Black and white, it's become so black and white
So insecure, you're so insecure,
That's what you are, that's what you are,
That's what you are, that's what you are.
"Forever Yellow Skies", by The Cranberries, from To The Faithful Departed
Beeep. Beeeeeeeeep. Beepepepepepep. Stupid pager. I try to locate it with my eyes closed, and when I can't find it, I flip on the light switch. The damn thing still beeps loudly enough to wake the dead guy on the other bed. Damn, Jerry still didn't call the morgue. I look at the chart. Joshua Kilmer. Joshua is definitely having a better time then me today.
It's five a.m. and I feel like someone drove a steamroller over my ribcage. This shows that it is not smart to eat spicy foods from a nearby deli before going to sleep. I go to the desk, ask which a**hole paged me, and get "no-one" for an answer. After muttering a short speech addressed to that "no-one" in particular and full of words not to be said on TV, I crawl to the lounge. It's full of sleeping medical students. I manage to get to my locker, pull out a fresh scrub top, a toothbrush, a comb and head towards the bathroom.
After having something more or less resembling a shower, I brush my teeth and battle with my hair, trying to make it look neat. The battle is lost, and my hair sticks in all possible directions. After that I give up caring about my looks for the next day and go back to continue my beauty sleep. The dead guy is gone, and I'm ready to be nice to Jerry for the rest of the day.
I see something lying on the ground. I bend down, to check it out. It's a hospital bracelet, with someone's name and room number. I pick it up, trying to make out to whom it belongs. All of a sudden I feel sharp pain in my left hand, then a kick just below my lower lumbar throws me to the floor, almost paralyzing me with pain. Then he (it must be a he judging by the amount of strength, although I've seen women pull four grown men across the hallway) pulls me up by the collar and squeezes my throat.
"Help!" I scream as loud as it is possible to scream for someone whose windpipe is getting crushed, then try to overpower the intruder, slapping him weakly with my good hand. "Somebody help me!"
I feel so utterly helpless, unable to see my attacker, not knowing what will happen to me. He pins my right hand do my side, and squeezes tighter. There are dark spots dancing in front of my eyes, and I know that in a couple of minutes I can suffocate if he continues to go on. Now I even can't scream, and the only sound coming out of my throat is a quiet wheeze.
The door slams open, and someone rushes in. I can make out green scrubs and a lab coat, and continue to make the little wheezing noises. The guy lets go of my arm and I start smacking him again, trying to make him disoriented. My savior smacks the guy with a chart. The guy grunts and falls down, pulling me with him. I hear a thump, and then the hold on my neck is loose again. I gasp for air, breathing in each treasured particle.
"OK, Carter, hold on. I think I knocked the guy out," my mysterious helper says loudly, revealing himself to be Mark Greene. "We'll find a board right now," Mark mutters. I hear hysterical notes in his voice. Everyone was shocked when Mark got beat up. He wasn't coherent for a couple of hours, crying and asking everyone what happened. Afterwards he became reclusive and irritated, until one day he just changed back to his old self. "No, thanks Dr. Greene, but I think that my spinal cord is OK," I say, and sit up, groaning. My back hurts, and my neck is burning. A security guard walks in, pulling two gurneys. Mark and him load the guy on the bigger one, and help me to lie down on the other.
"He's from psych, we've been looking for him since 12 a.m. His name is Sydney Lowell," the guard says, putting Lowell in restraints. Gee, I really care about the guy's name. I've got a piece of metal, something very sharp, protruding through my hand. I lift my hand, trying to find out what it is. It's a scalpel. Great.
Mark rolls the gurney to Exam two, waking a bunch of nurses. They all swirl around me and make me feel as comfortable as it gets. The night is slow, so I'm the only patient on the board. I'm very relieved when they tell me that I only have a bad case of bruising on my lower back and neck, a laceration on my shoulder, and of course, a scalpel through my hand. Dr. Greene disinfects the wound, and tells me to go up and see Benton, because the scalpel is really stuck.
After a short elevator ride that nearly ends tragically for my IV pole, which gets stuck in the elevator door, I sit down in the waiting area, holding my poor hand. It hurts like hell, and the scalpel is still in it. Everyone else is waiting for their relatives to come out of surgery, and I'm waiting for someone to show up and get the damned thing out. The pale guy on my right looks at me with narrowed eyes.
Finally Benton appears from the elevator. He is holding a mountain of charts in one arm, and his sleeping son in another. "Dr. Benton!" I squeak (my voice decided to disappear at the worst moment possible). Benton looks back with an annoyed expression on his face, which immediately disappears when he sees me. When did Benton become human? "What happened?" he asks, approaching me and looking at my hand. "Some psycho attacked me. Would you mind taking the scalpel out of my hand?" "Of course not, Carter. I need to get Reese to daycare, and get the anesthetic. Wait in OR 1, it's empty."
Soon I find myself in a comfortable chair, with Benton fiddling around my poor left palm. I feel sleepy, but I refuse to close my eyes. Benton's eyes are on the scalpel, and he is slowly pulling it out. If my hand wasn't numbed, I would be screaming my head off. I remember when Benton dislocated his finger, and I was doing all his procedures. Man, he was mad at me for a month afterwards. I was buried in scut work over my head.
In the last year our relationship definitely improved. Benton seems like a human being, and we even have a good talk once in a while. I'm thankful that he taught me so much, despite all times where he treated me like dirt. He helped me shape my character. Although very unpleasant and having an amazing capacity to piss people off, Peter Benton will help you in trouble, even if it means giving you everything he has.
Benton cleans the wound, and bandages it. I shake my head, trying to make myself awake enough to get downstairs. "Thank you," I mutter sleepily, gazing at my bandage. "Do you feel anything?" Benton asks. "No." "Then it's fine. Change the bandage in the evening, and take care." Benton pats me on the shoulder like an old pal. I start to feel weird. Am I dreaming or Benton wants to make up for those three years?
After a good six hour non-stop sleep I'm woken up, taken to the desk and handed all ovedue paperwork. They figured that if I'm impaired because of my hand I might as well help them out. I hold up in my corner, surrounded by trauma Sub-I's. I need to recheck them for mistakes because Mercy nearly had a lawsuit concerning a Sub-I with false information. It became popular in the last two years, maybe because everyone knows about my surgery fiasco. Lucy got it this year, much to my relief.
After the snowy mountains of papers slowly disappear into the OUT basket, I go to the lounge, where everyone is watching a videotaped "Days of Our Lives" and eating donuts. I sit down next to Maggie Doyle, grab a chocolate donut and watch some scene involving Roman, Kate and Lucas.
I am almost relaxed, when the room suddenly plunges into darkness. I search for the penlight, and turn it on to find everyone just sitting there, lighting their penlights at each other. The door opens and a white figure appears in the doorway.
We scream.
Finally we see that the figure is nothing else but Dr. Greene in a lab coat. He looks very worried and upset. He motions Carol and me to come outside. We climb out, nearly stumbling over Malik.
Mark glances at me nervously, and says: "Carter, we've got a problem. The whole surgical team is stuck in the elevator, and we got a woman who desperately needs surgery. We have to operate now, and you are the only person down here who ever was in surgery. Lucy can help, I can be present as an attending, Carol can act as a scrub nurse, and we'll get some surgical students."
Why do I hate those "hero" moments? You do something good in an emergency situation, they blame you for doing it. One more reprimand, and I'm on probation for a very long time. "Where's Edson?" I ask with a last flicker of hope. I recall seeing him on the surgical floor in the morning. "He's in Curtain two, sleeping off the cognac they served at his sister's wedding. We couldn't wake him up, and his BAC is still over .08".
I viciously scrub my fingers, mumbling the ABC's of the surgical procedure I am about to do. I did it once before, but Benton was hanging over my shoulder and barking medical terms at me every two minutes. It is also almost two years since I left surgery.
I finish scrubbing in, and walk backwards, pushing the door open with my butt. That was my favorite part at first, but then something in my head clicked, telling my overtired imagination that the main task of surgeons was to operate on people and not open doors with their butts. But excuse me, I was twenty-three, had Benton as my boss and I had way too little sleep.
The woman is bleeding all over the place, and I'm near to screaming. "Suction!" I command. Carol immediately jumps to my side, and obliges. She's already in her fifth month, but still moves around very fast.
"OK, Lucy, what kind of aneurysm we are dealing with?" "Aah... it's an aortic aneurysm, or a thoracic aortic aneurysm. It's ... it's a..." "...localized dilation of the wall of the thoracic aorta caused by atherosclerosis, hypertension or sometimes syphilis," I finish for her. She looks guilty, but I understand. I didn't have time to study for this case, then how should she have known?
"Come here, come here," I mutter, trying to find the damn aneurysm. It feels strange, I'm not even a surgeon anymore, and I am doing a ruptured aneurysm with a fourth-year trauma student, an ER attending, and a nurse. Finally I find the damned thing. It is near the heart, bloated and bleeding. Mental applause for Dr. Carter. Lucy and the other student help me to repair the vessel. I think I was too poetic for a surgeon. The heart for me always was the symbol of love and not a pulsating piece of flesh. First time I saw a picture of it in the textbook, I was extremely surprised, and plagued my elementary school teacher for a week.
Everyone breathes out when the vessel is closed. Promises for a celebration start falling on me like rain. Yeah, if I screw up they are all screwed up. If I succeed, everyone's OK. I accept an evening in the bar with everyone plus promises to switch shifts with me, and send Lucy and Mark with the gurney to the Helipad.
Just as I throw my gloves away, Haleh appears out of nowhere, looking not a bit happy. "Carter, there is another one coming in. Ruptured spleen." I roll my eyes and sigh. What, did they all decide to buy the farm at the same time or what?
I scrub in again, cursing all surgeons, elevators, aneurysms and spleens in the world. When was the last time I have done a splenectomy? Was it in '96? I even don't remember. But damn it, I have to operate or this woman is dead. Mount's helicopter is coming in late, and they can't take her because they are way too slow because of a major trauma and she can become septic each second.
I walk backwards, the door is pushed open and I'm prepared for surgery once again. I take a quick look at the next patient. OK, she's under anesthesia. That's something to start with. I ask Mark for a surgical scalpel, then make an incision. The woman has internal bleeding. Yeah, thanks a lot for giving me the train wreck. I see the damn thing, burst and bleeding all over the place. Lucy cuts off the attachment the other organs.
I take a quick look at the clock. Half an hour had passed, and we still didn't take out the spleen. Give me a chainsaw and there would be a real-life dramatization of a certain movie in this hospital.
After an hour, the splenectomy woman is almost ready to fly to Mount Sinai. I feel like I will throw up any moment. I barely feel my hand because the anesthesia has yet to wear off. Through both surgeries I could only feel the tips of my fingers. Now the pain in my hand kicks in, together with other injuries. I doubt I can sit down without painkillers.
"Well done, Carter!" Greene yells, and I blush. Luckily my face is still covered, so no one can see it. Lucy and the other kid are stitching the wound, and Mark is on the phone with the maintenance. Carol is practicing her breathing, and the horde of surgical students are wondering around, obviously talking about how impaired the careers will be by this incident.
Finally the wound is closed. We roll the gurney out of OR, and nearly bump into Anspaugh, Benton, Corday, Romano, and the rest of surgeons. They look very angry, to be expected from ten people stuck in an elevator for two hours. "Dr. Carter!" Anspaugh booms, looking malignant. "You operated on Mrs. Smith and our aneurysm patient." I motion the students to get the gurney to the Helipad, then turn my attention to Anspaugh. "Dr. Anspaugh, I had to perform two emergency surgeries, and I couldn't wait until you were out of the elevator. Dr. Greene was present, and he is an attending," I mutter. "If there is a problem, write it up and put it in my mailbox." With these words I turn around and walk towards the elevator. I feel tired and angry, and my only goal is get out of the hospital without beating anyone up.
I suddenly remember that today is another dinner with my parents and their friends. Great. That's really what I need right now. My ass is practically out on the street, my brain is having an emotional overload, and the rest of me is just about dead or sore. After a short look my neck proved to be black and blue.
I drive home breaking all existing speed limits, find a suit that looks like it's still new, and drive towards Lake Shore Drive. Kerry and me are leasing the car, but tonight she's working, and it's my turn anyway.
My Dad is talking to a bunch of people. They laugh almost mechanically, at his well-rehearsed jokes. Their faces are blank and fake. Not a soul in sight who could be classified as a real human being. I sit down, order vodka, and plunge head on into my mind. I need to get drunk, but before that I need to call Mount Sinai and find out what happened with the patients. After five minutes on hold I find out that everything is OK. Well, at least that's something. I have tomorrow off, so I can get drunk. Johnny's not so little anymore.
I realize that I wasted most of my short life. I wear nice clothes, look cute, and act like a prick. Have worthless girlfriends who don't give a shit about my life and only care about my money. I should have known, but I was a dumb kid until lately. I thought I was happy, thought I had it all, until one day I found myself almost in shock, resuscitating my cousin, who had the same thoughts. Then was my first glance at the reality, and it was a long one.
I down the whole bottle. My throat is burning, I feel lightheaded, my doctor sense tells me I had too much to drink, but I feel better then I felt in weeks. Fuck the hospital. They can throw me out. I don't care. "John?" somebody is shaking me, but I can't make out who it is. I lift up my head, and try to focus. Finally I can make out my Dad's face, a little vague. "John, are you drunk?" Duh, a really smart question. A round of applause for Mr. Roland Carter. Do I look sober? "Yes," I croak, trying to find my glass. But my father takes it away. Man, I even can't get drunk like a normal person.
"John, get up, we are leaving," my father says, tugging "Go to hell." God, how good it feels to have said that. "John!" my Mum says, appearing from nowhere. I grunt something, which even isn't registered by my own brain. I obviously said something very rude, because I can hear my mother gasp.
I feel myself moving towards the elevator. After opening my eyes and checking if I learned to fly all of a sudden, I see my own feet dragging across linoleum, with other two pairs of feet on each side. I see the bottom of metallic doors. They open, and I'm pulled inside, then leaned to a wall. My parents don't want to spoil their image, which is on the rocks right now. A drunk and violent son screaming obscenities at the guests is not good. Has to be disposed.
"Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take those broken wings and learn to flyyyy!" I sing, the vodka added to my bruised larynx not really improving my voice. "All your life, you were only waiting for a moment to arise." Chloe Lewis sang it when she gave birth to little Suzie, and my world was so easy back then.
The elevator door opens, and my father nearly has to carry me to the car. I feel sleepy and not like singing anymore. In fact, I'm really nauseous, and my hand is throbbing with pain. In the limousine I lie back, and close myself off from the world around and fall asleep without
Next morning I wake up slowly, with a huge hangover. My brain feels like a beehive. After being hit by a wave of nausea, I run to the bathroom, and lose yesterday's cafeteria lunch. So much for healthy food for healthy doctors. I stick my head under a stream of cold water, which wakes me up a little. Then I'm moving towards the kitchen, my scull bursting from the constant buzzing. My hand is also killing me, and I remind myself to ask someone to change the bandage.
"Dr. Carter?" Lucy says. She is sitting on a chair near the table. "Hm?" I grumble, heading straight towards the best invention ever made, coffee machine.
"Dr. Anspaugh told me to tell you that you are not suspended, and that you even get some more money on your paycheck this week. Dale isn't very happy. His paycheck is a couple of hundred dollars short. All surgical students are worshipping you. First time in OR history they got paid." "Glad for them," I mutter, downing a huge amount of coffee in one sip. "Why did you leave surgery?" she suddenly asks. "Some other time, Lucy. That's a topic I really don't want to talk about right now." With that I turn my back to Lucy and continue to watch the coffee machine. She gets the hint, taking a magazine from her bag and reading it quietly in the corner. I drink the coffee, feeling tired and worthless. What would I give to talk to Chase or to let Bobby hit me. No one can imagine what's going on inside me.
My parents are out of sight, and it seems that I really pissed them off yesterday. Frederic, their chauffeur, drives Lucy to the hospital, and then me to my apartment. I'm met by Kerry, who looks at me sternly, but after taking a look at my miserable appearance orders me to get patched up. After that I find her on the couch, dressed in one of her African summer dresses. She tells me to sit at her side. I let my body fall on the couch and bounce on the strings for a moment.
"Let's do something interesting, Carter. We can go... wait, I was in the hospital long enough to forget what I wanted to suggest..." "Let's go riding," I suggest, remembering the old days where I couldn't spend a day without sitting on a horse. Unlike other boys I had this horse obsession period which is mostly associated with girls. "I don't know if I can do that," Kerry says with a sad smile on her face. "I'm sure we'll find a way to do it."
After a long drive to a Chicago suburb where I spotted a place that lets people ride horses for a surprisingly low price, we get two horses for five hours. They wanted to give us a riding teacher, but I explained that I won a bunch of ribbons on my old horse. After a list of the competitions and a five-minute lookup in the book they gave us the horses with discount.
First hour is spent to acquit Kerry with the basic rules and the horse. Despite her disability, Kerry is great. I get her the quiet mare, going by the name of Apple. For myself I got a black stallion named Blueberry. The guys at the office assured me that he's one of the fastest horses they've got.
I leave Kerry for a moment, assuring myself that she will be all right, and ride around the ring, remembering all the fancy jumps I used to do. I won the whole bunch of championships when I was a teen, and now I don't remember where they were. I never was proud of myself, because there were people better then me, and there still are.
"It's pretty impressive, Carter," Kerry says, clapping her hands. I turn the horse, so that I can face her. Her hair is shimmering in the sun, and the green grass around her makes a striking contrast to her dark-red outfit. Kerry has good taste, and she can choose the colors amazingly well.
"Just a little part of my education. I am an expert in dressage, ballroom and modern dancing, and even can play a violin. Rich kid education, ha?" I say bitterly. Kerry doesn't say anything. We ride for some time, then after giving the horses back, we decide to head home. We walk to the exit, through the whole park. The nature is beautiful, it's warm and the birds are singing, but I feel cold and empty inside.
We drive back, stopping only to take some Ethiopian takeout at the little restaurant hidden in the maze of Chicago streets. Soon we are home, eating the food with our hands, and laughing. There is an old Monty Python episode on TV, and it's completely hilarious. When the credits start to roll, I pick up the dishes, and go to the kitchen, where I load them in the dishwasher.
After that I go back to the living room, surprised by the stillness. Kerry is on the couch, in another bizarre piece of clothing. "Tell me more about yourself, John. You're still such a mystery to all of us," she says. I frown. Nobody ever asked me this. My girlfriends jumped straight into bed, my friends were satisfied with what they knew, and the rest was just not interested.
Kerry is such a kind person. For me, she substitutes a sister and a mother, and she is one of my best friends. My own mother never even bothered to show up to my high school graduation or to my last ten birthdays. Barb was a wild child, running off to Europe after high school, and marrying some hotshot German businessman. Maybe now Kerry gives me the care and support that I never got from my own family.
So I sit down and start telling her the long and complicated story of my short and unsettled life.
"I was born in Boston on June 4, 1970. At that time my father was a young penniless lawyer, just out of law school, who landed a big case, which brought him fame and money, and later made him one of the richest men here in Chicago. He was trying to get out of my grandfather's shadow. If you heard about Carter Communications Inc. back in the seventies, you should know how powerful it was. My dad was the oldest of five kids, out of whom three did not survive polio. He was a rebel, and paid his college money out of his own pocket. It was he who actually told me to get my own apartment and my own life. It's the first good piece of advice I ever received.
My mother, Virginia Marilyn Truman, is almost wholly Cherokee, from Appalachians in Kentucky. She went to law school with my father, planning to graduate in 1971, but then had to drop out because she discovered that she was pregnant with me. She had preeclampsia, and they barely managed to get her out of the coma. I was three months premature; they held me in the incubator until I was two months old. They said that it was a wonder that I was not brain damaged or mentally challenged. Oh, those docs back in the seventies.
Two years later we lived in a condo on Lake Shore Drive and my mother had another child, my brother Robert Truman Carter III. Barbara Melissa Truman Carter followed a year later. We went to a private kindergarten, to an elite private elementary school for Chicago finest. By the time I was ten I'd been to almost thirty countries and had allowance of five hundred dollars a week.
When I was twelve, Bobby was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. He used to beat me up pretty bad, where I'd come to school with bruises everywhere. I never understood why he refused to talk to me, but just kept on punching me. Guess beating someone up made him feel stronger. After a year of struggle he died, and I had a nervous breakdown. Imagine a fourteen-year-old screaming his head off in the psych ward. They were afraid to send me back to school, because I was nearly seizing each time someone mentioned cancer.
Then Barb and me were sent away to a boarding school in Boston. Until I graduated, I saw my parents about three times a year: Easter, my birthday, and Christmas. I wanted to be a doctor, and made it my goal. I didn't go out but learned Biology and Chemistry all the time. Perfect little golden boy. Perfect graduation, accepted to University of Pennsylvania. Another perfect graduation.
You may think it wasn't hard for me to get into med school, for everyone thinks that I'm the rich kid and don't need to worry about student loan payments and admission. My father slapped me when I even mentioned medicine. They all had seen too much hospital corridors, and didn't want to think about that. But that hospital corridor haunted me every day of my life. Bobby always looked at me when I closed my eyes, telling me to help other people, to make them feel better.
There followed my another nervous breakdown. You won't find it on my record, it's strictly "don't ask, don't tell". That made my parents to rethink their decision about me going to medical school. I screamed that if they won't allow me to become a doctor I will commit suicide or something stupid like that. After I was cleared, I already had received letters from all medical schools in the whole US. So that's basically my whole story, Kerry."
She sits there, her face sad and her eyes looking at me with somber curiosity. "Poor John," she says, taking my bandaged hand, and putting it between her palms. We sit like that for a moment, then she embraces me. I just sit there, feeling her warm hands through my shirt. I want to wallow in self-pity. I hate myself, my life, and almost everyone around me. I hate my parents for not loving me enough, Bobby for leaving me without a soul who would understand me, Benton for helping me waste two years of my life, and et cetera. I'm a fortune's fool, lost in the sea of darkness and fear.