Flashback (1988) (9 page)

“I would also like to thank our radiologists, Drs. Moore and Tucker, as well as my brother Frank, for their work in obtaining our CT scanner. It’s a beautiful piece of equipment, and both radiologists have gone out of their way to become versed in its use. Sometime soon, the three of us plan to present some sort of workshop on the interpretation and limitations of the technique.

“Since my nearest backup is close to a hundred miles away, I’ll be on twenty-four-hour call, except during my vacation, which is scheduled from August third through August fifth … three years from now. Thank you.”

There was laughter and applause from around the room.

“Oh, one more thing,” Zack added as the reaction died away. “I expected there might be some unusual problems arising from my decision to return and set up shop in the town where I was born and raised. So I’d like to make it perfectly clear that there is absolutely no truth to the rumor—started, I believe, by Dr. Blunt over there, who delivered me and was my pediatrician—that I won’t go into the operating room without the one-eyed teddy bear I insisted on clinging to during his examinations.”

Suzanne, with Jason Mainwaring in tow, caught up with Zack in the corridor.

“Zack, hi,” she said. “Thanks for the laughs in there. Have you met Jason?”

“I think briefly, a few months ago,” Zack said, shaking the surgeons hand. “Nice to see you again.”

“Same here,” Mainwaring said, in a pronounced drawl. “That was a cute little speech, Iverson. I was especially partial to the line about the teddy bear.”

“Thanks” Zack said, wondering if the man was being facetious.

“I even liked that other one. About your next vacation being so far away. You’re a funny man.”

“Thanks again.”

“However,” the surgeon continued, “I would caution you against makin’ any more inflammatory statements about this Beaulieu business until you know all the facts. Y’see, Iverson, I’m the staff member Beaulieu alluded to in there—the one he’s suin’. And noble as you tried to sound in your little pronouncement there, you and Beaulieu aren’t the only ones
who do charity work. I operate on plenty of folks who can’t pay, too.”

Zack was startled by the mans rudeness.

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad to hear that. I only hope they get their money’s worth.”

“You know,” Mainwaring countered, “I’ve always heard that only the most arrogant and sadistic surgeons elect to spend their professional lives suckin’ on brain.…”

“Hey, guys, what is this?” Suzanne cut in. “This sounds like the sort of exchange you both should have put behind you when you climbed down from your tree houses and started high school. Jason, what’s with you? Were you attacked in your crib by a mad neurosurgeon or something?”

Mainwaring smiled stiffly. “My apologies, Iverson,” he said.

He extended his hand, but shielded from Suzanne the hostility in his eyes was icy.

“Hey, no big deal, Jason. No big deal.”

“Good. Well then, we’ll have to see what we can do about drummin’ up a little neurosurgical business for y’all.”

“Thanks.”

“Meanwhile, you might try to steer clear of politics around this place—at least until you’ve been here long enough to learn everyone’s name.” He checked his gold Rolex. “Suzanne, dear, I b’lieve we still have time to complete our business. Nice to see you, Iverson. I’m sure you’ll make the adjustment to this sleepy little place just fine.”

Without waiting for a response, he took Suzanne’s arm and strode down the hallway.

Andy O’Meara, red-cheeked, beer-bellied, and beaming, strolled among the tables of Gillie’s Mountainside Tavern, shaking hands and exchanging slaps on the back with the twenty or so men enjoying their midday break in the smoky warmth. Over nearly twenty years he had come to know each and every one of them well, and was proud to call them his friends.

“Andy O, you old fart. Welcome back!”… “Hey, it’s Mighty Mick. Way to go, Andy. Way to go. We knew you’d beat it.”

First the cards and candy and flowers when he was in the hospital, and now this welcome back. They were a hell of a bunch. The very best. And at that moment, as far as Andy
O’Meara was concerned, he was the luckiest man alive. Tomorrow would be Independence Day—the day for celebrating the birth of freedom. And this day was one for celebrating his own rebirth.

“Hey, Gillie,” he called out, the lilt of a childhood in Kilkenny still coloring his speech. “Suds around, on me.”

After three months of pain and worry, after more than a dozen trips to Manchester for radiation therapy, after sitting time and again in the doctors office, waiting for the other shoe to fall, waiting for the news that “We can’t get it all,” he was back on the road, cured. The bowel cancer that had threatened his very existence was in some jar in the pathology department at Ultramed-Davis Hospital, and whatever evil cells had remained in his body had been burnt to hell by the amazing X-ray machines. The backseat and trunk of his green Chevy were once again filled with the boxes of shoes and boots and sneakers that he loved to lay out for the merchants along route 16, and the rhythm of his life had at last been restored.

“To the luck of the Irish,” he proclaimed as he hoisted the frosted mug over his head.

“And to you, Andy O,” Gillie responded. “Were glad to have you back among the living.”

Andy O’Meara exchanged handshakes and hugs with each man in the place, and then set his half-filled tankard on the bar. It was his first frosty in more than twelve weeks, and with a full afternoon of calls ahead of him, there was no sense in putting his tolerance for the stuff to the test.

He settled up with Gillie and stepped out of the dim, pine-paneled tavern, into the sparkling afternoon sunlight. He prided himself on never being late for a call, and Colson’s Factory Outlet was nearly a thirty-minute drive through the mountains.

He switched on the radio. Kenny Rogers was admonishing him to know when to hold and know when to fold. The country/western music, usually Andy’s staple, seemed somehow out of keeping with the peace and serenity of this day. At the edge of the driveway he stopped and changed to a classical program on WEVO, the public station.

Better
, he thought.
Much better
.

The tune was familiar. Almost instantly, it conjured up images in Andy’s mind—softly falling snow … a stone hearth … a roaring fire … family. As he hummed along,
Andy tried to remember where he had heard the haunting melody before.

“… What child is thi-is, who laid to re-est in Mary’s la-ap, lay slee-eeping? …”

He surprised himself by knowing many of the words.

“This, thi-is is Christ the Ki-ing, whom shepherds gua-ard and angels sing.…”

It was the Christmas carol, he suddenly realized. That was it. As a child in Ireland it had been one of his favorites. How strange to hear it in the middle of summer.

He paused to let a semi roar past. The noise of the truck was muted—almost as if it made no sound at all. Andy shrugged. As wonderful as it felt to be back on the road again, it also felt a little odd.

“… Haste, ha-aste to bring him lau-au-aud, the Ba-abe, the so-on of Ma-ry.…”

He closed the windows, turned on the air conditioner, and swung out of the drive onto route 110. The green of the mountainside seemed uncomfortably bright. He squinted, then rubbed at his eyes and wondered if perhaps he should stop someplace to pick up a pair of sunglasses. No, he decided. No stops. At least not until after Colson’s.

Settle down, old boy
, he said to himself.
Just settle down
.

He adjusted the signal on the radio and settled back in his seat, humming once again.

Route 110 was two lanes wide, with a narrow breakdown space on either side. It twisted and turned, rose and dropped like an amusement-park ride, from Groveton on the Vermont border, along the ridge of the Ammonoosuc River Valley, to Sterling and Route 16. A scarred, low, white guardrail paralleled the road to Andy’s right, and beyond the rail was the gorge, at places seven hundred feet deep.

Andy’s restless, ill-at-ease sensation was intensifying, and he knew he was having difficulty concentrating. He adjusted his seatback and checked his safety harness. The guardrail had become something of a blur, and the solid center line kept working its way beneath his left front tire. He tightened his grip on the wheel and checked the speedometer. Forty-five.
Why did it feel like he was speeding?

Subtly, he noticed, the trees on the mountainside had begun to darken—to develop a reddish tone. He rubbed at his eyes and, once again, forced the sedan back to the right-hand lane.
Twenty-five years on the road without an accident. He was damned if he was going to have one now.

Ahead of him, the scenery dimmed. A tractor trailor approached, sunlight sparking brilliantly off its windshield.

Suddenly, Andy was aware of a voice echoing in his mind—a deep, slow, resonant, reassuring voice, at first too soft to understand, then louder … and louder still. “Okay, Andy,” it said, “now all I want you to do is count back from one hundred … count back from one hundred … count back from one hundred …”

Out loud, Andy began to count. “One hundred … ninety-nine … ninety-eight …”

A blue drape drifted above him, then floated down over his abdomen.

“Ninety-seven … ninety-six …

Hands, covered by rubber gloves, appeared in the space where the drape had been.

“Ninety-five … ninety-four … Why aren’t I asleep?” his mind asked. “Ninety-three … ninety-two.”

“Bove electrode, please,” the low voice said. “Set it for cut and cauterize.”

Another pair of gloved hands appeared, one of them holding a gauze sponge, and the other, a small rod with a metal tip. Slowly, they lowered the metal tip toward his belly.

“Ninety-one … ninety—”

Suddenly, a loud humming filled his mind. The metal tip of the rod touched his skin just below his navel, sending a searing, electric pain through to his back and down his legs.

“Jesus Christ, stop!” Andy screamed. “I’m not asleep! I’m not asleep!”

The wall of his lower abdomen parted beneath the electric blade, exposing a bright yellow layer of fat.

“Eighty-nine! … Eighty-eight! … For God’s sake, stop! It’s not working! I’m awake! I can feel that! I can feel everything!”

“Metzenbaums and pick-ups, please.”

“No! Please, no!”

The Metzenbaum scissors sheared across Andy’s peritoneum, parting the shiny membrane like tissue paper and exposing the glistening pink rolls of his bowel.

Again, he screamed. But this time, the sound came from his voice, as well as from within his mind.

His vision cleared at the moment the right headlight of his
automobile made contact with the guardrail. The Chevy, now traveling at nearly ninety miles an hour, tore through the protective steel as if it were cardboard, crossed a narrow stretch of grass and gravel, and then hurtled over the edge of the gorge.

Strapped to his seat, Andy O’Meara watched the emerald trees flash past. In the fourth second of his fall, he realized what was happening. In the fifth, the Chevy shattered on the jagged rocks below and exploded.

6

The cafeteria of Ultramed-Davis, like most of the facility, had been renovated in an airy and modern, though quite predictable, style. The interior featured a large, well-provisioned salad bar, and a wall of sliding glass doors opened onto a neat flagstone terrace with a half-dozen cement tables and benches.

Pleasantly exhausted from his three-hour cervical disc case, Zack sat at the only table partially shaded by an overhanging tree and watched as Guy Beaulieu maneuvered toward him through the lunchtime crowd.

During the summer Zack had spent as an extern at the then Davis Regional Hospital, Beaulieu had been extremely busy with his practice and with his duties as president of the medical staff. Still, the man always seemed to have enough time to stop and teach, or to reassure a frightened patient, or to console a bereaved family.

And from that summer on, the surgeons blend of skill and compassion had remained something of a role model for Zack.

“So,” Beaulieu said as he set down his tray and slid onto the stone bench opposite Zack, “thank you for agreeing to dine with me.”