Read Online On Call: An Original Short Story by Michael Palmer - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Palmer
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Kincaid asked, his stentorian voice catapulting from his clip-on microphone.
“A femur,” one fearless newbie shouted out.
“A natural guess, but wrong.”
“A humerus,” another ventured.
“A little large unless you believe in Sasquatches,” Kincaid said. “The point is, we all make assumptions based on what we see, or what we think we see. Assumptions, my dear residents, are what will make your patients dead.”
I looked at Paul, Paul looked at Lou, and we nodded in unison. This would probably be our last assembly together, so we had decided to go balls to the wall.
Paul stood first. “Is it possibly Oliver’s Twist, sir?” he asked.
Kincaid managed a knowing grin. After just a few seconds, he was already on to what was coming.
“I say it’s Huckleberry’s fin,” Lou chimed in.
“How about Herman’s Melville?” I contributed.
By now, even the most intense, nerdy resident had caught on. Kincaid’s real message to them was Relax and Have Fun When You Can . Rapturous laughter erupted in the hall. Kincaid paused, slapping the bone harder against his palm.
“Very creative suggestions this year, gentlemen, well done. Okay, everyone, as you appear to have been shown the right place to insert an apostrophe and ess, you know that what I am holding in my hand is in fact the baculum, or penis bone, of a sperm whale. Present in most placental mammals, but absent in humans, the bone aids sexual intercourse, thereby making the most descriptive answer—”
“Moby’s Dick!” the assemblage called out.
Kincaid droned on. Nothing we hadn’t heard before. About halfway through his vast PowerPoint presentation, the auditorium doors to our right burst open. Judging by the flashlight beams that followed, at least three people entered. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that the party crashers were in fact a uniformed police officer, a man in a rumpled sports coat who had detective written all over him, and Susan Bickford the director of Human Resources. At first I thought it was part of Kincaid’s theatrics.
Then, directed by Bickford, the flashlight beams intersected on Paul’s face.
With startling quickness, the police officers hoisted Paul up by his arms and, faster than a rodeo calf roper, cuffed his hands behind him. Everybody stood, necks craning in that car accident kind of way. There was a lot of murmuring, but all I could hear was the detective reading Paul his rights as they marched him out of the auditorium.
Drugs. Those always seem to be at the heart of a downfall—drugs or booze or lust. For me, booze was my Four Horsemen. I haven’t had a drop of the stuff since the accident years ago, and God willing, one day at a time, I won’t have a drop of it tomorrow.
Hours after Paul’s arrest, we had a sit-down with the hospital’s top brass and learned more about his stunning fall from grace. Word from HR was that someone called an anonymous tip line and reported seeing Paul dealing drugs in the hospital parking lot after work. That was enough to get a search warrant for Paul’s locker, where the police found three shoe boxes of oversized pill bottles filled with OxyContin, plus a good-sized bag containing vials of morphine. Although I never had even the slightest hint of it, I assumed that in addition to dealing, Paul was also using.
The police checked the hospital and local pharmacies for any inventory shortfall, but the drugs, it turned out, came from the Silk Road Marketplace—an anonymous Web site that NPR has referred to as the “Amazon.com of illegal drugs.” I later learned that to keep anonymity as strong as possible, buyers have to use crypto-currency to make a transaction. I didn’t know Paul had such tech smarts in him. But then again, this whole stunning turn of events was full of surprises.
The younger two Medicos smoked pot on rare occasions, and would drink when the time was right. But Paul kept a tight rein on himself, and Lou, who was the wild one of our trio,
“A femur,” one fearless newbie shouted out.
“A natural guess, but wrong.”
“A humerus,” another ventured.
“A little large unless you believe in Sasquatches,” Kincaid said. “The point is, we all make assumptions based on what we see, or what we think we see. Assumptions, my dear residents, are what will make your patients dead.”
I looked at Paul, Paul looked at Lou, and we nodded in unison. This would probably be our last assembly together, so we had decided to go balls to the wall.
Paul stood first. “Is it possibly Oliver’s Twist, sir?” he asked.
Kincaid managed a knowing grin. After just a few seconds, he was already on to what was coming.
“I say it’s Huckleberry’s fin,” Lou chimed in.
“How about Herman’s Melville?” I contributed.
By now, even the most intense, nerdy resident had caught on. Kincaid’s real message to them was Relax and Have Fun When You Can . Rapturous laughter erupted in the hall. Kincaid paused, slapping the bone harder against his palm.
“Very creative suggestions this year, gentlemen, well done. Okay, everyone, as you appear to have been shown the right place to insert an apostrophe and ess, you know that what I am holding in my hand is in fact the baculum, or penis bone, of a sperm whale. Present in most placental mammals, but absent in humans, the bone aids sexual intercourse, thereby making the most descriptive answer—”
“Moby’s Dick!” the assemblage called out.
Kincaid droned on. Nothing we hadn’t heard before. About halfway through his vast PowerPoint presentation, the auditorium doors to our right burst open. Judging by the flashlight beams that followed, at least three people entered. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that the party crashers were in fact a uniformed police officer, a man in a rumpled sports coat who had detective written all over him, and Susan Bickford the director of Human Resources. At first I thought it was part of Kincaid’s theatrics.
Then, directed by Bickford, the flashlight beams intersected on Paul’s face.
With startling quickness, the police officers hoisted Paul up by his arms and, faster than a rodeo calf roper, cuffed his hands behind him. Everybody stood, necks craning in that car accident kind of way. There was a lot of murmuring, but all I could hear was the detective reading Paul his rights as they marched him out of the auditorium.
Drugs. Those always seem to be at the heart of a downfall—drugs or booze or lust. For me, booze was my Four Horsemen. I haven’t had a drop of the stuff since the accident years ago, and God willing, one day at a time, I won’t have a drop of it tomorrow.
Hours after Paul’s arrest, we had a sit-down with the hospital’s top brass and learned more about his stunning fall from grace. Word from HR was that someone called an anonymous tip line and reported seeing Paul dealing drugs in the hospital parking lot after work. That was enough to get a search warrant for Paul’s locker, where the police found three shoe boxes of oversized pill bottles filled with OxyContin, plus a good-sized bag containing vials of morphine. Although I never had even the slightest hint of it, I assumed that in addition to dealing, Paul was also using.
The police checked the hospital and local pharmacies for any inventory shortfall, but the drugs, it turned out, came from the Silk Road Marketplace—an anonymous Web site that NPR has referred to as the “Amazon.com of illegal drugs.” I later learned that to keep anonymity as strong as possible, buyers have to use crypto-currency to make a transaction. I didn’t know Paul had such tech smarts in him. But then again, this whole stunning turn of events was full of surprises.
The younger two Medicos smoked pot on rare occasions, and would drink when the time was right. But Paul kept a tight rein on himself, and Lou, who was the wild one of our trio,
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