The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (10 page)

Dylan stood up to return to the stage. “No one controls my ass, Doctor. That’s the key to life. It’s as simple as this.” He raised his wrists and held them together, with his palms up and his left and right little fingers touching. Dylan bit his teeth into the imaginary handcuffs between the wrists, spit out the unseen shackle, and said “Poof,” as his hands broke apart.

Dylan gave me a thumbs-up and left to weave his way through the tables back to the stage. He clipped a harmonica holder around his neck, strapped on the steel string, strummed a trio of chords and said, “This song goes out to that one special North Country woman who’s always on my mind.” He filled the air with his lush voice, and crooned the opening lines to Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.” “If you’re traveling in the north country fair, Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline.”

A second mug of Bud Light appeared on my table. I took a long drink and lost myself in the lyrics of a genius and the vocals of his talented namesake. It was late, it was wintry outside, and there were anesthetics to deliver in just eight hours, but I was drifting with the music and feeling better than I had in months.

The crowd waved their hands in time to the music. When chorus came around the second time, Mr. Dylan called out, “C’mon everyone,” and the air was filled with the out-of-tune voices of happy Iron Rangers, singing an anthem to the girls they loved.

I didn’t know a single person in this audience, but in my inebriated state, I found myself drawn into the fantasy that everyone in this room had a true love. Every man had his own Girl from the North Country, and every woman had her own Boy from the North Country. Their loves defined them, and their lives were special and worthwhile.

Bobby Dylan sang like a man in love, as he led the multitudes in this North Country anthem. The fervor in the congregation was infectious. I was glad to be there. I was glad to be alive.

I raised my glass in a salute to my colleague. Dylan wasn’t much of an anesthetist, but he was one hell of a religious leader.

CHAPTER 9

I WOULD NOT FEEL SO ALL ALONE

Before sunrise Saturday morning, Johnny and I entered the Hibbing General Hospital locker room side by side. It was a notable event, the first time my son had ever accompanied me to a hospital. He wasn’t there to observe my professional life, he was coming to work himself. In his former life in California, Johnny slept until noon every Saturday. The new Minnesota Johnny 2.0 pursued and welcomed this weekend orderly job. The work was unskilled labor at minimum wage, and it required both an alarm clock and a willingness to obey orders.

It was unclear to me why Johnny was interested at all.

Two minutes after we exited the locker room, the answer became all too apparent—a teenage Scandinavian Barbie Doll stepped out of the women’s locker room. Her shoulder-length hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she walked with the jaunty step of a cheerleader. Her face lit up when she saw us. She grabbed Johnny’s arm and said, “I’m so glad you’re here. You’re going to love this job. Is this your dad?”

I looked from the girl to Johnny, and waited for an introduction. Johnny blushed and said, “Yeah, this is my father. Echo, meet Dr. Antone. Dad, meet my friend Echo.”

Echo fluttered long eyelashes at me and said, “Nice to meet you, Dr. Antone. Johnny told me all about you.”

She clung to Johnny’s arm, and after the initial pleasantries I became irrelevant. Echo was giggling and whispering into Johnny’s ear. He was beaming like he’d just hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.

“You’ll see,” she said to Johnny. “You’ll be working around all these interesting surgeries, and you’ll be making money at the same time. It’s the most awesome job imaginable for a high school kid.”

“I hope so,” Johnny said, looking sheepish and nervous. “You know what you’re doing here, but I’m a total rookie.”

“I’ll protect you,” she said. “You’ll do great.”

I stood alongside them, but it wasn’t a triangle. I was a spectator to a neighboring line segment. The two kids acted like they were best friends, even though Johnny and I had only been in town six days.

A scowling, hawk-faced nurse stepped up behind Echo and clapped her hands together with startling volume. “Good morning, everybody,” she said. “This stranger must be Johnny Antone.” She squared off against Johnny. “I’m Roberta Selvo, and I’m your boss. Welcome to the operating room suite.” She turned to me and said, “Dr. Antone, I understand this is your son.”

“He is indeed. Nepotism is alive and well in Hibbing.”

A pained expression crossed her face. I wondered if she knew what nepotism meant. I tried a different approach. “Don’t give him any preferential treatment. Make him do an honest day’s work.”

Roberta crossed her arms over her chest and said, “Your son will work like a man, or we’ll send him down to slop plates in the hospital cafeteria. We’ve got sick patients here, and surgeons who like all the details perfect. Our operating room suite is no place for lazy teenagers.”

Roberta Selvo was serious about her role. I liked that. There was nothing wrong with Johnny’s first boss acting like a female version of General Patton. He shook his arm free from Echo’s grasp and snapped his shoulders back. No lazy teenager he. My son molded himself into the image of a diligent, responsible employee.

“Come with me, you two,” Roberta said. “They just finished an emergency Cesarean in O.R. #2, and the room needs to be turned over.” She rotated her significant girth and headed for room #2. Echo followed her, and Johnny followed Echo. He offered no communication back toward me. The message was clear:
Let me go, Dad. I’ve got this covered.

I checked out the operating room schedule for the morning. There was only one case scheduled today, a laparoscopic gall bladder resection, and I’d volunteered to do the anesthetic. If Johnny was going to be in the hospital, it made sense for me to be here, too.

I put on a scrub hat and mask, and entered room #3. I was pleased to see Lena was inside. She was preparing the video equipment for the surgery. As soon as I walked in she said, “Your son is a cutey. He’s everything I heard he was.”

“Thank you. Who did you hear that from?”

“From Echo, of course. She’s my daughter.”

Ah, small town life. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the two best-looking females I’d seen in Hibbing were a mother and daughter combo. Peel off twenty years, and the mother was a copy of the daughter. I wondered what the real Lena looked like without the poufy hat, the surgical mask, and the baggy surgical scrubs.

“They send each other a thousand text messages a day,” she said.

“They do?”

“They do. Echo talks about him all day long.”

“What does she say?”

“She says he’s funny, smart, and way more sophisticated than any of the other boys in town. Does Johnny talk about Echo?”

I pondered the miniseries of abbreviated conversations I’d had with Johnny since we’d hit the deer, and said, “My son puts his social life behind a brick wall, and I’m not invited over, through, or around that wall.”

“That’s too bad. I’ll bet he talks to his mother.”

“She’s still in California.”

“Close marriage, eh?”

I winced. “We have fewer battles living two time zones apart.”

“Is that what it’s all about? Avoiding battles?”

“Sometimes couples get along better when they see each other less.”

“I get it. I’m a single parent myself. Is your wife going to move up here?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I was growing uncomfortable. It wasn’t my style to share details of my marriage with people I didn’t know well. I had no desire to play twenty questions with Lena right now. “I’d better set up my anesthesia equipment,” I said, looking for a way out.

“Sure,” she said. Lena turned her back on me and busied herself connecting the cables to the laparoscopy camera equipment and video screens. I opened the top drawer of my anesthesia cart and started drawing up medications for my anesthetic.

We were still alone in the room together, and the silence seemed awkward. Lena must have sensed this too, because she opened up again. “I have a question for you,” she said. “The kids are studying together this weekend. You’re new in town. Why don’t you and Johnny come over to my house tomorrow night for dinner? It would be fun.”

Fun? I imagined Echo and Johnny hanging all over each other, while Lena and I stood ten feet apart and tried to chat about the temperature outside.

She persisted. “I’m a good cook. You need to eat. We could have a glass of wine and a few laughs while Echo and Johnny do their calculus homework.”

A glass of wine? I floundered a bit. I’d just told the woman I was married. I hadn’t hit on her in any way, and yet she was pushing for an evening together. I opened my mouth to beg off, but before I could, Lena pulled down her mask to show me a thousand-candlewatt smile. “Relax, it’s not a date,” she said. “We’ll just have some food and conversation.”

What the hell? I had nothing else going on, and Johnny would be gonzo to hang out with his new girlfriend. Why shouldn’t we spend an evening with these cute Minnesotans? “Sure,” I said. “What time?”

“Seven o’clock? We live on 3rd Avenue. Johnny knows the place. He’s been there already.”

“Sounds good.”

“It does sound good.” She headed for the door. I watched her exit, each footstep landing with precision in front of the previous one. Her round bottom rocked with every stride. I grinned. My libido was tweaked in the middle of an operating room in this little town. I had to be honest with myself—Alexandra was a lost cause. Maybe someday Lena and I would be holding hands, and Echo and Johnny would be holding hands, and we’d all go on a double date to the movies together. The idea was so ridiculous that I threw back my head and laughed, my woes floating away like a helium balloon bound for the stratosphere.

At 7 p.m. that evening, I had my feet up and my fingers wrapped around a television remote control. Johnny breezed past, dressed in a winter coat and a ski hat. He hadn’t shaved in two days, and he looked a year older than he had when we arrived in Hibbing.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“Out.”

“Who are you doing out with?”

“Echo. I’ll be back by eleven.”

“You two are hitting it off, eh?”

“It’s all good, Dad. Relax.”

“It is all good. Have fun.”

Johnny walked out with the swagger of a Hollywood movie star heading for the stage. He’d gone from spitting venom against an airbag to radiating confidence in less than a week. I had mixed emotions. With my son gone for the night, my absence of friends or family left me lonely and low. I’d lived this insipid reality back in California, with Johnny out on a date and Alexandra working in the evenings, but California was home. I had a routine there. I’d go to the gym, spring for a jog, write a paper, or watch a movie in my 7,000 square-foot mansion on the hill.

I didn’t have an antidote for Minnesota loneliness.

I leaned on an old standby. Cable television was a godsend for bored and disconnected souls, no matter what state they lived in. I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and watched the puck drop on the Minnesota Wild vs. New York Rangers game. Beer and hockey seemed the best remedy available tonight.

My cell phone rang. The caller I.D. read
Hibbing General Hospital
. I sensed trouble. I wasn’t on call, and no one at the hospital was supposed to be bothering me right now. The hospital operator was on the line. She said, “Dr. Antone, I have Bobby Dylan on the phone. He needs to talk to you.”

“Put him through.” I drained half the beer, and wondered what the hell Dylan’s problem was. I wasn’t in the mood for saving a nurse anesthetist with inadequate training from another medical calamity on my night off. I waited, skeptical about what I was about to be dragged into.

“Hello. This is Bobby Dylan,” came the voice, cavernous and low. Two packs of Marlboro Lights so far today, I guessed. And maybe a joint or two.

“Nico Antone here. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a Fender bass for you. 8 p.m. tonight. Heaven’s Door. Be there.”

Be there. A command, not an invitation.

“I’m not that good. You don’t want me on stage.”

“Three chords. That’s all the songs will be tonight. Three chords. Can you sing?”

I laughed. “You don’t want me to sing, either.”

“Don’t sing then. Just come play some backbeat and drain a few beers. Doctor, I’m going to show you how we have a good time on an Iron Range Saturday night. You got nothing better to do. See you at eight.” He hung up.

The isolation of my Saturday night had been disrupted, challenged, and disrespected by a thirty-second phone call. My basement sanctuary of boob tube sports and Budweiser now seemed the domain of an isolated loser.

A commercial interrupted the hockey game. The ad showed an athletic young couple sailing a catamaran at a Club Med in Mexico. The girl was sun-bronzed and bursting out of a skimpy white bikini. The man had a knockout body to rival hers. I envied them both. They were actors. I supposed they lived somewhere in L.A. and didn’t even know each other. Maybe they were sitting apart in two separate apartments at this moment, watching television just like I was.