Call HO

Eddie sat naked at the peeling Formica table.  He had put a towel down on the hotel chair to avoid catching any diseases.  Using a worn surgical needle driver, he threw one stitch after another into the banana that shared the table with a half empty tequila bottle.

“What are you doing to that poor banana?” a petite Chinese woman wearing a bed sheet asked with some concern, having been awakened by the repeated ratchet-like clicking of the instrument’s locking mechanism.  Her Western accent surprised Eddie now just as much as is had the night before.  She ran her hands through her disheveled hair and looked cautiously over Eddie’s shoulder.

“Sorry.  I couldn’t sleep.  I guess I am nervous about starting surgical residency tomorrow.”  Eddie threw another stitch as his companion watched.   “It’s amazing how similar banana skin is to human skin.  It was nice of this banana to volunteer to let me practice on it.”

She gave a faint chuckle and followed Eddie’s technique, watching the suture come in and out of the banana skin in equally spaced intervals.  It was a continuous running stitch and looked not unlike the stitching found in a baseball, except that it was black instead of red.

“It appears that you are going to do well, sugar,” was her assessment.

His explanation regarding why he was torturing fruit in the middle of the night, combined with the fact that he seemed, by the looks of the banana, to know what he was doing,  calmed her fear that she might be his next reluctant volunteer. She put her chin on his shoulder and studied his work again as he threw several more stitches.

“That there banana looks like it’s going to be just fine, doctor.  Now why don’t you come back to bed and take care of your other patient?”  She started kissing him on the shoulders, back, and neck, successfully enticing him back to the king size bed with the faded brown comforter which smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

As Eddie motored onto the University campus later that morning, his night in Reno with the Asian cowgirl seemed a world away.  The crisp new signs, well paved roads, and immaculate landscaping told him this place meant business, and Eddie felt a knot of nervousness in his stomach.

The whole campus was confusing.  All the buildings had that Northern California faux-Spanish look to them and it was hard reading a map on a motorcycle.  Eddie eased his dented bike off of the main road and stopped in front of a sculpture garden.

“Hi, do you know where the medical center is?”

“That’s it, right at the end of this block.”  A student with a large red backpack smiled back at him.  She was clearly amused by the site of a dirty Eddie, having some trouble handling the oversized bike, which was precariously packed, both front and back, with duffel bags affixed with aged bungee cords.

“Great, thanks a lot.  Glad I finally found it.”

The bike made a grinding shift into first gear.  Eddie pulled away, veered wildly as he tried to wave to the good young Samaritan, and then straightened up and headed into the shadow of the medical center.  The building was ugly. Eddie parked his bike on the sidewalk outside the emergency room entrance and sprinted into the hospital, motorcycle helmet and jacket in hand.  He ran into the tail end of a large, young, neatly dressed group following a tall distinguished looking man, who was obviously the senior doctor, or attending, dressed in a lab coat.

“Oh, hi.  I’m sorry.  Are you guys the new surgical interns?”  The back end of the group had stopped.  The front few residents, engrossed in discussion with the man in the lab coat, continued to move down the hall, oblivious to the dusty new arrival.

“Yes, that’s us, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  Hi, I’m Nick.”  Nick sized up the scraggly newcomer.

“Hi, I’m Eddie.  Great, glad I’m not too late.  I just got here from New York.”  He reached out a dirty hand, then realizing its filth, withdrew it with a shy smile.

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