The Winter People (9 page)

"So this road
just comes out here and stops?"  It was just a curious situation for a
town, Nick thought.

"That's about
the size of it.  There is a road behind the jail that leads up to some places
in the mountains, and a few other dirt roads out of town that just sort of dry
up along the way somewhere.  But, this is it!" Hayden threw his arms wide
to exaggerate it.  Nick and Mike each smiled.  Hayden had a way of putting you
to ease when you needed it most.  "Shall we dash?" he prompted.

The three of them
bundled up and bounded for the front door of the jail with Hayden in the lead. 
Their heads were bent and their bodies leaned against the wind and snow and
cold.  By the time they had reached the safety and warmth of the building, they
were all panting hard from the exertion, all frosted in white.  At first the
heat from the room was overwhelming next to the cold of the outside, but they
adjusted quickly.  Except for Mike's glasses which had fogged instantly and
were taking a while to clear.

Hayden led them
into his office and they each began removing outerwear down to basic clothing,
jeans and flannel shirts.  They looked at each other for a moment then broke
out in simultaneous laughter; gales that seemed too much for what they were
amused at, but seemed just right considering the circumstances.  The three of
them looked like demented lumberjacks.  All were wearing jeans and plaid flannel
shirts with long johns poking out at the neck and arms.  Their hair was wild
and uncontrolled from the headgear they'd been wearing, and their shirts were
un-tucked and wrinkled and looked like they had all seen one too many wash
days.

The laughter ebbed
and things didn't seem quite so dark.  Hayden walked behind his desk, opened a
drawer and retrieved a partial bottle of Black Velvet.  He sat in his wooden
swivel chair, ignored its creak of protest, and uncapped the bottle.  The
others found chairs in the room and moved them to the desk.  Hayden took a long
hard swallow, sighed then passed it to Nick.  He took it and followed Hayden's
lead, giving it to Mike.  Mike did the same and back to Hayden it went.  For
some reason, Hayden found it gratifying that neither one had bothered to wipe
off the mouth before he took a shot.

The three of them sat there
drinking in gulps, waiting for the morning sun to come and cast away some of
the gloom of the night.  They talked of things unimportant and never once
mentioned anything that had occurred this night.  Had a passerby seen them
through the window, they would have looked like old friend reminiscing over old
times, or fishing buddies exchanging lies.  No, more like a father and his two
sons finishing off a great day together.  They just looked like friends.                                       

Tom Willis was in
a piss poor mood.  He'd been unable to get back to sleep ever since that Park
Ranger had called him.  Not that he even really wanted to go back to sleep. 
He'd been having the dream again.  It seemed that no matter how hard he tried,
he couldn't let it go.  But the dream was the least of his problems, and now,
in the early morning hours in one of many sleepless nights, they were all
converging on him.  Every worry, every care, everything that had gone wrong was
being thrown at him.

He leaned back in
his recliner and thoughtfully rubbed his brow with his right hand.  He pushed
his hand back over his balding head and down his gray hair until it stopped on
the nape of his neck.  Tom dropped his elbow to rest on the arm of the chair
then propped his right cheek on the closed fist he'd made.  The whiskers of his
neatly trimmed beard and mustache tickled his fingers lightly but he ignored it
and only stared off blankly.  He looked to nowhere in particular and began to
think.

That anyone would
bring injured men to him was a laugh.  Tom hadn't treated anyone in fifteen
years, not even his own wife.  Hell, he made her go see a doctor in Steamboat. 
Lucy had always protested the idea, but somehow, Tom thought she was relieved. 
He didn't think she really trusted him anymore.  But why should she?  After all
that had happened, Tom didn't trust Tom anymore.

Tom sighed heavily
then crossed his hands and let them rest on his belly.  He was a thin man with
the one exception of the round ball that was his stomach.  His eyes were dark
sockets in the pallor of his drawn face, its sharp features softened by his
facial hair.  Once dark brown, his hair was now a soft gray and his beard was
peppered.  He'd started losing his hair in college, and by the time he was an
intern he was as bald as he was now.  Had it really been nearly forty years? 
He supposed that it had.

Tom looked lazily
around the room but didn't really see it.  He sat there in a T-shirt and pajama
bottoms, stretched out in the recliner.  Upstairs his wife was asleep and
outside a storm had started.  But a storm had started inside as well, the storm
that is memory and self recrimination.  It was the storm of failure and self
doubt.  Of should have's and could have's and if only's.  Tom was embroiled in
a storm of his own.

It started with
his intern-ship.  There were pills to help you make it through the long hours. 
There were pills to help you get to sleep, then pills to help you wake up. 
Have a drink to help you relax, and another to help you forget.  Everybody did
it, or so it seemed to Tom.  After all, they were physicians.  They knew what
they were doing.  They could handle it.  He could handle it.

Then they went
their separate ways.  They found their niches in the medical community, found
their hospitals or practices.  But the problem went with them into their new
lives.  It followed them like a loyal dog.  In a profession with one of the
highest drug and alcohol abuse rates, Tom was a victim.  The drugs hadn't
followed Tom to his residency, but the alcohol had.  Only now, after the death
of a patient and ten years of counseling, could he admit that he had a problem.

But that didn't
help the patient, Tom thought bitterly.  That didn't help his wife who had to
put up with him, and had stayed by him through it all.  That didn't help him
much either.  It didn't make anything any easier.  Maybe it shouldn't, Tom
thought.  Maybe the pain of living with it was his just deserts.  Maybe he was
getting off easy.

After all he was
sober, for twelve years now.  Lucy was still with him.  He was retired now, at
the hospital's request, and could enjoy his and Lucy's remaining years.  The
cabin was almost finished, and . . . and . . . and he was miserable.  He'd
thrown away everything he had worked for, washed it away with one more for the
road.

Tom Willis wanted
more than anything to help people.  Tom Willis wanted to make a difference. 
Tom Willis wanted to be the surgeon that gave hope and life.  Instead, Tom
Willis was the surgeon who killed his patients.  "I'll give ya' some hope
alrighty.  Then I'll take your life! For services rendered," he thought,
cynically.  "Dr. Tom Willis?  No, no, no.  I'm Dr. Death.  That's retired
Dr. Death, don't ya' know?  Do it right, and they let (make) you retire.  Do it
right, and nobody knows but you and a handful of hospital
administrators."  Tom wondered then, if any of the other patients he'd
lost over the years were his fault?

Tom's eyelids had
grown heavy as he lay back in the recliner and relived his woes.  He hadn't
even noticed it; he just started drifting in and out with his thoughts.  Before
long, he fell asleep.  But his thoughts continued, changing from recollections
into nightmares.  As the storm outside was building, his own storm had reached
its climax.  He had the dream again.

***

The fading autumn
light cast a red glow through the thinly veiled window.  Bathed in the pastels
of a Denver sunset sat a figure much too tiny for the hospital bed on which she
sat.  A woman nervously flipped through channels on the old set hanging from
the corner of the room, waiting for the doctor to arrive.  As Dr. Tom Willis
entered the room, he paid little attention to the sunset, or the size of the
bed.  His concern was for his patient, Jamie.

"Mrs.
Gibbs," Tom acknowledged her with a nod and moved straight to the bed. 
"Hello Jamie," he said, kindly.  "I understand you've had a
rough time of it this evening."

Nodding, her mousy
little voice squeaked out, "It's my tummy."  Jamie looked up at Tom
then and his heart melted.  Her big brown eyes were sad and pleading.  The
brightness of her face was clouded in pain and sweat had matted her blonde hair
to her forehead.

"I know
honey," he consoled, "I'm going to take care of it for you." 
Mrs. Gibbs had come up beside him but he only barely noticed.  He took Jamie's
hand and talked directly to her.

"You have
acute appendicitis.  Do you know what that is?"

"A cute
what?"

"Not cute,
acute," he corrected.  "It means sharp or severe.  Your appendix is
inflamed and it's causing sharp pains in your tummy."

"My
penndice?"

"Appendix. 
It's a tiny little thing about the size of your pinky."  Tom started to
hold up his fingers to emphasize, but Jamie squeezed his hand as he tried to
move it.

"Why does it
want to hurt me?"  Her chin quivered as she asked, and she had to swallow
to keep from crying.

"Well, it's
sick, very sick.  And it's just letting you know how sick it is so you can do
something about it.  And that's what I'm here for.  I'm going to do something
about it."

"What?  What
can you do?"  She was trying so hard to be brave and it almost broke Tom's
heart.

"Well, me and
a few others will go in there and get it out.  Before it can cause you anymore
pain.  In fact, it won't be able to hurt you ever again."

"How will you
do it?" She asked warily.

"The nurse
will give you something to help the pain and let you take a nice nap.  And
while you're sleeping, I'll just reach right in there and take that nasty old
thing out.  When you wake up, it'll be gone and so will the pain."

"Well, okay,
if you promise it'll be alright."

There's nothing to
worry about.  I'll be there with you the whole time."  He gave her hand a
final squeeze and let it go.  She lay back in the much too big bed and sighed. 
Only then did he notice how tiny and vulnerable she was.  Tom smiled at her
then turned to leave.  He gave a nod and a smile to Jamie's mother then left
them alone.

As the nurse was
giving Jamie a sedative, Tom was taking one of his own.  Just a little 90 proof
sedative to help calm his nerves.  He certainly didn't want the shakes now, not
during surgery.  Besides, it was a custom.  Or was it a necessity?  Either way,
he'd been doing it for a very long time.

Less than an hour
later, Tom was standing over Jamie with a scalpel in his hand.  Her face was
hidden behind a drape where the anesthesiologist kept her under.  But Tom could
see her face anyway.  It was the face of someone who knew pain way too early. 
A frightened face, but a trusting face.  She had been so scared but she had put
her trust in him.  He would take care of her.  He would take care of
everything.  Tom swallowed hard and made his first incision.

For Tom, the
surgery was going as usual.  He made cuts and snips with ease, almost on
auto-pilot.  But for the nurse assisting him it was a different story.  He just
seemed to be hacking at the poor girl.  “Not that he was doing the procedure
incorrectly” Nurse Beverly Price would later report to the Chief of Surgery,
“he just didn't seem to be very . . . proficient.”

Rumors had been
floating around the hospital about
this
doctor for sometime, but she had
never worked with him before.  And now, Beverly wished that she wasn't.  Each
time she reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow, she would catch the
unmistakable scent of alcohol.  It was either on his breath, or he was exuding
it from his pores with the sweat.  Either way she cringed each time he cut
something else.

She wanted to say
something so badly she could taste it.  Say something to Jake, the anesthesiologist,
or to Dr. Willis himself.  But, she needed this job and she knew how things
worked in the hospital.  The number one rule was covering the hospital's ass. 
The number two rule was that surgeons were God.  So Nurse Price bit her lip and
handed the doctor what he asked for.

When Doctor Willis
finally got to the point of removing the appendix, Beverly sighed with relief. 
It would go quickly now, and with any luck he would have her closed.  But, luck
was not with any of them, particularly Jamie Gibbs.  Her blood pressure had
dropped to a dangerous level and capillary refill was poor.

The nurse had
increased the I.V. flow rate, but that didn't help.  Her pressure kept
dropping.  Tom stood there, trying to think.  It didn't seem like she'd lost a
lot of blood, and he hadn't come near any major arteries.  He probed into her
abdomen but didn't see any bleeders, or even an inordinate amount of blood. 
Yet, she had to be bleeding from somewhere.  All the signs were there.

Tom still stood
there, slightly confused.  How could this be happening?  There had to be a
reason.  He probed the abdomen again but could find nothing out of the
ordinary.  There was simply no reason that he could see for this child to be in
this condition.  He just didn't know what to do or how to proceed.

Suddenly, Jamie
was going into full cardiopulmonary arrest.  Panic swept over the room and it
cleared Tom's thinking.  This was something he could deal with.  It was
straight forward.

"Pure O
₂
and bag her Jake!" Tom barked.  "Get me some epinephrine and some
sodium bi-carb," he said to Beverly, "then prep the paddles." 
Both of them were already way ahead of Tom and she handled the syringes to him
just as he finished asking for them.  Tom pumped the epi into the catheter, and
then the bi-carb.

"She's
fibrillating!" Jake said.

Beverly handed the
defibrillator paddles to Tom before he could ask for them.  He took them and
waited for her to pull back the drape and expose Jamie's chest.  He rubbed them
together to make sure the gel was well dispersed on both paddles then placed
them on each side of her rib cage.

"One
hundred," Beverly said, indicating the charge.

"Clear!" 
Tom yelled.

"Clear!"
both Jake and Beverly replied.  Then Tom hit the buttons on the paddle
handles.  Jamie arched her back in response to the current then fell back to
the table.  They all stared at the heart monitor for a moment but saw nothing.

"Give me two
hundred," Tom said to Beverly.  She turned the dial on the defibrillator
and hit the charge button.  A moment later a red light on its panel came on.

"Charged,"
she said.

"Clear!"
Tom yelled.

"Clear!" 
Then Tom hit the buttons again.  Again she arched her back, and again she fell
to the table without response.

"Three
hundred!" Tom yelled, "…and get me some bretylium and more
epi!"  Fear was seeping into Tom's stomach and he had to swallow hard to
keep it down.  He stood there with the defibrillator paddles held out before
him, staring at Jamie's lifeless body, and waiting.  Waiting for Nurse Price to
administer the drugs he'd called for, and waiting for a sign from Jamie.

"Charged!"
Nurse Price yelled.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

Then Tom hit the
discharge buttons for the third time.  Jamie's entire body jerked to the charge
then fell to the table.  The three of them stared at the monitor for a brief
moment of anticipation.  There was a flutter in the line that was her
heartbeat, then one more.  Then nothing.

"Charge it
again!" Tom yelled.