Christmas Lost

I shrugged, "Yeah, about one in four live five years. About one in six to get out of this with no brain damage. Part of the reason I been thinking about Dr. Murphy is that I'm not sure I want to survive if..."

Jan pounced and I felt her nails dig into my shoulders. "Listen, you selfish son of a bitch, isn't it about time you stopped thinking only about yourself?" Her voice now dripped with contempt, "You want to know why you weren't happy when you had everything a man could want? It's because you had yourself at the center of your universe. You made yourself god of the universe. Man is a spiritual creation, and until you find something bigger than yourself you'll never fill that hole in your soul..."

Tears rolling down her cheeks Jan turned and marched out of the room.

I was left speechless. Neither Jan nor I are religious people. Her family were twice a year Catholics, mine vaguely agnostic. I suppose I believed in Alcoholic's Anonymous' "higher power," but my philosophy was that if It left me alone I'd return the favor.

Before I could give that idea any more thought Jan returned, her eyes still glistening and her makeup smeared. "I'm sorry, I had no right to say anything like that to you. After you left me, I was so lost I returned to the church. It's helped me get through some very rough times, but I had no intention of discussing the state of your immortal soul.

"What I want to do is to pretend that we're a happily married couple while you go through this. If you die, that will help the girls later in life. We both know what divorce does to kids, even those where the parents remain close. It's much better if one parent dies. If you're going to die I want you to spend time with them and to lie like a 'bastard at the reading of a will.' I know you love the girls and I expect you to do this for them.

"Confined to the bed like this, I don't expect you'll be chasing whores..."

I flinched, "Please, Jan, it was only that one, in our twenty-two years of marriage I never cheated on you, except that one time. I just ..."

I'd started to say that I just wanted to see if anal sex was what it was cracked up to be. Thank god, before I could get that out she snapped, "Twenty-three years damn it. I told you we're still married, and you're still wearing my ring!"

I looked down at my left hand. It was trembling so hard the finger blurred in my vision. I held them up and I really wanted to cry.

** ** ** ** **

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving when we arrived in Houston. Getting checked into a modern teaching hospital is a nightmare. I think it was even worse for me. I built two wings of this place with my practice, and I expected not to have to go through some of mal-practice prevention nonsense. I certainly didn't expect to have to bounce all over the place getting tests done and new scans made. Yes, the equipment was the very latest, but the pictures weren't actually any more useful in my case. Frankly I felt like I was at one of those old gas stations where a little bell dinged as the bill increased. Make that a whole chorus of bells ringing like mad.

Finally I was waiting in my room with Jan and the girls, trying to make casual conversation, but I'd been unable to focus long enough to know if they were even coherent. After a period of time that made the ice ages seem like a restroom break, Dr. Murphy waltzed into my room, his face a carefully practiced bonhomie.

I knew before he opened his mouth to give me his grave but confident expression, the one I'd seen him perfect in the doctors' lounge mirror, the news wasn't good.

"Dr. Murphy, we've known each other for a very long time. Shoot straight and let me know what you've seen."

It took him a second or two to recover and when he did I saw his normal face. It really wasn't very expressive but it at least looked natural. "Dr. Nelson, I'm sorry it doesn't look good. It's on the line between a Grade II and a Grade III. I'm pretty sure I can get all of it, but we both know that it could come back in multiples even if I do. If I don't get it all your time will be greatly reduced."

He paused. "I remember you telling me one time that you used the family test when you did surgery. You'd ask yourself what you'd do if the patient was a member of your immediate family. If you were my son I'd operate. If you were my father I wouldn't. I know you made your decision by coming here, but I think I have to tell you that this is one that I'll see in my dreams for a while. I'll probably do an article on it regardless of how the surgery goes."

I looked over at my family and the stricken look on my girls' faces tore my heart into tiny pieces. Lindsey braced herself and said, "My Daddy can't die yet. We talked to God and told Him that Daddy has to stay with us now."

[Here ends the draft Joesephus left. He had written two notes indicating where the story would go, but not the end of the story. --- Erik Thread]

go back for surgery

leave just before Christmas for cabin

Erik's's comments:

* [1] [this was Joesephus's way, but senior partner at a top anything is almost impossible to achieve while still young enough to begin a family. He resisted and I insisted. I usually did not read the final version to see who won, but I think he did--because he kept at it. He had his beginning architect win something like "Archie of the Year" at an incredibly young age--and then win it two more times in the next five. Or the restaurants where they ate weren't just good, they were beyond the best. Etc. So I would have recommended that she had positioned herself to make partner when the triplets came--but I don't know that Joe would have bought it.]

Jonnyrebel82 note: It looks to me like Joesephus was writing a mid-life crisis story and that the children were born very late in their lives. However, as I said in my note at the top these were the sort of things that he changed over and over as he polished his story.

* [2]

[this is another disagreement I had with Joesephus. He would stick these 25¢ words into a 10¢ scene; I thought they didn't fit and he wanted to use a better vocabulary. He, again, generally won.]

Comment by Jonnyrebel82

As you know English was not Joesephus' first language, but he loved its ability to be specific. We actually had long discussions about a word's nuances because he really did learn English by reading a dictionary. He would change a word if it did not fit and sometimes his malapropisms (a word he taught me) were hilarious! However, unless he was told that a character would not use a word he rarely changed it. In his opinion, if he knew the meaning of a word, so should his readers. Personally I agree with Erik.