Caddywumpus
A short story by Trevor Mooney
“Will I be breaking the news to Mr. G again?” I ask myself as I stumble out of my car, coffee
mug in hand and stethoscope draped around my neck. With my free hand I rub my bleary eyes,
which only unleashes a throbbing periorbital ache as I adjust to the obnoxiously cheery brightness of
the early morning Los Angeles sunshine. 6 am and it is already hot out. God I hate summer. One
of my favorite things about growing up in the shadow of the Berkeley foothills is the guarantee of
morning fog; even in the warm months, you are assured of at least a moment’s coverage to gather
your bearings and enjoy a hot coffee before the sun breaks through the canopy and sets the day into
inexorable motion. Clouds are full of possibility, beholden neither to time nor place, while sunshine
is a boring hourglass that heaps particles of light on all things pleasant and unpleasant, caring not for
the distinction between the two and thus draining all things indiscriminately of vigor.
As it is, I am an unpleasant target for the sun this morning, a reluctant witness to daybreak as I
trundle to the hospital entrance to begin another long day on the internal medicine service. My
vigor already sagging, I take a generous swig of medium roast and immediately regret it. Coffee
tastes terrible when you’re already sweating. Warms you from the inside out, turning your hot,
sticky drench into a cold, sickly sweat. “How did the Chinese railroad workers do it?” I mutter to
myself, referring not to their tragic feat of building the transcontinental line, but rather insensitively
to their habit of consuming lukewarm tea in the sweltering western Chaparral while doing so. My
mind returns to Mr. G. I wonder what he would say about the railroad workers. Mr. G fought in
the Korean War, and had a colorful view of Eastern civilization to say the very least (or to euphemize
the very most). He also has stage IV adenocarcinoma of the lung, and is no stranger to cold sweats
himself. “Will he remember this time?” I wonder, my mind finally shifting away from my own petty
woes, morbid curiosity finally trumping self-absorption.
Today is Friday, and I’d started every morning since Tuesday by breaking him the news that
he had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. No, not because I want to torture Mr. G. And
not because Mr. G is in denial. You see, Mr. G has advanced dementia, and he cannot remember
conversations from one hour, much less one day, before. He is Prometheus chained to a rock, and I
– the daily clarion of terrible news – Zeus’ eagle coming to rip out his liver. A thankless role for a
newly minted third year medical student to play. Well, not entirely thankless, to be brutally frank.
In a twisted sense, treating Mr. G is my own fucked up Groundhog Day; every morning represents a
fresh opportunity for me to practice the art of “breaking bad news” to patients. And no news is
worse than “you have months to live.”
That’s exactly what I’d said that first Tuesday, when I’d accepted sign off on Mr. G’s treatment and
boldly entered Mr. G’s room on the fifth floor of the VA to introduce myself and give his prognosis.
From the doorway, I could tell he was already sitting up in bed, picking at a breakfast of French
toast and sipping black coffee, his nasal cannula temporarily resting on his chest while he ate. The
windowshades were mercifully drawn, denying entry to the bothersome sun but also casting a
shadow over Mr. G so I couldn’t quite make out his features from afar. “And who the hell are you?”
he asked raspily as I approached the bedside. I paused, momentarily taken aback, not by his curt
introduction but rather by his appearance. He was more than skinny, more than gaunt – skeletal,
really. Maybe 100 lbs of skin and viscera draped around his six-foot frame. His temples had long
since been scooped out by cancer cachexia, his smile a macabre exposition of individual muscle fibers
radiating from the corners of his mouth to his multifold eye crinkles. I’d seen emaciation like this
before, but only in grainy history textbook photos of Holocaust victims. I couldn’t help but think,
“here before me is a dead man.” Defying that description, however, were his eyes; they were a
mischievous cerulean, boring holes into me as I scrambled stupidly to re-erect my professional
veneer. “Er, good morning Mr. G. My name is Trevor, and I’m a medical student. I’ll be taking care
of you during your hospital stay.” Mr. G had been admitted for shortness of breath, hence his
supplemental oxygen. And during his admission he’d been diagnosed with metastatic cancer, hence
his cachexia. My job was to treat his acute shortness of breath and hopefully transition him to
palliative care. And, of course, to remind him he was going to die before next Christmas.
“Trevor…Trevor…” he repeated, clearly trying to commit to memory. “My apologies, I won’t
remember your name. You see, I have dementia. Don’t remember a lot of things.” He re-inserted his
nasal cannula and took a deep breath, holding up his hand to signal pause and closing his eyes.
“Sorry again, sometimes I need to catch my breath.”
“Of course, Mr. G.” I waited for him to exhale, whereupon he returned his penetrating gaze to me.
My turn to take a deep breath. “Now Mr. G, one of the reasons I am here is to make sure you are
completely informed about your health – ”
“Well you’d better do that!” he interjected. “It’s my fucking body, after all. Remind me, what’s your
name again, young man?”
“I’m Trevor, Mr. G.” I smiled weakly. I was starting to appreciate the difficulty of my situation.
And, as an unmistakable sadness washed over me, I suspected this difficulty would have little to do
with Mr. G’s dementia.
“Well, Trevor, has anyone told you that you have a wonderful smile?” He posed this matter-of-factly
while taking another sip of black coffee, hardly an ounce of flattery in his voice.
“Maybe only my doting mother,” I joked awkwardly. No one had ever told me that. Truthfully, I
have a very crooked smile, a product of many generations of Scots-Irish breeding that no procedure
can fix. “All caddywumpus,” my dear Irish grandfather would call my teeth. Growing up, my
caddywumpus dentition singlehandedly bankrolled my local orthodontist’s early retirement replete
with a private yacht and Cancun timeshare. And yet, after all that work, my high school girlfriend
had no compunction telling me “Trevor, you’re the first person I’ve dated without caring about
physical appearances.” How charitable of her! Once upon a time, I smarted from that backhanded
endorsement of my personality. These days, I carry it like a badge of honor. Maybe Mr. G intuited
this.
He just shrugged. “It’s important to smile and laugh. It’s either that, or you cry. Some people are far
too serious.”
I facsimiled assent by nodding, at this point just grasping at straws for a transition back to
unpleasant reality. “Unfortunately, I have to talk to you about something, ah, quite serious.” I
paused briefly, anticipating a witty rejoiner from Mr. G. When nothing came, I forged onward with
reckless abandon. “You may not remember, but last week you were diagnosed with advanced lung
cancer. It has spread to other parts of your body, so while we cannot cure it, we will do our best to
make sure you are comfortable.” I stopped here, giving Mr. G space to digest this information.
“Lung cancer, huh? That’s news to me. Pardon my language, but what the hell do you mean by
‘comfortable’?” Mr. G asked, his tone not fearful but genuinely curious.
“Er, Mr. G, we cannot know for certain, but most people with your particular diagnosis don’t live
more than a couple months. The best we can do is to take steps to make sure you are comfortable
during that time.” My insides squirmed. I was going about this all wrong. Who was I to give a
prognosis? Sure, I was just parroting what my residents had told me, and what I’d read in Mr. G’s
oncology notes. Still, it felt wrong. I wanted nothing more than to start over, or better yet, to
disappear and never return. “What’s the harm in that?” the devil inside me tempted. “It’s not as if
Mr. G will remember this anyway.” But Mr. G seemed to be taking it in stride – certainly better
than I would have. He stared mistily at the wall opposite him, contemplating devastation that his
brain had already registered many times over, but not yet stored. I wasn’t sure what was crueler, the
dementia or the cancer.
“I’ve lived a good life,” he finally said, slightly choked. “Smoked a bit too much, maybe. You think
that has something to do with it?”
“Maybe,” I stated, knowing full well that it had almost everything to do with it. One hundred packyears with no other discernable risk factors made cigarettes persona non grata in Mr. G’s lineup of
suspects. But now my confidence was shaken, and I would do anything to relieve Mr. G of any
burden on his 100 lb frame, even bend truth if it could assuage some guilt. “But many people get
lung cancer who haven’t so much as taken a puff, and many people who’ve smoked their whole lives
never end up with cancer. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason. Surely, there is no reason to
blame yourself for this.”
“Ha! Blame or no blame, I’ve lived a damn good life. Not always decent. I mean, I was usually
decent to my daughter Julie. You should meet Julie, she’s the best thing in my life.” His blue eyes
widened. “My daughter…does she know about this yet?”
I wasn’t sure. “I’ll have to ask some of your other doctors if they’ve shared the news with her.”
“Don’t tell her!” he implored. “I don’t want to burden her. I’ve made her life hard enough already.”
“Of course, it’s your decision. Do you have anyone who can support you during this time?”
“I mean, Julie takes care of me,” he said. “But she worries way too much. I think she hates me.” He
paused, still staring at the opposite wall. “Did I tell you that she is the best thing in my life?”
“Yes, it sounds like you love her very much,” I said. “And again, we will respect all of your wishes
regarding confidentiality. But we always strongly encourage our patients to communicate with their
loved ones, especially during hard times.” God I felt so fake. Always. We. I was three weeks into my
clinical career, for fuck’s sake. Everything I was saying was ripped secondhand from Bates’ “physical
exam and history taking.” What I really wanted to say was that I’d only been next to someone’s
deathbed once in my life, at 15 years old, when my dear Irish grandfather, the same one who liked
the word “caddywumpus,” passed away from malignant melanoma. I was terrified then as I was
now. I remember bawling like a baby the last time I spoke to grandpa Bob; I wish I hadn’t, but I
did. I was helpless; he was just lying there, hooked up to breathing machines and IV drips, suffering
silently. I remember taking his hand and opening my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Tears just streamed down my face as I struggled to look him in the eye, my sobs ugly amidst the
callous beeping of his machines. I couldn’t help it. My aunt, his daughter, was in the room at the
time. At least she was stoic. She took my arm and led me gently out of the room. That was the last
my grandfather saw of me. He died later that evening. I still regret it.
But now I was wearing a white coat and sporting a stethoscope. Weakness wasn’t an option for me
this time; I knew grandpa Bob was watching from above. Plus, I’d read nothing about crying in
Bates. I resolutely grabbed my stethoscope from around my neck and said, “Alright Mr. G, if you
don’t mind, I’ll take a quick listen to your lungs before going on my way.” He nodded, his eyes still
a misty azure gazing off into the distance. “Deep breath in,” I said, placing my stethoscope on his
upper back and inhaling myself, “and out,” exhaling in concert with Mr. G. Together we breathed,
deep breath in, deep breath out. As I auscultated his lobes, I closely watched Mr. G’s face. With
each breath, his eyes became less misty, gradually refocusing until – by the end of the exam – they’d
fully recouped their original cerulean mischief. I shook his hand, told him I’d be visiting him over
the next few days, and started toward the door. I was washing my hands when he spoke.
“Hey, before you leave…Travis.” I stopped and turned toward Mr. G. He was smiling serenely
again, very much like he was when I first saw him. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have a
wonderful smile?”
The next day, Wednesday, was more of the same. This time I delivered the news much more
smoothly, much more confidently, much less caddywumpus. Bates would approve. Mr. G was
disappointed, but not heartbroken, by his diagnosis. He brought up his daughter, Julie. “She’s the
best thing in my life, you know that?” he asked. I did know that. “She mustn’t know about the
cancer,” he said. “I don’t want to burden her anymore than I already have.” She did know about
the cancer. I’d pored over his chart the previous day, and discovered that Julie had been informed a
little less than a week ago. Mr. G had also named her his surrogate decision-maker. And he was no
longer full code – good thing too, because if a heart attack didn’t finish off his brittle body,
resuscitative chest compressions certainly would.
I decided to postpone this discussion until
Thursday, when Julie would come in and we would have a “team meeting” with Julie and the
palliative care providers to iron out a post-discharge plan for Mr. G.
One thing I did notice right away on Wednesday was Mr. G’s breathing. It was much more labored,
his bony shoulders metronomically rising and falling with every gasp. Easiest respiratory rate I’d ever
recorded. He wasn’t wearing his nasal cannula; I asked why, and he said the nurses took it off, and
then he forgot about it. Together we dug around for it, finally finding it crushed between his
pillows and his mattress. The oxygen gave him immediate relief, and maybe a bit more. “Those
fucking nurses!” he rasped suddenly, catching me off guard – a moment ago he could barely utter a
word for lack of breath. “I think they’re Filipino, or Taiwanese, or whatever. Not Korean, I’m pretty
sure.” He cast a glare toward the nursing station outside the room. A couple of the nurses were
sharing a laugh. “They’re always fucking around over there. Thank god you’re here because I swear
they’ll be the death of me.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that, Mr. G. Is there anything I can do to help, or anything I can share
with the nursing staff to make sure you’re more comfortable?”
“Yea, fire them.”
I chuckled. “I’m hardly at liberty to do that, Mr. G. I’m just a lowly medical student.”
He stopped glaring at the nursing station and turned toward me. “Bottom of the totem pole, huh?”
He was smiling now. “Well, ya gotta start somewhere.” He closed his eyes and took a few deep
breaths. I appreciated his willingness to accept my care, despite my obvious inexperience. You’d
think he’d care more about that sort of thing, given that he seemed to hold the nurses to such a high
standard. But it was becoming fairly apparent that I met the standard that mattered more to him.
“I was in your shoes once, the shit end of the stick.” He opened his eyes again. He’d been
reminiscing. “Not in medicine, of course, but in the army. I fought in Korea.”
“And I thank you so much for your service,” I responded honestly. “It’s because of sacrifices like
yours that I have an opportunity to become a doctor in the first place.” Too sappy. He scoffed,
dismissed my canned gratitude with a wave of his ghostly hand.
“It wasn’t all hero’s work, you know. I mean, I’ve been a decent man most of my life. Not all the
time, though.” He grinned devilishly at me, beckoning me to come closer. “Can I say something,
just between you and me?”
“Uh, sure,” I replied nervously. I cast a quick glance outside the room; I had a feeling the nurses
wouldn’t appreciate his next words. I knelt by his bedside and returned his blue gaze. “I’m all ears,
Mr. G.”
“Well, I never went to a whorehouse in Korea,” he said, his face a picture of disgust. “Dirty race, the
Koreans. For fucks sake, you can smell the Kimchi a mile away with those Gooks!”
I laughed, sue me. A big, booming laugh. I couldn’t help it. The nurses looked up from their
computers and stared through the door with alarm. I’m Irish but I’m no Saint Patrick. There was
something twistedly funny about something so putridly racist coming out of his mouth. At this
stage in his life, he could scarcely hold onto a pound of weight, could scarcely remember words
spoken minutes before. The cancer was diuresing his body, the dementia his mind, but he’d be
damned if he didn’t hold onto this Korean resentment all the way to the grave! Who was I to
disabuse him of this notion now? He’d only a couple more months to hang on. I wasn’t there to
proselytize. I wasn’t any good at it anyway.
Mr G. wasn’t done. “When we traveled to Japan on the way back…now that’s a different story.
The Japanese are a clean race.”
I chose my next words carefully. “I’ll take your word for it, Mr. G.” I wouldn’t.
I knew what my laugh had enabled, but at the same time, I didn’t regret it. Laughs were rare
commodities on this medicine service, and I was more than happy to take them, even if they came at
the expense of marginalized communities. As I said, I am no Saint Patrick, especially in the wee
hours of a hot, sticky morning. What’s more, while no part of me shared it, a part of me certainly
understood Mr. G’s point of view. I knew that saintlier men than he had succumbed to the same
prejudices.
My mind returned again to Grandpa Bob in his dying moments. As my aunt whisked me away
from his bedside, through my pathetic tears I’d caught a glimpse of grandpa Bob’s wardrobe. His
closet door had been left ajar, and through the opening I could see his officer’s uniform, set apart
from the rest of his sundry clothing items. It was light brown and neatly pressed, its lapel decorated
with items that I couldn’t make out through the teary blur. Grandpa Bob had fought in the Korean
War too, and served honorably as his uniform clearly attested. He’d never spoken to me about his
time in Korea. Of course, I’d never asked. I regret that too.
After the funeral, I asked my dad, Robert Jr., if Grandpa Bob ever talked about the war. Almost
never, my dad replied. He’d kept that part of his life private, compartmentalized it just as he’d
isolated his officer’s jacket from the rest of his work clothes. But there was one story he’d shared with
his eldest son – the story about the American soldier he court-martialed in Korea.
…
Before the war, Grandpa Bob was a practicing lawyer. And before that, he’d studied intensely in the
seminary. He was a god-fearing man, so accordingly a Catholic sense of right and wrong guided his
judiciary decisions just as much as an encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal justice system. In Korea,
when courts-martial convened, he often was asked to represent the accuser, prosecuting soldiers who’d
committed a crime under the “Punitive Articles” of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). A
thankless job, especially considering that punishments decided by courts-martial did not always indefinitely
relieve the accused of duty.
For the most part, Grandpa Bob was fortunate enough to avoid one-on-one encounters with the men he’d
prosecuted after they served their punishments. That is, until his division came under enemy fire toward
the end of the war, forcing Grandpa Bob to seek cover in a small bunker near the edge of camp. The
attack had been so brisk that he’d hadn’t time to arm himself, so his only hope was to wait it out and pray
to God that when the maelstrom died down, it would be Americans – not Koreans – scouring the bunker
for survivors. But midway through his prayer, a soldier, an American, jumped into the bunker with him.
Grandpa Bob recognized him right away; he’d prosecuted the soldier only a month prior. The man had
been sentenced to solitary confinement by court martial for assaulting a fellow officer. Now he was alone
in a bunker with the man responsible for his confinement. And yes, Grandpa Bob confirmed, the soldier
was armed. The smell of stale whiskey hung on the soldier’s breath. “This is it,” Grandpa Bob thought.
“He’ll kill me and no one will know.” Grandpa Bob mustered a smile toward the soldier, hoping futilely
that this outward show of kindness would defuse the tension. But, miraculously, the soldier didn’t seem to
recognize him! Not reciprocating the smile, he gazed quizzically back at Grandpa Bob for a couple
seconds – seconds that stretched into an eternity – before leaping out of the bunker to defend his armed
comrades against the Korean onslaught, leaving Grandpa Bob alone in the bunker once again, breathing
raggedly, knowing full well he’d just dodged his closest bullet. “And a good thing he didn’t recognize your
Grandpa!” Dad concluded with a chuckle. “Neither of us would be here if he had!”
Mom, who’d been listening in while Dad told his story, chimed in. Tears had welled in her eyes. “You
should know, Trevor, never was there a more fair-minded, more compassionate man than your Grandpa
Bob. ” This wasn’t news to me. She said this often about her father-in-law, how he was a Saint, except for
maybe on the wretched golf course, where he was prone to legendary litanies of profanity after every
caddywumpus shot. “You motherfucking idiot!” Grandpa Bob would yell at himself after a wayward slice,
“just hit the little shit toward the fucking flag, you piss-poor excuse of a hack!” I smiled, reminiscing about
the time Grandpa Bob took 12-year-old me golfing. That was the day I figured out why someone so
goddamn perfect had any reason to go to church every week. He was brilliant out there, I thought, a
fucking poet.
My Dad interjected matter-of-factly. “Of course, as fair-minded as he was, he always had a thing against
Koreans. Hated them for the longest time, in fact…”
…
Thursday morning. I was back in Mr. G’s room, listening to his lungs. They sounded a lot worse.
He’d developed a hacking cough and low-grade fever overnight. Hopefully just an upper respiratory
virus. I’d actually been on call when the fever struck, lying down next to my pager in a scratchy call
bed upstairs. My resident didn’t bother paging me; she was a caring resident, and wanted me to get
some rest. I’d been working hard, she said. I deserved it. Plus, Mr. G’s team meeting with his
daughter Julie and his palliative care doctors would be happening first thing in the morning. I
would be debriefing Julie on Mr. G’s hospital course, my resident told me.
Truth be told, I didn’t sleep much overnight anyways. Lying awake, I thought about Grandpa Bob
and his lonely officer’s uniform, neatly interned in the shadows of his closet where I imagined his
traumas and prejudices to dwell like unseen monsters in the dark. But he couldn’t completely
cordon off that part of his life, could he? Growing up, Dad was evidently privy to the existence of
these monsters, and for the most part extrapolated that the beasts were borne of an ugly, primordial
inhumanity that only war can recreate. These monsters never reared their ugly heads in Dad’s
presence. But maybe Dad saw some of this ugliness every time Grandpa Bob reached for a cigarette
with his morning coffee, or imbibed his nightly whiskey on the rocks to help him sleep. Point is,
Dad never had to suffer the existence of these monsters. Grandpa Bob made sure of that.
For years, I’d always thought that Grandpa Bob suppressed his prejudice to protect himself – his
reputation as a fair-minded lawyer and dutiful Catholic depended on it. Lying awake in that
scratchy on-call bed, I realized I’d been wrong. Grandpa Bob wasn’t protecting himself; he was
protecting my Dad, protecting me, from the ugly thoughts that kept him up at night, made him
reach for the whiskey in desperation.
I anxiously listened to Mr. G’s lungs, and looked up. His daughter, Julie, was in the room today.
Her face mirrored my anxiety.
“I didn’t find any consolidation – er, that is, anything that would indicate pneumonia,” I said, trying
to sound confident. “Plus,” I shared, “his chest X-ray didn’t show anything concerning –”
“Besides the cancer,” Julie quipped, smiling sadly now. She had a toothy grin, framed by a freckled,
weather-beaten face partially obscured by locks of sandy, auburn hair. She looked like an outdoor
athlete – a skier or climber, I surmised, maybe both depending on the season. She had the same
brilliant blue eyes as her dad. She clearly also shared his quick wit.
“Yes,” I said, embarrassed by my thoughtless locution.
Julie picked up on this. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “I can’t thank you enough for
taking care of him.” The team meeting had gone very well earlier that morning. Julie was relieved
to hear that she would no longer be taking care of Mr. G alone, that we’d ironed out a discharge
plan for her father involving hospice and comfort-care. “He can get really sick of me,” she said, now
resting her hand on Mr. G’s shoulder. What was that in her tone? Affection, sure. But also fatigue?
Wariness?
Mr. G looked up at me in defense. “She worries too fucking much!” he exclaimed between coughs.
“It’s because you’re sick,” Julie laughed incredulously as if making an obvious point, looking at me
as if I were an arbiter in a dispute. “Do you not hear yourself coughing?”
“That’s it!” Mr. G rasped, glowering at his daughter. “I’ve had enough of you, get the fuck out! Let
the doctors do their job. They know what they’re talking about!”
I looked helplessly at Julie. Did I know what I was talking about? She returned a pained smile, and
put her hands up in feigned defeat. “Alright, alright!” she said. “I’ll give you some space, dad.” She
gave me a knowing look and walked out of the room, leaving me alone with Mr. G.
He was still steaming, his brilliant eyes challenging me to disagree. “You see the bullshit I have to
deal with?” he said hoarsely.
I remained silent for a minute. Mr. G closed his eyes and took a few appreciative breaths of oxygen.
When he opened his eyes again, they’d lost their intensity.
“I think my daughter is going to visit me today,” he stated, almost dreamily. “She’s the best thing in
my life, you know that?”
I finally spoke. “She also loves you very much, I’m sure.”
“Yes,” he said. His eyes were now moist. “Sometimes I think I’m no good for her. I wasn’t always
there for her when she was young, you know.”
This didn’t surprise me. I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the subject. “It’s almost
lunchtime,” I said. “Let’s get some food in you!”
“Whatever you say, doctor,” he said. “But make sure those fucking nurses aren’t poisoning my
food!”
“Will do, Mr. G. It’s Kimchi you wanted, correct?”
His nose flared in disgust. “Fuck you!” He was smiling, however.
I returned his smile.
“Remind me, what’s your name again?” he asked.
“Trevor.”
“Well, Trevor…has anyone told you that you have a wonderful smile?”
As I left the room, I saw Julie sitting just outside the door. She was reading “Into Thin Air,” by Jon
Krakauer. “Called it!” I thought. She looked up at me and smiled appreciatively. “I can’t thank you
enough,” she said. “Don’t mention it,” I responded earnestly. “It’s my job.”
“And what I job this is!” I tell myself sarcastically this Friday morning, the taste of coffee still
bitterly clinging to my tastebuds. At least I’m no longer sweating.
I’m sitting alone in the
windowless internal medicine team room now, poring over my patients’ computerized charts. The
VA is well ventilated, but poorly designed. The fumes from the cafeteria percolate directly into the
vents, which deliver cold air mixed with the unmistakable odor of burnt sausages and hashbrowns
into the team room. I don’t really mind; it actually smells pretty good. Maybe I’d have time to
sneak in a bite before rounds, if I was efficient enough. Plus, I’m just happy to be out of the sun’s
way.
I arrive at Mr. G’s chart, and I’m happy to see that his fever has broken. His vitals look good. We’d
stopped drawing routine labs yesterday, as part of his palliative care plan. My other two patients are
very stable – one recovering from a COPD exacerbation, and the other receiving IV diuretics for
decompensated heart failure. “Bread and Butter” VA cases, we called them; i.e., perfect for a med
student still learning the fundamentals. Pretty straightforward today, I think. I can already taste
those hashbrowns.
I visit Mr. G last. When I walk into the room, he is sitting up, looking out the window. It is open
today, sunlight streaming through and illuminating his untouched breakfast.
Sausages and
hashbrowns. Mr. G looks sad; his eyes are puffy. He’s been crying.
“How are you feeling today, Mr. G?”
He turns to me. “Trevor!” he says, his face brightening immediately. “How nice to see you again!”
I am pleasantly surprised. This is the first time he’s remembered my name all week. “It’s always a
pleasure to see you as well, Mr. G!” He nods graciously, and then returns his gaze to the window, his
eyes swimming again.
“Something seems to be on your mind, Mr. G.”
“I can’t seem to place it, Trevor,” he says. “I feel…bad. Like something terrible has happened, but I
just don’t know what it is.”
I’ve seen dementia patients before. It isn’t uncommon for them to be emotionally labile, swinging
from one mood to the next without warning. Mr. G is certainly susceptible to swings; I’ve seen
firsthand how he can go from happy to hostile to heartbroken, all in the span of minutes, usually
triggered by the presence of the nurses or his daughter. But this sadness is different, I can tell. He’s
grasping desperately for a memory that is just barely out of reach. I marvel for a moment: Mr. G has
an emotional recollection of his cancer diagnosis, I am sure of it. He can’t quite remember what it is,
but he can remember how it makes him feel. Once again I tell him about his terminal diagnosis, but
this time it doesn’t feel like I am breaking bad news. No, this time it feels like I’m giving a gentle
reminder. I’m validating his feelings, and he accepts my validation with open arms. He welcomes
death.
“You know, Trevor, I’ve lived a good life.” He smiles with satisfaction. “Not to say that I’ve been
good my whole life. But my life has been good. It’s been rich, you know?”
My words are empty in comparison to the solid lump forming in my throat. Yes, I say to him, not a
dull life at all, you’ve been around the world, met people and done things that I can only dream of.
He laughs. “A good life, as I said. But I’ve not always been good.” He looked at me with those
fierce blues. “Did I tell you I went to whorehouses in Japan? Never in Korea though, those dirty
bastards.”
I nod, perhaps betraying more understanding than is appropriate.
“But I wasn’t the perfect soldier in Korea either,” he goes on, emboldened. “I got in a fight with one
of my superior officers once. It was late one night, and we were drinking. I can’t really remember
why we started fighting. Probably over some girl…yes, a girl, that was it. Anyhow, words turned
into blows, and I grabbed the butt of my gun and nearly beat him to death.”
I sit down at Mr. G’s bedside, listening intently.
“I paid dearly for that stunt,” he says. “They put my ass in solitary for a week. The worst part was
the withdrawal,” he adds. “I was shivering and shaking so much, I could barely sleep. When I did, it
was one nightmare after another. First thing I did when I was released, I got my hands on a handle
of whiskey and drank it straight. Best drink I’ve ever had. Right then, war might as well have been
won for me.”
He gushes at the memory.
“Of course, only a few weeks later we were ambushed by the fuckin’ Gooks. It was early in the
morning, and I’d had a couple drinks the night before, as was my habit. Anyhow, at the time, I was
still a bit drunk, stumbling around the outskirts of camp. I felt a bullet whizz past my face – coulda
been friendly, coulda been Gook. Didn’t matter, either way I panicked and tripped. Fortunately
there was a bunker right there, and I fell in.”
I am stock-still. He forges onward.
“At first, I thought I was alone in the bunker. I could wait out the firestorm, I thought. But then I
noticed another man, sitting with his back against the muddy wall opposite me. He’d been praying
by the looks of it. He kinda blended in, you see, with his camo. Me being drunk didn’t help either,
probably took me longer than normal to come to my senses.”
Mr. G closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. I realize I haven’t been breathing either; I notice
my heart is racing, no doubt overcome with the burden of recycling my rapidly diminishing oxygen
reserves. I close my eyes like Mr. G, and I’m inside the bunker, back against the wall, my breathing
shallow and ragged. An armed soldier is facing me and he speaks, but his voice is muffled and
distant. He has auburn hair and bright blue eyes. “You listening to me, Trevor?” Mr. G’s rasp rips
me back into the present. I open my eyes and the blue eyes are still there, staring bullets into me, but
now they are framed by the gaunt visage of Mr G.
“Anyhow, I come to my senses soon enough. And wouldn’t you know, no sooner than I’d dusted
myself off, I recognized the man sitting against the wall! It was the fucker who’d prosecuted me in
my court-martial! There was no mistaking it. He was a real Irish-looking fuck, one of those thinlipped, slanty-eyed, big-nosed, holier-than-thou assholes who rolled rosaries around their fingertips
whenever the company treaded in the deep Gook shit. Boy did that sober me up.” Mr. G laughs.
“This slanty-eyed Irishman was no better than the slanty-eyed Gooks in my mind. All that time I
spent in confinement – the nightmares, the shaking…I had more than half a mind to blast his head
off right then and there!”
“But you didn’t, did you?” I finally find my tongue.
Mr. G speaks softly now. “No, no I didn’t.”
“Why not?” My voice is hoarse.
“The funniest thing,” Mr. G replies, his gaze no longer focused, but rather clouded in reminiscence.
“This fucker – sitting with his back against the wall with nothing but rosary beads to answer my
bullets – he smiles. He had a wonderful smile, you know. Not one of those fake, ‘hello-goodbye’
smiles either. A genuine goddamn smile, the type that makes a shitty day worth it. I knew then that
I couldn’t bring myself to shoot him.” Mr. G turns to me, grinning now from ear to ear. “Plus, I
wasn’t made of ammunition. Why would I waste a bullet on an Irishman when the Gooks were still
trying to kill us?”
Mr. G leans back, resting his head on his pillow and looking at the ceiling.
“So I hoisted myself out of the bunker and started emptying my cartridge on those Gooks. That was
the last time I ever fired a gun, come to think of it. Shipped out of that Korean hellhole a couple
weeks later.” Mr. G looks at me again. “Did I tell you we stopped in Japan on the way back?
Visited some whorehouses there…” Mr. G’s voice drifts off and he closes his eyes, breathing deeply,
in and out, in and out.
I nod. Silence. I hear the clock ticking over Mr. G’s breaths. Every second a minute, every minute
an hour. I look up at the clock and realize it’s already 8 o’clock. 8:05 in fact. Forget hashbrowns, I
am already late for rounds. I leap up, perhaps too quickly, because the room spins and goes dark for
a spell; my knees buckle and I clutch Mr. G’s bedside guardrail to steady myself. When the room rematerializes, I tell Mr. G that I’m honored to hear his story, that I owe him everything for his service
to our country. This time, my gratitude feels much less canned. Mr. G waives me off anyway. I
make my way toward the door.
“Hey, Trevor, can you do something for me before you leave?” Mr. G was lifting his plate and
inspecting his hashbrowns, which had gone cold. “Can you ask those wretched nurses to get me a
real meal? Just look at me – I’m starving!”
I turn and give him my best, most caddywumpus smile. “Of course Mr. G, it’s Kimchi that you
want instead, right?”
“You’re a real cheeky fucker, you know that, Trevor?”
I nod. That one I’ve heard many times before.
“Good thing you have a wonderful smile,” said Mr. G.
Yes, I think. Good thing.