The Agriculture Hall of Fame: Stories

Birthday

Birthday THERE WAS A RHYTHM TO IT, the starting and stopping, and despite the fact that there were no other cars on the road, Alan came to full and complete rests at every intersection. He was driving west, up side streets on the periphery of Lawrence Memorial Hospital, having to pause every hundred feet or so ofthe grid at a stop sign. He thought this would be a quicker route to the highway, but, in his exhaustion, had failed to realize that at 2 a.m. the main roads wouldn't have been crowded. The lulling quality ofthis cycle betrayed the urgency he was supposed to be feeling, and he slipped so far inside his own thoughts that he disconnected from the actions his body performed: hands on the steering wheel, guiding but not directing; eyes on the road, open but not seeing. Driving but not driving. He was headed to the medical center in Kansas City, and somewhere in the air above him inside a yellow helicopter was his newborn son, spending last breaths from his failing lungs. He had thought he might be able to follow the helicopter as he drove, but he couldn't find it now. It was an absurd notion, he knew, butAlan couldn't help the way his eyes strayed toward the sky every few minutes, thinking somehow it might appear and he could simply follow , like a funeral train behind police escort. But as he looked at the sky now there was only the dark expanse ofa starless night. He readjusted his grip on the wheel, knuckles flaring white against the brown leather, - 65 - Birthday and felt the encroaching weariness of a long day finally catching up with him. Ithad started out, as all Tuesdays were, a normal dayin clinic. Hewas an ophthalmologist and had a small practice in Lawrence, north ofthe river. Between patients his assistant Sharon slipped him a note thatsaid his wife needed to talk to him immediately. She had paged him twice already, but he was running thirty minutes behind schedule and Mr. Greenleaf, a curmudgeonly old man who had long-suffering cataracts and a quick temper, was waiting; his patients, Alan believed, deserved his full attention. After looking into the milky sockets for the fourth time in as many months Alan again told Greenleafhe needed surgery, and as he'd done the other three appointments the old man guffawed and said, "Isn't there something you could just prescribe?" Alan told him that what he prescribed was surgery, and Greenleaflooked away, huffing, and then mumbled under his breath, finally saying he would need to think about it. They agreed on a four-week follow up. As Alan walked him to the front desk to check out, Greenleafconfided that it was his daughter who made him keep coming back. "She wants me to have the surgery-won't let up on me," he shrugged. "Says I'll go blind otherwise. But the way I see it there ain't much worth looking at no how." The comment made Alan stop walking. It goaded him that people like Greenleaf, whose illnesses could be remedied, wouldn't accept help. Alan tried to smile, saying he agreed with Greenleaf's daughter, and then offered the elderly man a firm handshake. He checked two boxes on the billing sheet-shaking his head, Why wouldn't he have the surnery?-and handed it to the girl at the front desk, then calmly walked back to his office, shut the door, and called home. Sue picked up, a frantic timbre to hervoice-"Something's wrong." He tried to keep her calm, intoning softly for her to tell him what had happened. She was always getting worked up over things, but this was partly why their relationship worked, Alan reasoned; they balanced one another, their temperaments the yin and yang of excitability. "I think I'm-it's too early," was what she said. She was late in her seventh month. He told her sometimes that happened and it wasn't out ofthe - 66 - Birthday ordinary. "Alan, I'm bleeding," she interrupted. He felt the uncomfortable prickling of surprise but remained poised, exhaling and keeping the same steady tone he used when patients came in with ghastly eye injuries, bloody retinas and crushed sockets. He asked her how much. "I've got a bath towel between my legs and it's completely soaked." His...