valorous idylls chapter 17

I Owe Woody Allen Ten Thousand Dollars (And Bob Hope A Separate Ten Thousand Dollars For Stealing His I Owe Joke)

Hours drifting by waiting for the operation.
Can't pray full prayers now.
Now praying the rosary using shortened versions.
Like this.
"Our Father who art in heaven."
And that's the whole prayer.
Then.
"Hail Mary full of grace."
And that's the full Hail Mary.
I remember an account I read of Major Julian Cooke leading the crossing of the Waal river during the attempted Allied liberation of the Netherlands in 1944.
It was a hellish scenario.
Rowing across a wide river with no smokescreen cover with German guns zeroing in on them from the opposite bank.
Julian Cooke recalled that he prayed the Hail Mary all the way across the river under withering machine gun fire.
He had prayed the shortened version: "Hail Mary full of grace," over and over again.
I look up.
Some doctors are standing by my bed.
New dudes.
Not dudes I've seen before.
These two are also like Doctors Calum Swift and Danilo, cool as a breeze.
Only more so.
In fact, they're Charlie Choiseul cool.
Charlie Choiseul being an actor who appeared in my production of Woody Allen's Death a quarter century ago and who remained unperturbed even if the world around him seemed to be ending, as it usually did in my productions.
I still owe Woody Allen ten grand in performance rights for that one.
But isn't it extraordinary!
Everyone in this hospital is either cool as a breeze or extremely good looking.
I hope they're as capable in the practice of medicine as they are at style and deportment.
The ghost of Steve Tyler is standing on the far side of my bed.
He sings informatively: "Nah nah hah, Dude looks like a doctor. Nah nah hah, dude looks like a doctor."
He isn't helping.
The new dudes introduce themselves as Doctor Maloney's team.
They say it with an air of barely suppressed triumph like the character Colonel Hannibal Smith in a television series from my youth announcing to vanquished baddies: "We 're the A Team."
They have faint whimsical smiles.
They are quietly confident.
I like this confidence schtick.
Although given my druthers, I wouldn't necessarily have chosen BA and Murdock to do my operation.
Then they're gone.
More hours.
Now the bed is being wheeled down to the operating theatre.
I'm in a pre op holding area.
Large doors at the end.
We'll be going through those doors eventually.
That's where they'll operate.
A Pakistani girl says a few words about oxygen.
This girl's name is Jamie.
A shortened form of the Arabic Jameela which means beautiful.
I approve of the fact that staff at this hospital introduce themselves by name.
I smile at the coincidence of our names.
A guy joins her and introduces himself as Khaled.
He says: "So. We're operating on the right arm. Ha, ha, ha. Only joking. The left one, right? Ha, ha, ha."
Khaled recommends that I opt to have a further pain killing injection, something he calls a blocker.
He adds provisos as he is procedurally required to do, about how it could kill me.
"There are things that could go wrong," he points out cheerfully. "There's a small chance of killing you if we pierce the lung. But we recommend you have this."
Ho hum.
I agree to the blocker.
The girl explains what she's doing as she affixes an oxygen mask and gives me oxygen.
I look at the large door at the end of the room.
I think: Now we'll get a look at this Maloney.
I'm expecting an austere, tall, balding, portly figure with authority in his eyes and a stern face.
An heroic living legend type on whose broad shoulders the great momentous responsibilities of this hospital fall.
Yes, now at last we'll see this Maloney.
I am quite curious.
The girl says: "I'm going to give you some different oxygen."
I start to blink.
I'm still thinking: Now we'll see this Maloney.
My eyes blink and open.
I am in a different room.
There are six anaesthetists in gauze masks and green gowns around me.
Khaled is shaking me vigorously.
"Mr Healy, Mr Healy," he says. "Can you move your fingers? Can you move your fingers?"
The scene is a bit like in the movie Airplane where half the passengers are lining up to calm down an hysteric woman, and they're taking turns to shake her, and the shaking is getting progressively rougher, and there's guys in the queue with baseball bats and knuckle dusters waiting their turn.
There's an obstruction to my breathing but I can breathe.
"Can you move your fingers?" urges Khaled again.
I look at my arm.
It's encased in red plaster.
The fingers are visible.
Three of them move a bit when I try to move them.
"Look at that," I say to Khaled. "Not everybody can do that. Look. That's really good. Look. See that. Look. There you go. That's how you move fingers."
Khaled sighed.
He sounded relieved.
The clock on the wall behind him says 6.30.
"What happened?" I ask.
"Nothing," says Khaled. "Who said anything happened?"
"Well five hours have passed since you brought me in," I said. "What's been going on?"
Khaled muttered to one of the other anaesthetists: "Keep him on that mixture. It will break down the mucous."
He walked away quickly.
Five hours.
I had experienced it as the blink of an eye.
The blink of an eye.
Long enough for the surgeons to do the operation and for the anaesthetists to nearly kill me.