Quiet Teacher: Part Four

Welcome to the last online installment of my new novel, Quiet Teacher. My next post will mark a return to health and wisdom topics.

If you've missed the first three installments, they are archived on my blog and only a click away. In reading this serialization, you are participating in an age-old yet brand new experiment. Writers as luminous as Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), have serialized their books, although this may be the first time a major online newspaper has serialized a book as a pre-publication "tease" for the print edition.

Quiet Teacher is the second book in a series about the lives, loves, and action adventures of Dr. Xenon Pearl, a South Florida neurosurgeon who saves lives in the operating room during the day and goes out as a vigilante at night. There's something for everybody in these literary thrillers: Chinese history, medicine, martial arts, romance, ghosts, and of course page-turning action.

I know you'll want to know what happens to Xenon, so by all means use the links at the bottom to order a specially discounted copy of the book.

Chapter Three

First on the scene was a strapping young blonde with stubble on his chin. He regarded the ambulatory, half-headless biker like an entry to Ripley's Believe It Or Not and frowned when I identified myself and steered him toward the Subaru. I joined Wanda at the tractor-trailer, where a Florida Highway Patrol trooper used the Jaws of Life to work the door open. The driver was a big man with a big belly and a full beard going white.

"How you feeling?" I asked.

"Who wants to know?"

"The doctor standing next to you."

"Weak," he said. "But not so weak I won't strangle the life out of that guy in the Porsche if you drag him over here."

"I get that," I told him. "The troopers will have you out of here in no time."

Wanda tapped me on the arm. "The ambulance is leaving."

"You know what? I'm going to ride with the kid."

"I'll pick you up at the hospital."

"Don't worry about it. I'll get a ride. Anyway, I may be there a while. This much head trauma all at once--they may need my help."

I ran over and climbed in and the burly kid shut the door behind me. The seal was so tight I could feel the change in air pressure and the noise of the road was suddenly gone. We might as well have been in a tomb. Tierra's eyes were closed and she was as pale as a corpse. Her mother held her hand.

"She'll be fine," I said, even though I was not so sure. "We just need to relieve the pressure on her brain."

The driver maneuvered his way through what was left of the rush-hour traffic as if he were water seeking its level, finding holes and sliding through them without any fuss.

"You're good," I said, leaning through the divider.

"Thanks."

"Don't talk to him," the burly blonde kid said. "He needs to pay attention to the road."

I ignored him and kept at the driver. "You do martial arts, right?"

The driver smiled. "You got that from the driving?"

"Something in the way you handle the wheel. What style?"

"A little aikido."

When a martial arts guy says he does something a little bit, you can be pretty sure he's a veteran, particularly when he's in his forties and has a U.S. Marines tattoo on his forearm. "Desert Storm?" I asked.

"It's that obvious?"

"I didn't figure you for Grenada. Where can I find you if I want to be in touch?"

He gave me a card from his shirt pocket. It had a school name and number. "I'm there evenings, Monday through Friday."

* * *

The ambulance pulled into the bay at the hospital, and I went straight to the nursing station. "I'm Dr. Pearl. Who's the neurosurgeon on call?"

There was a flicker of recognition on her face. "Pearl . . . "

An orderly pushed Kimberly past, immediately followed by little Tierra.

"I don't work here anymore, but there go two trauma cases with two more on the way. You're about to have more patients than surgeons."

"I'll have to check with Dr. Khalsa," the nurse said.

My former boss, John Khalsa, was the Chief of Neurosurgery in the hospital district's division of surgery. The consummate politician, his influence seemed to grow by the hour. Lately, I'd heard talk he might be running for office.

"You didn't answer me about who's on call," I pressed.

"Dr. Tremper."

Scott Tremper is a competent surgeon. He was at my right elbow during the case that killed my career.

"Who else?"

"His partner, Dr. Weiss."

"I don't know Weiss."

"He's new. A young man."

"My replacement, you mean."

The nurse blushed and looked down at the phone. "They say he's very good. I'm sorry, but I really need to ring Dr. Khalsa."

"Then do it."

They brought in the truck driver and started a chart on him. It said his name was Edson Erkulwater. I stuck my head into the treatment cubicle. A physician's assistant I didn't recognize was working on him. "Dr. Xenon Pearl," I introduced myself. "How's he doing?"
"The Xenon Pearl? I heard you were canned for crazy."

"You're swamped. We'll see what Khalsa says. In the meantime, scan Mr. Erkulwater's neck. I'm betting you'll see something at C5, C6."

The assistant looked at me evenly. "Already ordered," he said.

I went in search of little Tierra. She was in a room with Dr. Jean Morris, an ER doc I'd dated briefly. There hadn't been chemistry, but we remained friendly and I gave her a peck on the cheek.

"Wow. Xenon. What are you doing here?"

"I came in on the ambulance. The wreck happened in front of me. There are other patients, and I knew the duty surgeon would need help."

We examined Tierra together, agreed she was crashing quickly and that we should prep her for surgery.

"Dr. Weiss is on his way," Jean said.

"I'll do it. If we wait just a bit, she loses any chance for accomplishment or achievement in the future. If we wait longer than that, she dies on the table. How's the mother?"

"I haven't seen her, but I heard she's stable. Look, I hate to ask this, but do you have hospital privileges?"

"I'm privileged enough to know how to save this little girl."

She looked pained. "This cowboy stuff is what got you fired. If you take a wrong step now, they'll sue you around the block and back."

"I didn't come in to make trouble. I was on the road, that's all. You know how fast they go when the fluid builds, Jean. I don't want this on my conscience and neither do you."

She nodded, her decision made. "All right. I'll back you up."

On the way to the locker room, I passed the motorcyclist sitting up on a gurney talking to Vicky Sanchez, my favorite OR nurse. She was trying not to stare at his naked brain.
"You think Ferraris are fast, you gotta let me take you for a ride on my bike," he said.

"Dr. Pearl!" Vicky said. "So nice to see you. Are you back with us?"

"For tonight I am. We have a trauma overload. How's Galina?"

Her face brightened at the question. "Can you believe she's talking a blue streak? All those months of silence and now I can't shut her up."

The little Russian girl had been orphaned by events of the previous year, and I had been instrumental in helping Vicky adopt her.

"Your loving home did the trick," I said.

She smiled and pointed at the biker. "Anyway, meet Charles Czarnecki."

"How do you feel, Charlie?"

"Tired," he answered.

I took Vicky by the elbow and walked a few steps. "Keep him away from reflective surfaces," I said. "I don't want him to see himself. He's in a kind of fugue state right now, sort of a heightened denial. We need to get him into surgery before infection sets in."

"We're waiting for Dr. Tremper," Vicky said. "It shouldn't be long now."

I went to the OR locker room. Weiss's name was on my old locker. I took the empty one above it and dug around for scrubs. Dressed for work, I used my cell phone to call Roan Cole, anesthesiologist extraordinaire and my best friend and former partner in crime. "I'm about to do a epidural on a little kid. Care to help me?"

"What? Where?"

"Samaritan."

"Come on."

"No joke. Car accident happened in front of me on the road, and I came in with the ambulance. Multiple casualties. Tremper's coming in and the new guy Weiss, too. They need one more."

"Get her prepped and into the OR. I'll be there in twelve minutes."

I went out to my old operating suite. I cruised the room. Almost everything was the same: my boom lamps, the scan reader in the corner, the trays and instruments, even Roan's tool chest with the familiar Arrogant Bastard Ale sticker and the black-and-yellow Batman oval, along with a temporary tattoo of the Sandman and a Wonder Woman sticker frayed around the edges. I was suddenly overwhelmed by nostalgia. It bent me over and I reached out for support. That was how John Khalsa found me--propped up on an operating table with wet eyes and a stricken expression and shaking slightly in a fashion strictly taboo for any kind of surgeon.

Comments

[xs10shl1]

OK, I am totally hooked.
This is not my typical fare. I am so not into graphic stuff.
But your narrator's voice is so powerfully alluring.

As a onetime English major, I love the title.
As a teacher, I so want to be a "Quiet" one.
As a reader, I love your 'voice'.

Thanks!