At Dewitt's End Read online

  David – short, portly, open-faced and garrulous – could, as they say, talk the horns off a billy goat.

  “So I guess you’re asking yourself, ‘Why is this med student, if he is one, moving from the Caribbean to Atlanta in the middle of a school year?’ Wellll, I’ll tell ya. I’ll tell ya, Ma’am. You see, when I went back to school this term I found things revolting.”

  The woman to whom David is talking shakes her head. She seems a bit perplexed. It is her Southern manners and drawl that reply.

  “But, my goodness, I would have thought that being in a Caribbean medical school would not have been revolting. I would have thought it would have been very lovely.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that the island wasn’t pretty. It was the country itself. They were having a revolution!”

  Try as she might, the woman cannot help but let out a little titter and take hold of David’s hand.

  “Oh, my, Mr. Collins. Or do I call you Doctor? You really did need to move, now didn’t you?”

  David seems lost in thought, his mind moving along with the jet towards his new future.

  “You can call me David, Ma’am. You can call me David.”

  He looks out the window of the plane. Quietly, he makes an observation.

  “That must be Atlanta, must be Atlanta. Home of the Braves, Coca-Cola – and me!”

  Being lost on campus where it seems like half the buildings are red brick and rectangular doesn’t make things easy for David on his first day at his new med school. His sense of direction is about as good as his common sense – that is to say, not all that good. But, he perseveres until he finds the building whose sign matches the handout he had been given for a class titled “Lecture on Emergency Medicine – Doctor Houston – 9:00 AM.”

  The clock says 9:08 AM when David finally sidles into an empty seat just behind a guy and girl who appear to be a couple and a tall black guy, all sitting near the back of a small auditorium half-filled with other (he hoped) junior medical students. Most of them just jabber away, and there is no attending physician in sight to give the lecture.

  Hmmm.

  “Hi, I’m David Collins,” David braves to the three sitting in front of him. “Uh, I’m new. Is this the ER lecture?”

  “Yeah,” says the girl, only half turning, but offering a smile.

  “Uh, back at my old school we got to leave after ten minutes,” ventures David.

  No response.

  “I mean, unless there was some reason to stay, that is. I mean, don’t we get to, uh, leave if... ”

  David pointedly looks at his watch.

  The girl, almost giggling, tosses back her blonde hair.

  “Oh, Doctor D.’s always late. But we don’t mind waiting... for him!”

  Now David begins to panic, a trait that comes with the perfectionist in him.

  “Doctor D? Doctor D!? I thought it was supposed to be a Doctor Hou-”

  Suddenly, there’s an eruption of half-polite, half-derisive applause and a couple of whistles. The room comes alive. David looks toward the front doorway where an entourage of interns and residents has just entered en masse. In the middle of them – somewhere – must be this well-liked attending physician who is going to give the lecture, late or no.

  “Glad you could make it!” someone shouts.

  Obviously, figures David, everyone is indeed willing to stay for this, this... Professor Doctor “D.”

  David looks up and realizes something. The well-liked doctor is in a wheelchair. Looking back at his handout and reading more closely, it all finally makes sense: Doctor Dewitt Houston – Doctor D.

  The room quietens down. And Dewitt Houston, MD, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, begins, as he always does, with this announcement:

  “All right, everybody, saddle up! Let’s get going!”

  David finds that his three new acquaintances – Trey and Sylvia, the couple, and Eddie – enjoy taking him under their wing on their November “rotation” in Acute Care medicine, with Dewitt being their attending physician. David joins them the next day bright and early on the medicine ward of the big teaching hospital, along with a dozen or so other aspiring doctors-to-be, all in the third year of medical school and still quite wet behind the ears.

  They begin their “rounds” and, of course, David, being the new guy, has to pull the big chart holder. He hands a chart to Dewitt who looks it over.

  “Okay, everybody,” says Dewitt, looking around the group. “So who thinks they know what Mrs. Perkins has? Scott?... Sylvia?... David?”

  Dewitt hands the thick medical chart to David, who looks it over briefly.

  “Well, I wonder if she’s got the ‘dropsy.’ You know, the heart dropsy.”

  Dewitt agrees, adding, “Okay. Fine. But – Ding! – why don’t we say that medically? I mean, Mr. Collins, you are in medical school!”

  “Oh, sorry, Doctor D. Uh, ‘CHF.’ Congestive heart failure.”

  Dewitt agrees. “Good. That’s right. The left side of her heart is failing her. What else? – Eddie?”

  Eddie takes the chart and peruses it silently for a minute.

  “I notice that her liver could be felt all the way down to her navel. Uh, that can go along with the congestive heart failure, right?”

  “Right,” says Dewitt. “But – Ding! – Let’s again get our terms right. Navel? Better to say ‘umbilicus.’ But I agree that she’s fighting a ‘navel’ battle with her liver!”

  Everyone groans.

  Sylvia looks at David and motions for him to lean over. She whispers in his ear.

  “Doctor D. always says ‘ding’ like that when he’s presenting a ‘pearl’ of wisdom. We’re supposed to listen carefully when he does that.”

  David nods in appreciation. Dewitt takes the chart and begins writing orders.

  “Looks like we’ll need a little digitalis ordered; then I think our Mrs. Perkins will begin getting better. Okay, everybody saddle up and let’s go see our next patient – a Mr. Biddle.”

  Dewitt comfortably wheels down the corridor, followed by the gaggle of students, all reviewing their notes that summarize their recent findings on various patients. Arriving at the doorway of Mr. Biddle’s room, everyone stops. A nursing student is trying her hardest to get old codger Mr. Biddle to use the bedpan. Dewitt motions for quiet as the group listens in from the hallway.

  “Mr. Biddle, I want you to please get on this bedpan at once!”

  The young nurse tries to scoot the bedpan under him, but Mr. Biddle seems to be putting up his usual fight.

  “No, no! What is it?”

  “It’s a bedpan, Mr. Biddle.”

  “Pig pen!? Nooo! Help me! Help me!”

  “No, Mr. Biddle, a big pen! A beg pan!”

  She throws up her arms and looks skyward.

  “Ohhhh, Mr. Biddle, pleeaase!”

  A shock of recognition passes over the old man’s face.

  “Did you say pan? Pan? You mean pancakes! I love pancakes. Can I have syrup on my pancakes?”

  Finally placing the bedpan under Mr. Biddle’s rear end, the nurse sighs with relief.

  “Of course you can, Mr. Biddle. Maple syrup if you want it. Warm maple syrup.”

  The young trainee draws back the curtain and, seeing the group, just shakes her head.

  “Every day!” she sighs, shaking her head.

  Dewitt mouths “Later” as he and the group head further down the hall. From behind them they hear the final sentence of this small saga:

  “Oh, nurse. I feel the warm maple syrup now!”

  Chapter Two

  Trey and Sylvia live in a nice older apartment off-campus. As they finish dinner the weekend before Thanksgiving, their conversation turns to their fellow classmates. Knowing that Eddie plans to stay in town and that David has put himself up in a little mom
-and-pop motel nearby, they decide it would be nice to have them over for dinner.

  “Yeah,” says Sylvia. “David’s got to be getting tired of ordering pizza and Chinese. Hey, let’s invite Dr. D., too!”

  Trey shakes his head.

  “Sorry, honey,” he says. “I know he’s the attending ER doc at the hospital this weekend. Then he’s leaving for Washington. Something about staying with his brother up in D. C. this coming week for Thanksgiving.”

  “Ahhh, that’s too bad. I’m glad for him, though.”

  The telephone rings and Sylvia answers it.

  “Hello.... David! We were just talking about you. We want you and Eddie to come to dinner on Tuesday... .You can? Great!... Bye!? Uh, David, you called us, remember?... Hmmm, no. I don’t think we did know that. That will work out great!.... Okay, bye.”

  Sylvia turns to Trey, shaking her head in wonder as she hangs up the phone.

  “Guess what? Doctor D.’s brother is going to be on television on Tuesday night. Some special on CNN. Can you believe it?”

  “Hey, that’s great! We’ll watch it after dinner with the guys.”

  Sylvia starts smiling.

  “And let’s make sure that we tape a copy for Doctor D. because...”

  Trey begins laughing and picks up the idea.

  “... because even though it’s his brother, if it’s on at the ‘top’ of the show, he’ll miss it! He’s late for everything!”

  Sylvia picks up a VCR tape and lays it on top of the television.

  “That’s our Doctor D.! – I wonder what he’s up to tonight?”

  Light is shining from just one window in the sub-basement of one of the medical school’s older buildings. Inside Dewitt sits watching an older grizzled man in coveralls work on some sort of a contraption. Artificial limbs adorn just about all the wall space save the door of the room, a door that has its ground-glass window marked with “Prosthetics Department.”

  Dewitt wonders aloud, “So you think this one will work, Sarge?”

  Sarge doesn’t stop his tinkering.

  “All I can do is keep a’trying. And you know I’ll keep a’trying. What I want to know is why you need somethin’ to get you scootin’ any faster than yer dad blame hands’ll do anyway?”

  Dewitt laughs and hands Sarge a wrench.

  “Let’s just say I’m tired of always being the last one to arrive at those ‘Code Blues.’ – But, Sarge, isn’t that thing you are making a might small to scoot me along, as you say?”

  “Dewitt Houston, quit yer whelpin’! I ain’t attached the dad blame tank yet.”

  Sarge picks up what looks like a small air tank and shakes it at Dewitt.

  “You and yer brother Jesse. Just alike. He’s always a comin’ down here from Washington lookin’ for me to build him arms and legs and bodies. And he won’t never tell me about the whys or the what-fors or nothin’!”

  “Well, Sarge, if it makes you feel any better, he doesn’t put me in the picture much, either.”

  Sarge keeps working. He waggles a wrench in the air for effect.

  “Dang C.I.A.! I thought they was outa ‘busy-ness’ once some of them Communist fellers was gone... Okay, here ya go.”

  Sarge attaches the air tank to his contraption, then attaches the whole apparatus to Dewitt’s wheelchair.

  Dewitt is pleased.

  “Vroom, Vroom! Thanks, partner,” he beams. “Hmmm. Zero to a hundred in about eight minutes. Hee-hee. So how much do I owe you?”

  Of course Sarge is having none of it.

  “Oh, get on out of here, you young whippersnapper!”

  Chapter Three

  Washington, D.C. has some beautiful old office buildings, many with marble facades and impressive frescoes adorning their entrances. The office building housing one Jesse Houston, Col. (Lt.), USAF was not one of them. It was old, made of plain red brick and was set in a forest several miles from the expansive historic district known to millions of tourists each year. This is the way the government wanted it. After all, Jesse was up to such top-secret research that his budget, just like the C.I.A.’s budget, did not officially even exist. And now that he and his comrades-in-arms, and the spooks and the Pentagon officials with whom he worked, were just about ready to operationalize their biggest project to date, along comes a most unique bureaucratic roadblock.

  Inside Jesse’s office there was a clutter of diagrams, blueprints, prosthetics of the human body – none of which was attached to any part that it should have been attached to – and, to top it off, several scale models of different fighter jets in varying states of disrepair. In one corner was a clear plastic jet canopy, stuffed full with a half-furled parachute.

  Photos in the room showed Jesse with a number of government bigwigs and military friends. But the only one beautifully framed sat alone on his desk. It was a photo showing Jesse in his full-dress uniform with his arm around Dewitt, who was sitting smiling in his wheelchair. They were next to a beautiful baby grand piano and Dewitt was playfully tinkling the keyboard.

  At the moment Jesse is holding up a large map while talking on the telephone.

  “Carl. Carl! I’m telling you, we have to keep those rights to fly over their land... No, nobody knows what we’re really up to, just that we are doing something out there... Well, Carl, they’ve always let us... ”

  Jesse’s face expresses his exasperation.

  “... So it was before they could have casinos! So what! This ‘BS’ about their sacred burial ground is just some smokescreen to stick yet another very profitable tee-pee village, full of one-armed bandits, straight up the ass of the American touring public!... Okay. Get back to me.”

  Jesse hangs up. Shaking his head he contemplates then twirls in his chair and looks out over the trees, above which he can see the very tip of the Washington Monument in the distance. Jesse uses his intercom.

  “Susan, get me someone over at Interior. Department of Indian Affairs. It seems some of the natives are restless near our test site. I’m sure they’re about to invoke the name of that famous American, or in this case, Native American, Chief ‘Big Bucks.’ Oh, and Susan, get hold of ‘Traveler’ at Langley. He and I and Carl may be about to embark on a little road trip.”

  Jesse pulls away from the intercom and leans back. He picks up a few pieces of paper and looks them over. He crumples them up and tosses them into the trash can.

  “Eh,” he thinks out loud, “at least they’re probably not very well connected.”

  Chapter Four

  The reservation towns and villages for American Indians are fairly typical of a modern western town, but peopled mostly by Native Americans, moving along the streets in typical cars and trucks, or walking the planked and occasional concreted sidewalks.

  A retired white couple, tourists just passing through, stands at the base of a tall monument, part of a larger tour group. Their Indian guide points to the top of the monument, which holds a statue of a defiant Indian Chief on a rearing horse. The tour guide proudly announces:

  “... And this commemorates where our brave tribal chieftain, Chief Sitting Throne, fell to his death.”

  The wife looks the monument up and down.

  “Well, I guess so,” she says aloud. “A fall like that would kill anyone.”

  Her husband just shakes his head. The group moves along.

  At the edge of the main street, a late-model Lincoln Town Car enters. It parks in front of a rather garish casino, the rooftop of which holds a large fake wigwam and a life-size mechanical Indian. The fake Indian flaps his arms slowly, sending smoke signals that come from a hidden burner up into the sky. It is all tacky.

  A huge neon sign gives the name of this dubious place: HONEST INJUN’S. And, it has a sub-title: Where Even Custer Would Have Had A Chance.

  Getting out of the Town Car is an entourage of Indian “Gofers,” all i
n support of a Mafioso-style Native American who is wearing a slick dark blue suit with too-wide lapels and a ruffled white shirt, sans tie. They enter the casino.

  A few tourists and locals play the slots. The other games are covered, awaiting nighttime action. Some casino flunkies ease the entourage into a back room. There they await a bigwig. Their leader, Mr. Nickels, starts getting upset.

  “Where’s that durn fool coming from, Alaska!? You’d think that on a ga-zillion dollar deal, the durn Governor of the state would show up on time.”

  An underling to Mr. Nickels rushes in from the street.

  “I think he’s coming, Mr. Nickels. I hear a jet!”

  Everyone is a bit excited. The group ambles outside. They peer into the blue sky as, far off, a small jet, like a Lear or something, indeed dips its wings, throttles back and appears to be descending. Nickels looks up, beaming.

  “That would be him. Never met the man but I sure like his style. – Boys, I guess it’s time to get ready to meet ‘Mister Big!’”

  But then the little jet revs its engines and flies over the distant horizon. As the group watches and wonders, an old biplane, engine coughing and smoke rolling out of its tail, circles in behind them. A white man waves knowingly to the group. Ahh. It is the bigwig himself, Governor Dill!

  Nickels is disappointed.

  “Oh, hogwash. Just our luck.”

  An Underling pipes up.

  “Yeah. Looks like we got us just a plain ol’ nickel and dime bag man.”

  Nickels glowers at the Underling, who is chagrined.

  “Oops! Sorry, Mr. Nickels. Won’t happen again.”

  Piling back into a couple of cars, this entourage of prospective deal makers happily heads out to the local airport to meet the plane.

  Chapter Five