Archives of The Cheerful Oncologist, Volume 2

Welcome to the first Literary MedBlog Showcase, where the nominees for “Best Literary Medical Weblog” for 2005 get the chance to display their writing talent and familiarity with the King’s English. Each of the six stories showcased starts out the same, then is finished by the specific blogger. According to the rules, each story must contain a line from a holiday song (formerly known as a Christmas carol). My offering, complete with the required hidden line from a well-known carol, along with a few other tidbits from a certain poem by Clement C. Moore, begins thusly:

It was a dark and stormy night.

I struck the match and the flame burst into bright orange-blue life. It danced on the end of the matchstick as it neared the ragged edge of the cigarette dangling between my chapped lips. Soon the smoke that lazily trailed from the glowing end of the cancer stick filled the entire elevator. My fingers plucked it from my mouth and I exhaled, mindlessly watching the plume of wispy grey ash travel towards the cylindrical fluorescent bulb that poured antiseptic yellow light onto us. The elevator ungracefully jolted to a halt and the doors swished open. The man with a goatee in a long white coat and black patent leather shoes shot me a dirty look as he stepped off.

“We’re in a elevator in a hospital,” he derisively muttered, enunciating “hospital” as if he was introducing a new word into my vocabulary. “What kind of idiot smokes in the hospital?”

The elevator doors swished shut, but not before he noticed the solitary finger of my right hand poised in the air. At him.

He looked offended. I didn’t care.

The elevator lurched back into motion as I chuckled to myself. His expression was certainly more amusing than the duties that awaited me. Reluctant to acknowledge that I was near my destination, my tired fingers apathetically dropped the cigarette and I watched the sole of my left shoe squash it, along with its orange flame. The elevator doors swished open. I then looked up and noticed that just above the illuminated number “7″ someone had scribbled a graffito announcing with great enthusiasm that “Wanda”, whoever that was, possessed an extraordinary talent for performing what gentlemen would call a “risque act.”

Thoughts of Wanda and her intriguing approach to dating must have distracted me, for as I exited the elevator I crashed into a diminutive woman carrying a tray of Christmas cookies, sending them flying through the air. The resulting explosion was impressive, resembling a 4th of July rocket bursting in perfect symmetry as several dozen red and green stars floated up then down onto the hard linoleum floor. I tried to help the poor woman up without attracting attention but as luck would have it just as I sent her on her way (sans Xmas treats) I heard a familiar voice chortling behind me. I turned and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the hospital gossip himself, standing there with a silly grin on his face. I whistled and shouted and called him by name.

“Don!”

“We now are gay?”

A parallel thought occurred to me as he gave me a smirk: Dash away! Dash away all! I didn’t run off though, but instead offered him a piece of a shattered cookie. He laughed like he’d had a bowlful of Jell-o that morning and then turned like a jerk and laying a finger inside of his nose, trotted on down the hall - the round-bellied little creep.

Suddenly I felt as if hot coals had been pressed against my ears, and longed to sit down. Today was supposed to be my day off, and it had started out promising enough, with me nestled all snug in my bed, just settling down for a long snooze after a rather late night at the casino. When the phone rang at a quarter to noon I was still several layers deep into a complicated dream involving a physics final exam, a missing cheerleading outfit, and King Kong. It took a couple of hundred rings before I was able to raise my aching head high enough to find the phone.

“I know today’s your day off,” the strident voice said, “but we need you this afternoon. George called in sick and you’re the only one available to fill in. You’ve got to come in now.” I’m not certain what my reply was but I believe it included some serious accusations about George’s relationship with his mother. I must have consented because I soon found myself toweling off from a cold shower. After dressing I lighted my first cigarette of the day and with a little help from Mr. Caffeine and a stale Pop-Tart I soon was driving on in to the hospital.

Now after my incident with the Cookie Lady and that louse Don I felt embarrassed as I wandered down the bright corridors, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone else. I squinted against the pulsating bank of ceiling lights which gave the luster of mid-day to objects below. My head began to pound. Before reaching the corner I ducked into a restroom, locked the door and fired up another Marlboro. As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly, so did great double-helices of smoke twirl upward from me - and right into an inconveniently placed smoke alarm. Just as the blasted thing went off I ran over to the window and threw up the sash, then dashed out the door and down the hall.

I could see my destination up ahead, a rather plain glass door with the number 101 painted on it. As I neared it I nervously fingered another cigarette and stopped. A passing nurse gave me a dirty look, and I glanced down, only to notice that my clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. I must have spilled my cigarette all over me when that alarm rang. The urge to smoke then overpowered me, and I did an about-face and locked myself inside a nearby mop closet. Approximately five minutes and one asphyxiated mouse later I emerged looking like a smoldering firefighter. The coast was clear so I headed into Room 101 and closed the door behind me.

From the seats of twenty formica desks, twenty faces stared back at me - some twinkling, some merry, some rosy and at least two with noses like cherries. They were mostly middle-aged folks, with a few thirty-somethings mixed in, and they had one thing in common with me: they all looked like they wanted to be anywhere but in this room. I silently sighed and with a final exhalation went straight to my work.

“Good afternoon. My name is Rudy Blitzen and I will be your leader for today’s session. Welcome to day three of our Stop Smoking Now and Forever! class. If you have any questions about today’s material just give a wink of your eye or a twist of your head, and I’ll explain. Now let’s go to work.”

That’s all folks! Be sure to visit the other blog sites as mentioned in yesterday’s post. Now let me exclaim ere I drive out of sight, “Happy Christmas-Hannukah-Kwaanza-Eid al-Adha-Diwali to all, and to all a good night!”