"It was the right thing to do." Tracy assured me. "It worked didn't it?"
"But it wasn't terribly fun."
"Well," Tracy opined, "Maybe you'll learn to consider the consequences of your actions a little better."
"Maybe." I agreed.
"How about Nina? Any developments there?"
"Unfortunately, no. She still won't talk to me or have anything to do with me. It's kind of hard to declare your love for someone who is repulsed by your very presence."
"I told you Bill," She said. "She's not repulsed by you. She probably still loves you. She just doesn't want to subject herself to pain again. If she can get away from you when you try to talk to her, she will. You need to put yourself in a situation where she can't get away from you, where she's forced to listen to you. Then you can say your piece to her. And it had better be a good piece."
"How about kidnapping her at gunpoint?" I asked sourly.
"That might not serve your interests very well." Tracy commented. "Don't worry, you're a smart guy, you'll think of something. You'd just better do it quick. Remember the more time that goes by…"
"The harder it will be." I finished for her. "I know that very well, thank you. So how about you? How are things on your end?"
"I'm hanging in here." She answered. "I don't get into cars at all anymore.
I bought a bicycle and I use that to ride everywhere that I need to go. It's not terribly fun, especially when it rains, which it does a lot here, but at least it's keeping me in shape."
"That's good thinking Trace." I told her. "Very good thinking."
"I do what I can." She said.
"Are you still coming home for Christmas?"
"As soon as Mom and Dad buy me the ticket." She said. "Try to have some good news to share with me when I get there, okay?"
"I'll try Trace. I'll try."
They say that fortune favors the bold. That may be so. But sometimes it favors the clumsy and the inattentive. This is especially true if the clumsy and the inattentive are blessed with quick thinking.
It was Monday afternoon, the last week of school before Christmas break. I was at my ROP worksite in the basement of the trauma center. My work partner, Brett Jackson, and I were about to begin putting together some sterile chest tube kits for the emergency department. In a few years Jeff Foxworthy would put out a list of indicators that you might be a redneck. Brett would fit nicely into many of them. He was a large, jovial kid that continually fidgeted and whined during the work period because, in the sterile environment of central supply, he was not allowed to suck on the large plug of chewing tobacco he habitually stored in his bottom lip at all other times. As we finished up laying out the sterile packaging on the sterile table with our sterile hands that were encased in sterile gloves, Brett was regaling me with his favorite, indeed his ONLY subject of conversation.
"So I got the Hearst shifter put in with my last paycheck," He told me, "And with my next one I'll be able to put a down payment down on a set of glass packs."
I had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Cars were not and still are not my forte'. I had picked up that glass packs were mufflers but as far as a Hearst shifter went I was pretty much clueless. I figured it probably had something to do with the transmission although why a Hearst shifter was superior to the one that had come with the car was a mystery to me.
"That's cool Brett." I said absently, putting down the last piece of packaging.
"Yep." He said, nodding. "And if I get hired here at semester break I can double my salary and quit workin' at fuckin' McDonald's. More money and more time to work on my car. That would be sweet." He said this last the way other males talked about having two women at once, in the tones of mystical fantasy, of the ultimate pleasure.
I walked over to the autoclave, where the instruments we would need had just finished the sterilization process. "How much money have you spent on this car?" I asked, picking up another set of sterile gloves that I put on over the ones I already had so I could open the autoclave.
"About two grand." He told me as I opened the autoclave and stripped off the second pair of gloves. "We need six keagle hemostats and six number eight scalpels to start with."
"Got it." I answered, dropping the gloves into the nearest garbage can. I reached into the autoclave, which was stuffed full of a variety of surgical instruments lined up in trays. Brett had loaded the machine earlier and I was not surprised to see that it wasn't the neat, precise way that I did it.
To each their own I figured, dismissing this.
"So you got two grand worth of car parts on that thing?" I asked him, grabbing the hemostats. "Does it run any better now?"
"Well," He answered, "Actually my gas mileage has gone down the shitter. But it LOOKS cool."
"And that's really what it's all about, right?" I said, smiling to myself as I handed him the first set of instruments to put in his sterile tray.
"Right." Brett agreed enthusiastically, pleased that I was on his wavelength.
I had another bright and witty thought that I was going to share with him, one of those patented Billy-remarks I'm famous for, so I turned my head to speak just as I reached into the autoclave for the next load. My hand, unguided by my eyes, contacted one of the steel instruments in the tray and I felt a sharp, burning sensation stitch across the webbing of my right thumb.
"Ow." I muttered, thinking that I'd poked myself with something. That would be a royal pain in the ass if the integrity of my glove had been compromised. If that had happened we'd have to re-sterilize everything in the autoclave. I pulled the hand out to take a look.
"Oh shit." I said, staring. My glove had a neat line about two inches long stretching from the base of the thumb to nearly the wrist. Blood was welling from a corresponding line on the flesh beneath. Some of the blood was dripping from the incision in the glove and pattering to the floor at my feet but most of it was being trapped beneath the latex, creating a rapidly swelling, water balloon effect.
Brett turned to see what was wrong and his face paled. "Dude!" He yelled in horror. "You're bleeding!"
"No shit." I told him testily, starting to feel pain now, a burning, throbbing pain that radiated up my forearm. I looked in the autoclave to see what had done this and saw the culprit immediately. It was a scalpel that had been placed in the tray with its blade sticking upward. That was a no-no for this very reason. Thank you Brett.
"Goddam Dude!" Brett said, backing away from me as if my injury might be contagious. "Are you gonna be all right?"
"Yeah." I nodded, looking around for something to use as a bandage. On a cart next to me was a box of surgical swabs that were supposed to go into the packs we were assembling. Though I would be violating the sterility field by putting my hands on the tray, I figured that under the circumstances I would be forgiven. I picked up a handful of them with my uninjured hand.
"Hold these for a second." I told Brett, holding out the swabs to him.
"Dude, I don't like blood." He said shakily, refusing to take them.
I swallowed, my eyes boring into him. "Brett," I said calmly, firmly. "Hold the fucking swabs."
Gingerly he stepped forward and took them from my hand. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice broken and near panic.
"I'm going to put those swabs on the cut." I told him. "But first, I'm going to have to take off the glove. Can you hang with that?"
"I don't know Man." He answered, looking a little green now.
"It's just a cut." I told him gently, wondering why I was the one doing the comforting here. "It's nothing lethal, okay? All you have to do is hand me the swabs when I take the glove off. Are you with me?"
He nodded rapidly, seeming to gather his courage. He looked like a GI hyping himself up to storm out of a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. "I'm with you." He finally said.