worried.”
Kaz scratched the stubble on his jaw. “Wait a minute.”
He stepped away and returned a short while later with a plastic bag. He plopped it on Lloyd’s desk.
“What’s this?” Lloyd asked.
“Organic vegetables… from my community garden. You need to eat better. You’re starting to look a little like shit.”
“I thought they were for the mice.”
“There’s plenty for everyone,” Kaz said.
“You’re giving me mouse left-overs?”
“Better than the highly processed, hormone-injected, pesticide-laden crap you eat every day. And I’m not talking about your girlfriends, this time. Take it easy this weekend. Go for a walk on the lake, breathe in some fresh air, clear out your head my friend.” He raised his hand and flashed a peace sign. “I’m punching out, comrade Copeland. Hasta mañana, amigo.”
“ Dasvidaniya , comrade Volkov,” Lloyd replied.
Kaz chuckled and shook his head as he walked away. “Man, your Russian sucks!”
Once the outside door clicked shut, Lloyd peered into the plastic bag. There were several crooked carrots, two ears of corn, and a moth-eaten leafy vegetable that might have been kale. Lloyd shook the bag and tied a knot in the plastic handles.
He straightened in his chair and held a hand out. No tremor. With an outstretched index finger, he alternated touching the tip of his nose with pre-selected items laid out on his desk: the eraser tip of a pencil, the stamp pad of a stapler, the serrated edge of a tape dispenser. Smooth as oil.
Chapter 4
A t five minutes to eleven the next morning, Lloyd was standing outside the neurology conference room when its door opened and a dozen students in short lab coats streamed out. A tall scrawny man with a poorly trimmed mustache was singing Tammy Wynette’s Stand by Your Man.
Lloyd couldn’t help but smile. He thought back to the day that Uncle Marty had regaled him and his classmates on the psychiatry clerkship with the fabled lecture on personality disorders. Did he look as young and naive back then as the students who were now stopping in the hallway to chat? Lloyd looked on as they laughed with airy indifference to the stern expression of a respiratory technician who was struggling to maneuver a ventilator draped in clear plastic past the different cliques that had congealed in the hallway. No, he had never been like them. And he felt pity, not for his past self, but for these young men and women whose adolescence had been extended by their protracted education, and who walked through life oblivious to the painful truths that awaited them.
Once the last of the medical students percolated through the door, Lloyd entered the conference room. Bender was coiling a thin extension cord around a tiny cubical speaker. On the white board behind him, in cursive penmanship a retired grade school teacher would be proud of, a table consisting of two columns had been written under the heading, Personality Disorders . In one column was a list of psychiatric conditions, in the other, the names of popular, if somewhat dated, songs.
Lloyd still remembered the significance of every song, how Uncle Marty had cleverly linked each one to a particular ailment as a teaching aid. Paranoid personality disorder was listed with Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street, schizoid personality with Simon and Garfunkel’s I Am a Rock, narcissistic disorder with You’re So Vain by Carly Simon, and of course, Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man appeared next to the heading of dependent
Kaz scratched the stubble on his jaw. “Wait a minute.”
He stepped away and returned a short while later with a plastic bag. He plopped it on Lloyd’s desk.
“What’s this?” Lloyd asked.
“Organic vegetables… from my community garden. You need to eat better. You’re starting to look a little like shit.”
“I thought they were for the mice.”
“There’s plenty for everyone,” Kaz said.
“You’re giving me mouse left-overs?”
“Better than the highly processed, hormone-injected, pesticide-laden crap you eat every day. And I’m not talking about your girlfriends, this time. Take it easy this weekend. Go for a walk on the lake, breathe in some fresh air, clear out your head my friend.” He raised his hand and flashed a peace sign. “I’m punching out, comrade Copeland. Hasta mañana, amigo.”
“ Dasvidaniya , comrade Volkov,” Lloyd replied.
Kaz chuckled and shook his head as he walked away. “Man, your Russian sucks!”
Once the outside door clicked shut, Lloyd peered into the plastic bag. There were several crooked carrots, two ears of corn, and a moth-eaten leafy vegetable that might have been kale. Lloyd shook the bag and tied a knot in the plastic handles.
He straightened in his chair and held a hand out. No tremor. With an outstretched index finger, he alternated touching the tip of his nose with pre-selected items laid out on his desk: the eraser tip of a pencil, the stamp pad of a stapler, the serrated edge of a tape dispenser. Smooth as oil.
Chapter 4
A t five minutes to eleven the next morning, Lloyd was standing outside the neurology conference room when its door opened and a dozen students in short lab coats streamed out. A tall scrawny man with a poorly trimmed mustache was singing Tammy Wynette’s Stand by Your Man.
Lloyd couldn’t help but smile. He thought back to the day that Uncle Marty had regaled him and his classmates on the psychiatry clerkship with the fabled lecture on personality disorders. Did he look as young and naive back then as the students who were now stopping in the hallway to chat? Lloyd looked on as they laughed with airy indifference to the stern expression of a respiratory technician who was struggling to maneuver a ventilator draped in clear plastic past the different cliques that had congealed in the hallway. No, he had never been like them. And he felt pity, not for his past self, but for these young men and women whose adolescence had been extended by their protracted education, and who walked through life oblivious to the painful truths that awaited them.
Once the last of the medical students percolated through the door, Lloyd entered the conference room. Bender was coiling a thin extension cord around a tiny cubical speaker. On the white board behind him, in cursive penmanship a retired grade school teacher would be proud of, a table consisting of two columns had been written under the heading, Personality Disorders . In one column was a list of psychiatric conditions, in the other, the names of popular, if somewhat dated, songs.
Lloyd still remembered the significance of every song, how Uncle Marty had cleverly linked each one to a particular ailment as a teaching aid. Paranoid personality disorder was listed with Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street, schizoid personality with Simon and Garfunkel’s I Am a Rock, narcissistic disorder with You’re So Vain by Carly Simon, and of course, Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man appeared next to the heading of dependent
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