A singular lack of catharsis

For the last four years, I’ve had this court case hanging over my head. Now, despite the fact that this incarnation of Balls and Walnuts is not open to search engine spiders, I probably ought to be careful what I say. No names, for example. But the circumstances were plain enough: I was named as one of the defendants because my name appeared on the chart, not because I actually did anything to the patient.

Well, that was part of the problem — they said I should have done something. But I was in the OR when I got called (yeah, that’s the connection — the ER doc wrote in the chart that I’d been called and was unavailable). My patient was under anesthesia, and we had a policy stating that we MDs were responsible for patients under anesthesia, since our hospital had no supervising MD anesthesiologist. So if we buy the plaintiff’s argument, I should have abandoned my patient to respond to the call.

We prevailed. No money from yours truly. The case dragged on until jury selection was completed, and then the plaintiff settled with the other parties, and the case against me was dismissed with prejudice.

I expected some sort of catharsis, and it never came. Not even a sigh of relief. Perhaps it was because this whole game of will-they-settle, won’t-they-settle had persisted for the entire week, and indeed, had gone on for months before that. Or perhaps it was because, like so many such things (see: Santa Rosa), I take this shit way too personally. By the time the decision came down, I was already sleep-deprived and more stressed out than I’d been in a good long time. My sleep pattern, never what you would call normal, had become aberrant in the extreme (unless you’re my son, in which case, my sleeping pattern had become quite natural, thank you very much). My lawyer will never know how lucky he was that I never took the stand. God only knows what I would have babbled.

So, I’m home now. I’ve been home for the past 10 days, and I keep thinking, “Get over it already. Write a damn blog or something.” And here we are.

By the way: after the first day, I called my wife to tell her how different this was from Law & Order-type courtroom dramas. “Nothing is dramatic,” I told her. “It’s all terribly predictable, and in fact, everything seems designed to be boring.” Then the very next day, something dramatic happened: some anonymous person turned in to the hospital some stuff he or she had printed out from the internet. The plaintiff had done the social media thing, blabbing about this very case, dropping names etc. The surprising thing is, this seemed to change very little about the case — she has her right to say whatever she wants to say, after all. But was this a bit of unexpected drama? You bet.

Weird. It would even have been interesting, this experience, had I not been one of the worms writhing on the hook.

D.

Fossil spotting

Up early this morning, so I went out to breakfast at a local greasy spoon, the kind of place where the musical selection spans from “Where the Boys Are” to “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” decor consists of mounted steer horns and old gas pumps, and the walls are filled with pictures of both Bushes (signed, thanking the owner for his continued support), John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan. A children’s book, Who Was Ronald Reagan? prominently displayed. Anti-Obama bumper stickers filling the dead wall between pictures of Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani.

At the table next to me, the owner pontificated about the Olympics — specifically, about our chances to surpass the “pinko Commies” if we snagged just one more gold medal.

Framed on the wall above my table: that photo of a leering George W. Bush, waving at someone off camera, with the caption, “Miss me yet?” To the owner’s character traits, I add irony impaired.

I’ve never paid much attention to the decor, but that “pinko Commies” comment opened my eyes. Since I don’t follow the Olympics, I wondered which Commies he was referring to — the Chinese? Or does he think the Soviet Union still exists?

D.

Overheard in the locker room

Call them Dude A and Dude B. I couldn’t see either one (there was a row of lockers between us) so I cannot provide any factual verification.

Dude A: Dude! You’re not going to!

Dude B: Gotta. I forgot to bring another pair of shorts.

Dude A: Dude, those are zipper pants.

Dude B: Yeah, well.

Dude A: I’m just saying. Dude.

Dude B: Dude, you’re like a hundred times bigger than me, so I’m telling you, I don’t have to worry about it.

Dude A: Unless you’ve like shrunk up since high school, you’re big enough to reach your zipper.

Dude B: Not a problem ‘less I get a hard-on.

Dude A: It happens, Dude. Like, spontaneously.

Dude B: No, man, I’m getting too old for that shit. Mine takes some attention.

From there, it devolved into a discussion of what it would take to get a spontaneous erection these days. The word “penis” figured prominently. Dude, I’m not kidding.

D.

The college thing

We did the college thing this weekend — drove to our nearest UC, UC Santa Barbara, so that my son could take the tour.

I suppose UCLA might have been closer, but it’s UC Los Angeles. And, well, Santa Barbara. Anyway, I was impressed by the tour, and Santa Barbara is an all-around neat town, though a lot more packed than it was the last time Karen and I visited, about 20 years ago.

Hard not to wish that I was in Jake’s shoes with college still ahead. It’s that sense of possibility I miss. Perhaps that’s a part of why I write — that same sense of possibility suffuses a new project. But I’m not so foolish as to really want to go through it all again — it was a tough climb getting from there to here. Could I do it (Rodney Dangerfield-style) as a fifty-year-old? Never mind the ridiculous face of it (I still recall this guy in his mid-forties who dated one of the co-op girls at least 25 years his junior . . . the man cheated at Monopoly, for the love of God!) Do I have the same stamina I had then?

If I were independently wealthy and hadn’t a care in the world, I think I would do it. No, there’s not much point, other than that pursuit-of-knowledge thing. Which I think would be enough.

D.

Firing range targets, 2012

Some observations:

1. My keen medical eye suggests a curious observation: zombies one through four all have torticollis.

2. Not shown: two other Middle Eastern (and, significantly, non-zombie) targets. Racism against Arabs is okay.

3. Not shown: several non-zombie criminal perpetrators — who are all white. Racism against blacks in NOT okay.

4. You can blast the hell out of Santa, however, as long as he is a zombie.

D.

What’s up

Anyone still reading? I seem to have become another one of those infrequently updated blogs. Anyway, here’s what’s up:

1. Writing proceeds apace. I passed the 50K word mark a little while ago. Currently hung up on one damned exchange that bugs me because it’s too Hollywood, too trite. I need to go back and cut the thing and think up something fresh.

2. My dad’s been dealing with some health issues, so I’ve been back and forth twice to Vegas in the last month or so. He’s looking at a bypass and has decided he’ll go through with it. Whether he can find a surgeon who wants to take the case is another story. It’s taking an amazingly long time for the surgeon to get back to him — honestly, how many records do you need to see to make this decision?

3. Currently dealing with lower back pain issues that are resolving verrry sloooowly. It’s from exercising, so for a change I can’t seem to exercise my way out of it. But I’m still exercising (just not doing weights, which is what I think caused the trouble in the first place) and doing lots of steam room and hot tub and stretching. But I need a massage.

4. Re-reading Mieville’s The City & The City. Yeah, I like it that much.

5. And I’m currently braising a beef tongue, which I won’t be able to eat.

Ow.

D.

Special

It’s rare that I find something this funny, that George Takei hasn’t discovered first.

How the hell is everyone?

D.

more tsuris

Got into an accident today. Nothing major, no injuries, just very expensive (I’m predicting). But it’s hard to get too upset about this sort of thing — my niece’s death has become a sort of yardstick by which to measure tsuris.

As I told Jake, I take this as a wake-up call to clean up my act, vis a vis my driving. I’m rough on cars. Generally this means that I bash the car into inanimate and immovable objects in the hope that they will animate and move. They never do. I’ve snapped off the driver’s side mirror three times now, and at least half of my car’s panels have more or less serious damage. I may have passed that magical halfway point today. And indeed, I confess to the thinking, when I looked at my sorry-assed car, “Time for a new car to destroy!”

But I generally don’t bash into other people or their cars. Today was the first time. Other people bash into me, not the other way around.

Guess what I’m saying is, I need to start driving like an old lady. But not a senile and half-blind old lady. You know what I mean.

D.