The Hernia Operation

^ The Hernia Operation Elias Papadimitrakopoulos Translated from the Greek by John Taylor As soon as the train arrived in Thessaloniki Station I got off, but before hailing a taxi headed for a nearby kiosk, from which I telephoned the city's Army Hospital. I asked for a colleague of mine, a surgeon. "I have an inguinal hernia," I told him. "When will you be able to fix it up for me?" He reflected for a moment. "How about Thursday?" he asked. "But come round to the hospital Wednesday morning, and on an empty stomach. Remember that every operation begins the day beforehand." Wednesday morning at eight I entered the hospital and headed for the director's office. He was an old buddy of mine. We had been classmates at the "Sacred Temple" (as we used to call our Military Medical School) and had gone through many a heartbreaker and mishap together. "These last few weeks have been crazy around here," he moaned, smoking one cigarette after another. "We've been up to our necks in heart attacks and accidents. Today they hauled me out of bed at dawn. A black fellow, a third-year student at the Sacred Temple, tried to commit suicide and was found in a coma. And can you imagine that only yesterday a helicopter crashed, in a lake? They brought in the mashed pilot, and I had to hang around here until midnight trying to get a hold of a member of the family." "But why were you drawn into the pilot's case," I asked, "once he was brought in dead?" "You wouldn't believe it," he replied. "The guy's commandant showed up shaking like a leaf and begged me to take care of contacting the next of kin. He said he was too emotional and couldn't stand doing things like that. Only when it was too late did I understand his ulterior motive. All day yesterday we tried to locate the pilot's fiancée, as we had been told to do, and finally late last night a woman with babe in arms * "The Hernia Operation" was first published (in Greek) in Hártis, no. 9 (December 1983): 321-25. Literature and Medicine 8 (1989) 122-27 © 1989 by The Johns Hopkins University Press EUas Papadimitrakopoulos 123 appeared. When we told her the bad news she lost it completely and started screaming. You see, they had gotten married secretly, without permission from headquarters, apparently since she had been tabbed 'politically undesirable.' Well, the commandant knew all about the marriage , unofficially, hence his pretending to be too emotional and so on. Then on top of all the screaming and wailing the pilot's mother came roaring in. A real dogfight got going between the two of them to see who would obtain custody of the corpse." "So what did you finally do?" "Nothing. I told the wife to show us a marriage certificate, and mama kept vigil outside the morgue, threatening all the gods and demons ." I went down to the lab, located on the basement floor. Two avenues now ran through the gardens of the hospital, cutting it, like a baklava, into four parts. From the window I could see the car wheels whizzing by, nearly beside us. "Progress!" exclaimed the clinical pathologist as he searched for my vein. "The outpatients don't need to come into the hospital forecourt anymore. They can urinate directly from the street or stick their arms out for us right from their cars—just like in those banks nowadays. ... At least we have slipped out of the clutches of the psychos. Their wing got cut off from ours by the avenue. Who would have the guts to try and cross it?" "How did all this happen?" I asked. "Just following the Fatherland's orders . . ." he sneered. I returned to the director's office. We ordered coffee and koulouria. "Have you learned anything about upcoming transfers?" he asked. A head nurse came in, said good morning, assumed an official air and announced somewhat pompously: "The student has terminated." How in the hell was all this going to turn out? Several colleagues now entered, then two combatant officers...