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A Memoir
by Carolyn Jourdan
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Then
he looked at me with his head tilted. “What’s
that sound,” he said.
“I don’t hear anything,” I
said, trying to stay focused on the opening
pleasantries of my business conversation.
He
laid his biscuit down next to his cup of coffee
and walked down the hall toward the back. I
heard him pause at the doorway of Room 3 and
say, “Good morn . . .” Then he shouted,
“What the hell’s going on in here?”
“Gotta
go,” I said, hanging up on the Director
while she was talking. Then I bolted for the
back.
Things
were not the way I’d left them. The surgical
table’s motor, normally a low-pitched,
almost inaudible hum, had changed to an angry
whine. The head of the table was tilted as high
as it would go, over five feet in the air, and
the foot was down, almost touching the floor.
Miss Viola had slid into a little wad at the
lower end. Herma and Helma were frantically
struggling to keep her from falling onto the
floor, but she was oblivious. She smiled serenely
as Herma tugged on her arms and Helma hoisted
her ankles.
I
couldn’t understand why this was happening.
It sounded like someone was standing on a cat’s
tail. I looked down reflexively and noticed
that Herma had somehow come to be standing on
the floor pedal that raised the head end of
the table. She clearly didn’t realize
what she was doing, nor could she hear the table
motor running.
Daddy
shouted a one-word accusation, “Carolyn!”
and leapt forward to snatch up Miss Viola. As
she slipped off the end of the table, her dress
peeled up over her head. He tried to set her
on her feet, but she was so dizzy she couldn’t
stand by herself. He told Herma to get her foot
off the control pedal, but she couldn’t
hear well enough to understand what he was saying.
He
made a series of shuffling hops sideways, crushing
Viola tightly against his side, and startled
Herma by lifting her bodily off the pedal with
his other arm. He held one lady under each arm
while he stomped on the “Head Down”
control.
All
of this confusion and man-handling sent the
sisters into a tizzy. And Daddy was incensed
that anyone would dare touch the controls of
his table, much less put such a terrible strain
on it.
“What’d
you do that for?” Daddy shouted at Herma
in a voice so thunderous that she finally heard
him.
“Do
what? I didn’t do anything! Your table
there is broken!”
“It
better not be!” he said.
When
the table was level again, he plopped Miss Viola
back down in the center and flipped her dress
down over her legs. She seemed neither startled
nor embarrassed. In fact, she seemed to have
missed the whole ordeal.
Under
the circumstances Daddy decided to go ahead
and tend to Miss Viola’s medical problems
before normal office hours. He patiently listened
to all three ladies’ health concerns and
wrote prescriptions all round.
As
the ladies drove away, Daddy went back to his
sausage biscuit. He stared at me while he chewed
and then said, “Don’t ever do that
again.”
“Don’t
do what?” I said. “Don’t leave
any old ladies alone with any of your stuff?”
“Just
don’t do it again,” he snapped and
took his biscuit into the back to eat it in
peace.
We
were both under a lot of stress.
A
few minutes later, Alma, Daddy’s nurse,
confided that during her entire twelve years
with the doctor she’d never heard him
shout like that before.
“Well,
just stick with me,” I said, “I’ve
been with him for forty years and I’ve
been hearing it the whole time.”
Copyright (c) Carolyn Jourdan 2006-2007. All rights reserved.
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