Frank Abagnale - Catch Me If You Can

“Uh, yeah, okay, get them ready for me,” I said. I went up to the station and looked over the stack of charts she had ready for me. There was one for each patient, noting medication given, times, the names of the nurses and interns involved and instructions from the attending physician. “That’s your space,” said the nurse, pointing to a blank area on the chart opposite the heading supervising

RESIDENT’S COMMENTS.

I noticed the other doctors involved had written in Latin. Or Greek. Or maybe it was just their normal handwriting. I sure couldn’t read it.

I sure as hell didn’t want anyone reading what I wrote, either. So I scribbled some hieroglyphics all over each chart and signed my name in the same indecipherable manner in each instance.

“There you go, Miss Murphy,” I said, handing back the charts. “You’ll note I gave you an A.”

She laughed. I got a lot of laughs during the following shifts with my wisecracking manner, seeming irreverence for serious subjects and zany actions. For example, an obstetrician came in early one morning with one of his patients, a woman in the last throes of labor. “You want to scrub up and look in on this? I think it’s going to be triplets,” he asked.

“No, but I’ll see you have plenty of boiling water and lots of clean rags,” I quipped. Even he thought it was hilarious.

But I knew I was treading on thin ice, and about 2:30 a.m. at the end of my first week, the ice started cracking. “Dr. Williams! To Emergency, please. Dr. Williams! To Emergency, please.”

I had so far avoided the emergency ward, and it was my understanding with Colter that I wouldn’t have to handle emergency cases. There was supposed to be a staff doctor manning the emergency ward. I presumed there was. I hate the sight of blood. I can’t stand the sight of blood. Even a little blood makes me ill. I once passed near the emergency ward and saw them bringing in an accident victim. He was all bloody and moaning, and I hurried to the nearest toilet and vomited.

Now here I was being summoned to the emergency room. I knew I couldn’t say I hadn’t heard the announcement-two nurses were talking to me when the loudspeaker blared the message-but I dawdled as much as possible en route.

I used the toilet first. Then I used the stairs instead of the elevator. I knew my delay might be harmful to whomever needed a doctor, but it would be just as harmful if I rushed to the emergency ward. I wouldn’t know what to do once I got there. Especially if the patient was bleeding.

This one wasn’t, fortunately. It was a kid of about thirteen, white-faced, propped up on his elbows on the table and looking at the three interns grouped around him. The interns looked at me as I stopped inside the door.

“Well, what do we have here?” I asked.

“A simple fracture of the tibia, about five inches below the patella, it looks like,” said the senior intern, Dr. Hollis Carter. “We were just getting ready to take some X rays. Unless we find something more severe, I’d say put him in a walking cast and send him home.”

I looked at Carl Farnsworth and Sam Bice, the other two interns. “Dr. Farnsworth?” He nodded. “I concur, Doctor. It may not even be broken.”

“How about you, Dr. Bice?”

“I think that’s all we’ve got here, if that much,” he said.

“Well, gentlemen, you don’t seem to have much need of me. Carry on,” I said and left. I learned later the kid had a broken shin bone, but at the time he could have needed eyeglasses for all I knew.

I had other emergency-ward calls in ensuing nights, and each time I let the interns handle the situation. I would go in, question one of them as to the nature of the illness or injury and then ask him how he would treat the patient. On being told, I’d confer with one or both of the other interns who were usually present. If he or they concurred, I’d nod authoritatively and say, “All right, Doctor. Have at it.”

I didn’t know how well my attitude set with the interns concerning such incidents, but I soon found out. They loved it. “They think you’re great, Frank,” said Brenda.

“Young Dr. Carter especially thinks you’re terrific. I heard him telling some friends of his visiting from Macon how you let him get real practice, that you just come in, get his comments on the situation and let him proceed. He says you make him feel like a practicing doctor.”

I smiled. “I’m just lazy,” I replied.

But I realized after the first shift that I needed some help. I located a pocket dictionary of medical terms, and thereafter when I’d hear the interns or nurses mention a word or phrase, the meaning of which I didn’t know, I’d slip upstairs to the unfinished seventh floor, go into one of the empty linen closets and look up the word or words. Sometimes I’d spend fifteen or twenty minutes in the closet just leafing through the dictionary.

On what I thought would be my last night in the guise of resident supervisor, Colter sought me out. “Frank, I know I’ve got no right to ask this, but I have to. Dr. Jessup isn’t coming back. He’s decided to stay and practice in California. Now, I’m pretty sure I can find a replacement within a couple of weeks, so could I presume on you to stay that long?” He waited, a pleading look on his face.

He caught me at the right time. I was in love with my role as doctor. I was enjoying it almost as much as my pretense of airline pilot. And it was much more relaxing. I hadn’t written a bad check since assuming the pose of pediatrician. In fact, since taking the temporary position at Smithers, I hadn’t even thought about passing any worthless paper. The hospital was paying me a $125-a-day “consultant’s” fee, payable weekly.

I clapped Colter on the back. “Sure, John,” I agreed. “Why not? I’ve got nothing else I’d rather do at the moment.”

I was confident I could carry the scam for another two weeks, and I did, but then the two weeks became a month and the month became two months, and Colter still hadn’t found a replacement for Jessup. Some of the confidence began to wane, and at times I was nagged by the thought that Colter, or some doctor on the staff, even Granger, maybe, might start checking into my medical credentials, especially if a sticky situation developed on my shift.

I maintained my cocky, to-hell-with-rules-and-regula-tions demeanor with the interns, nurses and others under my nominal command, and the midnight-to-eight shift staff continued to support me loyally. The nurses thought I was a darling kook and appreciated the fact that I never tried to corner them in an unoccupied room. The interns were proud to be on my shift. We’d developed a real camaraderie, and the young doctors respected me. They thought I was wacky, but competent. “You don’t treat us like the other staff doctors, Dr. Williams,” Carter confided. “When they walk in while we’re treating a patient, they say ‘Move aside/ and just take over. You don’t. You let us go ahead and handle the case. You let us be real doctors.”

I sure as hell did. I didn’t know a damned thing about medicine. Those young doctors didn’t know it until years later, but they were the sole reason I was able to keep up my medical masquerade. When things got tough-at least tough for me, and a headache was too stout for my medical knowledge- I’d leave it to the interns and flee to my linen closet on the seventh floor.

Fortunately, during my tenure at Smithers, I was never faced with a life-or-death situation, but there were ticklish positions where only my antic’s mien saved me. Early one morning, for instance, an obstetrics team nurse sought me out. “Dr. Williams, we just delivered a baby, and Dr. Martin was called across the hall to do a Caesarian section while we were still tying the cord. He asks if you’d be kind enough to make a routine examination of the child.”