In a Nutshell...

This week's writing assignment: "In a nutshell...".  Totally fiction and totally fun!

“I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” – Hamlet, by Shakespeare

In a nutshell: Don’t mess with me. I’m your worst nightmare.

That’s a funny phrase, “in a nutshell” – it’s like “long story short” only more picturesque.  What happened was in a picturesque place, could be considered a long story told short, and it definitely involved nuts.

It started the usual way: I was down in lovely Robbinsville, enjoying the camaraderie of Cheerwine and a burger at The Kickstand.  I was chewing thoughtfully, trying to figure out where to make some extra cash, when two bikers sauntered in, gray ponytails down to their patch rockers, faces burnt from flaunting North Carolina’s helmet law. The filled the doorway, paused a moment to scan the room, found an empty booth behind me and thudded into it, vinyl cushions whoofing under their weight.  The booths were joined and the guy behind me, flopping down, bumped mine forward dumping Cheerwine all over my lunch.  Crushed ice speckled my fries, now stained red.  I swore bitterly, surveying the ruin.  The bench jolted again as he heaved himself out to investigate.  “Oh hell, brother, I’m sorry”, he growled, seeing my leathers.  “Forget it”, I said, wadding up my napkin and throwing it on the soggy plate with disgust.  I scooted sideways and made to get up but he put a hairy-knuckled hand on my shoulder; “I feel kinda bad”, he said, “Can I make it up to ya?”  That’s biker code for “You wanna make some money breaking the law?” He squeezed my shoulder a couple times like we were friends, making the leather creak. I looked up into his sly, smirking eyes, realized where this was going and said to myself, “Why not?” 

Bikers like to do bad things, because they think people expect them to.  They like to do those bad things in groups, because individually they’re fat, hairy cowards.  Two’s company and they wanted me to make it a crowd, knock off the Kickstand’s register and escape down the 11 mile, 318-curve Tail of the Dragon, where a bike can go twice as fast as a police car and the Tennessee border beckons at the other end.  Either they planned to lose me, or wreck me on the Tail. Their pea-brains made three critical miscalculations, however.  One, they assumed I was a brother biker, probably because of my ponytail and leathers.  Two, they assumed I wasn’t local because no one lives in Robbinsville – it’s a tourist town for leaf-peepers and bikers.  Three, they assumed I was lonely, bored, broke, and stupid.

I heaved to my feet with a glint in my eye.  “What’s the plan”, I muttered.  “Right here”, he whispered.  “We’ll hit the register then hit the road to Tennessee”.  “Down the Tail?”  I feigned nervousness.  “Heh, heh. Sure - why not?, he grinned; “Don’t be scared - ain’t no one can catch us on the Dragon!”  I shrugged.  With no further ado he hit the register, the cashier hit the silent alarm, and we hit the road, smokin’. 

I rode behind them, gauging their skills on the turns - they were confident but sloppy.  They didn’t know the road as well as they thought and I’d been riding the Dragon nearly every day of my life except the six years in I spent overseas with Delta.  Screaming sirens behind us lent wings to their speed as they caromed around the slower traffic, owning both lanes with reckless abandon.  The paper sack stuffed with money peaked out from the leader’s saddlebag.  I knew a softer curve was coming up that hardened quickly; I saw my chance and took it.  As they clamped their brakes, I twisted my throttle and gunned between them.

  I’d spent the last two years jamming a 1,250 cc V-Rod Muscle engine into a 1958 Harley Duo-Glide, pairing that with anti-lock brakes and 240 mm of rear rubber that looked like a fat anaconda swallowing its tail – the bike ran like a cannon shot and cornered like a cat.  I snatched the money sack as I thundered through, gearing down to a throaty wail while pointing the front wheel at the tightest part of the turn, throwing my weight toward the inside corner and mashing the front brakes hard, still going 90 mph.  My knee gently kissed the macadam as the Harley drifted gracefully, smoke boiling from the howling rear tire as it slid around the curve like a cartoon road runner trying to catch up with itself.  When the tires lined up I snapped off the brake, leaned forward, eased off the throttle until the anaconda bit down, cranked it again and let the torque punch me forward like a carrier-launched jet. The two in back were blinded by smoke and nearly missed the turn but they slowed to a crawl and waddled around it using both feet like kids learning to ride.  They seemed angry.  They spotted me 200 yards ahead, hit the gas and gave chase.  I slowed up to give them a chance and in their rage they took huge risks on every corner to gain ground. I thought they would wreck and I wouldn’t get to carry out the rest of my plan but they showed a cunning tenacity that made me smile. Within three miles they were 100 feet back and breathing fire, which is just how I wanted them.

I slalomed off onto a rutted two-track that I knew led to a rarely-used hunting cabin.  I jolted and bounced up the lane, giving my spring-slung saddle a workout but knowing it was harder on them.  After a mile I pulled up to the clearing around the cabin, shut down the bike and vaulted off into the bushes.  They came roaring into the clearing a few seconds later, skewed to a stop and hopped off on numb and trembling legs, staring in all directions.  I was behind a pine 15 feet to their rear, hefting a sizeable rock.  I threw it into the trees across the clearing and launched as they spun toward the crackle and snap.  I was on the leader in less than a second but he heard my footfall and whirled back toward me, legs spread, reaching into his waistband with a snarl.  I never broke stride and kicked him with everything I had - and a two pound, black leather, ring-step boot - right in the credentials. He abandoned his waistband and clutched himself, doubling over with a groan.  Still moving forward fast and skirting his hunched figure, I palmed the back of his head and shoved off like a pole-vaulter, toward his partner who was now swinging his extended right arm toward me, gun in hand. In my peripheral I saw the first guy face-plant into his sizzling engine block and go still.  I was in the air, flying toward the second guy at top speed, laughing maniacally, swinging my bent left arm out in a Kenpo block and reaching for his throat with my right.  He was bellowing with fear, terror written on his grizzled face, trying to back up, his feet tangling….

I won’t bore you with the details, but the police never found the thieves, nor their bikes. I’m back here at the Kickstand, enjoying another burger and Cheerwine.  I can eat free here, now, whenever I like.  I’m chewing thoughtfully, trying to figure out what to do with two hot Harleys and two sets of leathers (slightly bloodstained).  I probably won’t have bad dreams about it, but those two large-livin’ lunkheads - they will.  In a nutshell, I mused: don’t mess with me; I’m your worst nightmare.

Passed My Prime.

There's a curious passage in a book I just finished, British poet Robert Grave's autobiography Goodbye to All That, addressing the diminishing effects of the endocrine system on soldiers fighting in the trenches along the Somme during WWI:
"Having now been in the trenches for five months, I had passed my prime.  For the first three weeks, an officer was of little use in the front line; he did not know his way around, had not learned the rules of health and safety, or grown accustomed to recognizing degrees of danger.  Between three weeks and four weeks he was at his best, unless he happened to have any particular bad shock or sequence of shocks. Then his usefulness gradually declined as neurasthenia developed. At six months he was still more or less alright; but by nine or ten months, unless he had been given a few weeks' rest on a technical course, or in a hospital, he usually became a drag on the other company officers. After a year or fifteen months he was often worse than useless.  Dr. W.H.R. Rivers told me later that the action of one of the ductless glands - I think the thyroid - caused this slow general decline of military usefulness, by failing at a certain point to pump its stimulating chemical into the blood.  Without its continued assistance the man went about his tasks in an apathetic and doped condition, cheated into further endurance. It has taken some ten years for my blood to recover."  I don't want to denigrate their sacrifice, but since I go about my tasks in an apathetic and doped condition, I can only logically assume that my stress is equivalent to that of an officer after a lengthy engagement at Ypres - although I do enjoy the luxury of mustard on my hot dog rather than in my lungs.

I started reading a book about another WWI soldier, although that's not what he's best known for:

I'm not terribly far into it, but this is my fourth McCullough book and he's rapidly becoming my favorite author du jour.  I finished his fantastic history of the Panama Canal with several schoolboy myths dispelled and a new appreciation for mosquitoes that don't carry yellow fever (I confess, any appreciation for mosquitoes must be classified as new).

I wish I could say I also developed a new appreciation for Douglas E. Richards' writing but, alas, although I just read his bestseller Wired last week I can't remember much of anything about it.  It cropped up on several science fiction favorites lists but those lists may have been written by teenage boys, the apparent target demographic. Richards, a molecular biologist by training, is a bright writer with intriguing ideas regarding genetic manipulation but I just couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to suppress my yawns. I prefer the suspense of history, I suppose, even though I know what's coming.  I guess I'm getting old.

Just Because You CAN....

I went to a Hepatopancreatico Biliary conference this week.  Yes, its a real thing!  I learned a lot.  Did you know you can remove half of someone's liver through a one-inch incision in their belly?  Now you do!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX8lx77kfSs

A Bibliophile in Banner Elk.

Last weekend I helped Tammy with her booth at an art show in Banner Elk.  'Helping' consists of two hours of heavy lifting bracketing 3 days of sitting in under a sunny blue sky surrounded by green mountains and reading; it's like heaven.  I brought two thick books but they were so engrossing I gorged myself and had to trade them for two more at a coffee shop halfway through the weekend.  The two I brought with me were excellent, the two from the coffee shop were... free.

Stephen Sears Landsape Turned Red leads us through the Civil War battle at Antietam Creek (Sharpsburg, if you're a Southerner) like a triptych of blunders and horrors. Having been to the battlefield I saw it all unfold in my head like a movie, the kind where you shout at the screen "Don't go in that dark basement alone, you idiot!" and no one can hear you and they go anyway and terrible things happen.  Pride and fear are the most ferocious and formidable of opponents, and they battle in us all.

Speaking of pride, my takeaway from Trevor Rees-Jones' fascinating The Bodyguard's Story is that extreme wealth creates a disturbing mentality of casual superiority to the proletariat - the rules of the 99% simply don't apply to the 1%.  Trevor Rees-Jones was Dodi Fayed's bodyguard at the time when Dodi's billionaire father Mohammed Fayed was orchestrating a romance between his son and the recently single Diana, Princess of Wales.  The elder Fayed reveled in the overwhelming attention the relationship garnered in the press which - in the mind of a shipping mogul - equated free marketing for him.  That level of attention became lethal, however, on August 31st, 1997 when Dodi, Diana, and their inebriated driver were killed in a car crash while fleeing the paparazzi; Trevor was the only survivor.  He wrote the book several years after recovering from the crash not only to pay his hospital bills but to defend himself from increasingly hostile, frantic, and fantastic attacks in the press by Mohammed Fayed alleging that Rees-Jones was part of an international conspiracy to eliminate Dodi and Diana. Delightful look at a normal guy inside an elite sphere.

I was reminded of Fayed's 1% mind-set when I read Predator's Ball by Connie Bruck, the story of Michael Milken's rise to the throne of junk-bond king in the 1980's.  The fulminating brew of risky capitalism incubates predators and prey like a Jurassic swamp; Bruck's detailed account submerges you in its fetid stink.  Books like this create dissonance in my gut because I want the lubricious life wealth brings without its attending corruption, while history tells me the two are inseparable.  Sigh. No Bentley for me, I guess.

I needed to take my mind off my status as prey so I cracked open the mindless fun of James Swain's Sucker Bet and learned nothing except the myriad and creative ways people cheat at games of chance.  I did enjoy the refreshing change of a protagonist in his sixties who's confident enough in his skin not to succumb to navel-gazing.  I also like stories that take place in Florida - the birthplace of goofy. Florida seems like America's appendix: a dangling fixture that collects toxins and causes all sorts of problems.  But I admit, it's easy to be critical when you're basking in the high-country of Banner Elk.

Elbow Greece.

O Greece, you idled in your cradle, 

guzzled panting from Tsipras' ladle,

sunk your debts to Agean's hadel, 

the grasshopper from Aesop's fable, 

blaming ants for an empty table,

refuse to work - although you're able,

loud, proud, hungry - lives unstable.

Now substitute 'Greece' for 'U.S.', 'Tsipras' for 'Obama's', 'Agean's' for 'Atlantic's'.

The troubles in Greece could happen here.  Stop reading this nonsense and get to work!

Bones and Blood.

Finished reading RN by Jane Carpineto.  She follows three nurses who represent different aspects of the profession over several months and documents the highs and lows of hospital nursing.  It was written in 1992 and I was struck by how little had changed.  Here's a few excerpts that jumped out at me:

"There's something weird about this profession....  None of your friends on the outside see death as an everyday occurrence. For them, it's an extraordinary event."

" I think you're right... that the best and brightest are leaving this profession.  A few of them become private home-care nurses.  They feel they'll be more respected that way, even if they make less money.  I'm envious of the autonomy they have."

"You know what I hate most?  It's when people say, 'Oh, you're a nurse, isn't that nice.  They don't say that to doctors."

"It's funny how they want us to take even more of our time to write down how much of our time our tasks take."

She remembers the personal power she felt almost two years ago when she entered the medical world as a genuine medical professional, and she can recall that inner voice that told her that she had been granted a special invitation into others' private lives.  Some people had been grateful for her presence, had turned to her in need and desperation, while others had withdrawn from her as time and illness advanced.  Like Arthur, they increasingly had used her as the target for their frustration.  The more control they lost, the more they tried to control her, the more distance they put between themselves and her. Eventually they couldn't remember her name.  Then she would find herself withdrawing, too. Mustering sympathy became more difficult.

"I don't see them (doctors) with the patients very often.  They're always in the charts.  The patients ask me so many questions that I can't help feeling there's a communication breakdown somewhere. It seems like there are about sixteen people between the patient and the doctor."

On the whole, though, the SICU nurses, in concert with their peers elsewhere, express the same standard complaint; too much to do, too little time to do it, too few people to get it done.

"The trouble with academic types... is that they lose their trench perspective.  Teaching skills and doing skills are different.  The more they move into teaching, the further away they get from doing.  You get to resent it when the CNS (clinical nurse specialist) comes up to you after four hours of horror in the trenches and suggests that you should try doing something a different way."

Staff nurses see the caretaking functions of nursing, the very functions that attracted them to the profession in the first place, eroding day by day due to an onslaught of managerial and fiscal priorities.  And they don't like it.

At the end of a day, most professionals, businesspeople, service workers, and artisans will have gone about their daily affairs without so much as a glimpse or thought of death, but nurses will have thought, seen, and felt its constant presence by the end of every day.  No one, not even physicians, will have been exposed to it so unremittingly.

Often it is the climate of emergency and high pressure that is apt to precede death, more than the death itself, that takes a toll on them. They have learned to accept the inevitability of death, to regard it more as destiny than tragedy.  They mourn it, but they don't personalize it.  They understand that disease can be a force more powerful than human ingenuity and modern technology combined.

"I struggle more these days with feelings of futility than with feelings of grief."

The closer she comes to the suffering of others, the further she travels from her own.  Usually the only conscious reason she voices for choosing to be a nurse is her desire to be helpful to suffering people, but that is partly an illusion.  What she doesn't know and doesn't say is that continuous caregiving is a selfless activity that affords her an extra layer of protective coating against experiencing her own personal pain.

No matter what strategies we as a society devise to counter it, the truth is that capitalism and caring for the sick are incompatible marriage partners.

Exhaustion and stress were such intrusive visitors to her daily life that they sometimes made her feel that she had nothing left for caring....  Too few nurses, not enough money, more and sicker patients, and who cared anyway?  Do politicians care?  Do hospital administrators? Some of them, perhaps, but not enough to make a difference. Do voters care?  Do patients care? ...it looked as if not caring was spinning so far out of control that if nobody else was going to care, why should they?  But put the nagging questions to sleep for awhile, and in the morning these nurses care again.  Can't get away from it.  It always comes back, this caring business; like it never really left, just felt like it did.  It's in a nurse's bones and blood.