JB

It can't have escaped notice that of late my blogging has wandered from the prime directive to inform and entertain about surgery and surgeons. So this post splits the difference. It's about friendship, and it's about a surgeon. I've mentioned him already.

Not entirely by intent, in recent years I've become more of a recluse than is my nature. Time was, I had lots of friends. In college, we were a group of four guys who ate nearly every meal together, went on dates together, did funny bits up and down the Northeast Coast; and there were a few others, my freshman roommate included, that were close and with whom I've stayed in occasional touch. Med school included new pals; with one or two I have rare contact. During surgery training, my wife and I had several couples who were much more than typical friends; not all of them were medical, and the friendships intersected in all possible combinations. I knew we were lucky, and I loved it. Once I started in practice, things narrowed into mostly professional acquaintances. Sitting in the doctors' lounge when there was a moment, shooting the breeze. Non-medical friends were fewer, and mostly consisted of people with whom we shouldered solidly on sidelines of our sons' sports sagas. Those were good friendships, too; but time, and our son, have moved on.

In the last few years of my practice I was so busy and so exhausted I really had time for little of life outside work. Since retiring, I've finally gotten close to my wife's large and noisy and wonderful family. They, entirely, are my friends now. Which ain't' half bad, except that they're all over an hour away. But as of a couple of weeks ago, I'm reminded of what I've been missing: JB and his wife were here for a few days, and now their absence feels like a hole.

On paper, there should have been problems: he's conservative, I'm liberal. He's religious, I'm not. I'm old, he's older. Where we both trained, ten years apart, he cut a wide swath; I came and went without fanfare. But here he was, after corresponding for about a year, and a brief meeting for only a couple of hours in San Francisco a few weeks ago. With his wife, whom I'd not met, he flew up from his place near Yosemite to spend four days with me and my wife, whom he'd not met. We've been married about the same amount of time (longer than many of my readers are old); our wives got along great. JB and his wife, Jeannie, met in Vietnam: he a surgeon, she a surgical nurse. Clearly, it was a central event in their lives. That, and the entry into it of their much-loved son. If our wives were unsure, JB and I knew with some instinctual certainty that it'd work. And it did. Despite certain philosophical differences, we have much in common. I'd even go so far as to say that we have our differences in common, although I'm not sure I know what I mean.

Going through surgical residency and war, which are not in all ways dissimilar, leaves a person with experiences that can't be fully imagined by others, and which bind people who have, no matter their other differences. JB and I did both: the former pretty much exactly alike, the latter less so in that he was a fully-trained surgeon and I just a general medical officer. But it translates well. His video from then (warning: parts are very graphic for people not used to trauma surgery -- and there's some of his writing here), though much more intense than one I could ever make, has overlap with my experience; some of it quite exactly. At the least, we both know war as much more than an abstraction or a slogan, and have seen its futility and horror at its worst (me, a little less than he!), and its fellowship at its best. And having had many of the same surgery teachers, we have stories to tell. Tell them, we did.

Amazing to me, we also have in common the abandonment of busy and successful surgical practices in our fifties, and for the same reason: it wasn't as much fun as it had been. A sense of it literally killing us (in his case, the signs were unmistakable). To do that, I'd say, requires a certain sensibility; maybe more than anything else, that decision alone tells me we're of similar cloth. It wasn't easy; nor free of worry, or of deep ambivalence. Whether on the basis of these things or not, there was an instant feeling of commonality and of trust. And that led -- preconditions set out in a couple of emails to the contrary -- to the ability to talk about politics, and religion, and life, without worrying that differences would break us down.

We ferried to Lopez Island and spent the day with my sister- and brother-in-law, talking incessantly on the way up, and back. I perfectly grilled some halibut, taking (of course) full credit for the entire meal made over the previous couple of days by Judy. Making up part of the smallest crowd ever (literally: the smallest ever!) at Safeco Field, we went to a Mariners' game, and afterwards to a luscious chocolate shop and talked till midnight. It's been a while since I've done that, unconscious of the time.

In this post, I thought I'd be describing JB in more detail and better than I had in a previous one (he was highly amused by the "wiry" moniker.) But I'd risk embarrassing myself (as if I haven't done that before!) or having it come off as hero-worship. So I'll just say this: JB is about as real as they get. No artifice. Honest. Knows who he is, and why, and what that means for him. Hell of a story-teller. A little paranoid about us liberal types.

I like him. I like his wife. We all got along, and well. For the first time in a long time, I felt I was spending time with a friend, it felt good, and I miss it.

[Update, 10/10: How things change. I guess it's the oldest friends that are the best ones, after all. Preferring to believe Barack Obama is a closet Muslim, JB finally had enough of me pointing out that he wasn't. Concluding I was an America-hating, terrorist-loving Jew, he kicked me to the curb like the remnant of a retread. I missed him for a while, even then. And I still miss the person I thought he was.]

[Update #2, 10/17: Watching the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick Vietnam series on PBS, I thought of JB many times; even thought I might see him. One story in particular, of a man triaged for death but saved by another surgeon, sounded like one he'd told. So, not knowing what to expect, I contacted him.

Having gone through several family tragedies and a couple of major, life-threatening health issues, he's back to the man I once knew. We've resumed our communications, and it makes me happy. Who knows? Someday there might be a reunion. Life. What a deal.]

Dougie

"Ready...." A long pause, milking it for all it was worth.

"Aim...." Blindfolded, I squirmed. I figured it was what he wanted.

"FIRE!!...." Then ...nothing. Not a surprise. This was, after all, payback. "C'mon," I said, making it sound like begging (which it was, partly.) "Just shoot me." Tick, tick.

Pkkfftack. Buried right next to my spine, deep and painful. Fair enough. Otherwise, he'd have told my mom.

Like many kids, it was by indifferent luck that Dougie and I survived childhood, and each other. On this particular occasion, we'd been shooting one another with a BB gun he'd borrowed from a neighbor. Unlike our Daisys, this one had some oomph; you could pump it more than once. Because we weren't totally clueless, we'd been using protection: the shootee wore a diving mask and a raincoat, and was dashing between trees across the street from Dougie's house. The shooter, from a window in Dougie's bedroom, took shots at the victim as he zigged the space between the trees.

Given the distance, and the precautions, it was fairly harmless, although it's hard to say where all the pellets ended up. After Dougie had had his turn as prey, he peeled off the mask and coat and ran toward the house. Who could blame me, really? It was such a clear shot. I fired one more time.

Being one year the younger, he was used to abuse by me. But this time he was really pissed, and I was scared of what I'd done. He'd screamed, "MY EYE!!!," and slapped his hand over his face, stopped dead for a moment, then run into the house and upstairs, hand still in place. (No one else, of course, was home.) I was cold-fingered and, I'm sure, white-faced as he removed his hand. The welt was within the hairs of his eyebrow, sparing his eyeball for no particular reason. He was, among other things, threatening to tell my mom.

The firing squad was our negotiated settlement, a way to retribution for him, and a promise to remain silent, for me. It's my recollection that he had to dig the pellet out of my back. Impressed with its power, we fired the gun again, at some sort of metal pan, and it went right through. Or dented it pretty good. Don't remember which.

I hog-tied Dougie once, playing cowpersons and Native Americans. Accidentally dropped him on his chin, causing enough bleeding that he thought it was coming out of his eyes. Another time my brother was showing us how to swing a golf club. I was looking over his right shoulder, Dougie over his left. My brother is right-handed. Enough said. Sounded like a coconut.

The time when actual death was among the possibilities (although I guess the golf club came close) involved bows and arrows. The real kind, with metal tips, albeit not the hunting variety. We'd been at a field at Reed College, where there were straw-stuffed archery targets. Shooting at those static circles got boring in about five minutes, so we did the natural thing: started aiming straight up into the air and seeing how close we could get ourselves to where the arrows came down. Pretty close, as it turns out. Ssshhppt. Couple inches from the shoe. Well, maybe a foot or two. Until one went up so high we lost sight of it.

Quickly computing the consequences, we sprinted in opposite directions. Dougie ended up scronched several yards away, having pulled his jacket up over his head. As if guided by the judgment of fate, the arrow returned to earth by way of Dougie's jacket and the space between his elbow and his left side. As I learned in anatomy class many years later (for this is a surgical blog), there were any number of comparatively vital structures within a shaft-breadth or two. No negotiations were required to keep us both silent about that one.

It wasn't all bad. We got hold of a couple of Army-surplus intercoms and strung wires between our houses, which were on the same block, around the corner from each other. Securing permission from every intervening neighbor, we ran the wires along fences and property lines. Battery powered, the boxes weren't very potent with that much wire between them, and there was no call buzzer. You had to lean pretty close to hear anything. Sometimes we could alert the other of a call by scraping something across the metal face of the box; usually, though, we'd call on the phone, and then hang up and carry on using the intercom.

Charmed by electricity, I did once try to electrocute Dougie, in the guise of a "lie detector" which a brainy friend and I put together. In actuality it was a battery and a capacitor to which we hooked a couple of wires and then talked Dougie into affixing them to his fingers. Asked him a question, and then zapped him. We were too young, I'd say, to be called assholes. Idiots, more properly.

Amazingly enough, Dougie and I maintain the friendship that started nearly sixty years ago. Exuding enthusiasm from every orifice, he teaches astronomy and cosmology, and the actor in him has made his planetarium show the talk of greater Portland. He played his guitar at my wedding. We call each other on birthdays (his was last week) and see each other on rarer occasions. Always it's easy and comfortable, and for the past many years, pretty much risk-free.