Fredric Stern - The Endorphin Conspiracy

The Navy had been good to Geoff, though in the end he found it all too macho and regimented. He appreciated the skills he learned, the education loans, the freedom it afforded him from financial dependence on his father. His family could easily have afforded to send him to any med school in the country. In fact, his surgeon father had secured a place for him at his own alma mater, Columbia. As proud—not always a virtue he’d been told—and independent as he was, Geoff had wanted to do it on his own, without anyone’s help. Least of all, his father’s.

If he became a physician, he had decided, it would be on his own merits, and he would pay his own way. And he had. Admitted to Harvard Medical School on a Navy scholarship, he had deferred his neurosurgery residency to complete his obligation to the Navy as a medical officer in the Seals. His father never seemed to understand his decision, though seemed oddly proud. Geoff’s wife, Sarah, thought he was crazy, but supported his decision. Geoff was his own man.

Geoff straightened his tie, smoothed his sweat-soaked shirt and resumed his brisk pace towards the Trauma Center, trying to act as if nothing had happened. Then he remembered the pager. What a way to start the day. Late and limping like some lame first year med student. Goddamn.

Geoff removed the pager from his waist, depressed the button, and held it up in front of him, keeping his gaze fixed on the road ahead. The number was all too familiar: the Neurosurgical ICU at the Trauma Center. His first call as Chief Resident. Whoever it was would have to wait a few minutes. At least it wasn’t a stat page.

Geoff crossed 168th Street, rushed past drug addicts lined up to exchange their needles at the old National Guard Armory building, now a drug rehab clinic, then the Center’s ER entrance, aid cars crowding it’s parking lot. He climbed the marble stairs leading to the main entrance of the Trauma Center. Over the entrance was an inscription, the only remaining vestige from the old City Hospital: “For of the Most High Cometh Healing.”

Geoff paused momentarily to catch his breath and compose himself, then checked his watch. Six-forty. Despite his eventful commute to work, he was only fifteen minutes late for rounds. Things could have been worse. All would be forgotten by later in the morning.

The automatic doors parted, freeing cool, dry air, refreshing after the sprint from his apartment. Geoff removed his bar-coded ID card from the backpack slung over his sore right shoulder and clipped it to his breast pocket, able then to pass to all areas of the Medical Center.

“Welcome back, Dr. Davis. We missed you around here,” said Sergeant Randall Johnson. He grabbed Geoff’s hand and shook it vigorously.

Johnson, black, tall and muscular, with closely cropped graying hair and keen eyes, had been recruited to join NYTC security from the New York City Police Department several years ago. Street smart and stern, he showed his underlying warmth to only a few. Geoff was one.

There was a good reason, aside from chemistry and respect. Geoff had saved Randall Johnson’s ass big time a few years back, treating him for a disease he wouldn’t want to have taken home to his wife Martha. The consequences might have been far more fatal than the disease. Geoff didn’t file the report with the department of health. He just gave Randall the shot of penicillin in the behind, along with a lecture, and never once mentioned the incident again.

“Thanks, Randall. Good to see you, too.” He glanced at his watch. “Hey, I’m running late for rounds. How about lunch one of these days?” he said, realizing even as he said it the odds of his having the time to actually meet someone for lunch during his year as chief resident were practically non-existent. He was about to re-enter the Twilight Zone.

Johnson guffawed. “Yeah, let’s pack a lunch and picnic on the GW Bridge! Hey, good luck, man. I’m sure you’ll be the best chief this place has ever had.”

“Thanks. Gotta go.”

Geoff hurried up the long corridor that lead to the bank of elevators. Lithographs dotted the walls illuminated by soft lights, all a blur to Geoff as he raced to get to rounds. Nearing the elevators, he couldn’t help but notice a rapidly approaching pack of young men and women in newly starched, white coats, stethoscopes dangling around their necks like amulets, mouths chattering. Med students and new residents.

Geoff hit the elevator call button, checked his watch again, tapped it twice with his finger. Six forty-two. Damn. He paced, waiting for the elevator to arrive. An overhead page cut through the white noise in the corridor. “Dr. Geoffrey Davis, emergency room. Dr. Davis, emergency room.”

A rush of adrenalin hit him. He turned and ran back down the hallway towards the ER. He had no idea what train wreck awaited him there, but whatever it was, he was prepared to handle it. This was what he loved about medicine. Making order out of chaos, saving lives, being resourceful. It was a lot like his days in the Navy. Rounds would have to wait.

A woman’s voice tugged at him from behind. “Dr. Davis, wait up!” Geoff stopped and turned to face a young woman with bright eyes and a friendly smile. She wore a white coat with a stethoscope draped around her neck. “My name’s Karen Choy,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m the new resident on the neurosurgery service.”

Geoff shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Choy. Have you done a neurosurgery rotation before?”

She hesitated. “Yes, well, only as a med student. Not as an intern.”

“Hope you like crash courses. I’m on my way to the ER. Let’s go.”

“Well, Dr. Davis, nice of you to pay us a visit. Four minutes to answer a page—you better cut that in half. Dr. Spiros has been setting his stopwatch again.

“Don’t forget, it’s July first.” Jan Creighton, head nurse on day shift, spoke with more than a hint of sarcasm

“Jan, you look great. New hairdo?” Geoff asked.

“Twenty-five pounds off, five more to go and counting. Oh, you mean the perm? You’re the first guy around here to notice.”

In truth, Geoff didn’t care much for Jan Creighton, though he respected the way she ran the ER. Forty-five, never married, sarcasm was her trademark.

“Where’s the action?”

“Trauma room one. Want me to take you there, or do you remember the way?”

Her words grated. “Good to see you, Jan. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again real soon.”

From the strategic viewpoint of the nursing station, a central, Plexiglas-enclosed area about twenty by fifteen feet in dimension, Geoff could see all areas of significance, from the ambulance entrance to the trauma rooms. The nursing station functioned as traffic control, flow directed by the head nurse, visibility providing her the ability to monitor all ER activity and assign treatment rooms and staff as indicated by patients’ apparent conditions.

Geoff left the nursing station, Karen Choy in tow. He turned, collided with a passing medic, knocking him into one of the portable crash carts that dotted the hallway adjacent to the nursing station. Like a quarterback sacked from the blind-side, the medic sent his clip-board flying and crashed helplessly to the floor.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you coming.” Geoff was physically unscathed but embarrassed.

“Hey, man, where the fuck you brains at!” the medic said as he got up off the floor. He reclaimed his clipboard and brushed his behind.

When the medic looked up, Geoff instantly realized who he was, embarrassment giving way to pleasure. “Santos, you son-of-a-bitch! I couldn’t have knocked you on your butt better if I’d tried!”

“ Ay, Dios mio! Geoffrey Davis, I thought you had died and gone to heaven without me. The laboratory is no place for a fine doctor such as yourself.”