist gave me -- and more -- and seeing the improvement every day.

First the little changes: being able to lift my leg over the threshold of the shower door without thinking about it, or to tie my shoes without gritting my teeth. Being able to undress without using my hands to lift my leg out of the pants leg. Catching sight of myself in a mirror and seeing myself walking instead of limping. Even things like being truly hungry, because I was active and didn't have any Vicodin slowing my gut and dulling my appetite.

Then the big changes. Like stairs. Just being able to take them without clinging to the banister for dear life, hoping with each step I could haul myself up with my left leg before my right gave out and I fell on my face, knowing I could go to the movies and sit where I wanted without being stared at.... oh, that was great. And then being able to take the stairs one after the other? Being able to run?

I pushed myself as hard as I could, and when I wasn't at rehab I was thinking about rehab. I went to a store to buy shorts instead of ordering long sweats online -- no more worries about the dressing room and about carrying the shopping bag. I pored over maps of Princeton looking for places to jog and then to run. I started logging my mileage.

And I made new playlists for my iPod, with running in mind. Every day or two, as my endurance increased, I added a few more songs. And I was happy. Nothing else mattered, not even that some guy had tried to blow me away in my own office and had gotten away with it. I was alive. I was more alive than I'd been in years. And I was having to make playlists ninety minutes long to cover my runs.

And now I'm sitting in my office, looking over my playlists, looking at the one I'd intended for my run this morning -- the one I'd had to skip. And every so often I have to stop clicking and just clench the mouse as a burning, stabbing sensation burrows through my right thigh.

I know what it is.

I know what it means.

Sex: more dangerous than cell phones

2006-09-09T20:46:00.000-04:00

Sex: More Dangerous than Cell Phones

companion fic: Ripples

2006-09-05T14:26:00.000-04:00

For your reading pleasure: a little trifle of a companion fic. Think of it as like a DVD extra.

So what's Dr Ball doing now?

anticipation

2006-09-01T08:06:00.000-04:00

Two pills? Or three?

I'm in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew and looking down at the pills in my palm.

I think over how I felt yesterday and how I'm feeling now, and I try to keep my mind on the decision at hand and not on the steep increase in my daily dose this summer.

My old reliable. I first started taking it after the infarction. I complained the first time the nurse brought it -- I don't need this -- but after a day or two I gave in. I found it hard to admit to myself how much better I felt. I kept taking it while I was in the hospital, and then all through my stay in rehab, and then in the weeks and months afterwards....

And soon it was just part of my new life. Wake up in the morning, grab the cane, make the coffee, take the pills.

But after a while, the usual dose wasn't always enough and I found myself taking an extra pill now and then. "Now and then" happened more and more often until my usual dose had doubled.

And it kept creeping up, but so slowly it was easy to think of it as normal. Wilson raised an eyebrow when he was here -- by then my usual daily dosage had doubled again -- but he didn't say anything.

And now I'm taking more than ever just to get by.

But it's what I need. I buy the biggest bottle the drugstore has but it barely lasts a couple of weeks. I look down at the pills, forcing myself to think only about how many I need and not about why I need them, and why I need so many.

They're not Vicodin.

They're docusate sodium and casanthranol. They look a little like jelly beans.

The more Vicodin I need, the more of this I need. It's almost a perfect correlation. And now, this summer with the morphine... I've had to take more of this as well. Every morning for the last month or so I've asked myself the same question: Two or three? The answer's been three every morning for a couple of weeks now.

Oh well. I shove the implications of this out of my mind, decide that if I have to add a fourth pill I'll start with the bedtime dose, and toss back the three pills. I can swallow them dry, but they work better if I take them with plenty of water. I fill a tall glass from the sink and gulp it down.

The coffee's done, and I pour myself a cup to complete my Breakfast of Champions. I finish it, pour the second, and push myself off from the counter to launch myself back to the bedroom to dress.

I smile as I walk down the hallway. I had clinic yesterday, and I had a case that made it totally worth my while, some guy with an amazing swollen tongue. I don't think I've taken such a thorough H&P since I was in medical school. I picked up the admit and I'm going to present the case to the team this morning.

"Ippp crrrm." This is going to be funny.

complications

2006-08-31T01:26:00.000-04:00

PG-13 for language and content.

Thanks to npkedit and Dr Mac for their technical help, and special thanks to Namaste for her patient, heroic beta work on this long chapter.

It's been a while, and we've been joined by new readers from around the world, so here's a quick note on what's going on.

Since its beginning, this fic has included chapters about House's past, including the infarction story and a series of chapters about his residency.

The foundations of the backstory chapters were laid during the first season. Since then, the show has rendered all this backstory AU. For the ficblog, I have chosen to stay as consistent as possible with earlier backstory chapters. For example, Canon House is the only child of Blythe and John House. In the ficblog, House has a brother named Mark; their ficblog mother is named Nancy. The backstory is also populated with characters that live only in the fic, not in the show.

House has been reminiscing here and there about Eileen, a woman who came unexpectedly to visit him in the hospital after the infarction. (There's a complete list of Eileen chapters in the right sidebar.) He'd met Eileen during his residency and found himself interested in her. Things were complicated, though, for Eileen was significantly younger and -- even worse -- was dating a medical student whom House was supervising at the time.

Eileen and House bumped into each other a few times that spring. Their paths crossed again that November: Eileen, now a senior in college, had just broken up with her med student. House found himself giving her a lift home for her Christmas vacation, taking her bowling in January -- and then inviting her out for a bite to eat....

Sitting here in my bedroom chair, in the dark.

Wilson left a couple of hours ago. We finally went to see "Snakes on a Plane" last night. The closest place it was playing was down at the fancy theater on Route 1, which happens to be in a mall, and Wilson's price for the privilege of seeing this fine piece of cinema was dinner at the seafood restaurant instead of the food court and side trips to Williams-Sonoma and Restoration Hardware. Gotta feather the nest to attract the chicks, I guess.

My leg's been better lately, but wandering around the mall wasn't good preparation for climbing the stairs in the theater. At least stadium seating means I can stretch out a little. The theater wasn't too crowded, which also helped. I wondered idly where all the high school kids were; the local schools aren't in yet. Not that I missed them.

As we were leaving the theater, Wilson's cell phone went off. I wondered who it was -- he wasn't on call -- but I quickly saw that whoever it was would be talking a while. So I found a bench.

Another movie let out while I was waiting -- apparently, the one that all the high school kids and other local yokels were seeing that night. They streamed out, clumping into groups and pairs, some of them turning the corner to go drink mochas at the bookstore and others going straight ahead toward the Friday's for cheese sticks and illegal beer. Just another Wednesday night. I suddenly felt very conscious of how invisible I was to them -- some old guy sitting alone on a bench.

And that was fine. Wilson finally got off the phone. From there it was back to my place for legal beer, and now it's just me again.

It's getting dark earlier now. Aas we left the mall we passed the restaurants, their windows lit up in the dark. It struck me how cozy and merry they looked. I quickly reminded myself that that cozy and merry look was a commodity, produced by architects and designers, and a pretty trite commodity at that. That brass, beer, and antiques look has been around for what, thirty years now?

But once it was tempting and new. I glance up at my dresser and start thinking it's time to go to bed, but I don't. I force myself to remember....

I looked around the counter to the bowling alley's snack bar. The lanes were full now, so the snack bar was only going to get more crowded and smoky, and I wanted something a bit more substantial than pretzels and watery Cokes and cold plastic chairs.

I turned back to Eileen. “…Maybe I’ll ask if you want to go get something to eat.”

She smiled. “That sounds great.”

We ended up near the mall, at one of those R.T. McHooligan’s places. It didn’t seem too busy, but the perplexed hostess sent us to the bar anyway. I grumbled, went to get a couple of drinks, and came back to find Eileen gone. I looked around and saw her trying to catch my attention from a nearby booth.

“Good work, Abney.” I set the drinks – a Guinness and a Shirley Temple – on the table and started to take off my coat.

Eileen’s face lit up. “Oh, my favorite! How did you know?”

I frowned -- no tantrum? Not even a little eyeroll? – and then stared in chagrin as she started drinking my beer.

“Mmm.” She put the glass down. “Thank you so much, that hits the spot.” She looked at the lonely mocktail. “How cute! I didn’t know you liked those. Aren’t they called ‘Roy Rogers’ when they’re for boys?” She chuckled as I glowered at her.

“I figured you’d be up on your kiddie drinks.” I tossed my coat into the booth and sat down. Eileen looked like she was going to say something, but instead abruptly pulled the mocktail in front of her.

“Hey,” I complained, “don’t I – ” Eileen ignored me; she was staring over my left shoulder. I looked around. The waitress was coming with menus.

I cut her off before she could start the recitation of her name and the evening’s specials. “We’ll have the appetizer sampler – the big one.”

“Um, okay—” She tucked the menus back under her arm.

“And another Guinness, please,” Eileen added. I waited, amused, as the waitress carded her.

“That’s a lot of beer for you to be crying into, Abney, I didn’t realize you were that competitive.”

“Competition is my life. Besides, aren’t there nachos in that plate? I’m going to need something to drink.”

“Who said those nachos were for you? You had your chance to order, you should have taken it.”

“You said we!”

“That was the royal we.”

“Well, if you’re not going to share, then I’ll order something for myself when you get your refill on your Roy Rogers there.”

The waitress brought the second beer. Eileen smiled, pushed the mocktail across the table, and sent the new beer after it. I pushed the mocktail back to Eileen, lifted my beer, drank, kept drinking, trying to put off the moment when I’d have to put down the beer and make with the small talk.

Finally I had to set down my glass. Eileen leaned forward. “So,” she asked, “how was your Christmas? Was Santa Claus good to you?”

“A shiny new lump of coal for my collection. How about you?”

“I had a good break.”

“That’s not what I asked. Did you get your car?”

“No.” She looked away, but not quickly enough to hide the disappointment and frustration flashing across her face. She quickly collected herself. “No, I got something bigger. Our whole family got big news for Christmas: my brother got engaged.”

“Oh. Well, congratulations, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Or whatever I’m supposed to say. I don’t know; you’re not the one getting married.”

I kicked myself as soon as I said it. Eileen just chuckled wryly. “No, I’m not. But a sister-in-law’s better than a car, I suppose. I’ve met her; she’s pretty nice.”

Eileen stared at her beer for a moment, while I stared at Eileen, trying to assess her expression. I’d known her for about a year now, and I had a good sense of her type: pretty, prissy, a little prudish, and almost certainly a daddy’s girl. Was she a queen bee? She didn’t seem vindictive enough -- she’d asked me to take it easy on Kopp only half an hour after dumping him. Manipulative? She certainly played at it. But then, maybe she was doing just that – playing. I couldn’t picture any of the queen bees I’d known sending out bags of candy, for example. Or carrying around chess magazines in their bookbags, for that matter. Or inviting me to their recitals. Or sitting in a restaurant drinking beer with me.

But I could certainly picture them being upset at having their plans of engagement and marriage foiled -- Eileen had been sniveling about that all the way up to Christmas Eve -- especially plans of engagement to a future doctor. Really, why in the world else would she have been dating that scut monkey?

I looked at her again. Who was she really? Part of me was urging me to shut up and just take in the view of her sitting there, her long hair glinting copper under the stained glass lamp. Another part of me wanted to consider the possibility of taking her out again and mull over whether I wanted to expend the patient and careful effort it would almost certainly take to get to know her in the Biblical sense. But the rest of me was eager to test my theory: that Little Miss Abney had been in love with the idea of being engaged – and wasn’t used to not getting what she wanted.

Finally I just went ahead and asked. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

She didn’t look up, and even as part of my brain yelled at me to shut up already, I pressed on: “You are, aren’t you? You thought you were going to bring a boyfriend or even a fiancé home, and instead…”

“It just wasn’t meant to be, was it?” She leaned back, still looking bleakly at her beer. “No, it’s better this way. How long would it have lasted? And besides, even if I had come home with a ring on, that wouldn’t have changed anything. My brother would have still gotten engaged, and that would have been that: the rest of the holidays would have been devoted to getting their planning started, and I wouldn’t have been allowed to set a date until they had their own stuff squared away.” She laughed a little. “It’s just as well. Dresses, planning… let his bride deal with all that stupid bride stuff. I’ve got enough on my plate with school.” She reached for her beer and took a drink; as she set the heavy glass down, I saw a glint of mischief coming back into her eyes. “As long as she doesn’t pick graduation weekend or my senior recital. Those dates are mine.”

“And what if she does pick those dates?”

Eileen shrugged. “She’ll just have to shell out and get someone else to sing at her wedding.” She looked up. “Can we talk about something else now?” Her voice was getting an edge to it I’d never heard before, and I knew I was on the right track. There was no way I was going to let her change the subject.

“Why?” I pressed her. “This is interesting.”

“So call up Claire and talk about it with her. I’m on the groom’s side anyway, so I’m just a spectator.”

“And that is what’s interesting. Weddings are anthropology. Bridesmaids, for example. Those matching dresses? In ancient times they were identical to the bride’s dress, to confuse the evil spirits—”

Eileen snorted. “That explains a lot.”

I ignored her. “So, if weddings are anthropology, talking to people about weddings shows how they see themselves in relation to their culture. It’s psychology. And in this case, what’s interesting – ” I leaned forward “-- is your psychology: seeing how you react when you’re out of the spotlight.”

She leaned back, arms folded.

Bingo, I thought. “You thought you were going to be the Christmas Queen, coming home triumphant with your doctor-to-be on your arm.… I’ll bet you had it all planned out in your head: he’d give you the ring for Christmas, you’d get to show it to your mother and your sister and squeal, and you’d get to spend the rest of your break meeting his parents and gushing about dresses instead of--”

“Instead of singing to dead people and practicing bowling,” interrupted Eileen. She glared at me. “Is that all you think it was about?”

I lifted my eyebrows.

“That’s all you thought I wanted? All the trying to compromise, all the hoping and planning for a future with someone I – someone I loved, someone I thought loved me –” The disgust on my face at the thought of Eileen loving that scut monkey only made her angrier. “—losing everything I’d been hoping for – and you think it was only about getting a ring? Do you really think I’m that shallow? That I’m some kind of… some kind of….” She paused, searching for a word; I decided to help her out.

“Some kind of diva?” I suggested.

I almost burst out laughing as I saw the blood drain from her face -- I’d never thought she was capable of such fury. But my amusement faded quickly. This intriguing display of anger had nothing of her usual playfulness. There was plenty of resentment, though, and I grew a little uneasy as I thought I recognized a growing hint of disdain.

“That’s…” she finally started. “That’s… I don’t know what to say. I thought….”

I waited eagerly to hear what she thought, but instead she looked down at the table as she collected herself. Finally she looked back up. Her voice was quiet and hard.

“You knew I was with Dave for over a year, and you know how upset I was when…. when things fell apart. You were even nice to me. So for you to sit here and say this to me – either you know better and you’re just trying to make me mad, in which case it’s mean and not funny, or you really believe it. You really believe that the only reason I would want to get engaged is wanting to be the center of attention.

She looked me straight in the eye. “I wonder if it’s because you want to be the center of attention. It’s what you want, so you think everyone else wants it too. And you make fun of other people if you think they want it.

“I bet you’re used to it. I bet you love it. The way the med students hate you and fear you – I bet you eat that up, you love knowing that you’re the one they’re talking about at the end of the day. I bet you’ve been the star of the show since the day you were born. You know you’re smart, you made it through medical school – and from the looks of that old bumper sticker on your car, not just any medical school, either.” My eyes narrowed -- I thought I’d gotten enough of that Hopkins garage sticker off. “So you probably went to a good school before that and were at the top of your class there. You’ve probably been at the top of your class all your life. Were you the high school valedictorian? Did you get a perfect score on your SAT?

“And your parents – having a doctor for a son? They must be so proud.” She said it without a trace of sarcasm. “It must be nice to be the center of attention so often that you get used to it.”

“And you’re not.”

“No. I’m not.” She looked away for a moment. “You don’t know what it’s like to always be second-best, do you? In my family, my brothers are the stars. They got good grades, they played sports, they got into good schools… I landed a solo in All-State in high school, but what’s singing? Sean got two varsity letters. I was in the top twenty, but big deal – Tom was first in his class. They both graduated with all kinds of honors. Now Sean has an MBA and a fiancée. Tommy’s an engineer.

“I’ll never be an international star, but at least at school I know that if I audition, I have a chance. But at home, no matter what I do, I’ll never be Eileen – I’ll always be Sean and Tom’s sister. I wish I could explain it better.”

“No, I know what you mean,” I said. Eileen’s talk of high school… for an instant I was back at the kitchen table in Somerset, drinking hot chocolate after practice while my mother started dinner… “I… Actually, you were right. I did make a perfect score on the SAT…”

“Hah!” Eileen crowed. “Did you get your picture in the paper?”

“Sort of. It was underneath my older brother’s: ‘Local Teen Repeats Brother’s Feat.’ He’s two years older than me; he’d gotten a perfect score too. He’d also submitted corrections to some of the questions – the College Board had to go back and regrade all the tests taken that day.”

“Hm.” I waited for her to say something more, but instead she reached for her beer. She tilted the glass towards herself, gently swirling the heavy foam, but instead of lifting the glass to drink she looked up at me. “What’s his name?”

I looked down at my beer. “Mark.”

“So at school were you always ‘Mark’s brother’?”

“Never for more than a day. I’m very different from Mark.”

“Oh really?” Eileen leaned forward. “Is he as…” Her voice trailed off. I took another drink of beer and waited for her to continue, but she was still thinking.

“As mean as I am?” I finally suggested.

“What? No, that’s not what I was going to say.”

“You had quite a bit to say about that just a few minutes ago, so don’t try to spare my feelings now.”

“But that’s not what I was going to say!”

“So what were you going to say? You’ve already forgotten, which just goes to show you: tact is just a waste of time.” Eileen opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off. “Think about it. You could have told the truth and said the first thing that came to mind, but instead you thought you’d make it sound nicer. So you stop while you try to think up some euphemism. Meanwhile, the clock’s ticking and your silence is telling the person you’re talking to exactly what you’re doing, which is trying to say something you think they won’t like in a way that won’t hurt their feelings, and when you finally say something they’ll already know that it’s a lie. So all that musing was a complete waste of time.”

“Well, it all depends,” Eileen retorted. “If it takes you that long to think of a graceful way to say something, maybe you just need some more practice. Of course, a really good way to move a conversation along is to quit trying to be psychic and telling other people what they’re thinking. Because first you spend all that time thinking up what you think they’re going to say, and then you spend all that time telling them what they’re thinking, and then they have to spend all that time saying, no, that’s not what I was going to say and you go off onto some ridiculous tangent to justify yourself. You could save all kinds of time and just ask them – or better yet, stop interrupting and let them tell you.”

Her voice was still cold, and I was really starting to miss her old playful hauteur. “So tell me, Abney. What were you going to say?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. You interrupted me. I –”

“Here ya go!” Eileen looked up, distracted, as the waitress slid a plate in front of her. I sat back as my own plate appeared, followed by the platter. “Anything else I can get for you? Another Guinness?” the waitress asked.

“Yes,” I grunted, and reached for the food. Eileen had already spooned some sour cream on her plate and was daintily dabbing it onto the end of a potato skin.

“Tell me the truth, Abney, and no trying to sugar coat anything. What were you going to say back there?”

“The unsweetened truth is… at that moment I was still trying to decide what I thought. I knew it wasn’t mean but I hadn’t settled on what exactly it was.”

“And have you decided yet?”

“Yes.” She looked me straight in the eye. “Is your brother as contentious as you are?”

“No.”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“No, my brother is not as contentious as I am. He… is not contentious at all, he’s downright placid. Immoveable, even. We take turns poking him with a stick to watch him blink.” Eileen snickered. “He’s like those guards at Buckingham Palace, it’s impossible to get him to raise his voice, much less pick a fight with him.

“Of course, that means he’s got some wicked inertia -- once he gets rolling, it’s impossible to stop him. He doesn’t look to the right or to the left, he just does what he’s going to do. He doesn’t care about how it looks.

“I wonder sometimes if anyone really knows how smart my brother really is. It’s hard to tell, because he doesn’t care much about credentials.”

“Credentials?”

Why was I saying all this? I never talked about Mark. At least it seemed to distract Eileen, but why would she care about any of this? Even as I pondered, I heard myself keep talking. “What makes smart people smart? They do the things smart people do. They take tests, they go to big name schools, they get lots of degrees in the right subjects.” I nodded toward the swinging doors. “You could have a guy with an IQ of 170 frying cheese back there in the kitchen, and you’d never know it because he didn’t have the right credentials. And some credentials are cooler than others. Who’s smarter – a PhD in folklore or a PhD in nuclear physics?

“My brother got a scholarship to MIT and majored in math. But instead of double-majoring in physics and becoming the absent-minded rocket scientist he was born to be, he got into geopolitical economics or something like that, and now he’s slogging away in some eternal post-doc program.”

“Where?”

“Someplace in Washington.” I stabbed my cheese stick into the marinara sauce.

“Georgetown?”

I shrugged and leaned back a little as the waitress brought my beer. “Who knows? Wherever it is, he’s always doing something somewhere else – taking a class here, teaching there… I’m amazed he can keep track of it all.”

“I thought you said he was smart.”

“He is, but only about one thing at a time and only in a certain order. It’s like he runs on tracks, he can only go in one direction and he only makes scheduled stops. He’s got his routine, and all you have to do to throw off his whole day is move the raisin bran from the right side of the shelf to the left. Take his favorite mug out and hide it in the dishwasher? I think he’d have to wash it in the sink, put it away, go back to bed, and start the whole morning over again.”

Eileen smirked. “Why do I get the feeling that you did some very, very bad things on April Fool’s Day?”

“Probably because you’re projecting your unconscious wish to torment your older brothers on to me. You wanted to prank them, but you were too good a girl to do that, so you tell yourself that I played mean tricks on my older brother.”

“So in other words, you did do some very, very bad things on April Fool’s Day.”

“Well, maybe not very bad, but…” Eileen listened appreciatively as I reminisced about sugar swaps, hidden shoes, ooky surprises in jacket pockets, and a mirror-image rearrangement of Mark’s bedroom. I didn’t mention that all of these pranks were ultimately failures, as even the most ingenious ones failed to get as much as a lifted eyebrow from impervious Mark.

Eileen, in turn, confessed to doing her best to keep her own older brothers on their toes, mostly through small acts of sabotage and often with the help of her younger sister. “Tom took it all as good fun, but Sean….” She grinned at the memory of her past victories. “We never went too far. Just enough to annoy him, but only little things, so he’d be too embarrassed to complain.”

From there it was easy to get Eileen talking about her family, about high school, about long bus rides to the state capital for concerts and baby-sitting to earn money for a summer program at a conservatory. Eileen played along, carrying the conversation as we ate, until I realized that by some weird conversational judo she had me talking about high school in Somerset: lacrosse in the winter, track in the spring; calculus, chemistry, French, the science fair.

“Were you in the chess club?” she suddenly asked.

“No,” I replied brusquely. I’d already talked quite enough about myself and more than enough about Mark, and didn’t feel like telling her about how I joined the chess club only after Mark graduated because he was the club president, and where exactly the hell did that question come from anyway? “Were you?”

“I went when I could,” she said, and too late I remembered that stupid magazine she’d been reading at Christmas – and how she’d asked me the same question then, too. What did she think she was after?

“I’ll bet you just went to meet boys,” I teased.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, that was it.” She helped herself to the second-to-last potato. Something caught my attention, and as she went after the sour cream I realized what it was. In that brief action, as I’d watched her, there’d been something about the way she’d pressed her lips together just for a second or two, her fork hovering over the platter, a quick glint of concentration in her eyes -- maybe considering the chicken wings and rejecting them as too messy, maybe doing some fast arithmetic involving Guinness, potato skins, calories expended in bowling, and the fit of her jeans – and then, as she made her decision and harpooned her potato, that little twitch at the corner of her mouth as if she were laughing at herself…. She might have been thinking about her potato or maybe her dress size but she wasn’t thinking about me at all, and in that fleeting, unguarded moment I thought I caught a glimpse of the little diva again.

So what had just happened here? I’d thought I’d gotten a good look at the real Eileen tonight, but had I really? What if I’d been seeing her true face all along?

She looked up, as if she’d realized I was watching her, but before I could say anything the waitress appeared wanting to know if we were “still workin’ on that” and if either of us wanted another beer?

“I’m fine, thanks,” said Eileen. I glanced at her Guinness – it was almost half full – and shook my head.

As soon as the waitress left, Eileen wrapped her hands protectively around her beer. “No.”

“No, you’re not going to finish that or no, I can’t have my beer back?” I turned to the platter and captured the last potato skin.

“Oh, please, help yourself, I’m getting full.”

There was still a bit of an edge to her voice – was she still angry at me? – but then she laughed a little. “No, I mean it, go ahead.” She picked up her fork again.

Time to test her good humor. “Thanks.” I reached across the table and took her beer.

“Not fair!”

“Perfectly fair. There was no way you were going to finish that, and it was mine to begin with.”

“You didn’t have your name on it.” Her indignation was all in her voice, nothing in her expression.

I felt encouraged. “I thought your name was written clearly enough on your own drink.”

She looked at the Shirley Temple, which was now looking pretty watery, and drew it over. “You could have just asked me what I wanted.”

The waitress appeared again. “Anything else tonight?” I silently cursed the waitress, and cursed her again as Eileen gave her one of those bland looks that clearly signaled we’re done no matter what he says, and then I cursed myself for wasting so much time trying to discover the Real Eileen when I should have been making sure that I would be seeing Eileen, whether Real or Fake, another night.

The waitress left, and I turned my attention to Eileen, who was contemplating the maraschino cherry from the soggy mocktail. She looked up. “Seriously, why did you order this? I’m sure you didn’t care if I was legal or not. Did you think that I was too prissy to drink? Or were you just trying to be funny?”

I kept my voice as even as I could. “I wanted to see what you would do with the cherry.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure she got it; she did not look flattered or amused or even disgusted. She regarded the cherry for a moment, bit off the fruit, and put the stem down beside the glass. A tiny grenadine-pink stain started to appear on the napkin.

The waitress appeared again, and for once I was glad to see her. I took the check and ignored her as she chirped her instructions for paying her and thanks for coming to A.J. O’Whatchamacallit’s have-a-great-evening-bye.

I read the check and reached for my wallet, and looked up to find Eileen leaning across the table and craning her neck, trying to read the check. She was holding money.

“Sit down,” I commanded her.

“You paid for the bowling,” she protested.

So it wasn’t a date. My heart sank as I realized it; the sensation surprised me, and not in a good way.

I gradually became aware that Eileen was still squawking, so I made her work for it a little bit longer and finally let her leave the tip. She was a little too generous, I thought, so while her back was turned I pocketed the surplus. I’d get it back to her somehow, I told myself.

But when? There she was with her coat on already – that girl moved way too quickly sometimes – I grabbed my jacket and got her out of there before she could notice the amended tip.

We stopped in the entry to button up. The outside door flew open and a gaggle of college kids straggled in, one at a time, bringing the frigid wind in with them. Eileen shivered and reached for her hat; I glared at them and remembered that while I’d certainly managed to provoke her and keep her off balance, I hadn’t asked her a thing about her classes or any of the other obvious but reliable possibilities.

The last one hurried in and stopped as he saw Eileen. “Hey,” he said.

She stopped putting on her mittens and looked up. “Oh, hi!”

Great – more information I had failed to collect. I watched them as they chatted about a meeting. Eileen kept the conversation brief and, with a “see you then!”, got the kid moving again.

I watched the door close behind him as he went into the restaurant. They’d stood a good arm’s length away from each other and that casual Oh, hi, didn’t suggest anything more than classmate, but still....

But still nothing. No, it did not bother me, I reminded myself, but I still had to know.

“One of your admirers?” I said lightly.

Oh, please, her look said. “Just a group project.”

I stopped, my hand on the door. “So you’ve found yourself another med student then?”

Eileen rolled her eyes. “I’m not dating a med student.” She pushed on the door and stepped out.

I understood her perfectly: But I am dating someone. I flinched as a gust of wind caught me in the face, and I followed her out into the cold.

We picked our way across the sidewalk. The temperature had dropped significantly while we’d been in the restaurant and the wind had picked up, stronger and with a damp, bitter edge, and it occurred to me that it would have been a chivalrous touch to have left her in the restaurant while I warmed up the car. Oh well; too late for that. Too late for a lot of stuff. I felt the stupid irrational feeling that was not jealousy, that was not disappointment or resentment or anger, welling up again. I ignored it until it went away.

Eileen stopped and turned as a gust of wind flung a spray of blowing snow in her face. She’d pulled her coat tightly around herself.

I caught up to her. “Good Lord. We’re going to need coffee and brandy just to make it across the parking lot.”

“And a dollop of whipped cream for me,” she said earnestly. “Oh that sounds so good.”

“Just whipped cream? No coffee or brandy for you? That St Bernard’s going to be so disappointed.”

“I won’t turn down brandy.”

“But you will turn down coffee.” My clinical brain perked up, welcoming this change of topic. “What’s up with you and that decaf, anyway?”

“I told you, it doesn’t agree with me.”

“Well, what does that mean? Does it make you jumpy? Give you headaches? Make your stage fright worse?”

“No, it makes my stomach hurt. A lot,” she added, cutting me off.

She sounded a little defensive. Had she ever been accused of malingering? I noticed her right hand resting briefly on the right lower quadrant of her abdomen.

“So one cup of coffee’s enough to cause severe abdominal pain.” We reached the car, and I opened the passenger door. “Here, get in. What about Coke, does that set you off too?” She nodded. “I’m sure this sounds like a crazy idea, but did you ever seek medical attention for this?”

“I did, a few years ago. He didn’t find anything; he said I was probably just really sensitive to caffeine.”

I closed the door. “Really sensitive to caffeine”: now that was a real masterpiece of diagnostics. As I walked around the car, I wondered who she’d seen. Someone at the student health center? That didn’t make sense; even those quacks would have sent a culture to the hospital lab, and all she had on file at the hospital was a throat culture. A doctor in Briony? Maybe some old family practitioner who accepted chickens in payment? Whoever it was, why didn’t he find anything? Probably because he didn’t look very hard. And why hadn’t Kopp at least gotten her to get a second opinion? Her damn pride, probably: Oh, it’s nothing, really, I’m fine.

I opened the driver’s side door, turned on the engine, and cranked up the heat. Eileen looked over. “It’s not that bad,” she said.

I ignored her and thought for a minute as I reached for the ice scraper. “Is it worse when you’re having your period?”

She didn’t answer right away.

“Don’t be a prude, Abney,” I admonished her.

“I’m not a prude, it’s just… personal. And yes,” she added sulkily.

I got back out, leaving her to stew while I scraped the windows and pondered. I didn’t have much data: no labs and, to my regret, no physical exam. Not even a decent history or review of symptoms: if Eileen got all embarrassed about Aunt Flo, there was no way I was going to be able to get her into a chat about her bowel habits.

And since we were now personally acquainted, there was no I could – or should, technically – be her doctor. It was a shame – it was an interesting case, and I didn’t want somebody stupid mucking it up, particularly one of the other residents. And then there was that stupid Kopp in the picture.... So no clinic. Maybe I could get her in to see Doyle….

I finished scraping the windows and got in the car. Eileen was still looking abashed.

“Thanks for warming up the car. And really, it’s not that bad.”

“’It’s not that bad.’ You get horrible stomach pain from drinking a Coke and you’re telling me it’s really ‘not that bad.’ ” I looked up at the mirror and started backing the car out of the parking spot.

“Well, it isn’t. I can live without Coke, you know. And it’s gotten better,” she insisted. “It was really bad last year; I couldn’t even eat chocolate.”

“I didn’t know females could live without chocolate.”

“They can if they have to.”

I glanced over. We were still in the parking lot, and the lights gave me a good view of her face. From her expression, I could tell she wasn’t kidding around. Suddenly I thought of how miserable she’d looked at the softball game last spring, sitting in the stands with David Kopp, and felt another surge of the feeling that was not jealousy.

Eileen was still looking off into last year. “That was awful,” she reflected. “Sometimes it even hurt to walk.”

I stopped the car.

“ ‘It hurt to walk,’” I repeated. “You live in the same town as the largest research hospital in the state, and all you have to do to get there is get on the damn bus. And you didn’t.” Probably because she didn’t want to find out what was wrong. “Okay, when it hurt to walk, was it your legs that hurt or your stomach?”

“Why are you asking me this? It’s better now.” She was starting to look frightened, and I couldn’t tell if it was from my anger or from her just not wanting to know.

Maybe it was both. I didn’t care. “Just answer me,” I commanded.

“My stomach.”

“And did you have to walk funny sometimes to keep it from hurting? Kind of hunched over?” She nodded. “Show me.”

She looked back at me, stunned. I put the car in park and got out. When she saw I was serious, she opened her own door.

I met her on the other side. “Okay, show me.”

She was too bewildered to protest. A couple of shuffling steps, her stance a little wide and her hand pressed to her belly, and I’d seen enough -- what I’d known I would see.

“All right, Abney, back in the car. It’s cold out.”

As I went back around to the driver’s side I felt a blaze of brutal victory. I’d figured out several little mysteries – the decaf, the ex, the reality that Eileen had been too cowardly to face. Which meant that I’d figured out a little more of the reality of Eileen.

I wondered, with idle cruelty, how the little diva would take what I was about to tell her. My anticipation felt dirty and ugly -- almost sadistic.

I didn’t care. I opened the car door and got in. Eileen just looked at me. I put the car in gear and started to drive.

“So…?” she finally said.

We pulled out of the parking lot. “I think you know.”

“I thought I did, but you seem to think it’s something different, so would you please just tell me?”

As we passed a streetlight, I took a quick glance at her face: agitated, frightened…. and I waited another beat or two, just to draw out the tension a little longer.

“You have a venereal disease,” I finally announced.

And oh, the look on her face – her jaw dropping in shock and denial, her face blushing cherry-pink…. And even as some small part of my brain screamed at me in vain to stop already, I savored my triumph.

“Chlamydia, probably; there’s been a lot of that going around lately. It’s not that big a deal. College town like this? It’s more common than the common cold. We see it all the time in the clinic, and those are just the morons who were too embarrassed to show themselves at the student health center.

“Of course, the real morons are the ones who don’t show up at any clinic. For God’s sake, Abney, even if you didn’t want to admit to yourself that you might have cooties, did it ever cross your mind that with that kind of abdominal pain you might have had something seriously wrong with you? What if you had appendicitis?”

“I knew it wasn’t my appendix,” she muttered.

“Oh really? Did you think you could catch diagnostic ability from your med student, too?” My conscience was starting to get a little shrill; I distracted myself by paying careful attention to the road. We were getting close to the university.

“Well, what makes you think you can tell something like that just… just from looking at me?”

I looked over my shoulder and finished changing lanes before I answered her. “That little walk you were doing is a classic sign of pelvic inflammatory disease. It’s even got a cute name: the ‘PID shuffle.’ When you didn’t get the initial infection treated, it spread to the rest of your reproductive system and caused so much inflammation that even the ordinary little bounce it takes from walking was painful.”

She stared out the window for a couple of blocks before she spoke up again. “If I really do have this… disease, what do I do?”

“You need to get an exam. You should be getting that done every year anyway. Since the worst of the pain’s gone, your body’s probably fought off the infection on its own, but you probably have some scarring. That’s what’s causing your stomach pain. If you still have an active infection, they’ll give you antibiotics.”

I gripped the wheel a little tighter. “You should also tell… whoever it is you’re dating.”

She didn’t say anything. At the next stoplight, I looked over to try to get a read on her. She was staring straight ahead, her arms folded and her lips pressed tightly together.

We reached the main drag and started getting into the main campus, passing the newer classroom buildings. It was late, but there were still plenty of windows lit.

“I’m going to need some directions here,” I said.

“Sorry. Take a right here and then a quick left.”

I made the turn. “But that’s the campus center.”

“Yes. That next left is a driveway. If you could leave me off there that would be good.”

“It’s late and it’s cold. Which way’s your dorm?”

“It’s not really convenient to drive. If you could leave me off here…”

“Where’s your dorm?”

“Please. Just leave me off here.”

Then it hit me: she didn’t want me to know where she lived. I took a deep breath and grudgingly made the turn into the brightly-lit driveway.

She had already unbuckled her seat belt. I pulled the car over and grabbed her coat sleeve before she could open the door. “Abney. It’s late. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”

She turned to face me. Her eyes were rimmed with red and filled with humiliation and hatred. “I’ll be fine. Really.” She pulled her arm free and opened the door. When she was out, she turned back around, one hand still on the door handle.

“Thank you,” she said coldly. “Bowling was fun.” I braced myself, expecting her to slam the door shut, but she was content with a fierce push. I watched her as she walked quickly up to the entrance, fighting the wind all the way, pulling off her right mitten as she approached the door – so she could get at her key card, I supposed. She paused at the doors – yes, there was the key card – and then I saw the doors open. I drove off, not waiting to see whether or not she looked back before she closed the door behind her.

I seethed all the way back to my apartment – at Eileen, at that punk she’d met at the restaurant door, at David Kopp, and especially at myself. Once I was inside, I threw my jacket on the kitchen table and went straight to the microwave to heat a mug of water. When it was done, I added a tea bag and a slosh of whisky and sprawled on the couch, half listening to Carson and then to Letterman as I swirled the toddy, watched my cigarette burn, and mentally reviewed the evening. It had started off so well. When had I blown it? At the bowling alley? At the restaurant? Sure, I’d pushed her buttons and gotten to see an Eileen I’d never seen before, but for what? Now I was never going to see her again.

Oh well. The prissy little diva had gotten her introduction to reality; a course of erythromycin, and she’d be no worse off than most of her classmates. And it was fine.

I finally shut off the TV and headed off to brush my teeth and go to bed. As I pulled up the covers, I heard the wind whistling outside and I suddenly thought of Eileen again, shuffling in the parking lot. How long had she lived with that, shuffling from class to class? How on earth had she managed to sing?

And why hadn’t she seen a doctor? It didn’t make sense. And then it hit me: she didn’t see a doctor because she hadn’t thought anything was wrong – because she was used to it. She had seen a doctor – a few years ago. That was before she’d gotten the PID. And she’d said she’d known it wasn’t her appendix….

I turned on my back and stared at the ceiling. I was going to have to see Eileen again, whether she wanted to see me or not.

I wasn’t able to get back over to the campus until Friday evening. I hadn’t bothered trying to call her – I knew it would just be a waste of time. Instead I headed to the practice rooms.

Room by room, I read the schedules posted outside the doors, looking for the ABNEY that would tell me when she’d be there. As I worked my way down the hall, I heard a faint brittle jangle: a harpsichord.

I shook my head. Scarlatti on a Friday night was kind of pathetic. Not as pathetic as what I was doing, of course, but still….

No luck on the odd-numbered rooms, so I moved on to the evens. Finally, I found her name – for nine to nine-thirty a.m. on Mondays. I wrote it down – it was better than nothing – but it would be weeks before I’d see a Monday morning off, and decades before I’d be up at nine to nine-thirty on a Monday morning off.

As I worked my way down the hall, the harpsichord music changed to bursts of annoying, random-sounding chords with the occasional wandering run here and there. I tuned it out and kept going.

I found her name for another slot: Thursday, four to five-thirty. That could work, I thought, and then I saw the other names under hers: it was for an ensemble. Great.

Two more rooms, and then it was on to the next hallway. I heard footsteps from somewhere and stopped to listen; they grew fainter and then I heard the crash bar as whoever it was left. Must have been the harpsichordist.

There were only a few rooms on this corridor. I found her Wednesday morning practice room, noted it, and turned the corner.

I hadn’t been down this hall before. The rooms looked larger. One of them had the door open and the lights on. It looked like it had finished walls instead of painted cinderblock. Curious, I walked over to check it out. It was the harpsichord room.

The instrument’s lid was up. Curious, I walked in to get a closer look at its action. As I entered the room, I noticed a music stand next to the bench. There was a score on it, a long one, annotated in pencil, its ends flapping off the sides of the desk. As I looked around, I noticed a backpack neatly stowed on a chair against the wall.

The harpsichordist was probably coming back. I snooped at the workings of the instrument and looked longingly at the keyboard. Did I have time to try it out? I –

A startled gasp came from the door. I wheeled around. Damn my luck – it was Eileen, standing there in her coat, looking aghast.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

A dozen smart answers came to mind; I discarded them all. I only had a few minutes before she ran out or called the cops. “Looking for you,” I replied simply

“Did you know I was here?”

“No. I was looking for your practice rooms to see if I could catch you next week.” I looked around the room. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Working.” She came in, warily, and started to take her coat off. “So why –”

I cut her off. “Listen, about the other night—”

“Don’t. You did me a favor, actually.” She walked over, closed the door, and turned to face me. “I did what you told me to do. And you were right, they said everything you did.” She chuckled sadly. “Including the part about how I should have gone to the doctor instead of eating Advil and waiting for it to go away.”

“That’s why I’m here. There was something else. Are there any organs I have that you don’t? Besides the obvious, of course. What about your appendix? Do you still have one?”

“No. No, I had it out when I was thirteen. How did you – “

“You told me, of course. I bet it ruptured.” She nodded. “You recovered, you went back to school, you forgot about it, a couple of years went by, you got into high school or maybe college, tried to live on coffee and Diet Coke, and found out that they made you sick.”

She stared at me and finally nodded again.

I looked at my shoes and then back up at her. “You probably are sensitive to caffeine, but that’s not the real problem. I think you have adhesions. Your appendix ruptured, you had peritonitis and developed bands of scar tissue around your intestines and maybe even your girly parts.” She winced. “It must not be too bad, if you can usually drink decaf and eat chocolate. Caffeine stimulates the gut, and even decaf has a little caffeine in it. But it’s bad enough that when you have a strong cup of coffee… I bet there’s other symptoms that you didn’t tell me about. Does it make you throw up? Do you get the runs a lot?”

She looked away, and I figured it was time to shut up and not push it. “You need to get a laparoscopy, get someone to look inside and see what’s going on. You could get it done over at the hospital.”

“The doctor at the health center said the same thing – that I should get that…. that test.”

“You should listen to him. That stuff you got last year could have gummed you up with even more scar tissue.”

Eileen stared off into the corner of the room. I started to walk to the door.

“Wait,” she said. “Please.” She draped her coat over the back of the chair and stood there for a minute.

“This helps me a lot,” she finally said. “It makes sense. And it’s going to be a lot easier to break this to my parents when I tell them I should have this thing done.

“Why did you come back?”

“You needed to know.”

She looked away again. “I should apologize to you. I didn’t want to believe it and I took it out on you. You were right. You didn’t have to be so mean about it, but you were right.

“I should also apologize for something else.” She lifted her backpack up onto the chair, rummaged through the front pocket, and pulled out a small, thin book – a magazine. I caught a glimpse of the cover. It was Chess Nerd News.

Eileen flipped through the magazine. “I thought I was being clever, trying to catch you about the chess thing. You’d recognized the magazine, so I figured you must have been a serious player at some point. It seemed like such a silly thing to hide, and I just thought it might have been fun to play a game or two.” She found what she was looking for and folded back the pages. The binding was still stiff. “This came today.” She handed me the magazine. “I think I understand now.”

I looked at the article -- something about rooks. It was the byline that caught my attention, as it had hers: M. House, Contributing Editor.

“The M stands for Mark, doesn’t it?” she said. “There’s a blurb at the end that says M. House lives in Washington.”

I’d already started to skim the article. The dull, precise style was pure Mark. I hadn’t known he was writing.

I handed the magazine back to Eileen. “Even if it seemed silly to me, it obviously wasn’t silly to you. I should have left you alone,” she said. “I’m sorry I pushed you so hard.”

She put the magazine away, walked to the music desk, and picked up her pencil. I was about to be dismissed.

I thought furiously. No date: that ship had sailed, and I’d probably been banned for life from that cruise line anyway. But I’d grown used to knowing that Eileen was out there and that she’d even tolerate me a little. It had been something different, something to look forward to, and I didn’t want to lose it. At this moment, she seemed pretty calm and hadn’t called security on me; it wasn’t much of a chance, but it was still a chance. And if I didn’t take it, I’d never get another.

“I never said I didn’t play.”

I looked up at her. No triumph, no anger; just waiting to hear what I’d say next. “Maybe we could break out a board sometime,” I continued. “If that’s why you were asking.”

“I’m not that good a player.”

Somehow I doubted that; she’d skewered me pretty well on this chess thing and she hadn’t even been trying that hard. “You must be that good a student; you’re the one carrying the book around.”

She looked down at her score, considering. “Maybe we could sometime. I don’t know when; I don’t have my calendar with me,” she hastily added.

“I’m waiting on some stuff myself. I could call you.”

“That would be okay.” She took a deep breath. Only her right hand, frantically twiddling her pencil, betrayed her agitation. “I should get back to work now.”

I nodded and walked to the door. I turned, my hand on the knob. Eileen was still standing next to the desk. “Good night, Abney,” I said.

“Good night.”

As I turned back the way I’d come, I heard her shut the door to her practice room. I didn’t stop to look back. The only sound was the squeak of my shoes as I headed back to the exit. I pushed open the stairwell door, went up the short flight of stairs, and headed back out into the night.

Ketamine and Depression

2006-08-20T09:26:00.000-04:00

Ketamine as a treatment for depression?

...a treatment conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). ...ketamine has been used as a general anesthetic for both humans and animals. Given in doses too low to cause anesthesia, it relieved depression in as little as two hours.

The study, appearing in the August Archives of General Psychiatry, comprised 17 depressed patients randomly assigned to receive either an injection of ketamine or a placebo. For 71% of those receiving the real deal, depression improved within a single day. Indeed, 29% became nearly free symptom free. Thirty-five percent of patients who received ketamine were still feeling better a week later. Patients receiving the placebo reported no improvement. No patients had serious side effects.

A week later, in a cross-over study, participants were given the opposite treatment unless they were still benefiting from the ketamine. Those with no benefit from the placebo were now helped while those who had received the real thing the first time but the fake stuff this time had no improvement.

More spectacularly, these were all treatment-resistant patients. They had tried an average of six medicines each without relief.

Interesting. Not for me personally, of course.

the ultimate one-stop shopping: groceries from Amazon.com

2006-08-19T19:51:00.000-04:00

This is great! I can order my DVDs and the popcorn to go with them. But why do anchovies have their own section?

They seem to sell everything by the gross, but I am going to make this work for me somehow. Like these microwave brownies in a bowl -- I bet I could find something to do with eight of those.

All they need now is delivery Scotch. That and Peeps, year-round.

worst summer vacation ever

2006-08-06T21:33:00.000-04:00

Stretched out on the couch. How long have I been here? When's sunset these days? It's dark out, so it's been a few hours, but finding the exact time isn't worth the effort of lifting my arm to look at my watch. I'm comfortable. I want to enjoy it.

It was around five when I couldn't take it any longer and made the climb up the stepstool to get the box. Five milligrams, snap off the tourniquet, put the syringe aside, and lean back, knowing that rest is on its way at last. I was so tired from the pain that I fell asleep shortly after the morphine kicked in. That must have been around five-thirty.

This summer has been hell. The heat, the pain -- it's literally been hell, with the smell of hot asphalt standing in for brimstone. The heat makes me tired and the humidity makes my joints hurt and everything makes my leg hurt. Everything. I get on the bike and and I have to brace myself as the heat from the metal sets off the shooting pain in my thigh. I wait for a minute or two, or three, until I'm finally able to get going again. I get to work, pull into my parking spot, and have to give myself an extra bounce to get the momentum to lift my leg over the bike. The effort kicks up the neuralgia again, and I start getting a pins-and-needles sensation that overwhelms every other signal coming in from my leg. I have to glance down to my foot as I cross the parking lot so I don't step on it the wrong way and stumble.

When I get to the front door, I go straight to the vending machine, supporting myself with my left hand as I wait for my drink to drop. I balance myself on my left leg as I pop the top and take the first sip. Then it's off to the elevator, one step at a time through the crowded lobby. Four floors up, and finally I can relax in my office chair, preparing myself for morning rounds. I haven't made them drag the whiteboard into my office. I won't. I don't need that.

All day long, I manage the pain in my leg: fidgeting, pacing, staying away from the plastic chairs that cut into the back of my thigh the wrong way, rolling my chair away from the air conditioning, bouncing my super ball. Vicodin. Foreman ignores me and Cameron and Chase take less and less notice every day. When I need a refill, Wilson gives me a look that's a question and I give him a look that means I'm fine. Every so often Cuddy gives me the look and I just turn away. I'm not interested in her platitudes and saline.

And finally I'm home again. Most evenings I'm able to keep things under control, put up my leg and titrate the beer and Vicodin until I can get some rest. But some evenings, some nights....

It hasn't been that often. Just a couple of times. There was the first time, when that sucker Crandall was here. And then there was that time last month. But it's only when I need it. And when I finally give in and go for the box and undo the combination with my thumbs, breathing easier even through the pain because I know real relief is coming soon.... I always put the box back, always, stowing it back on the highest shelf and piling the books on top.

It's what works. It's what I need.

So how much longer am I going to need this?

And how much longer will it be enough?

I shove the thoughts away and reach for the remote. Out of the corner of my eye I see the phone blinking; someone must have called while I was asleep. I'll deal with it later.

I turn my attention back to the TV.

tolerate mornings

2006-06-22T17:15:00.000-04:00

Rec: Eight Days, Eight Months

2006-05-17T17:19:00.000-04:00

Namaste has finished her new magnum opus "Eight Days, Eight Months." House/Stacy breakup; suitable for all.

Go, read! The whole thing's here.

bothered

2006-05-02T01:40:00.000-04:00

Some moron from the Food Network is getting ready to take me on a journey into the Secret Life of Chili Peppers, and I really am not interested because it's just going to get me thinking about Stacey and her vindaloo curry or, at best, my current famotidine dosage, and I just do not feel like going there tonight. So I click off the TV.

I don't get up right away. No reason to; I can stay up as late as I like, since I don't have to worry about Wilson waking me up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning polishing his teeth to be ready for early rounds. But even though things are getting back to normal it's weird not having him around. Even my mom was getting used to his being here. When I talked her earlier tonight, she sounded disappointed to hear that he's gone for good. Of course, she had her own reasons for hoping he'd stay; I think she figured that with Wilson around she could be sure I was eating well and keeping my feet dry and what not.

She also had someone else to talk to about that stupid show she watches. A few weeks ago she got her wish and they had standards night. That was the night Wilson insisted on watching it. Rod Stewart singing the classics? Did the 60's and 70's not happen? They might as well fire up the bubble pumper and the reanimated corpse of Lawrence Welk.

So there was Wilson eating popcorn and drinking beer and making cracks about how at first he thought Simon and I were separated at birth but that theory can't be true because Simon has more hair. I was sitting there trying to ignore him and silently fuming at the lack of visual interest in that show -- Paris was hardly dressed to seduce that night (though if she had been it would have been more "disturbing" than "hot"; it hadn't been that long since we'd discharged our teenage supermodel). Wilson tried to get me into a differential diagnosis of Paula; "She's an idiot," I snapped, and went back to reading the paper.

And then I looked up at the TV again as some girl who looked like an extra from the "Hee Haw" cornfield began her attempt at "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered." Wilson snorted and said something about "one out of three, anyway"; I sat there, staring, remembering another April when I'd sat in a college auditorium listening to a green-eyed girl perform the very same song.

I watched until I sensed Wilson looking at me. I gave the paper a snap, said something about that girl needing to just find herself a nonagenarian millionaire and settle down, and pretended to go back to reading the paper.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Since then, Daisy Mae has been kicked off the island, and I'm beginning to understand the savage pleasure that my mother takes in seeing contestants get voted off.

Now if I could just get the song completely scrubbed out of my head....

I sigh and get ready to push myself out of the chair. After all that, I'm going to need some famotidine anyway.

Americans, riled

2006-04-10T22:10:00.000-04:00

Simon, Simon, Simon, why must you persecute me like this? I had to endure a thirty-minute rant from my mother last night. She and her little friends at the retirement community are back to watching American Idol. Their list of favorites this year is very short, even shorter than last year (I think Ace is on the Bad List just for being named Ace) and, unfortunately, Mandisa was on their short list. So these old ladies are already furious over Mandisa's getting the return ticket, and then they found out that tomorrow night is dedicated to the music of... Queen.

Good Lord, it was awful. "Now, Gregory, dear, who is this Queen? It's not Queen Latifah? It's who? And they've sung what? But isn't that that song that they play in stadiums all the time? And their last hit was when? But I thought the point of this show was to find people who would be popular today. This show's aimed at young people and not people like us? Now what exactly do you mean by "people like us"? Oh, I know you're teasing. And I'm sure you're right, but we have cell phones and buy records too, so why can't they find someone who appeals to people like us as well? And if they're going to have 'Queen Night' why can't they have another Motown night? Or a Broadway night or standards night? And another thing, Gregory, why do they keep pointing at us all the time when they sing? Especially that Kellie? It's... off-putting, that's what it is. If they had Lerner and Lowe night, that would be a good stretch for the contestants, and I'm sure we'd see a lot less of that pointing...."

And on and on and on, Wilson snickering the whole time while he pretended to read. I think he's going to insist on watching it tomorrow night. Weren't the first ten plagues bad enough?

link: guy juggling to Beatles song (work-safe)

2006-03-24T09:54:00.000-05:00

Damn! Look at this guy!

I am... in awe. Just think of all the time I could "waste" working up something like this.

memory lanes

2006-03-23T23:36:00.000-05:00

A note from your author:

OK, I fibbed. Here's a little something I've had on deck and finally got a chance to post.

House has been reminiscing here and there about Eileen, a woman who came unexpectedly to visit him in the hospital after the infarction. (There's a complete list of Eileen chapters in the right sidebar.) He'd met Eileen during his residency and found himself interested in her. Things were complicated, though, for House was... well, House, and the life of a resident is not easy. Eileen was significantly younger and -- worst of all -- was dating a medical student whom House was supervising at the time.

They bumped into each other a few times that spring, but House didn't see Eileen again until a November afternoon when their paths crossed again. Eileen had just broken up with her med student and had found herself without a way out of town for Christmas. House offered her a lift. He had his own issues at the time and wasn't looking forward to his own visit home, so he was pleased when Eileen ended up accepting the ride, and even more pleased when Eileen promised to get back in touch after the holidays. Eileen kept her promise -- and House found himself wondering what he'd gotten himself into....

I can't sleep.

I can't sleep. Again.

I rub my right leg again as if it's going to help. It does, a little; kind of like rounding your tax bill up to the nearest dollar helps reduce the national debt a little. Maybe I could practice intentional breathing and picture tiny pink clouds of healing. Maybe that would help. A little.

I prop myself up on my elbow, turn my pillow over, and lie down again. The logical thing to do would be to take another Vicodin; it's right on the nightstand. But every time I think about turning over and reaching for the bottle, I think about Cuddy looking at me, her big green eyes dripping regret: "It was saline. I gave you a placebo."

Dammit, Cuddy -- why? Why did you do that? All you did was just take something else away from me. And my leg still hurts. It still hurts.

Why doesn't anyone believe me? It still hurts.

And if this is what it's like now, it would have been ten thousand times worse in a few months, a few years -- whenever Stacey finally got fed up with me and "got lonely" again.

"Get a hooker. Anything." I tried it Wilson's way. God, how utterly pathetic. Paula came and went and here I am, alone again. I can lie here and admit it -- yeah, I miss Stacey -- and my leg's still going to hurt.

"I hear... bowling is more fun than stalking." I smile a little to myself. Wilson was pulling my chain, of course; bowling's out until they come up with some kind of crip league. And as for being more fun than stalking, I doubt it. The stakes are higher in stalking so the satisfaction's proportionately higher. But for short-term satisfaction, Wilson's right -- bowling's the way to go. Nothing like flinging a weight down an alley at a pile of pins and knocking them all kaplooey.

I think about how I went bowling in med school, especially those first couple of years before clinicals really got going. Duckpins, mostly, at that really ancient place not too far away from school.

I managed to make it a few times when I was a resident, too. My first year, one of the Chief Residents tried to get us all to go together once a month -- so we could "bond", I suppose. After he left, a few people kept it up in second year and I came along, but I was there for the beer and the bowling, not for any bonding. By third year, I wasn't bowling very often, and the few nights I went I was bowling alone.

Until that January.

Before I knew it, the plan was set. “See you next Wednesday!” she chirped. And that was it.

I hung up the phone, wandered back into the living room, and picked up the game again. I’d just the fourth level when it hit me: I was taking Eileen Abney out.

Was I going on a date with her?

Did I think it was a date?

Did Eileen think it was a date?

What had I gotten myself into?

I brooded over the question for the next week: mulling it over as I drove back and forth to work, fretting as I watched a popcorn bag pirouette and swell in the microwave, struggling to find a way to diagram the problem as I sat in Friday Grand Rounds, ignoring the presenter…. I tried to devise a model of the problem and came up with something like a Punnett square, but had to stop myself from crumpling the paper and flinging it to the floor when I calculated a 50 percent chance that the evening would end in disaster.

On Sunday afternoon I found myself drinking beer, trying to watch hockey, and finding myself thinking about Wednesday instead. A 50 percent chance of disaster – bad odds, but then what did I want to have happen? What would success look like?

From my past dating experience, I figured getting through the evening without being slapped would be a good start. And beyond that…. I looked down at my beer bottle and the label I’d been peeling off, and dragged my attention back to the game.

It was a long three days, and I almost didn’t make it; my pen-tapping, finger-drumming, and increased general irritability that week had made me more unpopular than ever. Even Hirsch had been sending dirty looks in my direction. Barras finally snapped on Tuesday evening as we toiled away in our carrels. He stopped his dictation, flung down his papers, and wheeled around in the office chair. “House,” he snarled. “It’s great that you’re quitting, but you know, there are samples of the nicotine gum down in the clinic. Go down there and get yourself some. Or let me write you a scrip, or go out and get yourself a smoke. Just do something, or I swear to God, you will not live long enough to enjoy not getting cancer.”

I made it to Wednesday afternoon without getting shoved down the stairs and managed to escape shortly after report. Back home, I had enough time to get a shower and cook dinner before heading back out the door and into the cold to go get Eileen.

She was ready and waiting, peeking out a window by the front door of the campus center. Her long coat flapped in the wind as she ran down the steps and across the walk. I frowned as she skidded a little on a patch of ice. She caught herself and hurried up to the car. I reached across the seat to open the latch. She shivered as she dropped into her seat.

“It is so cold!” she exclaimed, and then gave me a sheepish look. “I suppose you’re going to make fun of me now for saying something so obvious.”

“Yes, especially since you haven’t seemed to learn something equally obvious about the strong correlation between cold and ice. Seriously, if you don’t want to go bowling, we can do something else, you don’t have to resort to giving yourself a concussion. Of course, if you want a tour of the emergency room….”

“No, that’s quite all right. Why do you keep thinking I don’t want to go bowling?”

I took a deep breath. I simply didn’t know how to answer her question, and thinking about it made me uncomfortable, so I just drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. I was already on edge, and there was something different about Eileen that I couldn’t quite place. I looked over at her again: hat, hair, coat, that knowing little smile that meant she knew I was looking at her….

“Where’s your backpack?” I asked abruptly.

“I didn’t bring it. What, did you think it was surgically attached or something?”

“Seemed to be,” I grunted. “Or at least sewn to your coat.”

“I could see why you’d think that, but I thought I’d leave it at home tonight. I wasn’t planning on studying between frames or anything like that.”

“You would have been disappointed if you had. My turns don’t drag on too long.”

“I didn’t think they would. Those gutter balls don’t need too much in the way of math, do they?” She snickered as I scowled at her.

“Just for that, I’m not going to go easy on you, Abney.”

She smiled smugly, her nose in the air. “I appreciate the warning.”

The college town’s cultural amenities included not one but two bowling alleys. I’d been to both, and had decided on the one on the edge of town, out towards the mall. It was a newer place, self-consciously retro – sparkly turquoise plastic and all that -- so it was a little bit cleaner, not as smoky; that would probably please the little diva. And it was farther away from the hospital, which pleased me. I didn’t know if any of the other residents bowled, and I wasn’t in the mood to find out.

It was a slow night, so we were able to get a lane right away. Eileen got her shoes on first and came over to wait while I laced mine up. She chuckled a little to herself.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing. Your feet just look so big in those shoes.”

I stood up. “You know, it’s a good thing you’re so easily amused. You’ll still have fun and won’t cry when the scores get posted.” We walked over to the ball racks. “Oh, look, there’s a pink one, just for you!”

“Hm?” To my disappointment, she didn’t even look up. She’d walked straight to a rack and was eyeing her choices.

I knew where this place kept the balls I liked, so I found one pretty quickly. I turned around. Eileen had chosen a ball and was testing the grip. Satisfied, she looked up. “Ready?”

We headed over to our lane and put our stuff down. “You first, Abney.”

“Thank you.” She nodded regally and walked to the end of the lane. As she waited for the pins to set, I found myself turning to the same question that had been vexing me all week: was this a date? Did I want it to be a date? If not, then why did I had I been so upset when she hadn’t called? Why had I pressed so hard for this date/outing/whatever-it-was?

There were so many good reasons for this not to be a date. She was young, she was probably still on the rebound, she was only going to be around for a few more months, and she didn’t seem interested in me. And she definitely wasn’t my type – I tended to be more interested in tall and sexy than short and cute.

But as she paced back from the foul line and stood for a moment, getting ready, I had a good view. Her jeans and sweater weren’t tight, but I could still get a nice sense of the curves of her waist and ass, especially as she took the first step, the second, faster, the ball swinging back, and three four five…. the ball swinging forward, leaving her hand; Eileen standing up straight, watching the ball rumble down the lane. The clatter of the falling pins -- all ten of them.

She turned, grinning, and came back to the settee as her score appeared overhead. “Your turn!”

“That was beginner’s luck, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“It would be if I were a beginner. But I practiced over break, so that just makes it a strike.”

I took my first throw and cursed under my breath as the ten-pin and its two obstinate neighbors stayed upright. To my relief, I made the spare, but Eileen had the high ground just from of that strike. I came back over to the settee.

“You practiced for this?”

“Well, yeah.” She hoisted her ball. “I figured it’d be more fun if I were actually ready.” She concentrated, stepped off …. and threw another strike.

The look on her face was a little too calm. I stared at her as she walked back. “You brat!”

She shrugged. “Okay, so I practiced a lot.”

I grabbed my ball from the return. “What, slow funeral season?”

“Not at all! I actually did very well this winter. But a funeral in the morning, a shift at the grocery store in the evening… that left me all afternoon to go bowling.”

I shook my head, sent my ball down the lane, and seethed as the seven-pin teetered and recovered its footing to form an ugly split. Eileen choked back laughter when she saw my face as I stalked back to the settee.

I pulled my ball off the return. “Some of us didn’t have three weeks off to do nothing but practice bowling in the afternoons.”

“You know, you’re right. Do you want me to take it easy on you? No? I didn’t think so.”

There was no way I was going to pick up the spare. I tried to pick off the ten-pin and failed. Back at the table, I frowned as I watched the scores tally. That open frame hadn’t helped me at all, especially when Eileen’s two strikes had given her such a big advantage.

“I can’t believe you practiced,” I said. “No wonder you were so hot to play.”

“Bowling was your idea. I just wanted to be ready.” She picked up her ball and headed to the foul line.

Her streak didn’t last – she finished her next turn with an open frame – but any moping over the is-this-a-date question was forgotten as I struggled to catch up. A couple of splits for Eileen, a strike for me, and by the eighth frame I was getting close.

But not close enough. I slouched against the ball return and watched my chances shrink as she threw another strike.

I hoisted my ball, headed over to the lane, and concentrated. I really needed a strike. I stepped forward and threw… and made it. I was still in the game.

I swaggered back over to the settee. “Don’t start gloating yet, Abney.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” she said with a smirk. She lifted her ball, headed off to the lane, and threw a strike.

I grabbed my ball off the return as she got back and got ready to throw. If I got a strike, I could pull ahead.

I didn’t make it. I left four pins. As Eileen watched from the settee, I picked up the rest of the pins on the spare. But it wasn’t enough, especially when Eileen took another strike on the next frame. She finished me off with her bonus throw. I stared as the final scores went up -- it hadn’t occurred to me that she might win.

I turned and looked down at her. She had her lips pressed together, trying to keep from bursting out laughing.

“Best two out of three?” she finally asked.

The scores were really tight on the next game. I was warmed up and throwing more accurately, but Eileen was still having those annoying little runs of strikes plumping up her score. I sighed as I watched her start the eighth frame, stepping forward, making her throw… The ball rolled down the lane and six pins clattered to the floor.

Something wasn’t right. Her throw was accurate, and she should have made that strike, but she didn’t. She picked up her ball and headed back to the lane. I watched her carefully as she made her second throw. Four pins teetered, but only three fell. She was getting tired.

I thought about it as I squinted down the lane. I had at least seven inches of height on Eileen, was throwing a much heavier ball, and had a set of free weights in the corner of my bedroom.

I was going to pull this off. I sent the ball down the lane and was rewarded with a strike.

Eileen made her next spare, but it wasn’t enough – I made my spare as well, and finished her off on the last frame. We watched the scores tally. I’d just made it.

Eileen was a good sport and played the third game, but I took that one handily to win our little tourney. I took her ball in my left hand and we headed back over to the ball racks. “Too bad, Abney. All that practice for nothing, unless you were just taking it easy on me.”

She sat down on the bench and started untying her bowling shoes as I stepped out of mine. “Oh, it wasn’t for nothing. I had fun, and I think I made you sweat, or at least work a little. But don’t worry, you came by it honestly. I always play to win.”

We traded in our bowling shoes. Back at the bench, Eileen sat down and started putting on her own shoes.

“I wonder…” she said. “What would you have done if I had won that second game?”

I yanked on my shoelaces. “What do you mean, what would I have done?”

“Just that. Would you have shaken my hand and said ‘Great game, Abney,’ or would you have demanded three out of five, and then five out of seven, and made me play again and again until you finally won, even if my arm was falling out of the socket?”

“Nobody cares what the loser does. What would you have done?” I stood up.

“Oh, I don’t know… maybe taken an ad in the paper? Not really. But I would have thought about it.”

“So do you expect me to hire a skywriter? I’m too cheap for that, but maybe…” I looked around the counter to the snack bar. The lanes were full now, so the snack bar was only going to get more crowded and smoky, and I wanted something a bit more substantial than pretzels and watery Cokes and cold plastic chairs.

I turned back to Eileen. “…Maybe I’ll ask if you want to go get something to eat.”

She smiled. “That sounds great.”

to be continued

dulce domum

2006-02-20T15:51:00.000-05:00

I'm at home. I skipped out of work early today. Our crispy critter is stable, and the clinic is closed for President's Day, so it's not like PPTH would grind to a halt if I weren't there.

Besides, today was a red-letter day on GH: Holly's back, and I wanted to be able to devote my full attention to this very important event. If I tried to watch in my office, someone would have been rapping on the glass, bothering me. My coma guy's room is out -- Cuddy's on to me there.

I was thinking about the digs over in Oncology -- they do have that sweet flat-screen with the TiVo -- but then I'd end up watching my show in the company of a certain gossipy boy wonder. I'd have to explain everything and everybody to him again, and he wouldn't pay attention and spend the whole time turning everything, down to the last Huggies ad, to the topic of Stacey. It's getting old. And my leg's been bad today. So between my wanting to watch Holly in peace and wanting to put my leg up in comfort, home was the place to be.

I got home a little before three. As I put my key in the lock, I heard something in my apartment and stopped to listen. It was a vacuum cleaner. Of course -- it was Monday, the cleaning lady was there. I grimaced, turned the doorknob, and stepped into the apartment.

Mrs Brudzik's been coming for a couple of years now. Our relationship is mostly epistolary: every Monday she leaves me a note, and on the first Monday of the month I leave my response in the form of a check. It's been a while since I've actually seen her.

I think she's getting deaf. She was vacuuming the living room and had her back turned to the door as I entered. She didn't hear me come in, even as I rattled my keys (intentionally) and sent the chair skidding into the desk as I tossed down my bag (unintentionally.) She shut off the vacuum, turned to unplug it, and jumped a little when she saw me.

"Oh! Dr House! I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting you -- I can leave the rest, if you need me to go --"

"Don't worry about it." I waved my hand as I crossed the living room.

"Are you off today?"

"Just early. Good day today: we cured all the patients and sent 'em all home."

She smiled nervously. She doesn't know what to make of me, and I could tell that she was trying to not stare at my cane. I went on to the kitchen. As I fixed my snack, I could hear the vacuum's wheels squeaking as she rolled it back to the closet, and then the clang of the dryer door. I went back out into the living room. Plate on the side table, leg on the ottoman, remote in the right hand, and off to Port Charles.

And soon, there she was. Holly! How many years has it been since I've seen her? She looked so different without all that big '80's hair.

I caught a whiff of orange thirty or forty minutes into the show, and realized that Mrs B had come out from the bedroom. I turned to look at her and she quickly turned her head, pretending that she wasn't watching TV over my shoulder as she dusted the bookshelves. She'd left a bag of trash and a bag of newspapers by the door, and I realized that this room was her last stop -- that she saved the dusting for last so she could watch her show while she worked. For an instant I felt like I was the intruder, and then I just felt annoyed: annoyed with myself, and then annoyed with her, and then annoyed that I pay a woman with grandchildren to take out my paper to the recycling bin because it's easier than trying to handle it myself. Annoyed that I was at home instead of in my office because the people at work annoy me so much. Annoyed because I was annoyed instead of enjoying being at home.

My reverie was interrupted by a surge of pain coming from where my vastus lateralis used to be, boring through my leg like an electrified corkscrew. I caught my breath and reached for my Vicodin, rattling the bottle a little before I shook the pill out into my palm. Behind me, Mrs Brudzik went on with the dusting, but I could feel her anxiety. I gave my full attention to the commercials.

The show came back on. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs Brudzik pushing a dustmop back and forth and then returning it to the closet. She came back out and started putting her coat on. "Well, I can just tell you -- I deep-cleaned the kitchen today, washed out the icebox and cleaned the coils." she said.

For a nanosecond or two, I thought about getting up to let her out. But I was still annoyed with her, and I was comfortable on the sofa. "Okay," I grunted. She finished buttoning her coat,walked over to the door, grabbed the trash, and left.

It was just as well. In the time it took her to do all that, I would have still been getting myself up off of the couch. The thought of dinner and how I would prepare it flitted through my mind. I shoved the thought away -- I'd deal with it later. Dinner, Wilson, Cuddy... later, I'll deal with all of it later. Right now I just want to be left alone.

percolatin'

2006-02-09T00:39:00.000-05:00

Overhead, the moon is beaming,
White as blossoms on the bough.
Nothing is heard but the song of a bird
filling all the air with dreaming;
Would my heart but still it's beating,
Only you can tell it how, beloved;
From your window give me greeting,
Hear my eternal vow.

Soft in the trees lies the echo of my longing,
while all around you my dreams of rapture throng.
My soul, my joy, my hope, my fear,
Your heart must tell you that I am near.
List from above while I pour out my love
For you know through my life you are love'd.
Oh, hear my longing cry, oh, love me or I die!

Overhead, the moon is beaming,
White as blossoms on the bough.
Nothing is heard but the song of a bird
filling all the air with dreaming;
Would my heart but still it's beating,
Only you can tell it how, beloved;
From your window give me greeting,
I swear my eternal love.

"Serenade" from Romberg and Donelly's The Student Prince

thanks to TWoP poster MsJ for the reference

fun with email

2006-02-07T14:50:00.000-05:00


To:  Stacy Warner
From: Gregory House, M.D.
Re: interesting cultural fact

Hey, is your passport current?

My Sexy Brazilian Name is:

Frangao Lopes

What's Your Sexy Brazilian Name?

To: Gregory House, M.D.
From: Stacy Warner
Re: Re: interesting cultural fact

God, Greg, are you that desperate for ways to waste your time?  Don't answer that.

To:  Stacy Warner
From: Gregory House, M.D.
Re: Re: Re: interesting cultural fact

So you're not going to tell me what your sexy Brazilian name is?

>To: Gregory House, M.D.
>From: Stacy Warner
>Re: Re: interesting cultural fact

>God, Greg, are you that desperate for ways to waste your time?
>Don't answer that.

To: Gregory House, M.D.
From: Stacy Warner
Re:Re:Re:Re: interesting cultural fact

No, but I'll tell you what kind of candy you are.

You Are Candy Cigarettes

You're a total badass, but you don't taste very good.

What Kind of Candy Are You?


To:  Stacy Warner
From: Gregory House, M.D.
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: interesting cultural fact

Cigarettes?  That's another addiction you've never been able to kick, isn't it?  Even when you're trying to quit, you still want it.

To: Gregory House, M.D.
From: Stacy Warner
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: interesting cultural fact

SHUT UP.  Just SHUT UP.

good news from Innards

2006-02-06T13:50:00.000-05:00

last night's sleep rating: B
mood: accomplished

A good day today. I'm still feeling pleased about last night -- thanks to Messrs. Ward, Randle El and Roethlisberger, I've had a good return on certain short-term financial investments. The only way that could have ended better would have been taking some money from Foreman, but he didn't bite this year.

Satisfactory rounds this morning. Reporter guy is doing well and should be ready to go home soon. What home he's going to I don't know and don't care. That's what discharge planners are for.

Had a good lunch and now I'm just going through the mail. As she passed out the mail, Cam saw the big white envelope addressed to me and was clearly dying of curiosity, so of course I brought my stack into the office and closed the door. I toss the little things on the top of the file -- CME seminars, flyers for Grand Rounds -- until finally I'm at the bottom of the stack. I take the big white envelope and slit the flap open.

It's three complimentary copies of Innards. My article's in print and will be coming soon to a medical library near you. This is the first time I've published in this particular journal, but the cover letter is the same old boilerplate. It thanks me profusely for my interesting submission, notes that the article will also be available online to paying subscribers, invites me to consider submitting again very soon, blah de blah blah. I take one copy and put it in my bag: I'll give it to Cuddy when I go to the clinic this afternoon. I file the second copy: I'll need it if I ever need to update my CV. The third copy will go out to the conference room.

I look at the title page of the journal. To my surprise, my article's not in the back, where they usually put the "News of the Weird" type write-ups. I flip back and start skimming the article again:

Upon inquiry, we discovered that the patient's cat had died at around the same time of the onset of the patient's symptoms. We performed a necropsy....

We performed a necropsy hardly begins to describe what "we" did. The wary hope in Chase's eyes as he delivered the animal down to the morgue; the stench of the dead cat as it thawed; the rattle of... the rattle of the instruments. Knowing that the kid was dying upstairs, knowing that they were prepping him for the O.R., knowing that, despite all that, I had to work slowly, that I couldn't let the urgency of the case make me careless.

But that was almost a year ago. I look up and, like magic, Foreman appears at the door.

"Tyrant," I snarl. I stand up and hand him the journal. "Here you go: one more reason why you're only pretending to be the boss." I take my bag, chuckle inwardly at his expression, and head off to the clinic.

Stupor Bowl

2006-02-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

No, I am not going to liveblog the Super Bowl. Wilson's here, we've got chips and beer, and I'm going to watch the damn game.

I just want to float an idea. That Burger King commercial, with the Busby Berkely babes dressed up like lettuce and hamburger patties, and the lecherous fiberglass monarch? I'm thinking about suing for emotional pain and suffering. Anyone up for making it a class-action suit?

no-fly

2006-01-30T03:08:00.000-05:00

Sitting up in bed, looking around. It's just a bland, standard-issue hotel room, tan and tan with a subtle tan stripe, the windows shrouded with heavy blackout drapes. The only light's the dim yellow glow from the bathroom nightlight.

This isn't the most comfortable place I've ever slept, but it'll do, by God it'll do. I rearrange the sheet and the flimsy Vellux blanket over myself and lie back down, turning onto my right side, propping my head on my hand.

My chest grows tight as I look at her. She's washed off her makeup and put her shrewd wit to bed. Now I'm seeing her bare face, her secret face, silent and naked in the night. Once she only showed that face to me. And tonight, at last, I am seeing it again.

I love watching her when she's asleep, she's so beautiful. Her dark hair's spread across the pillow, and she's smiling faintly as she sleeps. How I've missed this sight. And all those years of missing, of longing, have made this moment even more beautiful now that I'm here again at last.
The chain of her necklace glints gold against her breast. I can't stop myself, and I smile a little as I reach to turn the crucifix over: He likes to see.

I don't know how long I lie there, just staring at her, but it seems like only a moment before dawn is glowing around the heavy drapes. She wakes up slowly, and smiles when she opens her eyes to find me watching her. She reaches over to touch my face, I run my hand down her side and around to her back....

...and God, I've missed that too, she grabs my shoulders as she cries out....

...and finally, we lie in bed again, exhausted, grinning like fools. "Oh," she says, "Greg, my God, that was...."

"That was some good curry?" I suggest. She playfully punches my shoulder, and I catch her hand to kiss it. "You know, in India they eat vindaloo curry three times a day."

She sits up in bed. "Well, now that we've had India breakfast I'm ready for American breakfast."

I lie back down. "Wonder if they have crab cakes Benedict?"

"What is it with you and that crab? Well, they say you are what you eat. Why don't you go ahead and shower while I go get some coffee and the paper?"

"I'll go." I sit up and reach for my shirt.

"No, you'd better go, otherwise I'll have to listen to you complaining, just like always, about how I didn't leave you any hot water."

I chuckle and watch her go. I wait for a while and then head off to the shower. I wash quickly and come back out to the room.

Stacey's not back yet.

I sit down to wait. Long minutes pass like seconds, and Stacey still does not return.

I start getting uneasy and decide to go see where she is. I stand up, and almost fall as my right leg buckles beneath me. I grab the wall with my left hand and reach for my cane with my right.

It's not there. My heart starts to race as I look wildly about the room. I don't see it. I stagger across the room and hang on to the dresser as I try to bend over and look under the bed. It's not there. I can't find my cane. My cane's gone.

I walk over to the door and step into the hallway. It's almost pitch dark -- only the emergency lights are on. "Stacey?" I call.

The door clicks shut. Too late I realize that I don't have the room key with me.

"Stacey!" I yell.

There is no reply -- not from Stacey, not from anyone. I take another step, holding on to the wall, trying to peer down the dark hallway. Where is the elevator? I can't tell.

I take another step. Pain shoots up my leg, and I almost fall. I cling to a door frame, my heart pounding with fear: I'm not going to be able to make it to the end of the hallway.

What am I going to do? I'm locked out of the room, I can't make it to the elevator -- and what if I do make it? the power's out --

"Stacey!" I call again. "Stacey!"

Nothing.

Stacey, come back, please come back, please, I need you -- I can't do this, I need you --

And then I realize that nobody is responding, there are no newspapers or food trays in the hallway, the hallway is absolutely empty, my right leg is burning with pain, I am alone in the hotel --

I'm awake.

I take a deep breath. I'm awake.

I look around my room. The bathroom light's on. As my eyes adjust, I can see my wallet and phone on my dresser, my clothes hanging in my closet, my cane hanging off the nightstand next to the glass of water and the bottle of pills.

I push myself up on my elbow and reach for the Vicodin. I take a couple, send a drink of water after them, and lie back down, hoping I can get another hour or two of sleep, even after that, before it's time to get up and endure another Monday....

my first quiz

2006-01-28T15:04:00.000-05:00

I'm a Ferrari 360 Modena!

You've got it all. Power, passion, precision, and style. You're sensuous, exotic, and temperamental. Sure, you're expensive and high-maintenance, but you're worth it.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Plato, meet Sisyphus

2006-01-27T15:29:00.000-05:00

With stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

--Friedrich von Schiller

returning

2006-01-13T16:21:00.000-05:00

That Cuddy. How does she do it? Even the TSA listens to her.

After Stacey got on the plane, I just stood there, staring at the door. They closed the door and I went over to the window, watching the gateway retract, watching the plane pull away from the terminal, watching it taxi to the runway. Shifting position a little so I could watch it take off, watch it disappear into the clouds.

I don't know how long I just stood there, watching Stacey leave. Part of me knew I needed to get going and tend to practical matters. Like how I was going to get home. But I wasn't ready yet; I needed some more time to think, to just take in the memory without being interrupted. Stacey, letting me touch her, letting me kiss her, kissing me back.

I rested my head against the window, the glass cold against my forehead, and found myself smiling a little. I'll never look the same way at Indian food again.

I don't know how long it took me to realize that my name was coming over the P.A. system again: Passenger Gregory House, please report to gate 15A. Passenger Gregory House....

When I made my way over to the gate, they had a boarding pass for me. Cuddy had worked her magic again, and in another hour I was boarding.

My knapsack was waiting for me at the airline office in Newark. I took the shuttle straight to the hospital to check in on the kids. Foreman and Cam had gone someplace to crash, leaving Chase to make sure Aphasia Man tolerated his loading dose of quinidine. The guy's stain should show some improvement in the next twenty-four hours. As for his marriage... why he married someone he couldn't trust isn't my problem. Of course, it would seem that when you yell at your husband for "not trusting you" and then take off in a huff, you're kind of proving his point that he can't trust you. But then, I'm just a jerk who doesn't get relationships, so what do I know?

As I finished looking over the lab work, Cuddy showed up. "So Stacey was able to snow the Medicaid inspector," she said. "Lucky you. And lucky us that you were able to figure out what was going on with your patient."

"You were too worried." I tossed the papers aside, reached for my coffee mug, and frowned: the mug was empty. "Worst case scenario, he tries to write an exposé of how we failed to cure him and submits 10,000 words of gibberish to his editor. Hey, can you page Foreman for me? Tell him I want him to check and see if there's any fresh coffee." I smiled a little as I watched Cuddy make that little frustrated look I value so highly, but my fun was over when it morphed into a look of concern.

"You should go home," she said. "You've had a long day, and a long night before that."

"And what time did you get in this morning? I see you're wearing your emergency outfit, the one you keep in your office closet. I hope you're wearing the purple thong underwear, it matches the blouse so nicely." Cuddy was back to looking disgusted and weary; satisfied, I set my mug down. "I got some rest on the flight, I'm fine. Besides, we're doctors. Since when do we need sleep? Foreman just needs to get in here so he can get back to his supervisory duties. Otherwise, I don't know, I might do something stupid."

"I don't think there's a keeper alive who can keep you from doing something stupid. God knows Stacey had a hard time of it in Baltimore. Trying to bribe a federal inspector? Threatening a TSA agent?" She shook her head. "Fletcher Stone is stable, isn't he?"

I nodded.

"Then go home," Cuddy commanded.

"I have clinic hours today."

"You can do them another time. Go home."

Stacey. "Did Stacey come in?" I blurted. Cuddy lifted her eyebrows. "I need to return her cell phone," I explained.

"No, Stacey's at home, she took the day."

I nodded. Cuddy looked at me for a long moment and walked to the door. "House? Go home," she said again, and left.

Finally. I put in a page to Chase to ask him about the coffee and turned to the computer. I was intending to surf while I waited for him to call me back, but I found myself turning to the blog instead . January.

How long had I been working on this stupid thing, anyway? I clicked into the archives and found my first post:

I've been surfing around and looking at some of these blogs. Some of them are so cute it's disgusting. Should I start putting little blurbs about my feelings on each post?

All this just from an idle afternoon looking for O.C. spoilers.

I start clicking around. So much has happened this year. All that stuff with Vogler; that whole mess with Chase, knowing for months that Rowan had died and wondering if Chase was ever going to say anything; that stupid bet with Cuddy....

"You have no relationships," Wilson said. "I don't need any relationships," I'd told him, and given the way relationships just screw up my life, I still think I'm right. In just one year, I've managed to get tangled up in a highly unprofessional relationship with a terribly naiive subordinate -- one that I could only get out of by doing the jerk thing that everyone tells me not to do. I'm a jerk because I care.

And in that same year I've managed to save my ex's husband from death, get told by my ex that she is Over Me For Ever, do my best to get over her, find out that she's Not Over Me, fall for her again, and now almost cuckold the husband I just saved from death.

Cam thought she wanted me because she thought she could change me. Stacey didn't want me because I couldn't change me. I tried to change, but just trying to change wasn't enough, I guess because I was trying to change (based on the specifications she'd given her therapist) and hadn't just changed spontaneously. But now she wants me even though I haven't changed on my own and she doesn't think I can change. But her wanting me... that's change enough for me. I think.

And all those people I haven't thought about in years. Old Dr Ball... I wonder what he's doing now? And Eileen... I stopped thinking about her years ago, but ever since that afternoon in the bookstore she's never been far from my mind. She never tried to change me; is that why I haven't heard her voice in years?

And what am I going to do about Stacey?

mood: pensive

...and the party's today!

2006-01-13T11:47:00.000-05:00

Today is our first blogiversary!

Thanks for reading. Big thanks for the encouragement. And ginormous thanks to everyone who's helped me with beta-ing and fact-checking, especially sy, Namaste, and Dr Mac.

it's a party!

2006-01-09T14:35:00.000-05:00

The first anniversary of the ficblog's coming soon! How should we celebrate? Favorite post poll? Icon contest?

I've also been thinking about arranging the first year's posts in chronological order and making them available as a .pdf file. Would you be interested in having such a thing? Might anyone have a little server space where such a thing could be made available for download?

Let me know what you think, either in the comments box or by email. Lurkers, new readers, you too!

threats and promises

2006-01-06T18:28:00.000-05:00

A note from your author:

House has been reminiscing here and there about Eileen, a woman who came unexpectedly to visit him in the hospital after the infarction. (There's a complete list of Eileen chapters in the right sidebar.) He'd met Eileen during his residency and found himself interested in her. Things were complicated, though, for House was... well, House, and the life of a resident is not easy. Eileen was significantly younger and -- worst of all -- was dating a medical student whom House was supervising at the time.

They bumped into each other a few times that spring, but House didn't see Eileen again until a November afternoon when their paths crossed again. Eileen has just broken up with her med student and had found herself without a way out of town for Christmas. House offered her a lift. He had his own issues at the time and wasn't looking forward to his own visit home, so he was pleased when Eileen ended up accepting the ride, and even more pleased when Eileen promised to get back in touch after the holidays....

Foreman’s got me doing paperwork again – charting, countersigning orders, tedious crap like that – and he wants this batch ready on Monday. Which of course meant I had to work on it this afternoon. Meanwhile, Cuddy seems to have thought I was supposed to be down in the clinic this afternoon. I was still working on today’s Sudoku (since Foreman dragged me to Grand Rounds, another two hours sucked away there.) So when the phone rang with Cuddy’s extension on the display, I put it through to Foreman’s pager and, while his back was turned, slipped out the office door. The green light in my head went off and I headed over to Wilson’s office; I hung out there for a while, eating his food and watching him work, until his pager went off. “So,” he asked, “am I going to see Foreman’s name on that page, or Cuddy’s?”

“Ooops. Losing my lead here.” I took the rest of the chips and headed over to my coma patient’s room to catch the tail end of General Hospital. It’s weird to see Drake back again, and even weirder to see him twenty years older. I’d always thought of him the way he looked back in the ‘eighties. What's Scorpio going to look like if he really comes back?

See, that’s why class reunions are such a stupid idea. Why show everyone how tired and old you’ve gotten, what lousy taste in spouses you turned out to have ? Let them think of you as they remember you, from back when you were thin and had hair and no wrinkles.

I finished the chips and threw out the wrapper, wondering in passing if housekeeping was surprised to see my lunch trash in that room. Before I got up, I turned around to check the settings on the vent to see if they’d made any progess in weaning him off: none yet.

I got up and headed to the door, but before I left I took a look back at the patient. Sure, the nurses had rearranged him a little bit, but otherwise he was just as he was the last time I’d seen him: a comatose old gomer, his only movement the rise and fall of his chest as the ventilator puffed air through the tube in his neck.

Now, if we could be born old and get younger… Then I could see reunions. Everyone would remember you as being old and bald and wrinkly, and you’d come in and you’d look great. You’d have nothing to lose.

I looked at the guy again and walked on. Once he was young, had hair, had tight skin…. Maybe that’s why people run fifty-year-old photographs in death notices – so that it’s their younger selves that live on in the perfection of memory.

I took the long way back to the office, ignored Foreman as he demanded to know where I’d been, and settled back in to charting. He’d wanted to sign off on it this afternoon, and sat in the conference room for a while hoping his big black brooding presence would pressure me to finish on time.

He finally gave up around six and headed out. He’ll get it Monday morning – 11:55 AM on Monday morning.

It’s been dark for a while now, and the corridor’s getting darker too as the lights in the offices go out. I get up to stretch out a little bit, go to the conference room fridge for a bottle of water, and sit down at my desk again. Wilson should be done soon; I might as well work a little longer. I date the next form with Monday’s date – 9 January 2006 – and put my pen down. I stare at the paper.

9 January….

“So the little girl –”

“Robin—”

“Yeah, whatever. So she’s Scorpio’s daughter with Anna, not with Holly.”

“That’s right.”

“And Scorpio’s back now?”

“Yeah. But I don’t think he’s gonna stay, I think he’s going to go back.”

“Back where?”

“Australia. To be with Holly.”

I slipped the rubber band around my index cards and gave it an angry snap. “Holly doesn’t need to be hanging out with dingoes and wallabies, she needs to come back here.”

“Yes she does.” The patient’s voice was earnest. He took another spoonful of ice chips and slowly brought it to his mouth. The dialysis machine on his left hummed away.

I snorted and took out a stack of lab printouts. A commercial for disposable diapers came on, and the patient turned back to me. “Are you my doctor?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“If they ask what I’m doing here, then yes, I’m your doctor. If they want me to write orders, then no, they need to page the R-1.”

The patient didn’t look satisfied. I sighed and tried to spell it out a little more. “I’m on Dr. Hirsch’s team. Dr. Lamont’s the one running your case. That’s the short one who woke you up this morning. I’m just… helping.”

“Helping how?”

“Making sure your chart’s in order.”

He seemed to accept that and turned his attention back to the large wall-mounted television. I kept reviewing the printouts as the commercial break ended. If I kept my head down and looked busy, I could probably make it all the way to the closing credits.

It was Tuesday afternoon. I was surrounded by a dozen patients in recliners, each with an arm stretched out on the armrest and connected by a needle and tubing to a dialysis unit. Their waste-laden blood was slowly drawn out, cleansed, and returned to their bodies. Some of them were dozing; a couple of them were reading; a good number of them were watching TV. The TV watchers knew their broadcast schedules; they were hooked up to the dialyzers three to five hours at a stretch, three times a week. When the dialysis nurses set up for the afternoon shift, they sorted the patients by network: CBS/NBC on one side of the room, ABC on the other.

This Tuesday, I’d lucked out and identified a patient on our service who was getting dialysis, getting it in the afternoon, and sitting on the ABC side. A chart review was an excellent pretext for stopping by and looking busy while I caught up on my real paperwork and watched General Hospital. I’d gotten into it in college and had started following it again the previous summer, when I was on the Nephrology service. Nephro meant a daily visit to the dialysis suite to check on our patients, write orders, and sign charts. A couple of afternoons on the ABC side and I was quickly drawn back into the glamorous world of Holly and… well, the other ones. But mostly Holly.

I finished my stack of papers, put it back in the file folder, and sighed. The unfairness of it all – I was all ready for report, but now I needed to dictate discharge summaries, and there was no way I was going to get away with doing that in the dialysis suite.

Well, what was twenty minutes? I could put it off until the show was over. I stole a peek at the patient’s ID bracelet – since I was here, maybe I’d even actually review Mr. Melvin Small’s chart -- but then my pager went off.

I stood up and started gathering my stuff. Mr. Small took another spoonful of ice and kept his eyes on the TV. “See you Thursday,” he said. I grunted and headed out the door.

I answered the page at a nearby wall phone. It was a second-year resident, asking for help with a patient who was going bad. It was probably something stupid and obvious, but I went anyway – better to help out now than be inconvenienced later by a time-consuming code. We got the patient to the MICU, where he could go ahead and croak on somebody else’s shift. From there it was straight to report, and then listening as Hirsch blathered about something, and blathered some more, and finally I was free… only to start dictation. As Barras, the other R-3, started a fresh pot of coffee, I stared at my papers and finally started the recording:

“Patient ID 598643. Bennet, Frances,” I rattled off. “Date of admission December 28; date of discharge January 8; attending physician Jerome Hirsch; discharge summary dictated by Gregory House, R-3; date of dictation – ” I checked my watch – “January 14.”

I hit the pause button and leaned back in the chair, staring dully ahead at the back wall of the carrel. January 14.

It had been three weeks since I dropped off Eileen, three weeks to the day. I’d long since eaten through the cookies and marshmallows she’d given me. She’d been in Briony almost that whole time, but she said she’d call back when she got back in town, around the ninth.

She hadn’t called back.

She had to be back in town -- classes were back in session at the university -- but she hadn’t called back.

At first I’d thought she might have gotten in later, but the days ticked by and I hadn’t heard from her. I’d checked my messages, scrolled through the history on my pager… nothing. For about two seconds I’d even thought about swinging by her apartment to see if the lights were on. But even as I realized how pathetic that sounded, I remembered that she didn’t live in the apartment where I’d picked her up on Christmas Eve – she lived in a dorm, and I didn’t know which one or where it was. She’d probably have me arrested anyway, and rightfully so.

I’d even broken down and tried to call her, on Sunday evening. I let the phone ring and ring, waiting for an answering machine to pick up. I was just about to give up when someone answered. “Hello?”

I was confused for a second -- it wasn’t Eileen -- until I remembered too late that living in a dorm meant roommates.

Forget it. “Hello?” the girl said again. I could hear music in the background.

“Sorry. Wrong number,” I said, and hung up.

Why hadn’t Eileen called? She promised she would.

Standing out in the snow by my car, me not knowing what to say, Eileen holding a plate of cookies, shivering but hanging back… If we go bowling in January, she’d said, I want to play chess in February....

If she never wanted to see me again, she wouldn’t have said that. Had she changed her mind? Was she sick? Did she drop out of school? Did she forget?

Did she get back together with Kopp?

“Hey. House.”

I looked up. Barras was looking at me strangely. I realized I’d been drumming my pen on the table. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Huh. Well, coffee’s up if you want some.” And excuse the hell out of me for asking, his face added.

“Thanks.” I got up and brought a cup back to my carrel. I looked down at the chart in front of me, rewound a little to see where I’d left off, and went back to telling the story of Frances Bennet’s hospital stay: “Admitting diagnosis: congestive heart failure….”

I cranked through the rest of the charts until I’d reached the last Patient to follow up with Dr Hirsch in one week. A trip to Medical Records to drop off my charts, and I’d be on my way out the door. It was about seven o’clock – not too bad.

I stacked the charts and was starting to leave when the dummy terminal at the next carrel caught my eye. I considered for a moment, but only a moment, before I sat down again and logged on.

The main menu popped up. I selected option one: PATIENT LOOKUP.

NAME? the blinking cursor asked me.

ABNEY, EILEEN, I answered.

And I got a hit, a single outpatient record from two years ago. I copied the visit number, logged out, and went to the Pathology menu. I plugged in Eileen’s number and pulled up… a negative culture for strep throat. They’d probably sent it over from the student health center. And that was all.

I logged out of Pathology and went back to the general info screen. Would they have her address?

The face sheet info came up with her Briony address: another dead end. Oh well.

I logged out, turned off the terminal, hung my white coat on the hook in my locker and stuffed my tie into the top compartment. I took my jacket and bag, spun the dial on the padlock, and headed off to Medical Records. Looking up Eileen’s record had been totally unethical and a complete waste of time. What had I thought I was going to find out about her? Even if I’d found something embarrassing, what good would it have done me? Or her address – if I’d gotten anything local, it would have been either a campus post box or a dorm address from two years ago, nothing about where she lived now.

Why hadn’t she called?

I dropped off the records and headed for the exit, bracing myself for a moment against the bitter cold before I shoved the door open and began the long slog out to my car. I warmed up the car, brushed off the snow. I was halfway home before I stopped shivering. I thought briefly about stopping off for carry-out on the way home, but decided not to – it was too cold to think about getting out again. Once I was home, by the time I got from my car back up to my apartment I was shivering again.

I peeled off my shoes and coat, dropped my bag on the floor, and headed off to the kitchen. The freezer was well stocked. I pulled out two Budget Gourmets, stuck one in the microwave, left the other on the counter, and headed off to the bedroom to change into sweats. Insta-dinner, news, second insta-dinner, Cheers rerun, mail, a couple of rounds of Commando…

I quickly lost interest in the game, so I laid down my weapon and let the digital guerillas fill my digital body with illegally obtained digital ammunition. They killed me three times before the PLAY AGAIN? screen came on. I sat back against the couch, ignoring the screen as the animation looped again and again, the game controller lying in my lap.

I was lonely.

My chest started to ache as the emotion hit me. I closed my eyes.

She’d promised she’d call. But she hadn’t.

Big deal, I tried to tell myself, but the lie did nothing to hold back the encroaching gloom. And for a minute, I was back in high school, standing by my locker, wondering why Diana Crawford was smiling at me, taking the bait like an idiot and smiling back -- and then turning to hide my face in my locker as she whispered to her friends and started to laugh ….

Stupid Diana Crawford. I sighed in disgust and pulled myself back to the present. She’d gone to some third string college and was probably married to some rich guy who she never saw because he worked crazy long hours in an investment firm or something stupid like that.

As opposed to some guy who worked crazy long hours in a teaching hospital. This was pathetic, even for me. I shook my head, picked up the controller, and restarted the game. I’d been playing about half an hour when the telephone rang.

I ignored it at first -- whoever it was, I’d call them back later – but then I remembered and paused the game to listen. The fourth ring, my message switching on, and then the beep….

“Um, hi, it’s Eileen, I was just calling to let you know I was back and – ”

I leapt up and went to the kitchen. “Hello, Abney.”

“Oh, hi! Screening your calls?”

“Of course. So where’ve you been?” I realized too late how harsh I sounded.

If Eileen was offended, though, she didn’t show it. “I got back late,” she said. “And then I had a million things to do – ”

“A million! So if you get one thing done every five seconds, you’ll be done by, oh, April. Of course, that won’t leave you any time to eat, sleep, or pee, and forget about class – ”

“You know, you’re absolutely right! Good thing you reminded me. Looks like your five seconds are up, so – ”

“Oh, right, the just-a-figure-of-speech excuse. So what kind of million things have you been up to?”

“Books, registration, class – the usual. Anyway, I think I’ve got my schedule for this month squared away, so: do you still want to go bowling? Oh, how was your trip home?”

“Yes, we’re still going bowling. Let’s see….” I walked over to the fridge. “Thursday looks good; I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Can’t do Thursday, I’ve got a rehearsal.”

“It is the first week of classes, you cannot have rehearsal already.”

“Well, I do. What about Friday?”

“On call. Sunday?”

“Sunday’s bad.”

“Good Lord, Abney! How far ahead are you booked?”

“Just two days! You’re the one who was working on Friday.”

After some going back and forth we were finally able to set a date for the next Wednesday. I offered her an out on the actual bowling, but she carried on about promises and the keeping of promises until I was afraid she’d commit seppuku if I didn’t take her to put on a pair of ugly shoes. So bowling it was. And before I knew it, the plan was set. “See you next Wednesday!” she chirped. And that was it.

I hung up the phone, wandered back into the living room, and picked up the game again. I’d just the fourth level when it hit me: I was taking Eileen Abney out.

Was I going on a date with her?

Did I think it was a date?

Did Eileen think it was a date?

What had I gotten myself into?

“Hey.”

I look up. Wilson’s at the door, wearing his overcoat. “You ready?” He steps into the room and sees the papers spread across the desk. “You know, if you really wanted to confuse Foreman, maybe you could hand those in early – just to shake things up a bit.”

“You make it sound like I’m trying to jerk the guy around.”

“Well, at least lock that stuff up, no sense dragging HIPAA into this.”

I was already on it, stuffing the papers into the desk. I shut the drawer, lock it, put the key in my pocket, and go to join Wilson.

The Cute Factor - New York Times

2006-01-04T08:00:00.000-05:00

See, cuteness isn't real, it's just an evolutionary response:

The Cute Factor ( New York Times)

Here's that Cute Overload website they mentioned. The Cat Bath series isn't too bad -- the third picture, in particular.

Gimel! Gimel! Gimel!

2005-12-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

This has been the best Christmas ever. Boss-man Foreman took the Christmas Day schedule apart, gave Chase the day off, and informed me that I'd be working on Christmas in the wombat's place. Would he have done all that if he'd known he was doing me a favor? It got me off the hook with my mother, so no worrying about how I was going to get out of Christmas this year.

The caf has free meals for staff on Christmas Day, so I got my turkey dinner. Wilson came over that night. We ate Thai and watched the game; a couple of beers in I reminded Wilson that it was now Chanukah, so weren't we going to do any Chanukah stuff?

"Sure. Start peeling the potatoes." He didn't look away from the TV.

I felt like a heel. But I'm used to that, so I just got up and went to get the bag I'd left on the piano. I brought it back over to the coffee table, sat down, and shook out the dreidl and the gelt I'd bought last week.

Wilson looked over, shot me a look of loathing, and turned back to the TV. I ate one of the candy coins and started spinning the top.

"Spin, spin, spin little dreidl of mine, oh..." I crooned. The top fell on its side. "Oh look! I win!" I reached for some candy.

Another spin. "Well, look at that -- I won again!"

Another spin. I flicked a gold candy wrapper at Wilson. "Hey -- you ever get the feeling that the laws of probability aren't working and you're really just a character in a play by that Tom Stoppard guy?"

Wilson wadded up a napkin, threw it over the back of the chair at me, and turned around to the coffee table. He grabbed a handful of candy coins, pushed the rest towards me, and took the dreidl. "Like this." He gave it a spin. "Nun. Nothing." He handed me the top.

I took the top and set it going. "Okay, what's that mean?"

"Shin. It means ante up." He took the top back.

I threw in a couple of chocolate coins. "Language, please. This is sacred gambling."

Before long we'd eaten the candy and started playing for real money. He went home that evening a hundred dollars richer than when he'd arrived.

I got some revenge on Monday. Foreman barged in my office on Tuesday morning and found us going at it again. On Wednesday I discovered dreidl Yahtzee and we've been playing that for a couple of days. I think tomorrow I want to give dreidl baseball a try -- National League rules, of course, unless I start losing again. Once these eight crazy nights are over, maybe I'll see how the other team does it and have Chase give me tips on where I can find me some good bingo.

another smart-ass link from Wilson

2005-12-21T10:19:00.000-05:00

So David Letterman's been slapped with a restraining order:

Lawyers for David Letterman want a judge to quash a restraining order granted to a Santa Fe woman who contends the CBS late-night host used code words to show he wanted to marry her and train her as his co-host....

Nestler's application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and "eye expressions" to convey his desires for her.

She wrote that she began sending Letterman "thoughts of love" after his "Late Show" began in 1993, and that he responded in code words and gestures, asking her to come East.

She said he asked her to be his wife during a televised "teaser" for his show by saying, "Marry me, Oprah." Her letter said Oprah was the first of many code names for her and that the coded vocabulary increased and changed with time.

Anyway, Wilson, for some reason, felt the need to make sure I saw this news item. He appended some comment about how this corresponded precisely to my own situation with Stacey and how I should just get my own restraining order against her so she'd lay off with her telepathic messages of lust. Har de har har.

Looks like Animal Farm wasn't just a parable

2005-12-20T18:32:00.000-05:00

Are there any evil mass-murdering dictators who aren't a little crazy?

The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

"Indifferent about the quality of food they eat"? He probably would have had more success if he'd started with scut monkeys instead of the other kind.

slush hour

2005-12-08T16:54:00.000-05:00

It's time to leave but I'm putting off going until that last Vicodin kicks in a little more. I didn't need to read the paper or look at that Intraweb thingie to know that bad weather's coming.

I want to just go home and turn up the heat and relax, but I can't -- there's nothing in my fridge but an apple, a beer, and a jar of olive spread. Now I have to go out shopping and brave the stupid crowds. I hate being jostled, it makes everything hurt that much more.

Let's see: milk, bread, cereal, beer... and rat chow. Great: not only do I have to go shopping, I'm going to have to go all the way out to Plainsboro. This is all Stacey's fault: her rat, her making me so distracted that I forgot to get groceries....

Can't think about that right now. I look up. Cam's at the other computer, Chase is in the lab, and Foreman's back is turned. So I'm safe. I take a deep breath and lean against the table as I slowly stand up. Time to go.

Virus Provides a Clue to the Cause of Schizophrenia

2005-12-05T07:20:00.000-05:00

mood: crabby
last night's sleep rating: D
rounds start in: 10 minutes

note to self: Have Cameron research this and present. This is really interesting:

Scientists have long believed schizophrenia to be a disease that lies dormant, waiting for the right set of circumstances to strike its teenage or young adult victims. Whether genetic, biological, or environmental -- or some complex mix -- the precise nature of the early defect remains largely undetermined, although the disease affects some 2 million Americans.

Now researchers believe that a viral remnant long ago incorporated into the genetic makeup of all humans -- like a footprint frozen in the winter snow -- is brought to life in some individuals, leading to a cascade of events that can result in schizophrenia, a mental illness that causes delusions and hallucinations.

And what may be responsible for activating that viral remnant is another infection, say researchers in a report that appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

For the footprint is really a retrovirus -- a virus that carries genetic material found in all human cells. And the particular retrovirus they identified is believed to have infected humans so long ago that it became a part of the very genetic makeup of humans, a bit of dormant "junk" in the human genome.

Yet, when they looked at the fluid bathing the brains of patients with schizophrenia, they found something remarkable: evidence that the retrovirus had become active. Virus Provides a Clue to the Cause of Schizophrenia

it's not pr0n, it's literature

2005-11-30T20:44:00.000-05:00

PG-13

"Perhaps it isn't too late for John Updike to bag a Bad Sex award," wrote Adam Mars-Jones in his Observer review of Villages at the beginning of the year. The longlist for this year's Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award, announced last Friday, confirms that Mars-Jones's prediction was on the money.

Updike is in the running for what the organisers call Britain's "most dreaded literary prize", with an extract from Villages in which an adulterous character appraises his lover's v@gina: "[it] did not feel like Phyllis's. Smoother, somehow simpler, its wetness less thick, less of a sauce, more of a glaze": Guardian Unlimited Books:Stiff competition for Bad Sex award

"Less of a sauce, more of a glaze"?! The implications of that... 69 flavors of love? Yeah, baby, I'll butter you up, I'm the Iron Chef. "She tensed as she came closer and closer to the Maillard reaction of ecstasy...."

Good Lord. And look at all these big-shot authors:

But, excruciating as his entry is, Updike is up against some stiff competition. Among the 11 contenders for the prize this year are some of the biggest names in literature, including Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Paul Theroux. Of the three, Theroux's offering, from Blinding Light, is arguably the most deserving of the prize, with its description of a character's orgasm as

"...not juice at all but a demon eel thrashing in his loins and swimming swiftly up his..."

A demon eel! So do you call a vet or an exorcist about that?

The article links to a list of all the nominated passages, but I've got to stop. I'm laughing so hard it's frightening the rat.

back

2005-11-29T11:56:00.000-05:00

The Scoobies are at lunch; I'm just waiting for Wilson to come by, and then we'll go too.

Not much to say about Thanksgiving. Chase covered; the caf had free turkey dinners for hospital staff, so of course I came in. Football. That's it.

I've been spending most of my time trying to not think about how completely I screwed this up with Stacey. But then, I didn't screw it up, did I? I got what I wanted.

I think.

God, Stacey -- am I ever going to get her out of my head?

When she left... things had been awful between us for forever. She was so unhappy. I'd lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, trying to tell myself that she was just being too sensitive or was having PMS or something, and when that stopped working, I'd try to just not tell myself anything at all. And then that telltale smell of her cigarettes would come through the crack in the window.... I knew things were getting bad when she started smoking again. She'd nagged at me ever since she'd quit, so for her to start again.... I felt awful at first, and then I tried to not care, and then I was secretly glad -- every cigarette she smoked was a point for me. And then I would feel awful again about keeping score.

"But with you I was lonely."

But what about me? Without her, I've been lonely. I hated her for leaving, and I hated her for not coming back, and I hated her because I missed her so much and I hated missing her. I hated that I missed her. I hated knowing that I couldn't make her happy.

But she didn't come back, the months turned into years, and I thought I was getting better because I wasn't thinking about her all the time, and then all of a sudden she's having dinner with Wilson and showing up in the clinic, and not only am I thinking about her all the time I have to see her. All the time.

And then realizing that she was lying, that she was lonely with Mark, knowing she she did have feelings for me, knowing that she did want me. That she did want me. Knowing it. That it wasn't just this bull about me Being The One but Not Being Good Enough -- that she did miss me. That she did want me. That I was good enough for Stacey.

And then confirming it. Plugging in the copier in the dark office, waiting for it to warm up so I could make the copy, holding the objective evidence in my hand.... Knowing it. Lying next to her in the attic, knowing it. Going to her in her office, having her treat me like an adult instead of screaming at me, knowing it, having her treat me like a person, the ice on my chin, knowing it, knowing that Stacey wanted me....

I know Stacey, and she knows me. I got what I wanted. I got her to admit that she did want to be with me. Or that she had wanted to be with me. Whatever. I know I could have made her happy and I made her admit it. And now she knows I could have made her happy. And now she knows I won't make her happy. I was doing her a favor; she should have known that all along.

She knows, and I know. That's all I wanted.

That's all.

Our bodies break down...

2005-11-22T16:54:00.000-05:00

Our bodies break down. And it's always ugly. Always.

So I don't know why three different people felt compelled to send me a link to this article:

"I don't care if you're black, white, rich or poor, whether you live in the projects or a penthouse, everyone smells the same when they die," Mr. Gospodarski said as he scraped a caramel-colored goo off the floor of Apartment 6-F this spring.

Mr. Gospodarski, a paramedic for 23 years, is what is known as a bio-recovery technician, a highly trained, extremely efficient, self-employed house-cleaner of sorts whose specialty is removing the unpleasant aftereffects of suicides, attempted suicides, shotgun murders, accidental impalements and, in the case of lonely, unnoticed passings like that of the man in 6-F, "decomps."

My Smoking Days

2005-11-21T09:59:00.000-05:00

mood: fidgety
last night's sleep rating: C

Sitting at my desk, playing with a rubber band. I'm about to get up and find something to do when I hear the email chime. I go to my inbox and find a message from Innards or whatever the hell that journal's called: they've finally accepted my article on the termite kid. I smile a little and lean back in the chair. It's still a good feeling when something's going to be published. But my satisfaction is brief, I feel like something's missing -- and then I realize what.

Came across this a while ago when I was doing a little random surfing: My Smoking Days

The more I quit, the more I learned about how important cigarettes had become to me. I began to notice, for instance ...that the feeling of absence was strongest at particular moments of the day. My morning coffee just wasn't the same without my morning cigarette and, as time passed, I drank ever less of the stuff. Lunch and dinner were less fulfilling when they weren't concluded with a smoke. And the act of going to bed seemed somehow less definite when it wasn't preceded by one final cigarette. Similarly with my emotional life. When I was smoking, moments of enthusiasm, disappointment, expectation and sadness were all marked by lighting up. With a cigarette, the enthusiasm seemed all the greater, the disappointment less bitter, the expectation richer and the sadness less insuperable. Without one, I couldn't be sure that I was feeling these things at all. Even my sense of beauty was impaired by quitting.

God, can I relate. I quit cigarettes for good after the infarction. Part of it was rational -- cigarettes only made it more likely that I'd get another clot -- but most of it was just circumstances. I couldn't go out to buy any cigarettes, and I couldn't make it to the roof or the loading dock to bum a smoke. The morphine and the delirium had carried me over the worst of the nicotine withdrawal, and as for the habit part, I was out of my normal routine for weeks, living at the beck and call of nurses and therapists of every species. The fifteen minutes after morning rounds, the twenty minutes between lunch and M&M or Grand Rounds, the fifteen minutes before afternoon report.... all those little breaks in the day disappeared in the monotony of rehab.

It's been years, but I still miss it now and then. It comes up at odd times.

Like now. It's mid-morning, a natural pause point, and I've just had a little good news. What could be more natural than getting a coffee and heading down to the smokers' end of the courtyard?

And then I wince a little. Nine years ago, that's exactly what I would have done. But first I would have sent a lewd page to Stacey. If she was able to get away, she'd catch up with me down in the courtyard. "Gre-eg," she'd say, in that little admonishing drawl. What she meant, of course, was I still want you to quit. And I'd just lift my eyebrows, which meant But it's so sexy when you nag. Stacey fussing, me blowing her off: the whole argument compressed in one word and one gesture. Quite a time savings there. We used to be so good together. Even when she was mad at me... I'd slip up to the roof to have a smoke as I contemplated my sins. And of course she'd always find me.

And now Stacey is back. Smoking in the courtyard's not allowed any more, though, and neither are those quiet, intimate morning reunions. These days I'm usually trying to avoid her, but I've lost the roof option, too. It's such a hassle, and I don't smoke like that any more anyway, and if I still did she wouldn't care. She'd probably even encourage it ("as long as I'm standing upwind," she'd add.) She'd always find me, but now I'm trying to hide from her for real, and there's no place to go.

I look down at my hands, at the rubber band wound around my fingers. It's not the cigarette I'm missing. It's all the times I used to smoke -- all the little ups and downs I took for granted.

It's moments like this that I know I will never stop missing my old life.

It's moments like this that I know I will never stop missing Stacey.

the truth is out there

2005-11-12T18:40:00.000-05:00

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets:
An Empirical Study

It's all a government plot in the end.

the cry of the citizen

2005-11-07T20:40:00.000-05:00

Oh for God's sake -- if I see one more ad for this stupid governor's race, I'm going to have to give up TV. Well, till Wednesday, anyway. It's enough to make me think about voting, just to get rid of them.

something new from Eastbrook Pharmaceuticals

2005-11-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

No matter what you do or where you go, you're always going to be yourself. And Panexa knows this. Your lifestyle is one of the biggest factors in choosing how to live. Why trust it to anything less? Panexa is proven to provide moremedication to those who take it than any other comparable solution. Panexa is the right choice, the safe choice. The only choice.

Obviously we need to add this to the hospital formulary right away. And if Cuddy squawks, I'll just point out that she doesn't seem to like the pills I'm taking for my current personality; why shouldn't I try something new?

weaving time in a tapestry

2005-11-01T18:12:00.000-05:00

A note from your author:

It's been a few weeks, and we've been joined by new readers from around the world, so how about a little synopsis?

Over the past few months, House has been reminiscing here and there about a woman who came unexpectedly to visit him in the hospital after the infarction, a woman named Eileen. (There's a complete list of Eileen chapters in the right sidebar.)

House met Eileen during his residency and found himself interested in her. Things were complicated, though, for House was... well, House, and the life of a resident is not easy. Eileen was significantly younger and -- worse yet -- was dating a medical student whom House was supervising at the time.

They bumped into each other a few times that spring, but House didn't see Eileen again until a November afternoon when their paths crossed again. Eileen had just broken up with her med student and had found herself without a way out of town for Christmas. House offered her a lift. He had his own issues at the time and wasn't looking forward to his own visit home, so he was pleased when Eileen ended up accepting the ride. He picked her up early on Christmas Eve, and they were off. We join them after a coffee stop....

Sitting at the coffee shop, dunking cookies in my coffee. It's cold and rainy out; I stopped in to warm up on my way home. I'm tired and sore from the weather and from sitting so long. I was working late tonight on that article, that one on the napthalene toxicity case. I really hope the revisions I made will pacify the stupid journal so they'll go ahead and publish the thing.

Why does everyone think that there's something wrong with me for being a misanthrope? You look at the world today and misanthropy seems to be the only logical response. Like these stupid cookies I'm eating. I'm actually kind of gnawing on them, because these biscotti are so hard you'll break your teeth on them unless you dunk them in coffee. Which means you have to order a coffee. Nice little scam there, kind of like the way bartenders set out peanuts and pretzels.

Or the grocery stores, my God -- I was at the store yesterday picking up my Halloween candy, and they already have the Christmas stuff going up. In a few more years it's going to be Christmas all year long. I dread that day; it's going to make holy hell out of the scheduling. It's pretty easy the rest of the year, but the holidays are a bitch. The kids are already sniping at each other about who worked where when, and whose personal level of devotion trumps whose. Note to self, the next hire should be a Jewish endocrinologist. As long as Passover and Easter don't coincide, we'll be golden.

I take another bite of my biscotto and look around the coffee shop. It's a slow night. I'm not usually here on weeknights, so I'm surprised to see some of the chess regulars here. I catch the eye of one of them, and he recognizes me from when I come here on Sundays. He comes over and tells me about how they come on Tuesdays, and would I like to play sometime? I tell him no thanks, I'm not really into pick-up chess, and he nods and goes back to the others.

It's not really a lie; I was never as into chess as... as some people. Like these guys, they're hard-core chess nerds, they've got the timers and everything. It looks like some of the players are kids from the university.

When was the last time I played chess? It's not something I do all that often.... I think of games I played in restaurants, lining up the captured pieces behind the coffee cup, and suddenly I am filled with nostalgia. The cold November rain spatters on the sidewalk. I lean my head on my hand and stick my cookie in my coffee and forget to take it out; the cookie turns soggy and falls apart but I'm not paying attention any more....

We’d made very good time; it was only another ninety minutes or so to the Briony exit. And then I’d drop her off, head back to the turnpike, and spend another two hours in the car by myself.

I took another bite of the cinnamon roll. I didn’t want to leave the restaurant. I didn’t want to get any closer to Briony. But I couldn’t think of any excuse to stay.

Like I could think of anything to say to her, anyway. Here, Eileen, just sit here in the booth with me for a couple of hours, just because I just want you to. I’d already had a good hour or so with her in the car and all I’d managed to accomplish was put her to sleep, push her buttons, and make her cry.

She came back with the coffees. “Are we ready?”

I stuffed the last bite of roll into my mouth -- "Mm-hm--” and started gathering up the trash. By the time I'd dumped it out and stowed the tray, Eileen was halfway out of the restaurant. I shook my head and went to go catch up with her.

I stopped for gas before we got back on the turnpike. As I started the pump, I heard the car door close again. I looked up: Eileen had gotten a squeegee and was washing my windshield. I shot her a disapproving look; she smiled sweetly and kept going. She was standing away from the car, trying to keep the salt and grime off her long blue coat, so even with the long handle, she really had to stretch to reach the middle of the glass.

I settled back in the car, started the engine, and pulled out of the station. "What was that for?" I asked.

"What?"

"The windshield."

"You mean... cleaning it?" I nodded, and she looked at me strangely. "Just to be nice. I can go out and spit on it or something if it really bothers you."

"That's all right." I looked over my shoulder and hit the accelerator; soon we were up to speed on the turnpike.

I looked back over at Eileen. She'd put her coat in the back seat and was sipping her coffee. When I caught her eye, she started guiltily and leaned over to turn on the radio.

"Don't bother," I said, "there's nothing on. We're even losing that stupid oldies station. Besides, you were supposed to bring some music. Don't you have anything in that backpack of yours?"

"I do." She lifted the bag onto her lap and pulled out a smaller case. "What are you in the mood for?"

"Surprise me. But no Christmas music."

Pouting, she chose a cassette and fed it to the car stereo.

I don't remember what I thought she would bring -- did I seriously think she only listened to madrigals? -- but whatever I was expecting, it wasn't a shouting David Byrne:

Watch out!
You might get what you’re after
Cool babies
Strange but not a stranger
I’m an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

I turned down the volume and looked over at Eileen. She had a smug little smile on her face, even though she was pretending not to look at me.

"Who'd you borrow that from?"

"I didn't borrow it from anyone. What, were you surprised? Everyone else seems to be when I bring that tape."

"I just thought maybe you'd bring your Duran Duran tape, the one with the lipstick prints all over it."

"Oh, Simon!" she simpered mockingly. "Sorry, not today. Maybe another time."

Another time? I looked back over at Eileen. She was just poking around in her backpack again. I took a sip of my coffee, looked back at the road and felt myself smiling a little.

Another couple of miles rolled by.

“So why no Christmas music?” she asked suddenly.

“It’s annoying. I don’t want my car to sound like the mall.”

“That’s true. It doesn’t mean as much if you start playing it all the time starting at Thanksgiving,” she mused. “Funny, I wouldn’t have thought you spent a lot of time at the mall.”

“Dude, I live for the mall.”

“Hanging out at the record store, drinking an Orange Julius…” she teased. “You mall rat. Or are you one of those boys that never come out of the arcade? What’s your high score on Centipede?”

“Centipede is a chick game.”

“Galaga, then. Whatever.” She giggled.

I started at the road. She did not need to know that my Nintendo was packed in the trunk of the car.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “You do play video games!”

“So?” I grunted.

“So I didn’t think doctors did stuff like that! Do you go to the arcade with the other doctors, or is that a secret too?”

“Doctors do all kinds of things. And I’m hardly a typical doctor,” I snapped.

“So I’ve seen,” she replied.

“Well, what does that mean?” I looked over; her expression was conciliatory. Was she making fun of me or not? This was so confusing.

“I’m sorry, I just – I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“But you said it,” I pressed. “You must have meant something.”

“It’s just –I don’t know.” She ran her hand over her hair. “I hardly know you. But from the first day I met you you’ve been asking me to keep secrets, like that whole thing with the piano and the practice room.... You seem to keep so many things about yourself a secret from the others -- and such little things, nice things. I don’t understand. I suppose it kind of helps when you’re dealing with patients all day long. But I don’t know why I said that. How would I know? It’s not like I hang out with doctors all the time.”

“Excuse me? How long were you dating Kopp?”

She pressed her lips together for a moment as she thought. “A little over a year. But that doesn’t count; Dave and his friends are med students, not doctors.” She smiled wryly. “And it’s not like I was hanging out with them all the time, even. No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made fun of your playing video games. But you said it first – that you’re not a typical doctor.”

Another couple of miles rolled away. The sun was all the way up now, but it hadn’t made much difference; the sky was completely overcast with dull, pale clouds that were almost the same color as the snow on the ground. Only the billboards and road signs broke up the monotony. I reached for my coffee and finished it off.

“So what do atypical doctors want for Christmas?” Eileen asked.

I decided to let her change the subject and get off the hook. “Doesn’t matter what I want. I’ll probably get two shirts -- one blue, one with stripes -- with matching ties and a sweater, a gift certificate to the local bookstore, and two CDs.”

“You have a CD player?” She said it as if she were saying, You own a Learjet?

I nodded.

She sighed. “I can’t wait to be done with school,” she said.

So what do covetous little divas with senioritis want for Christmas? I wanted to ask. Instead I just asked, “And what’d you ask Santa for?”

“A car.”

“That’s a big present. You trying to give Santa a hernia or something?”

“I’m not hoping for a fancy car or a new car. I just need a car.” She leaned back in the seat, the hunger for freedom plain on her face. “Maybe my brother will get a new car and give me the old one. Then I wouldn’t need to get a ride back to school.”

“Like, ohmyGod, and then you could, like, go to the mall, like, whenever you wanted!”

“And wear jelly bracelets and play Centipede!”

I looked over; she pulled a face at me. I stifled a grin.

The Talking Heads were still thumping away on my cassette player:

I can't seem to face up to the facts
I'm tense and nervous and I
Can't relax
I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire
Don't touch me I'm a real live wire

A mileage sign came up. Eileen craned her neck to read it and and leaned back smiling: only one more hour until we reached Briony.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.

I’d met Eileen back in February. It seemed like a long time, and yet I hardly knew her. But why was I so -- what did I want to know about her? Why couldn’t I keep a conversation going?

And why did I care? Three or four miles rolled by as my mind slipped off its leash and started chasing the same old thoughts: why couldn’t I talk to girls, why was small talk so damned difficult…. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her reach down and pick up her backpack. Great. Might as well let her read.

I gripped the steering wheel a little harder.

“So, um -- Greg,” Eileen began.

I looked over, surprised. She’d put her bag back on the floor. She looked a little abashed, but then she smiled a little: look, I said it. “How much longer are you going to be a resident?” she asked.

“This is my last year.”

“So what comes next? Will you be a doctor doctor?”

“No, next comes a fellowship. That’s where I start to specialize.”

“Will that be here, or…?”

“I’m applying for a fellowship here, but I doubt I’ll end up taking it, even if they offer it to me. It’s not my field.”

“So what do you want to specialize in?”

“Nephrology.” I saw the question on her face: “Kidneys,” I explained.

“Ew,” she said. “Why kidneys?”

“You’re a squeamish little thing, aren’t you? Do you think kidneys are gross? Is there any part of the body that isn’t gross?”

“Fingernails seem pretty clean.”

“Oh, yeah? Ever seen a fungal infection? I could find some really cool pictures in a path book – green and black and --”

I smirked as she shuddered. “Ugh, no, that’s quite all right.” She shuddered again and collected herself. “So why kidneys?”

“They’re interesting. They’re very delicate, yet they’re one of the hardest working organs in the body. Always making sure that the body’s water balance is okay, checking the sodium and potassium and hormone levels and so many other things… Did you know that urine is sterile when it comes out of the kidneys? You could drink it.”

“Ewwwwwwww—”

“And they’re important in so many regulatory systems… they’re so sensitive, even as they compensate they’re an early warning system when things are going wrong. You should be grateful to your kidneys.”

She curled forward and addressed her waistband: “Thank you kidneys! I love you!”

“You are just way too punchy. Don’t they have bio classes for people like you? Lean forward. Your kidneys are here.” I reached over and tapped her back. She laughed and looked backwards over her shoulder, thanking her kidneys again. I turned my attention to the road, trying not to think about what I had just done – had I ever touched her before? -- and trying not to think about what it would be like to rest my hand on her back, to caress her, slowly, from her waist to the nape of her neck to the small of her back again…. I clenched the steering wheel again. Damn it.

Eileen had finished thanking her kidneys and was settled back in her seat. “How long does a fellowship last?”

“The ones I’m applying for are two years.”

“So four years of med school, three years of residency, two years of fellowship…. Wow.”

I shrugged. “That’s what it takes. Some programs are even longer; some of the surgical residencies are five years long,” I said. “But surgeons are crazy anyway.”

“So you’re leaving this year, and so am I. And so is Dave. What a strange coincidence.”

Strange and unpleasant: at that moment, the last person on earth I wanted to be thinking of was Dave. Mr David Kopp, fourth year medical student, scut monkey, Eileen’s ex-boyfriend… I hadn’t worked with him since the spring, back on GI-Hepatology with Dr Ball. The memory of that night with the team at the restaurant came bubbling up – the memory of seeing Kopp kiss Eileen…. I tried to shove it out of my mind. But I couldn’t.

I let a good three or four miles go by before I went ahead and asked her. “Were you living with Kopp?”

She stared at me for a moment and then snorted. “Living with Dave? Are you kidding? My father would kill me.”

“What, Kopp gets off scot-free?”

“Oh, he’d delegate that to my brothers.” She smirked. “Maybe I should … no, that would be too evil.”

“What?”

“Sic my brothers on him.”

“What are they, your personal goon squad or something?”

She laughed. “No, they work for my dad, not me. Why in the world would you think I was living with Dave?”

“Well, you were staying with that girl….”

“Oh! No, I live in a dorm. I was staying at her place because I left so late, the dorms were closed.” She chuckled to herself. “Locked out of my dorm room and camping at Michelle’s. This was not the way I’d planned to kick off Christmas break.”

She leaned back in the seat and stared ahead for a minute or two.

“That afternoon in the caf…” she began.

I took a deep breath – did I want to hear this? yes, I did—

“Dave and I had already been -- having problems, and then that whole residency thing…. He was looking at residency programs, and I was looking at graduate programs, and we’d talked about looking in the same area, but I could never get him to really sit down with me and make a plan.

“There’s this performance and teaching program in Delaware – “

“Delaware?”

She ignored me. “— it’s exactly what I’m looking for, and they sound interested in me. They’re talking about a big grant – a free ride. Dave and I had been talking about residencies in that area, and he’d mentioned being interested in a couple in the Philadelphia area. I was all excited, so that afternoon I went over to the hospital – I dropped off some flyers and met Dave in the caf, and I told him about the program. And that’s when he told me he’d already submitted his applications. None of them were for Philly.”

“He told me where he did apply, and only one of them was anywhere close to where we’d talked about. I asked him what he thought I was going to be doing, and he just looked at me, and I realized -- he hadn’t given it any thought at all. So then he said, well, couldn’t you just find something there? Or teach or something? So I tried to make him understand what a big opportunity I’d be passing up, and that we were getting to the point where we really needed to get moving and start planning, especially if he wanted me to give up the scholarship….”

Her voice grew hard. “Dave said something about how we can’t make plans until he knows what residency he’s doing, and oh, Eileen, you weren’t talking about planning a wedding, were you? Long story short – he thought I was going to give up everything, just to shack up with him. I told him that I thought we were going to get in the same area, we’d talked about it, and instead he’d gone behind my back and applied to all these different places. I wasn’t going to give up all my grad school plans – especially not a full grant to a conservatory -- unless we got married, and he said it took a long time to plan a wedding and he didn’t think he was ready to make that kind of commitment.

She was speaking faster and faster. “So I said, let me get this straight, you’re willing to ask me to commit to giving up my professional future but you’re not willing to make a commitment to getting married. And he just looked at me. That’s when I took off.

“I was so stupid!” she said bitterly. “And I wasted so much time. I’d been lying to myself for months. But it was so easy to pretend that we wanted the same things, that things were going to work out the way I wanted them to.”

She looked over at me. “I suppose I owe you a dollar now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

We drove a while in silence. Eileen sat with dry eyes and folded arms, staring ahead at the gray morning sky.

So Dave hadn’t wanted to give her a ring. Which one of them had been stupider – Eileen, who’d seriously considered giving up a scholarship to be a resident’s wife? Or Dave, who’d seriously considered giving up Eileen? Had Dave even considered a future with Eileen, or had he been planning all along to dump her after graduation? Had he been planning at all? But then, residency was so important… what would I have done? I’d never have changed my plans for someone else; what would I have done if someone had been willing to change her plans for me?

“Greg?” Eileen’s voice called me back to the car. “I know you’re not going to tell anyone about what I just told you, right?”

“No.”

“And you’re going to leave Dave alone, right?”

I gave her a look: Do I have to? She lifted her eyebrows.

“Oh, all right,” I said. “If you insist. But why do you care? Weren’t you going to send your brothers after him just a few minutes ago?”

She chuckled. “I was kidding about my brothers. It’s just… it wasn’t fair for me to tell you all that. Promise me you’ll leave him alone?”

“I’ll leave him alone about this.”

“Thank you.”

She thought for a moment and turned back around. “Why do you dislike Dave so much?”

Because it infuriates me that a med student with nothing upstairs but an ability to memorize his textbooks and suck up to the right people could land someone like you. “Why do you think I dislike him?” I cautiously asked.

“Oh, come on.”

“What, you told me why you don’t like him, so now it’s my turn?”

“I don’t dislike Dave.”

“You broke up with him.”

“Yes, I did. And I’m angry at him, and I probably will be for a long time. But being angry at someone isn’t the same as not liking someone.”

“So you’re looking for another reason to be angry with him?”

“No, I’ve got plenty, thanks. But, I don’t know, maybe you saw something that I didn’t. Or maybe I’m just trying to get something out in the open.”

I thought back for a minute. Kopp was a med student, so of course I disliked him on principle, but beyond that, when I’d worked with him I hadn’t despised him any more than I despised the rest of his barbarous classmates. He was just another med student, and our paths hadn’t crossed since April. No, the only reason I even remembered his name was… jealousy? Certainly not that, but…

“I don’t have any special reason for disliking Kopp,” I lied. “I just... don’t like him. Besides, I hardly know him. He’s a med student, I’m not supposed to like him. It’s my job to pick on him. I pick on everyone.” I shrugged. “It’s nothing personal; I don’t really like anyone.”

My stomach dropped when I realized what I’d just said. I glanced over; she was turned in the seat and was looking at me. She smiled a little when she caught my eye – ha ha, funny joke – and let it pass.

Another mile, and another.

Why had I said that? Well, it was true, but for once I regretted letting it slip.

Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was

My irritation floated around and found a target in Eileen’s tape: the Talking Heads had gotten way too precious and annoying. I reached over and hit the eject button.

“Hey!” Eileen protested.

“Isn’t it neat how when you have a song on tape you can listen to it whenever you want?” I pulled out the tape and tossed it to her. “I see I’m going to have to take control. Get me that box on the back seat.”

She undid her seat belt, got the box, and held it open for me. I glanced over, found the Rolling Stones mix tape I wanted, and pushed it into the player. “You can throw that box back now,” I said. I usually kept it on the passenger seat.

Instead of hearing Eileen turn around, I heard her seat belt click. I looked over. She was settling back into the seat and grinning as she prepared to check out my driving music. I groaned and turned my eyes back to the road.

“Let’s see… The Who, Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd – don’t you label which album it is? – Blondie?” She chuckled at my sour expression and went back to rummaging in my tape box. “Oh, here we go: ‘Beethoven’. That narrows it down.” She closed her eyes and dramatically held the tape to her forehead. “I’m guessing… the Fifth and the Seventh.”

“Good guess.”

“Miles Davis… Elvis Costello… Brahms…” She squinted at me and nodded. “I could see you being a Brahms guy.” She picked up another tape. “Who’s Giles Memphis?”

“John Henry Giles, Live in Memphis. Jazz trumpet.”

She held up my tape of the Mozart Requiem. “Ah, here we go.” She dropped her voice and giddily mimicked the basses and tenors:

“Confutatis maledictis
Flammis acribus addictis…”

I cut her off before she could start her own alto part. “All right, that’s enough.”

She smiled and twisted around to put the tape box on the back seat. “Very impressive.”

“Well, I’m glad you approve. So when do I get to snoop through your tapes?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe if I ever have a car.” She looked ahead and smiled: we were coming up on another mileage sign for the Briony exit.

I felt myself sigh a little. It was my turn to say something and I was coming up empty-handed. It occurred to me that if I lightened up on the gas, we wouldn’t get there as quickly. If Car A is driving at 70 mph and Car B is driving at 55 mph, how much sooner will Car A… I stopped myself before I started doing the calculations. Another few miles had slipped by: another few minutes of time, wasted. I looked over at Eileen. She’d gotten fed up with waiting for me to hold up my end of the conversation and had pulled a magazine out of her bag. She was bobbing her head a little in time with the music: Jumping Jack Flash, it’s a gas gas gas….

“Hey. Abney.”

She looked up.

“Have you forgotten your duties? Entertain me.”

She rolled her eyes and put down the magazine. “I spy with my little eye… something that begins with an S.”

“Oh for God’s sake. Sign.”

“Nope.”

“Snow. Slush. Saab.”

“Wrong, wrong, and wrong. By the way, the game goes faster if you ask for clues.”

“Aren’t you supposed to give the clues?”

“S does not stand for spoon-feed! Oh, all right: I spy something that begins with S that is neither solid nor liquid.”

“Sulfur dioxide.”

“Close! But that’s invisible, so I could not spy that with my little eye.”

“Sky.”

“Bing bing bing!”

“So what’s my prize?”

“You get to be the next spy.”

“What? Do I have to? Okay: I spy something that begins with E.”

She gave me a withering look. “Please tell me it’s not ‘Eileen.’”

“How did you ever guess? I would have also accepted ‘epidermis’.”

“Were you one of those little boys who would tease girls by telling them their epidermis was showing?”

“I was more the pigtails in the inkwell type myself. Now pick something else.”

“I spy… something that begins with P.”

I guessed pavement, police car, and Pontiac before insisting I was all guessed out.

“Something that begins with P that is inside the car.”

I sighed. “Physician.”

“Very good! I would also have accepted ‘pianist.’”

“So my turn now. Something that begins with M.”

“Mazda.”

“It’s inside.”

She glanced around and then down to her lap. “Magazine.”

“That’ll do. And would that be M for Mademoiselle? Or some other chick magazine – Cosmopolitan? What’s my horoscope?”

“Cosmo!” she snorted. “Okay, let me see here…” She flipped to the back. “ ‘Beware of jumping to conclusions: your guesses are not as accurate as you think they are. Tonight, you may meet a mysterious man dressed in red.‘ “

“A vision of Satan! Excellent. Now read yours.”

“ ‘Your future begins with a journey to your past.’ ”

“Well, that’s boring. Where’s all the sex? Cosmo’s really gotten tame. Or are you reading Seventeen?”

“Seventeen? What, do you want to take a personality quiz? Oooo, here’s a good one: ‘What type of lip gloss are you?’ “

I looked over. “Are you really reading Seventeen?”

“No.”

I tried to remember some of the other titles from the magazine rack – whatever it was, it was way too thin for Vogue, and I already knew it wasn’t Bride’s…. “Young Miss? Glamour?” She shook her head.

“Tiger Beat?” I guessed.

“I do not read Tiger Beat.”

“Not any more, at least.” She pulled a face at me.

“Come on, Abney, what’s the secret?” I wheedled.

“It’s no secret.” She turned the magazine face down.

“So what are you reading?”

“See? All you had to do was ask.” She held it up: King’s Pawn Almanac. “It’s kind of obscure – it’s a chess magazine, ” she explained.

“I know what it is.”

Eileen’s face lit up. “Do you play?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“So how do you –”

“Saw it on the newsstand,” I snapped. I looked over my left shoulder and pretended to be preoccupied with passing a truck. But I could still feel Eileen looking at me. Once the truck was in my rear-view mirror, I looked back over at her. She was absorbed in her magazine.

Fine, I’d let her read. I couldn’t keep up this cheerful small-talk crap another minute anyway – I’d tried my best and all I’d managed to do was practically chew her head off yet another time.

King’s Pawn Almanac. I didn’t know if it was even sold on a newsstand, and I figured it was just a matter of time before Eileen called me on it. I knew it from when I was living at home – or, more precisely, from when my brother Mark was living at home. He’d been a chess nerd since the fourth grade and a subscriber since high school. Hadn’t I heard somehow that he’d even been writing for the thing? Was it for this one, or some other kind of Chess Nerd News type thing?

And Eileen Abney read Chess Nerd News? Before I could ponder this interesting new fact, memory tugged at me like an undertow, sucking the sand out from under my feet, pulling me under… coming home from school, dropping my books on the entry table, peeling off my damp coat and yelling I’m home… stepping out of my shoes, wet from an early November snow, and seeing the mail still lying on the floor in front of the slot… picking it up, sorting through it, dimly realizing that it had been sitting there for hours, since the mailman came around lunchtime. Mail for my parents, a college catalog for me and three more for Mark, plus his copy of King’s Pawn Almanac… rolling my eyes at his stupid chess magazine, planning how I was going to tease him about it, thinking of a way to read it without anyone seeing me… Looking up. Noticing I was still alone in the foyer. The growing unease as I realized that my mother’s car was in the driveway but she hadn’t called back to me yet, that the house was silent… Mom? I called out, Mom, I’m home....

…Relief at hearing her footsteps on the stairs, hearing her say Hello, dear, how was school, are you hungry? -- the same thing she said every day -- but today her voice was scratchy… seeing her smiling, seeing that it was forced, seeing that her eyes were swollen, that she was blinking a little too often – eye drops, she’s just put in eye drops – that her face was still a little damp from the cold washcloth… the surge of childish fear – Mommy is crying – coming back to myself and saying Mom, are you okay? Hearing her speak a little too quickly -- of course, Greg, I’m fine, it’s so cold out, you must be freezing, would you like some hot chocolate? – and choosing to believe the lie; letting her brush a snowflake out of my hair, leaving the mail on the table and following her to the kitchen…. Mark coming home later, reading his magazine at the kitchen table as he drank his cocoa…. Thinking about telling him -- I came home and Mom had been crying – seeing him absorbed in the chess problem in his head, and deciding not to…. Thinking it about it again over dinner, watching my father cut his potatoes, wondering if I should tell him, deciding not to….

It would not be the last time I came home and found the mail still scattered on the floor.

My eyes narrowed as I clenched the steering wheel. Had my father been cheating on her even then? How long had he been doing this to her, how long had she known? And now she was insisting everything was okay, and I was supposed to go home and sit at the dining room table and pass the stuffing as if nothing had happened? Who was worse – my lying father? Or my lying mother? Only a few more hours, and I was going to have to look at them again.

Part of my brain coldly observed that my heart rate and respirations were up. I couldn’t even hold up my end in a conversation about the weather -- what in the world was I going to say to my mother?

Eileen’s voice jolted me back to the moment. “Greg?”

I took a deep breath and looked over. She looked apologetic.

“There’s a rest stop coming up soon; I really….”

I nodded. “Your kidneys are working as they should.”

“Thanks.” She smiled, but her right leg was bouncing.

Another mile, and we were pulling into to the rest stop. Eileen grabbed her coat from the back seat and hurried inside. I looked at the magazine, decided not to sneak a peek, and got out of the car to follow her.

I didn’t even try to go in the rest stop; it was jammed with irritable travelers with full bladders and empty stomachs. As unpleasant as it was to be getting close to Briony – and to my own parents – at least it would get me off the road and away from these hordes of annoying people. I took up a spot outside the doors, stuck my hands in my jacket pockets, and settled in to wait. From the crowds, I knew it was going to take her a while. I fingered the new pack of Camels in my left pocket, considered, and decided to wait. It wasn’t worth listening to the little diva fuss about the smell – or worse, watching her wrinkling her nose and knowing she was trying to be polite and not complain. I’d be dropping her off soon enough. Besides, I wasn’t really ready for a smoke anyway. Another couple of hours of crowds and driving, though, and I would be.

Eileen finally pushed her way out the door and started heading back towards the car. I pushed away from the wall and caught up with her in a couple of steps. “There you are,” I said. “Are you going to offer me that lame excuse again about there being a line?”

“I am so glad you insisted on leaving so early. I had no idea it would get this crowded this quickly.”

“Haven’t you ever traveled on Christmas Eve before?”

“No, I’m usually home from school by now.”

“Well, then, you’re getting a learning experience – hey!” I grabbed at Eileen’s arm as she stumbled. Some clod had been too busy yelling at his zombie children to watch where he was going, and he’d plowed right into her. She staggered, but caught herself before she tripped over her coat. I turned to yell at the guy but he’d disappeared into the building.

“Idiot,” I snarled, and turned back around. “You okay?”

“Yeah. What a jerk.” She shook her head and took her hand off my jacket sleeve.

Back in the car, I waited as she stowed her coat in the back again and buckled her seat belt. We managed to escape the parking lot without getting hit, despite the best efforts of the other drivers, and get back on the road.

“You really couldn’t have waited till you got home?” I asked.

“I was trying to make it….”

“All right. Well, tend to your duties.”

“Aye aye, sir.” She reached forward and ejected the Rolling Stones tape.

“Excuse me?”

“Can we have just a little Christmas music? Please?” She made a beseeching face. “It’s not too much longer, and I promise your car won’t sound like the mall.”

“If I say yes, will you quit with the puppy-dog eyes?”

She smiled and put the new tape in. A few seconds of hiss, and then a piano playing “O Tannenbaum”… the bass began, and then I recognized the album: it was the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack for “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

I looked over. Eileen was watching for my reaction.

“I suppose I can put up with this for a while.”

“Thanks. I thought you might like it."

The miles quietly peeled away. Eileen gazed out the window, her magazine closed on her lap. I kept my eyes on the road. I was still feeling talked out and irritable, but the Guaraldi’s tinge of melancholy was strangely consoling. At one point I looked over at Eileen and found her looking at me, her head tilted to the side. She smiled and went back to her magazine.

Another five, another ten miles. Soon it would be time to say good-bye.

And then the sign for her exit came up. I turned to order Eileen to get the toll ready, but she already had the ticket in her mouth and was counting out coins in her palm. We pulled up to the booth, I handed over the money and the ticket, and we turned off towards Briony.

“You’re going to have to give me some directions here, Abney.”

“Just keep going straight, we’ll cut through town.” She looked at me quizzically. “You’ve never been to Briony?”

“Oh, I know, you’ve got that domed stadium there, the two NFL teams, the jazz cafes, the world-famous art museum… I bet you think I’m a real hick now.”

“Please. The only domed thing we’ve got is the roller rink. No, you said you were headed this way anyway, so I thought you lived further down Route 30, maybe towards Devon or Clear Springs, and you pretty much have to drive through Briony to get there….”

“Well, you guessed wrong. I’ve never been down Route 30 in my life.”

“So where are you from?”

I sighed deeply before I answered at last. “Somerset.”

“Somerset?! You told me this was on the way! By the time you get to Briony and back to the turnpike – this puts you almost an hour behind! And the tolls –”

“So what’s an hour? And what do you care? You needed a ride, I offered you a ride.”

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have done this.”

“Again: if I want to spend an extra hour careening around the turnpike, why should you care? Next time you need a ride without worrying about inconveniencing anybody, take the bus. But wait -- Greyhound doesn’t stop in front of your house, does it? So someone would have had to come and pick you up anyway. And like I said, don’t think I was doing this for you as some kind of favor. I wanted a co-pilot. That’s all.”

“Well, I hope—” she broke off.

“What?”

“Nothing. I lost my train of thought.” She stared ahead, as if she were watching her lost train somewhere in the distance, then leaned forward and pulled out the ashtray. “Oops – that’s right, you keep ashes in there. Where do you want this loose change?”

“Just put it back in that little tray there.” I nodded toward the center console. She obeyed and sat back, grinning, practically squeezing herself to contain her glee.

A few more miles passed by, and then we started seeing the first signs of the town: a gas station, a convenience store, and then the big old-fashioned WELCOME TO BRIONY – HOME OF THE BRIONY BEARS sign, surrounded by the signs for every fraternal organization in town and festooned with lights and pine roping.

“Just keep going straight,” she said.

I drove slowly down the main drag – there were a lot of people out and about. “Rush hour in Briony. Okay, Abney, time for the tour.”

“Well, there’s the town hall, and there’s the post office….” The tiny downtown was decorated with greenery and red ribbons, and I had to admit to myself that it was kind of pretty. If decorations were necessary, at least Briony did it with a little taste. A few blocks and we were soon into the newer, blander area.

“So what are you going to be doing on your break?” I asked.

“Not that much. Writing applications, hanging out with friends, trying to make some money….”

“Money again! What’s with the avarice?”

“Making money is kind of a major concern when you don’t have any."

“Aren’t your parents helping you?”

“Well, yeah. But there’s always something. I always have extra fees for private lessons and that kind of thing. And then a recital comes up, you need a new dress and then you need the shoes…. And then I’m saving for a car, and I know I’m going to be traveling for the auditions.”

“So you’re working over the break?”

“See that strip mall? Make a left up there, you’ll see the grocery store as we turn.” She chuckled. “That’s where I’ll be ringing in the new year.”

I made the turn and started running the numbers in my head. Was Eileen a gold-digger? The idea didn’t sit well with me. She was feeling the pinch, and marrying a doctor was a time-honored way of taking care of that. If she’d gotten her way, she’d have gotten married in the spring to a boring med student who’d have become a boring resident in July, which would have meant a steady paycheck, with the promise of a comfortable life if she’d held on. And it was marriage or nothing for her. But the way she’d been talking, her issue had been over grad school, not community property law…. Had this whole thing really been over property? Or over principle?

We passed a church as we got into the residential area. “Oh look,” said Eileen, “they’ve got a new Nativity scene! That reminds me, I’ll have to give Jerry a call this afternoon. Jerry’s the music director there,” she explained.

“Is Jerry going to come ring in the new year with you at the supermarket?”

She rolled her eyes. “Jerry is old and bald and married. But if his musicians are all out of town he might have some work for me.”

“What kind of work?”

“This time of year? Mostly funerals -- turn right up here.”

I followed her instructions before I turned to look at her. “Funerals?”

“You know – singing at funerals. Music. It depends on the family, of course, and on what the church allows, but it’s good money. The directors like knowing when I’m home on break. I can work on short notice and on weekdays, so they call me a lot.”

“So how much do you make for a funeral?”

“Depends on what’s usual for the church.” She smiled mischievously. “But I think I’m going to start charging extra for ‘Danny Boy.’ Make another right up here on St John Street. We’re almost there!”

I made the turn, and Eileen guided me to the house. She frowned as we pulled up to the front – the driveway was empty. “Where is everybody?”

“Maybe they gave up on you and moved.”

“As long as they didn’t change the locks first.” She got out and opened the back door to get her coat. I popped the trunk and got out to get her suitcase. Halfway up the driveway, I looked back – she’d gotten her backpack from the front seat and was coming up with her shopping bag. We made it up to the front door; I stepped aside and held the storm door open as she fumbled with her keys.

“All right, Abney, this is it.”

“Not yet. You’ve still got a way to go, so you’re going to come in, rest for a minute, and tend to your micturition reflex.” She pronounced micturition carefully and precisely. “Come on. My mom’s out, and everyone else was going to the airport with my dad. You won’t have to talk to anybody.” She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. “Hello?” she called.

The house was silent. She held the door open as I brought her suitcase in. “See? Everyone’s out.” She stepped out, brought in her other bags, and closed the door.

As Eileen took off her coat, I caught a whiff of coffee and cinnamon from the kitchen. From the entry, I could see the family’s Christmas tree in the living room. The tree was surrounded by a mountain of gifts. Behind it, I could just see an elaborate Nativity scene set up on a table. I squinted. Everyone was in place but the star of the show: the crib was missing. Some of the figures with the shepherds didn’t look like they came from the original set. One of them seemed to be carrying a light saber.

I was about to walk over and take a look when Eileen turned back from the closet. “Can I take your jacket?” she asked.

“Huh? No, I’m okay.”

She smiled. “Come on, then.” She led me down a short hallway. “Bathroom’s here, if you need it, and the kitchen’s around the corner.”

I decided to seize the moment and stepped into the bathroom. As I stood at the sink to wash my hands, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I leaned closer and frowned. Eileen had had to look at that the whole way up? Maybe I should have shaved. It wouldn’t have done a thing, though, for all the late nights and early mornings written under my eyes… Oh well. I splashed my face with water, washed my hands, and headed out to the kitchen. Eileen was hunting around in a cupboard.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Some juice? I’ve got hot water on, would you like some tea? Maybe some hot chocolate?”

“Abney, I –”

She smiled, raising her eyebrows expectantly -- the kitchen was warm, the tea kettle was starting to burble -- and my resolve crumbled like a sugar cookie.

“I’ll have what you’re having,” I said.

“Tea it is, then. And there’s got to be some scones around here someplace.” She pulled a stool out for me at the center island, took two plates from another cupboard and started investigating a stack of tins and plastic boxes.

While she rummaged, I wandered through the dining room back to the living room. After weeks and weeks of seeing nothing but the hospital, my apartment, and the occasional bar or supermarket, it was almost disorienting to be in a room like this – a family’s room, comfortable, settled. It was like getting out of a sailboat and not having my land legs back.

It struck me that Eileen hadn’t always been in college, that she might have stood in this room as a high school student or maybe even earlier. There was a small console piano on the other side of the room. Did she play? I’d never thought to ask her. The Christmas tree was groaning under years of homemade ornaments. Which of them had her name on the back?

I walked over to the Nativity scene and bent to take a look. It was plastic, vaguely Italian; Mary’s hands were flung up in the “behold” position, but without the manger she just looked startled. Maybe there was a mouse in the stable. Joseph’s hand was pressed to his sternum in awe, or possibly in pain. Reflux, most likely: ranitidine 150 mg p.o. b.i.d. times 14 days, make appointment for follow-up visit in clinic. As for the rest of the cast, the Magi were off by themselves on another table to the right. The shepherd’s flock had been joined by a few animals from the workshop of Fisher-Price, and as for the shepherds themselves….

I heard the tea kettle whistling and headed back to the kitchen. “Hey, Abney. Since when are Yoda and Lando Calrissian shepherds in the Christmas play?”

She looked up from the counter. “Yoda’s in with the shepherds?”

I nodded.

Eileen made an annoyed face as she got out the tea bags. “See, this is why I needed to get home.” She added boiling water from the kettle and set the teacups on the center island to steep. “Sit,” she commanded. I obeyed. “Yoda belongs with the Wise Men, I keep telling them this –”

“I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen.”

Eileen turned and my stomach dropped: A yawning teenaged girl in flannel pajamas and bunny slippers was shuffling into the kitchen. “Hi, Eileen,” she said drowsily.

“Bern!” cried Eileen. The two girls started hugging and emitting high-pitched delight noises, and for a moment my skin crawled just as it did when I was fifteen and my female classmates would huddle around their lockers and giggle. I seriously considered grabbing my keys and taking off – I could cut through the living room….

Eileen pulled herself together. “This is my sister Bernadette, who I thought had gone to the airport with my dad. Bern, this is Dr House.”

Bernadette waved a little. “Hi,” she said. She seemed perfectly unconcerned by my presence. “You brought Eileen home, right?”

“Yes, he did,” Eileen said quickly. “Hey, where is everybody? Are you the only one home?”

“Yeah. Tom’s gone to the airport with Dad, and Mom’s at church. I think she was going to go to the store afterwards, she didn’t think you’d be in this early. You guys made great time.” She looked at the clock. “She should be home soon.”

“So why didn’t you go with them?” said Eileen fretfully. “Oh, forget it. Where’s Mom hiding the cookies?”

“Like I’m supposed to know.” Bernadette took a sip of Eileen’s tea and went over to open a drawer. She lifted a towel and started pulling out boxes. “Making a plate?”

“Yes. Dr House needs to get back on the road. He still has a ways to go.”

“Okay.” Bernadette started opening boxes and stared at me with naked curiosity. “That was really nice of you to give Eileen a ride. Do you like pumpkin bread?”

Eileen shot her a warning look and brought me a scone. “Sorry,” she whispered. I nodded and took a bite of the scone, and put the fork down again. I was trying to get a sense of how old the sister was, but it was almost impossible. Eileen looked young, and the sister looked like Eileen, so she probably looked young… maybe sixteen? But then what was with those bunny slippers?

Bernadette kept opening boxes and piling baked goods on a paper plate. Eileen handed her a roll of plastic wrap and walked back over to the stove. “Some tea or hot chocolate to take with you?” she asked me.

“You don’t have to do all this.”

“It’ll save you some time.”

Bernadette looked up from wrapping the plate. “Fine,” I said -- anything to get out of there. Eileen nodded and started spooning hot chocolate mix into a travel mug. She poured in the hot water, gave it a stir, and snapped on the lid. “Hot drink, something to eat… Anything else?”

“No thanks.” I pushed away from the counter and stood up. “Thanks again, Abney – Abneys,” I corrected myself, before that infernal Bernadette could start tittering.

They followed me to the door. “Well, see you later,” I said.

“Wait, I’ll carry the plate for you,” said Eileen. She handed me the mug and took the plate from her sister.

“Okay,” said Bernadette. “Merry Christmas, Dr House! It was nice meeting you. Thanks again for bringing Eileen home.”

“No problem,” I grunted. Eileen opened the door and I hurried out. She ran after me and caught up on the driveway.

“I am so sorry!” she said. “I figured everybody would be gone, I wasn’t counting on Sleeping Beauty in there.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a sister.”

“You didn’t ask.” She followed me down to the car.

“Well, now this is it,” I said. I looked down at the mug, and then looked up at Eileen. She wasn’t going to try to hug me, was she? I was probably safe as long as she had that plate in her hands.

“I’m really sorry,” she repeated.

“It’s okay.”

“Thanks again for the ride. I really, really appreciate it. Are you okay finding your way back?”

“Yeah.” I opened the car door and got in. I put the mug in the holder, started the engine, thought for a second, and turned back. “What about your mug?”

“Don’t worry about it, we have piles of those things. You can give it back to me in January.”

“January?”

“Weren’t we going bowling in January?”

“Glad you remembered. When are you back?”

“Not sure yet, I’ll let you know. Probably around the ninth.”

January. “Well, get back inside, you’re shivering.”

“Okay. But can I ask for a favor? If we go bowling in January, I want to play chess in February.”

“I told you, I don’t play.”

She smiled slyly. “You also told me that everyone lies.” She handed me the plate. “Thanks again for a fun ride. And have a merry Christmas, you deserve it.” She stepped back as I closed the door, waved, and headed back up the driveway.

I turned to put the plate on the passenger seat and found a small wrapped package. A card in a red envelope was taped to it. I looked up to the front door. Eileen was standing inside the storm door, watching me, holding the front door half-closed behind her. I held up the package and made a disapproving face. She smiled, waved, and went back inside. I put the car in gear and drove off.

Once I was safely out of Briony, I pulled into a gas station and tore into the goodie plate. Once I’d wolfed one down and crammed a second into my mouth, I unwrapped the little package. It was a coffee mug, with a little cartoon of the university mascot standing at a director’s podium and holding a baton. The other side of the mug was labeled DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC. I looked inside. Eileen had stuffed it with little marshmallows shaped like Christmas trees. I shook my head, ate a marshmallow, and put the mug down. The card had an innocuous winter scene on the front and was signed Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Eileen. I looked back at the envelope, at my name in her handwriting.

What had just happened?

I wasn’t sure.

But I was thinking it was something good. And I’d have plenty of time to think it over, because I was going to see Eileen in January. Christmas was tomorrow, New Year’s was just a week away, and then as soon as nine more days… I’d been kidding about the bowling, but now she seemed to expect it. It could be fun.

I pulled back out on 30 and headed back to the turnpike.

The rest of the trip went quickly. I spent most of it thinking about my co-pilot , about crying, laughing, teasing Eileen , about the curve of her back when she was twisting around trying to see her kidneys… about how she didn’t just slam the door and say so long when I dropped her off…. and I was going to see her again. I was going to see her in January.

When I got to Somerset, I took the back road around to my parents’ neighborhood and stopped off at the empty playground. I trudged through the snow over to the swing set, found one that wasn’t too wet, and opened the Camels. A light wind was blowing. I turned my back to the wind to keep the smell of my cigarette off my jacket and my mother off my case. Across the snowy field, the bare tree branches swayed in the breeze.

Finally I couldn’t put it off any longer. I put out the cigarette, threw the butt in the trash, and headed for home.

I pulled in the driveway, shut off the engine, and looked over at the cookies and the mug in the passenger seat. “Have a merry Christmas. You deserve it.” I stuck a cookie in my mouth, left everything else in the passenger set, and went around to the trunk for my duffel bag.. I stopped on the doorstep and stood there for a long moment in front of the wreath, trying to prepare myself, before I gave up, turned the key, and stepped in.

“Hello,” I announced, tossing my bag on the floor. I stepped out of my sneakers, wet from my trip to the playground. Before I had my jacket off, my mother had appeared. She was beaming. “Gregory! Oh, it’s so good to see you– ” She hesitated, and then stepped forward and hugged me for a long, long moment. When she finally stepped back, she was blinking back tears.

I felt sick to my stomach. I had done this to her.

She laughed a little. “Don’t mind me. I’m just – I’m so glad you’re here.” By now my father had come into the entry. She reached behind her, lightly touching his arm and drawing him closer.

“It’s good to see you,” he said. I understand, his eyes added.

He extended his hand. And, at last, I took it.

The visit passed quickly. I took a long nap that afternoon in front of the fire and slept in on Christmas morning, so it was almost noon before we started opening presents. Mark was full of surprises that morning. He’d offered to pick out something for my dad from both us, and I’d taken him up on it (it saved me a shopping trip.) He’d done a surprisingly good job: Dad seemed quite pleased with his new humidor. I started in on the present Mark had given me, expecting the usual two CDs, and was surprised to find a Nintendo game in the box instead – especially since I hadn’t mentioned to anyone in the family that I owned an NES.

I looked at him curiously and he shrugged. “I figured you either had one or would be getting one soon.”

Later that afternoon I took my Nintendo out of the trunk and we spent a couple of hours playing Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers. We were pretty evenly matched; I was faster, but Mark was quicker at figuring out the game. My parents gave it a try, which was pretty amusing, but they quickly gave up. After supper my dad opened his new humidor and invited Mark and me to join him in the garage. It was easy to sit out there and not have to say anything. Later that evening my mom opened the piano; she played for a while and then played duets, a few with Mark and a few with me. I played one duet with Mark, but only because my mother asked, and only because it was Christmas.

I had intended to leave early on the 26^th, but I stayed for lunch instead and left in the afternoon. My mother was still disappointed that I was leaving so soon, but she didn’t say anything. A hug for my mother, stiff handshakes from my father and Mark, and I was back on the turnpike.

I would be back at work the next day, rounding with Roderick at seven in the morning, but for now I had five or six hours to myself with nothing to do but think. It had gone so much better than I had expected, all of it. No scenes with my parents, no bickering with Mark….

I saw the sign for the Briony exit and thought of the little diva. Even that had gone well. Maybe I could take a side trip to Briony, drop in and surprise her at the grocery store?

No, that would be pushing it. Besides, that town seemed to be crawling with her siblings, and I’d be seeing her pretty soon anyway. As I passed the exit, my Rolling Stones tape reversed:

I'll never be your beast of burden
I've walked for miles
My feet are hurting…

Only a week to New Year’s, and then only nine days till Eileen would be back. And somehow I knew she wouldn’t forget, she wouldn’t break her promise.

“Thanks again for a fun ride….”

I smiled and sped up a little. Roderick would be expecting me to thank him for this time off. Maybe I’d even do it.

The chess players start whooping and cheering, snapping me back to the coffee shop. I take a sip of my coffee. It's cold.

It's still raining outside but I can't shelter in here forever. I gather up my cold coffee and leftover cookies, toss them in the trash, and head out into the rain to go back home.

the candy part's okay

2005-10-31T23:58:00.000-05:00

Halloween 2005: I didn't do a damn thing. No way was I going to go out and find some drunken costumed idiot in my parking spot when I got back. Covered the 'Vette, too.

Wilson came over, thus depriving another drunken costumed idiot of a parking spot, and we drank beer and ate candy and watched the game.

I wasn't planning on doing anything for trick-or-treaters. There aren't many kids in the building, and even if there were, when you think of Nice People Who Give Out Candy To Lisping Tots In Costumes, I suspect I'm not the first name that comes to mind (can't imagine why.) But Wilson nagged me about it and we ended up putting a bowl of candy outside the door. A couple of pieces were gone when Wilson opened the door to leave, and about ten more mysteriously disappeared between the time he picked up the bowl and the time he closed the door behind him.

Foreman drew the short straw and is covering tonight. Wonder what Chase and Cameron are dressed up as? I'll have to ask them in the morning.

el baile de yoda

2005-10-31T07:39:00.000-05:00

This is as good a way as any to kill sixty-three seconds.

Rex Morgan, M.D.: The Truth Revealed.

2005-10-26T08:21:00.000-04:00

This is disturbing and coarse.

I like it.

Shirley Horn

2005-10-22T09:59:00.000-04:00

Shirley Horn, Jazz Singer and Pianist, Is Dead at 71 - New York Times

The Post has more here on her music and her work with Miles Davis.

Time is NOT on my side

2005-10-21T10:16:00.000-04:00

From: James Wilson, M.D.
To: Gregory House, M.D.
Re: Rolling Stones on Days of our Lives???

So how was this? That must have been pretty funny. I'm surprised you haven't said anything about whether or not they did a spot for Palmolive or Geritol. Or was it just too traumatic to see Mick on a soap opera? Is this the one with the doll that comes to life and talks?

From:Gregory House, M.D.
To: James Wilson, M.D.
Re:Re: Rolling Stones on Days of our Lives???

I didn't say anything about it because I didn't see it. And Days is not the one with the talking doll. That's Passions, and Timmy died a while back of congenital heart disease, you insensitive ignoramus.

>>So how was this?
>>That must have been pretty funny.
>>I'm surprised you haven't said anything about whether or not they did a spot for Palmolive or Geritol.
>>Or was it just too traumatic to see Mick on a soap opera?  Is this the one with the doll that comes to life and talks?

From: James Wilson, M.D.
To: Gregory House, M.D.
Re:Re:Re: Rolling Stones on Days of our Lives???

What?  You didn't see it?

>>I didn't say anything about it because I didn't see it.
>>And Days is not the one with the talking doll.
>>That's Passions, and Timmy died a while back of congenital heart disease, you insensitive ignoramus. Have a little respect, please.

From: Gregory House, M.D.
To: James Wilson, M.D.
Re:Re:Re:Re: Rolling Stones on Days of our Lives???

No.  I DIDN'T SEE IT.

Don't you have work to do?

>>What?  You didn't see it?

From: James Wilson, M.D.
To: Gregory House, M.D.
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: Rolling Stones on Days of our Lives???

Since when do you care if anybody has work to do?

And how did you not see this? Don't tell me you actually skipped the Rolling Stones appearing on Days of Our Lives to work in the clinic!

>>No.  I DIDN'T SEE IT.

>>Don't you have work to do?

From: James Wilson, M.D.
To: Gregory House, M.D.
Fw:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: Rolling Stones on Days of our Lives???

No way you skipped this to actually work.  You must not have known about it!  How did you not know about this?  I know you don't read newspapers, but you must have seen one of the commercials.

>>Since when do you care if anybody has work to do?

>>And how did you not see this? Don't tell me you actually skipped the Rolling Stones appearing on Days of Our Lives to work in the clinic!

>>>>No.  I DIDN'T SEE IT.

>>>>Don't you have work to do?

From: Gregory House, M.D.
To:James Wilson, M.D.
Re:Fw:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: Rolling Stones on Days of our Lives???

Hello -- of course I wouldn't have seen a commercial for an NBC show on ABC.  Haven't I taught you anything?

And why are you so excited about this anyway?  It was just a couple of characters watching the video.  At least they had mute buttons. 

Now can we please get back to saving lives?

>>No way you skipped this to actually work.  You must not have known about it!
>>How did you not know about this?
>>I know you don't read newspapers, but you must have seen one of the commercials.

Gargamel Strikes Back

2005-10-11T19:04:00.000-04:00

Smurfette is left for dead. Baby Smurf is left crying and orphaned as the Smurf's village is carpet bombed by warplanes _ a horrific scene and imagery not normally associated with the lovable blue-skinned cartoon characters.

These are the scenes being shown as part of a new UNICEF ad-campaign on Belgian television.

"It's working. We are getting a lot of reactions and people are logging on to our Web site," UNICEF Belgium spokesman Philippe Henon said Tuesday.

Ah, Papa, where are your powers now? I wonder what UNICEF says when the Web site visitors ask where to sign up to run the raids?

this should pacify the peanut gallery for a while

2005-10-11T18:53:00.000-04:00

Just for you, Wilson: HappyNews.com - All The News That's Fun To Print

Sample headline: Tortoise fit and well at 175

There. Are you happy now?

Pakistan quake

2005-10-10T14:02:00.000-04:00

Good Lord.

30,000 dead in Pakistan.

the coming calamity

2005-10-09T12:56:00.000-04:00

More on how totally screwed we are if this bird flu thing hits the US.

I told you surgeons were nuts

2005-10-07T10:33:00.000-04:00

Surgeons are crazy. Surgeons in Congress are even crazier:
Twelve things you probably didn't know about Bill Frist

I have to admit, #9 sounds like the kind of thing I used to do.

Experts Unlock Clues to Spread of 1918 Flu Virus - New York Times

2005-10-06T08:50:00.000-04:00

There's an article in the paper about how they've reconstructed the 1918 flu virus. Talk about your kick-ass pandemic -- and it went after the young and healthy. Well, at least I'll be spared if that bug kicks up again.

It's cool how they did it. Apparently the Army has a pathology warehouse down in the grossatorium at Walter Reed. They obtained tissue samples two soldiers who died of the flu, and then dug up another lady who'd been buried in the Alaskan permafrost.

And it seems that there are indeed similarities between this bug and the avian flu strains that are popping up in Asia. Sleep well!

apples and honey and funnel cake

2005-10-03T18:11:00.000-04:00

Sitting at Gilbert's, eating a reuben and fries and drinking a Coke. I hope the Coke will keep the indigestion at bay so I won't need to go running for the Pepcid again tonight. God, I'm getting old.

It's nice out -- a bit of a nip in the air, the smell of autumn and all that -- but I passed on the outdoor table. It hasn't rained in forever, and all that scent of autumn stuff is really the stench of ragweed and leaf mold. My allergies are finally under control and I want them to stay that way.

I also don't feel like being bumped around. It's way too busy tonight -- people coming home from work, going to dinner, hauling all the little Brads and Madisons to soccer, yakking on cell phones as they hurry down the sidewalk. And, in little groups of three and four, students all dressed up and headed in the same direction. For a moment I wondered if it was some kind of rush thing, but then I remembered: I'm watching football alone tonight. It's the first night of Rosh Hashanah, another sign of autumn. I stir the ice in my Coke.

Everyone likes fall. What's not to like? Pretty leaves, pumpkin pie -- that restaurant I went to when I was a resident had pumpkin pancakes that were off the chain -- football, bonfires, hockey, lacrosse, field hockey, girls in plaid skirts with great legs....

How quickly it all passes, faster than I ever thought it would.

The infarction happened in the fall.

The last run I ever took -- the falling leaves damp and shiny after an afternoon's rain, the air smelling so clean, so good... I was running alone; Wilson was still catching up after the High Holy Days. I took the stairs up to the condo, ran them two at a time. It wasn't until later that evening that my leg started to hurt.

Watching football from my hospital bed. Watching hockey and the World Series from my rehab bed. Eating Halloween candy at home, turning down beer because getting to the bathroom on crutches was such a struggle.

I saw Eileen again that fall. And Stacey....

When Eileen came, I was so surprised to see her. James told me once that at Rosh Hashanah you eat apples dipped in honey, for the wish for a sweet new year. That's what Eileen's visit was to me that fall: sweetly familiar, yet new again.

If Eileen's return was sweet as an apple dipped in honey, Stacey's was the glycemic load of a funnel cake dipped in corn syrup, rolled in cotton candy, and drizzled in caramel, chocolate syrup and Kahlua, with whipped cream and a cherry on top: probably not kosher, but you get the idea.

And from that strange autumn, ripe with hope and despair all at the same time.... what's left? Eileen? I'll never see her again. Stacey is lost to me yet I have to see her every day, and it's just torment.

I look out the window again. A jogger's going by.

I pick up my cane from where it's hooked over the table edge and bounce it on the floor. I'll always have that.

"The tongue is not stupid," the Russians say: once you've tasted something good, you want more of it. I've tasted apples and honey, and had a couple of plates of funnel cake, and I'll never get so much as a whiff again. What's worse? Not tasting? Or getting a taste, only to hunger forever?

Wishing, hoping... it's so stupid. Life is crappy enough without setting yourself up for being disappointed on top of it all. Why taste the honey? It only makes the inevitable vinegar that much worse.

So L'shanah tovah to Wilson, Cuddy, and everyone else who's using kicking off 5766 as an excuse to go home early. The same old year's good enough for me.

royal road to nowhere

2005-09-26T03:42:00.000-04:00

I'm rooting around in the tiny storage room, down in the basement of the hospital. There's only one weak light, and everything's all junked together, like nobody ever comes down here -- there's barely enough room to turn around -- how do they expect me to find anything in this mess? Damn it, it's got to be around here somewhere.

Why am I doing this? I want to quit, I don't like being down here, but I've got to find it. I've got to. It's here, I know it is. I pull another cardboard box off the shelf and start pawing through the papers and envelopes -- nothing. I put the box away and move on to the next one.

A surge of pain goes through my leg; my foot feels thick and tingly. I shake out a Vicodin and realize I'm down to my last pill. Great. I look around. The storage room is really a skeleton of light wood with chicken wire stretched over it, like a cell or a cage. It's dark and damp and oppressive down here, it's creeping me out, I'm in pain -- I've got to find what we're looking for and get out of here. "Chase!" I yell. "Chase!"

"Right here," he says. He's standing outside the door to the storage room, fumbling with the lock.

"Hurry up," I snap.

The padlock clicks open and the door swings out. Chase lets Andie come in first. "Hi," she says. I just nod. Chase rolls an office chair over and I carefully sit down. I pull another box off the shelf and poke around inside, but no luck. "Not in here, either," I say.

She hands me another box. I look up. Chase has pulled a chair over for Andie and is sitting down on a box of office supplies.

"You shouldn't have come," I say to Andie.

She smiles, her head tilted to the side, a knowing look in her green eyes -- and then she giggles and takes a sip of her Sprite. "Is this your secret hideout?"

Chase speaks up before I can answer. "Yeah, this is it," he says. "But you can't tell anyone." Andie giggles again. I'm not sure whether I'm grateful to or furious at Chase for interrupting.

Andie hands me my iPod. I put it back in my pocket. She stands to leave.

"I'm not going to kiss you," I tell her. "Not even if you ask me to."

She gives me that playful, haughty smile again. "But I'll never ask," she says.

And then she's hugging me. I close my eyes and feel her white jacket crumpling against my thin cotton shirt, I smell the scent of her clothes and hair.

Chase smiles and holds the door open for her. She steps out; he follows and the door swings shut behind them. The padlock clicks, and I feel sick with apprehension.

She looks in through the chicken wire. "It's a nice day. You should go to the park, take a walk." She turns and gives Chase a quick hug; the top of her head just brushes his chin. She takes a step back. Chase bends over and gives her a brotherly kiss on her forehead. She looks up -- her brown hair brushes against her back -- and my chest tightens as Chase leans forward to kiss her again...

I'm awake.

I grope for my pills, but my eyes are barely open and I clumsily knock the bottle off the nightstand. The pills rattle as the bottle hits the floor. I'm too groggy to swear, much less turn on the light and start looking for them, and I just drop my head back on the pillow. My itchy, heavy eyes close and immediately I'm back in the storage room, Andie is looking me over, cool and haughty; Chase is touching her hair --

No. I rub my eyes. Sleep starts draining away. No.

What was that?

It wasn't a nightmare, but whatever it was, I don't want to go back. I switch on the light and blink as my eyes adjust to the light. I push myself up and sit on the side of the bed until my head clears a little. I look around on the floor for the pills -- thank God they didn't roll under the bed. I use my cane to push them to where I can reach them. I take a pill and a swallow of water, and then head off to the bathroom. By the time I'm back, I'm good and awake.

And that's okay. I don't want to go to sleep again.

I lie down again and turn off the light. Not too much longer till morning.

I can make it.

News item: Cheney Surgery Raises Awareness Of Aneurysms Wou

2005-09-23T16:56:00.000-04:00

So they found a couple of aneurysms behind Cheney's knees, and he's going to get them all fixed up.

Good thing they found them in time. Those little buggers could clot off. And wouldn't that suck?