Summer Shorts-Four Short Stories

Summer Shorts

Four Short Stories

Copyright 2014 Jan Earl Miller

Published by
Jan Earl Miller
at Smashwords

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Discover other titles by Jan Earl Miller

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Table of Contents

Prologue

What do you
want from life? A pathway to a respectable career? An escape from a
respectable career? Acceptance by society? Escape from society?
What would you do to get it?

Every five years our own private world
completes its revolution, and we are totally different creatures
than we were at the beginning of that revolution. Our wants, needs,
society, finances and family transform in that revolution.

So that question, "What do you want from
life" is different for a six year old, a twenty year old, a
mid-thirties year old, and a sixty-something year old. Let's
examine the lives of four men through four short stories. When you
finish reading them, ask yourself "Did they get what they wanted?
And then ask yourself "Was it worth the price they had to pay?"
Would you have paid it?

"Hold his head still
with both your hands while I stitch up his busted lip. A couple of
teeth went right through it…musta' hit the steering wheel" the
young intern instructed. Radar said "Ok. Got it" Nurse Ann
whispered in Radar's ear "Talk to him. He's drunk and rowdy. Try to
keep him still". The patient who called himself "Wild Bill" had
just been brought into the ER by a local squad. The paramedics
wheeled him in to the first exam room and Radar helped them move
him onto the gurney for examination. Wild Bill had way too many
Buds that night and drove his pickup head first into a large oak
tree. The tree won the encounter and was still standing,
scarred…but upright and otherwise intact. Wild Bill, on the other
hand, had flown head first through his windshield and was now in
Memorial Hospital's emergency room, his face and tee shirt drenched
in his own blood.

******

Radar had overtime taught himself a coping
mechanism: blood is just leaked engine oil…that's all…nothing more.
He thought back to his first day on the job as an orderly…when
blood was blood. That first day had started with all the chaos and
confusion any college-aged teen would encounter on a new job. The
world of a hospital--- with its glaring fluorescent lit halls and
beige walls, it was a harsh, alien scene. The white uniforms of the
1970's exaggerated the features of the lower ranks who wore them:
the nurses, nurse aids, technicians, and orderlies. As one of the
latter group, Radar was part of the bottom caste…those who see the
worst there is to be seen up close; those who mop it up, and those
who bag it and haul it away.

Even though the dress rules were strict
regarding their uniforms, each member of the caste added their own
little signature look to his or her appearance. The nurse aides who
shared the same bottom rung as the orderlies could be identified by
their cheap hair dye jobs and over-abundance of make-up. Some
pushed the dress code envelope by wearing non-regulation brightly
colored panty hose, giving those women the look of a hooker
dressing up like a nurse to work a bachelor party. The young female
technicians working in X-ray and the various therapy departments
also took liberties with their panty hose colors, but their subdued
color choices, natural hair shades, and normal make-up
distinguished them from the aides. The real nurses---the RN's and
LPN's--- were held to the letter of the dress guidelines and were
sent home to change if they deviated in any way. The orderlies
followed a simple, but strict dress code: white smock or "tunic",
white pants, white hospital-approved plain tennis shoes and white
socks. Being that it was the Seventies; the hospital administration
was somewhat lenient on the length of orderly hair: it must be off
the shoulders and clean. No beards were permitted, even though
several doctors had them.

Radar liked the simplicity of the uniform: it
kept him from trying to figure out what was in style every morning.
Being young and single, looks were still very important in a
youthful society. But as he would find out, the hospital whites had
an effect on everyone he encountered. They assumed that he had the
knowledge…and he would learn how to use that impression to get his
job done.

The knowledge couldn't prepare him for what
he was about to encounter on that first day. Shortly after picking
up his pager and then making his way to the nurses' break area at
the side of the nurses station, his pager beeped and he was
instructed to go to the morgue to assist in "a squad delivery". "E"
was waiting for him there. "E", as they called him, was about six
feet three…an imposing figure with jet black hair and long thick
sideburns just like the ones his idol Elvis Presley wore. He got
his nickname "E" because he moonlighted as an Elvis impersonator.
"E" was always singing, regardless of the situation. A kinder,
gentler soul you would never meet.

"E" greeted Radar with "Boy, do we have a
treat for you on your first day!" as Radar entered the room, wild
eyed at stepping foot into an actual morgue. If the hallway
fluorescent lights created a ghoulish environment, the stainless
steel autopsy tables, examination tool trays, wall cabinets, and
large mounted flood lights made the morgue look like something out
of a Sci-Fi Frankenstein movie. "You're…we're gonna need this" "E"
chuckled; pulling a large aerosol can out of one of the stainless
steel cabinets. "Undertakers use this stuff to spray the ripe
ones." He then lowered his voice and took on a fatherly tone: "I'll
warn you right now…you're gonna puke. There's no stopping it…even
if I soak it with the entire can of this stuff. It will hit you
like a big, hairy arm jamming itself right down your throat and
pulling the barf out of your stomach before you know it. We all do
it, so don't get down on yourself… OK?"

Radar wondered what the hell he had got
himself into. There was no discussion of "ripe ones" during the job
interview. The kindly hospital educator had talked about helping
people, learning about the medical world, and how…if Radar so
decided…the hospital would pay his tuition to go to nursing school.
That seemed like the golden ticket Radar had so desperately sought:
a career pathway. With that education, he would work in the booming
field of male nursing or even become a paramedic. Radar jumped at
such an opportunity to change his life to become a valued member of
society.

The emergency squad backed up to the loading
dock. Between the paramedics and two orderlies lifted the gurney
out of the squad, up onto the dock, and then wheeled it into the
morgue. The paramedics were laughing with "E" as he told them they
had "new meat" in their midst. One paramedic who also worked on his
off days as an orderly told "E": "This guy's a floater. Two weeks
in the river, we figure. A cop had him at Fourth Street but when he
turned him over, the floater's eyeball fell out along with a bunch
of maggots. The cop dropped him back into the river, and he called
us."E" laughed "So you got to fish him out?" The part-time orderly
laughed "Yeah. They lowered me off the Fourth Street Bridge. I got
a rope round his body and we hauled him up. He's a bad one…so
decomposed we couldn't tell what race he was."

"E" shot Radar a glance, smiled, and
pronounced "Let's see". He quickly opened the leather body bag part
way and sprayed nearly the entire aerosol can's contents into the
bag. "We already used two cans on him" the paramedic warned "It
won't help. Now excuse us while we back out onto the dock before
you open it all the way". "E" unzipped the bag all the way. He had
been right: Radar instantly dropped to his knees puking onto the
spotlessly clean tile floor. Outside the paramedics laughed
heartily. "E" had his own head under a faucet at one of the big
stainless steel sinks, coughing and fighting back the vomit in the
back of this throat. "On second thought, we'll keep it in the bag
until the coroner gets here. This will stink up the whole basement
level." "E" put a wet paper towel over his face to shield his
nostrils and with his other hand; he zipped the bag back up. Radar
had composed himself enough to take what was left in the aerosol
can and spray his own mess on the floor. With paper towels, he
cleaned it up. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a coffee
break" E announced like they had just wheel-chaired an old lady
from a car. "See you upstairs in the ER".

Radar no sooner made it upstairs to the ER
desk than he was summoned by an older gray-haired ER doctor. "Hey
boy, I need you in here right away!" Upon entering the examination
room, Radar found a six year old boy sitting on the gurney with a
nurse holding up his bloody left arm up by the wrist. The boy was
crying and his striped golf shirt was smeared with blood and tears.
The tall, slim, distinguished looking ER physician calmly
instructed "Now, I'll need you to place his elbow on the gurney and
hold his hand by the thumb and index finger so I can clean this
wound and stitch it." Radar obliged, careful not to look down at
child's hand. "You see, this one is actually a clean tear." The
doctor explained as he dabbed and poked into the wound. "Caught
your hand in the car door, did you little fellow?" The child sobbed
and nodded his head. The doctor then addressed Radar again: "You
can clearly make out all of the major tendons and ligaments here.
This is a great wound to use as an anatomy lesson. See?" As Radar
timidly looked down at the boy's gaping laceration, he realized
that the flesh was opened like an envelope from the large knuckle
of the index finger to the base of the thumb. Just as the doctor
had explained, there they were…all of the muscles, ligaments, and
tendons…plain as day.

Radar continued holding the child's hand and
then watched studiously as the doctor first numbed, and then
stitched the wound. The doctor took his time and went to great
lengths to show Radar the proper technique to dress the sutured
wound. "All done" the gentlemanly doctor announced. "You can hand
him back to Mama, young man". Radar picked up the child gently and
handed him to his mother who was waiting just outside the door.
Turning back into the exam room, Radar began to thank the doctor:
"That was really interesting. I really appreciate…your …man… is it
hot in here or what?" The old doctor grinned and motioned with his
arms to the nurses on either side of Radar to stand by to catch
him.

Radar was apparently out for a good five
minutes before coming to on a gurney in the ER hallway. The ER had
filled up so quickly with patients that there was no other place to
stick a passed-out greenhorn orderly. A passing nurse commented
"Well---he lives!" as Radar slowly sat up and asked "What
happened?" The nurse said over her shoulder "First time fainting?
Stay down for a while. You've got ten minutes left." Radar was
puzzled and indignant, sliding off the gurney he took two steps and
down he went again." When he awoke the second time, he had been
promoted to an ER exam room as a patient. "That knot on your head
will serve as a reminder to you to stay down when a nurse tells you
to stay down, young man" the same old doctor rebuked him. "We can't
care for patients if our ER is filled up with orderlies who don't
follow orders, now can we?" So went Radar's first day.

******

Over the next week, he would be trained on
setting up traction equipment for post-surgical patients, inserting
catheters in male patients (something Radar was quite uncomfortable
doing), walking patients, assisting in the ER, and lastly
performing cardio-pulmonary recessitation or "CPR". It was that
last skill that Radar would come to dread. Unlike the scenarios
played out on TV and in the movies, when summoned to a "Code Blue"
heart attack situation, the orderlies performed all of the pumping
of the patient's chest---not the doctors. The latter stood back and
directed the orderlies and nurses involved in the "Code Blue" like
a basketball coach would direct his players. And unlike TV and the
movies, the first task was to get the patient onto a hard surface,
either the floor or a wooden back board, so that the gurney or bed
mattress would not absorb all of the pushes applied to the
patient's chest.