Saturday, October 6, 2012

Scenes from Hospitals

The Surgeon strides down the hall to his office, passing a series of patient rooms.  The last one on the right has the door wide open.   
-Mom, can you hear me?  It's me, Franky.  Mom?   I'm here.  Do you recognize me? ............. Ma?

The Surgeon pauses in the hall just outside the door.  He knows the woman in the room.  She had fallen the prior week and sustained a severe, inoperable cerebral hemorrhage.  She can only vacantly stare off into space.  The Surgeon had signed off the case after a few days.  He stands in the hallway and listens.  Nothing more is said.  He moves on.  There are patients waiting in the office.

Later that day he passes the room again.  The middle aged, balding man is still sitting in a chair bedside.  He's looking at his mother, a baseball cap balled up in his hands.  The TV is off and no one tries to speak anymore.  Silence.     


Bianca Castafiore? said...

I'm still missing YOU, and not much caring for "The Surgeon." Mostly, I don't want to dump on "The Surgeon" my experiences with surgeons, and my assessment of their insight, overall intelligence, and capacity for... well... whatever.

As a device, the third-person Surgeon is a failure. Please come back.

Anonymous said...

Just what I was saying.

Come back Jeff!


Anonymous said...

Bianca, When Buckeye is tired and worn out he lets his hand puppet do the story-telling. It's OK.


Buckeye Surgeon said...

Hey, gimmee a break. Part of the reason for going awol so long was that I got sick of the solipsistic me me me aspect of blogging. The "I" will return in time.

Bianca Castafiore? said...

no, i don't see that you deserve a break (appealing now to your love of public self-flagellation). solipsism is at least honest. the hand puppet makes me feel, as most hand puppets do, STUPID. led by the nose. a sated horse being roughly led and then forced to drink. and so on and so forth. most of all, it denies you and us your greatest gift: you, you, you. to call inclusion of self, when that self is the source of all that is written, the source of the telling of the tale, or (for god's sake) the exposition of the opinion... to call that solipsistic is to f*ck with narration itself. do you want your self-pity to ruin the entire history of (good) literature? harrumph. p.s. those of us, and there's gotta be more than moi, moi, moi, with cataracts *and* glaucoma, are beginning to resent like hell these damned captcha thingies. i can't freaking see them.