Chapter Twelve
January
On January 3 I started on Antonio Romero’s service—one of the busiest services at Mayo. On my first night on call I managed only one hour’s sleep. I came home tired and hungry—and it was snowing again, five inches on Sunday, three inches on Tuesday, six inches so far today, and three more on the way.
Why, I wondered, did the Mayo Brothers have to start their clinic in Minnesota? Hadn’t they ever heard of Hawaii? At this very moment some guy is doing an ortho residency in Honolulu. He is running a clinic for surfing injuries. A voluptuous young thing approaches. “Doctor,” she says, with a little pout, “I’m getting chafing from my halter top. Can you help me?”
Back in Minnesota, though, it was fifteen degrees and dumping—but at least I was prepared. I had made two extravagant purchases with my first paycheck in August. The first was a pair of Sorrel boots from the local Feed and Seed Store. Sorrel is the Canadian manufacturer of a legendary rubbersoled, felt-lined boot made to withstand the most extreme winter conditions. Minnesota ice fishermen swear by them. No matter how drunk they get, no matter how many other body parts become frozen stiff, their feet stay warm.
My second purchase had been a heavy, goose-down coat from L.L. Bean. The coat was a drab tan color with a dark brown corduroy collar and a detachable hood. It was supposed to keep you warm “in any kind of weather.” So far it had.
It was only five o’clock but already it was pitch-black outside. Snow swirled around the light over the back door. I hated to leave the warmth of the kitchen, but if I didn’t shovel the driveway I wouldn’t be able to get out in the morning. I laced up the Sorrels, then zipped and buttoned my coat. I slipped out the back door and clumped through the drifting snow to the garage where I kept the heavy, cast-iron coal shovel I had inherited from some long-forgotten construction job.
I pulled down the garage door, then turned to face 140 feet of driveway that stretched to the street. I picked up the shovel. The sooner I started the sooner I’d be back inside where it was warm.
Back in Hawaii, my counterpart was treating his second patient: a college girl with second-degree sunburn from her first visit to the nude beach. “Hold all calls, Nurse,” he said from behind the curtain. “This may take a while.”
But in Minnesota there were no nude beaches, just snow-covered driveways. I started by shoveling a narrow swath down the middle of the driveway. Within five minutes I started to feel warm. I was wearing a wool hat so I pulled my hood back. The cold air on my neck felt good.
The shovel was indestructible. It could chop ice and drive through the most hard-packed snow. I literally made sparks fly with it. I stood at a right angle to the driveway, my feet wide apart as I drove the shovel into the snow. The shovel grated against the concrete, and I exhaled sharply as I hurled the snow to the side. I started to get into a rhythm, the numbing iamb of labor:
Shhhk-humpf!
Shhhk-humpf!
Shovelin’ snow
Don’t mean jack.
Lord I want
My baby back.
Shhhk-humpf!
Shhhk-humpf!
Every ten minutes I straightened up, leaned against the shovel, and stretched my back. I was sweating heavily. My coat was unzipped, and I had crammed my wool hat into one of the pockets. A layer of snow coated my hair as I shifted the shovel to my left hand. Another sixty feet to go.
In ninety minutes I was finished, but I looked with dismay where the drifting snow had already started to reaccumulate against the garage.
Back in Hawaii, the resident yawned. He had been working for almost three hours and he was exhausted. Sunset was still another four hours away. He wondered if he should have mahi or wahoo for dinner. He opted for the former. “The Vouvray is so much nicer with mahi, don’t you think?” he asked Bambi.
Bambi was an exotic dancer who doubled as his cast technician. She giggled and said, “Oh, Doctor, I love it when you talk dirty.”
The snow was bad, but the cold was worse. All through October and November blizzards and cold fronts gathered strength in the arctic reaches of northern Canada, biding their time until they swept across the frozen lakes and plains of Manitoba and the Dakotas to hurl themselves on us in a demented frenzy.
I awoke one Saturday to the coldest day I had ever seen. All night the wind had howled from the north, tearing a thin flume of snow from the drifts piled on either side of the road. Patti and I spent the night huddled next to each other under four covers.
Harley Flathers, the morning radio announcer on KROC, read a statement from the governor’s office. “The National Weather Service has issued a severe weather warning for the entire state of Minnesota. Temperatures from minus twenty to minus forty with high winds are anticipated. Wind chills are estimated to be a hundred degrees below zero. The governor has declared a state of emergency and asks all citizens to remain indoors.”
All over the city, cars wouldn’t start or, worse, started only to die in the middle of nowhere. Water mains burst, deliveries ceased, gas pumps froze.
Mac Self, who had been on ERSS with me, was from Florida. I ran into him in the doctors’ lounge as I was finishing rounds. Mac was not having a good day. He told me he had never seen cold like this. He felt like a damn Eskimo. He said a person had to be nuts to live in this godforsaken place.
“Why in the hell did I ever leave Ft. Myers?” he asked.
He told me the lock on his back door froze, the gas line in his car froze, the bottle of scotch in his trunk froze, the pipes in his basement froze, the cup of coffee on his dashboard froze, and his dog’s penis froze.
“Listen to this.” He was reading from the chapter on “Frostbite of the Extremities” in the ER Manual: “In the field, the initial treatment of severe frostbite is to warm the frozen digit by cupping it gently in your hands.”
He dropped the book as if he had been stung. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said, “if I am going to take that dog’s johnson in my hand. I don’t care if it does fall off.”
I was home by noon. Patti put the kids down for their nap and made a couple grilled cheese sandwiches for us. When we were done, she noticed I was pulling on my Sorrels. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
“I have to bring that chair back to Eamonn’s,” I said.
Eamonn O’Sullivan was an Irishman who had come to Mayo to do a fellowship in Neurology. The poor man had never seen a temperature below twenty degrees in his life. He was appalled when I called to say I would be right over with the chair we had borrowed.
“Are you daft, then?” he asked in his thick West Cork accent. “Have you not seen the weather outside? Sure, Jaysus, it’s colder than bedamn.”
“Hell, Eamonn, I’m only bringing over a chair. We’re not going to play softball.”
He begged me not to come, swore he didn’t need the chair, said he would pick it up himself later in the week. “I don’t want your death on me conscience,” he said.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I told him.
But first there was a car to start. The Ponch had started for me that morning, but only because I had gone out to start it during the night. I had become so attuned to its idiosyncrasies that I could tell almost instinctively how long to try, how long to rest between tries, how much to depress the accelerator, when to put it to the floor.
I bundled up in my L.L. Bean coat and went out to start the car. The garage door was frozen again so I backed up and threw a shoulder into it to break it loose. The two front doors of the car had been frozen shut for the last two days, so I had to get in through the back door and then climb over the front seat. The car coughed into life on the second try. I revved the engine a time or two and then left it running. I climbed out and sprinted back to the house to warm up. When I returned ten minutes later, the interior of the car had warmed up to about five below. I opened the trunk, tipped the chair into it, and set out for Eamonn’s.
I headed up the hill next to the country club and then wound my way through the deserted streets to Eamonn’s house. I left the car running, clambered over the seat, got out the back door, ran up to his apartment, and rang the bell. The wind was roaring out of the north, driving snow into my face, under my jacket, up my sleeves. I missed sitting in the car, not so much for the heat, but just to be out of the wind.
Eamonn opened the door, grabbed my arm, and yanked me in. He slammed the door behind me and began flapping his arms across his chest. “By God,” he said, “it’s colder than a Protestant’s tit out there.” Poor Eamonn and his wife, Moira, had shifted their baby, the TV, and a couple chairs into the kitchen—the only place in their basement apartment they could keep warm. The oven was on, the door open. Eamonn threw on several sweatshirts, two hats, and a coat and came out to help me carry the chair.
Afterward I sat in the kitchen with them having a cup of tea. While we watched a John Wayne movie I told them about Mac Self and his dog.
“The poor wee thing,” Moira said.
We were silent for a while, watching the movie. Ten minutes later, after The Duke had whipped his man, I told them I’d better be going. I hoped my engine was still running.
I stood up and put my mug in the sink. The windows above the sink were frosted over. We could hear the wind howling. I pointed at the faucet. “You should leave the water running a trickle,” I told Eamonn. “It keeps the pipes from freezing.”
“It keeps the pipes from freezing,” Eamonn repeated in wonder. He scratched some frost from the inside of the window, and then poured himself another mug of tea. “Lord Jaysus,” he grumbled, cupping his hands around the warm mug. “It’s a hundred degrees below zero, the wind is roarin’ like the banshee, and we’re huddled in the kitchen like a bunch of fuckin’ refugees. Cars won’t start, pipes are freezing, and dogs’ dicks are falling off. What in the name of God sort of a place is this anyway?”