The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (14 page)

“I’d love to,” I said, and I meant it.

CHAPTER 11

A FRIEND OF MINE

The following morning I was back in the cockpit piloting a routine anesthetic. Michael Perpich was doing a partial colectomy on an 81-year-old man named Harlan Versich. Mr. Versich’s bowel movements ceased seven days earlier, and he presented that morning with severe abdominal pain, distension, and vomiting. His intestinal obstruction could have been from a variety of diagnoses, but the unfortunate news for Mr. Versich was that the pathology was malignant—Perp found a large adenocarcinoma occluding the sigmoid colon.

The monitoring gauges on my anesthesia dashboard showed normal readings, and for the moment Mr. Versich was the most secure man in town—he had a board-certified anesthesiologist watching every heartbeat and every breath. I was in control of his physiology with my repertoire of inhaled gases and intravenous drugs, and I was focused on the challenge.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about Lena Johnson.

The metronome beep, beep, beep of Harlan Versich’s heart droned on, and I thought about Lena Johnson. The ventilator purred as it puffed eight breaths per minute into Mr. Versich’s lungs, and I thought about Lena Johnson.

The phone on top of the anesthesia machine rang, and I answered it. I felt a pang of annoyance when I heard the voice—the caller was Bobby Dylan. My enchanted, obsessive loop of thoughts was centered on the allure of Lena’s body, and I didn’t want to interrupt them for a conversation with her estranged husband.

“Can you talk?” Dylan rasped.

“I guess so.”

“I’m in room #4 right now. I’m doing a hip fracture on an 80-year-old, and she just tried to die on me. Her heart rate dropped and dropped until the monitor screen showed no EKG beats at all. Flat line.”

“And?”

“It only lasted about 4 or 5 seconds. I shot in some atropine and her heartbeat came back up, but I have no idea what caused the whole episode. Should I call a cardiologist?”

“What are her vital signs now?”

“They’re all normal.”

“It might have only been a vasovagal episode, but you’d better have a cardiologist or internist follow her tonight to rule out a myocardial infarction. He’ll put her in a monitored bed and draw some troponins.”

“Will do. Thanks for the consult. You’re a decisive guy. You must be from some hotsy-totsy hospital in California.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Hey, I got a phone call from your wife last night,” Dylan said.

I almost fell off my chair. While I’d been with Lena, Mr. Dylan was talking to Alexandra? “What did she want?” I said.

“She’s horny. She wants some action. And unless your dick is 2,000 miles long, I think the woman has a legitimate complaint.”

“Alexandra never called you,” I said, relieved by the hoax.

“No, not yet. But if she ever did call on Bobby Dylan, it would be the happiest day of her life.”

“I hate my wife,” I said.

“Of course you do. Heads it’s love, tails it’s hate.”

“You’d hate her, too.”

“I love all the ladies.”

What would Dylan think if he knew about my sauna last night? It was an absurd question, and I knew the answer. Dylan would not appreciate me hooking up with Lena, his Girl from the North Country. I squirmed in my chair. I was uncomfortable with the duplicity of my friendship with Dylan and my intimacy with his wife. I didn’t want to talk about women anymore right now.

“Heaven’s Door tonight?” I asked, shifting the topic.

“Nope. Tonight I’m home watching the Minnesota-UMD hockey game. Why don’t you come over? Have a couple of beers, watch the game, shoot the shit.”

“I went to UMD. Big fan.”

“I went to the University of Minnesota, and I’m an even bigger fan. Come and watch your alma mater get their asses kicked. Game starts at 7:30. I’m at 2425 7th Avenue, at the corner of 7th and 25th Street.”

“I know the place. Bob Dylan’s old house.”

“Of course it is. I’m Bobby Dylan.”

I rolled my eyes.
I’m Bobby Dylan
, indeed. Michael Perpich began stapling Harlan Versich’s skin incision together. “Got to go,” I told Dylan. “It’s time to wake up this guy. See you tonight.”

I finished three more anesthetics and left the operating room by 6 p.m. Back home I found Johnny frying hamburgers and heating up some frozen French fries. The house smelled like a diner, and my stomach rumbled in anticipation. I was blown away that Johnny was cooking at all. He never prepared meals in our Palo Alto kitchen. It was another good sign that small-town Minnesota values were rubbing off on the kid. I liked the change.

“Have a good day?” I said.

“Yep.”

“What was the best thing that happened today?”

“Everything. Classes were good, lunchtime with friends was better.”

“How’s Echo?”

“Super.”

I let “Super” hang in the air between us for a while. I could relate to my son’s level of jubilance. The look on Johnny’s face was telling. The kid was as infatuated with Echo as I was with her mom.

One week into our North Country adventure, Johnny had changed from a boy into a broad-shouldered, wide-eyed man, complete with a day’s stubble on his chin and a cocksure look in his eyes. He removed the tray of fries out of the oven and spread them on two plates. He dropped a steaming hamburger patty between two pieces of bread, handed the plate to me and said, “It’s feast time at the Antone Man Cave, Daddy-O.”

The cuisine was primitive, but the effort and enthusiasm were laudable. “I’m impressed,” I said, pouring a mound of ketchup onto my burger.

“Do you think we could host Echo and her mom here some night?” Johnny said.

“Sure. You could cook for them, return the favor. That was fun last night. I like them both.”

“You should have come to the curling club with us last night.”

The corners of my eyes crinkled into a reflective grin. I thought,
That’s OK. I had a better time than that.
“What was it like?” I said.

“Echo’s so good at the sport, she’s a legend in this town. There are posters of her and her team all over the walls. Everyone at the club knows her. They treat her like a celebrity. She took me out on the ice and gave me an hour-long private lesson. She says I picked it up faster than anyone she’s ever taught. I’m going to play in the Monday-Wednesday night league with some guys she introduced me to.”

“I don’t want this curling to get in the way of your schoolwork.”

“It won’t. School comes first. Tonight I finished all my homework before you got home. Echo is taking me to the curling club again tonight after dinner. It’s fun.”

I gave Johnny a thumbs-up and said, “Glad to hear it. You need a gimmick when it comes to getting into the top colleges. Curling could be a pretty good gimmick. There aren’t a lot of curlers in the United States. You’ll stand out in a crowd.”

“Not everything is about college applications, Dad. I’m doing it because I like it.”

“And you’re doing it because of a certain blue-eyed Scandinavian gal.”

“And that doesn’t suck, Daddy-O. That doesn’t suck.”

I parked my car in the driveway of Mr. Dylan’s house, and gaped at his garage door. The square wooden door was painted as a replica of Bob Dylan’s classic
Blood on the Tracks
album cover, with the rock star’s image in profile, hazy and cartoonish, and the singer’s eyes hidden behind opaque sunglasses. The background color—a maroon hue of blood ancient and dried—was identical to the original album.

I’d walked or driven past this house a thousand times, but never been inside. Bob Zimmerman vacated his boyhood home decades before. What I was about to see lacked any history—it would be a nurse anesthetist’s 21st-Century version of the Zimmerman home. I stood on the front walk and gazed north toward Hibbing High, two blocks in the distance. How many fathers had walked past this house, taken in the panorama of Hibbing High School in the distance, and wondered if their son or daughter could succeed like Bob Zimmerman had?

The front door opened, and Mr. Dylan stood on his stoop. He was dressed in bizarre attire—a faded, red-wine-colored University of Minnesota hockey jersey, oversized thermal snow pants, and a white CCM hockey helmet unstrapped at the neck. “Get in here, Doctor,” he chided. “You already missed the first period.”

“Nice outfit,” I said.

“Damn right. I just took my Arctic Cat for a spin up to Carey Lake and back. The most fun a man can have with his clothes on.”

The shining black and orange chassis of an Arctic Cat snowmobile stood parked next to the front door. In California, men bought Harley Davidson motorcycles to prove their masculinity. In Minnesota, they bought Arctic Cats. “Looks like a powerful machine,” I said.

“She goes ninety miles an hour if you crank her. One hundred and sixty horsepower. She’s a rocket. Nothing wrong with having a rocket between your legs, right Doctor? C’mon, let’s go in and watch the game.”

I followed him inside the house, to a small square space dominated by a massive TV hanging on the only windowless wall. The room was lit like a Broadway stage, with a ceiling lamp, two standing lamps, and four lights on tables. I felt like putting on sunglasses. The décor was absurd, spartan, and all brown: brown chairs and sofa, brown wall-to-wall carpet, brown plaid curtains, and walls painted brown. The solitary accent piece was an oil painting of Echo on the wall adjacent to the front door. The image of her youthful face graced an inelegant room that was otherwise a man’s space, a bachelor’s space. A pair of brown Lazy Boy reclining chairs faced the television. Four remote controls sat on a small table along side it. Mission Control.

“The good guys are up 2-0 already,” Dylan said. “Have a seat. Put your feet up.” He handed me a bottle of Bud Light, and plopped down in the nearest reclining chair. A tug on the stick shift lever snapped the leg holder into the horizontal position. Dylan motioned me toward the second chair alongside him.

Four library books were stacked on the table between the two chairs. The books were fiction titles authored by well known popular scribes: James Patterson, David Baldacci, Dan Brown, and John Grisham. “While I’m home reading anesthesia journals, it looks like you’re reading thrillers and mysteries,” I said.

“I love a good yarn,” Dylan said. “Nothing better than trying to get inside the author’s head and figure out who did it.”

“I haven’t read a library book in twenty years.”

“I read two or three a week. Can’t afford to be buying a hundred and fifty books a year. I’m not a rich doctor like you, remember?”

I nestled down into my reclining chair. The vinyl squeaked as I pulled the stick shift to elevate my legs. It wasn’t a classy piece of furniture, but I had to admit it was a superior way to relax. I liked the chair, liked the beer, and loved having someone to watch sports with again. Johnny Antone—super-student and Echo-addict—had no time to watch TV with me anymore. My time with Bobby was rain on the desert. Playing rock n’ roll, talking about women, drinking, hanging out and watching hockey together—hanging out with Bobby felt like I was back in college with one of my mates again. I hadn’t had a guy friend since my son was born.

I shielded my eyes from the blazing illumination in the room and said, “It’s a little dark in here. Can you turn on a few more lights?”

“It’s how I cope with winter,” Dylan said. “In December, the sun sets at three in the afternoon, and it makes me crazy. The darkness makes me depressed. When I set the house blazing, it cheers me up.”

“They call it SAD.”

“Who calls it sad?”

“SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s a medical diagnosis for people who get depressed during the dark winter season. Doctors recommend treating SAD with light therapy, to trick the brain into forgetting it’s winter.”

“Hmm. I’m no doctor, but I sort of figured that out by myself. You docs come up with fancy names for things just to show off how you went to school for too many years, and how you memorized too many useless things.”

“Who’s the girl in the picture?” I said, tipping my beer bottle toward the painting of Echo. I feigned ignorance. Dylan didn’t seem to know our kids were dating.

“That’s my daughter, Echo. I’ll bet you’ve seen her. She works part-time at the operating room. Best little girl in the world. Echo lives with me Wednesdays, Thursdays, and every other weekend. She’s with her mother the other nights.”

“I’d hate being away from Johnny half the nights.”

“You get used to it. All those years I was on tour, I didn’t see her for weeks at a time.”

I raised an eyebrow. “On tour where?”

“All around the world. Concerts. Traveling.”

“But you’re a nurse.”

“Now I’m a nurse, but I spent years touring and performing. I got burned out with the travel, so I came back here. But I still need to play. Heaven’s Door is a kick—the adoration from the audience, the attention from the women. Ladies like me when I’m singing and playing my guitar. It’s like the blazing lights in here.” He waved his hands at the lamps. “The lights and the women, they keep me from getting down.”