Julie Garwood - The Ideal Man

“My date, Dr. Dwight Parish, said, ‘I’ve got this,’ and ran over to the golfer, whose name I later found out was Chuck,” she said.

“Chuck the Choker is what I dubbed him,” Tommy added.

“What did you do?” Max asked Ellie.

“I started the clock the second Chuck tried to swallow the meat-”

He interrupted. “What do you mean, you started the clock?”

“Oxygen deprivation,” she explained. “There was plenty of time, but I always start the clock, which means I note the time down to the second.”

“The deadhead announces he’s a doctor,” Tommy said, “and he kneels down beside Chuck and starts pushing his chest, giving him CPR. He, too, believed Chuck was having a heart attack. The jerk acted like he was running a seminar or something, talking to the crowd while he pumped Chuck’s chest.”

“Then what happened?” Max wondered.

“I tried to explain to Dwight that the man was choking,” Ellie said.

“Yeah, she did,” Tommy agreed. “I stood beside her. She was real nice about it, but the deadhead wouldn’t listen, even after she told him she’d seen Chuck try to swallow a hunk of meat. Deadhead was too busy dazzling the crowd to pay attention. And all that pumping didn’t dislodge the meat, did it?”

“No, it didn’t,” Ellie said.

“And I’m watching, getting real worried. It’s bad for business when a customer dies in your restaurant.”

Max had to agree. “Yeah, that would be bad.”

“I didn’t know the kid was a doctor then,” he added. “But she was trying to convince deadhead that Chuck wasn’t having a heart problem-”

“Had anyone called nine-one-one?”

“Oh yeah, of course. So tell him what happened next,” Tommy urged.

“I was watching the time,” she said. “And I politely asked Dwight to get out of my way.”

Max raised an eyebrow. There was something about the way she made the comment that told him she wasn’t quite telling the truth. “Politely, huh?”

“I thought so.”

“Before you go on, tell me, what kind of doctor is Dwight?”

“He just finished his residency.”

“In what field?”

“Psychiatry.”

“Ah,” he said, smiling.

“It’s an important and difficult residency,” she told him. “However, Dwight has a Superman complex and was determined to revive the golfer. If he had had paddles, he would have tried to shock him. I say ‘try’ because I wouldn’t have let him.”

“Dwight sounds like a jackass,” he commented.

Tommy nodded vigorously.

“Okay, so go on,” he urged, caught up in the story, but before she could continue, he asked, “Weren’t you a little worried? What if you couldn’t get the meat out?”

She looked astonished, as though she couldn’t understand why he’d ask such a silly question.

“There was still plenty of time, and I had a backup plan. Clean steak knife, alcohol. If I had to, I’d open his throat. I wasn’t going to let him die. All of what Tommy and I have told you took less than a minute,” she added. “It sounds like a lot was going on, but it happened really fast. I explained that the man was choking, but Dwight continued to argue that I was wrong, that it was a heart attack. He said he knew the symptoms. He was once again talking more to the crowd than to me, and it was difficult to get a word in.

“I’m a trauma surgeon,” she reminded Max. “And we are trained to take charge. We’re… aggressive when we need to be. I tried to explain to Dwight… but he just wouldn’t listen, so I did what I had to do…”

Tommy finished for her, “She used her foot and knocked Dwight out of the way. He landed halfway across the room.”

“Tommy helped me get Chuck upright, then I dislodged the meat and pulled it out of his throat. All the while I’m checking the clock. It was all good,” she said. “I still had plenty of time.”

“I wanted to throw the meat at Dwight, but she wouldn’t let me,” Tommy grumbled.

“And Chuck?” Max asked.

“No worse for the wear,” Tommy said. He stepped aside to let the waiter set plates in front of them. “You kids go ahead and eat your salads now, and I’ll check on your dinners.”

As soon as he left, Max asked, “Did good old Dwight ask you out on another date?”

“Like I would go?” She shook her head. “Since I had had my fingers down Chuck’s throat, I went to the ladies’ room to wash my hands, and when I came back to the table, Dwight had taken off.”

“What a gentleman.”

As the evening wore on, Max asked questions about her work. It was obvious that she had a real passion for helping people, and he loved the way her eyes lit up when she talked about them.

“It must be stressful at times,” he commented.

“It is,” she answered. “But what about you? Your job has to be riddled with stress.”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. He smiled and added, “And then there are those criminals who all but capture themselves. One of my first cases as an agent I barely had to investigate.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He put down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “It was a robbery of a neighborhood bank, a one-man job. I don’t think the robber had much experience, though. When he walked into the bank with a cap pulled down over his eyes and a gun concealed in his pocket, he found the lobby crowded with customers. He was so nervous, he decided he should wait until they had cleared out before going up to the teller to make his demands. But he didn’t want to look suspicious just milling around the bank doing nothing, so he went to a table with some forms stacked on top.

“In the surveillance tapes, you could see him pick up the pen and start writing on one of the forms. He must have been pretty distracted because, after he finally made it to the teller and got away with the cash, he didn’t think to pick up the forms he had been filling out.”

“What were they?” Ellie asked.

“Applications for a job.”

“No,” she said incredulously.

“Yep,” he said. “He wrote down his name, address… everything we needed to drive to his house and pick him up.”

“I can’t believe anyone would be that stupid.”

He nodded agreement. “A friend of mine who’s on the police force in Honolulu told me about a crime he covered where this man went into a convenience store to rob it. He got the money from the cash register and then demanded the clerk hand over a bottle of whiskey, too. Out of habit, the clerk asked to see some form of ID, and…”

“He gave him his ID,” she finished.

“That’s right.”

“Tell me another one,” she pleaded, laughing.

“I’ve got a hundred of them, but just one more,” he said. “It’s my favorite. There was this one guy who tried to rob a bank. He carried a grocery bag to use as a mask to conceal his identity. His ingenious plan was to put it over his head, then throw the front door of the bank open and rush in. He’d cut holes in the bag for his eyes but evidently hadn’t tried it out because, when he put it on, the holes lined up with his forehead. On the tape, you see the guy come barging into the bank with a bag over his head, waving his gun and turning in circles, trying to get the tellers to give him the cash. He was threatening a potted plant.”

Max liked the way Ellie’s eyes sparkled when she laughed. The waiter appeared with the bill, and he knew it was almost time for them to leave. He was sorry to see the evening end.

“Ellie, if Dwight left you here, how did you get home?”

“I was going to take a cab, but Tommy’s wife, Mary, was on her way out the door, and she drove me home. She’s not here tonight, or Tommy would have brought her over to our table to introduce her. He’s very proud of her. They’ve been married for almost thirty years.”