Wind Tunnel

Word Count: 4,068

WIND TUNNEL
by
Lane Diamond

Stress kills!

"Ain't that the truth," Mike said.  "Pithy and accurate."

His running partner, Dr. Jim Belluk, craned his head mid-stride.  "What's that?" 

"Nothing.  Just admiring a bumper sticker on the back of a truck that drove past.  'Stress Kills!'"

"Amen, brother."

Stress stalked like a murderous mistress in any profession, but particularly so for a surgeon.  Stress begot distraction, distraction begot mistakes, and one simple mistake by Dr. Michael Sheehan could well beget death.  No one demanded he be perfect, of course—no reasonable person would expect such a thing.

They merely required he make no mistakes.

Or better yet, that he undo theirs.  Like yesterday.

***

"Somebody help my baby!"  A woman ran through the doors of the ER, cradling a small boy.  "Some people said he hit his head at the park and fell into the fountain.  My baby drowned.  Oh, God, my baby drowned.  You gotta bring him back!  He ain't but four years old."

Dr. Sheehan examined the boy as nurses placed him on a gurney.  "You didn't call 911?"

"I got him here faster myself," she said.  "Drove down to the park and picked him up."

"Drove to the park?"

"Yeah.  Figured he'd be okay with some kids from the neighborhood."

A four-year-old? he thought.  Are you kidding me?  "But EMTs could have performed CPR, attempted to…."  Ah, what's the point?  "How long ago did he fall in the fountain?"

The woman chewed on a fingernail and looked around the ER, down at the floor, toward the doors—everywhere but at Dr. Sheehan.  "I dunno.  Musta been a while.  Maybe over an hour 'fore I even know'd about it."

That probably means an hour and a half… or more.  In ninety degree temperatures.

Dr. Sheehan put down his stethoscope; he'd seen and heard enough.  He shook his head at the two nurses helping.  At that moment, the woman finally looked up at him with pleading in her drooping, bloodshot eyes.

Stoned.  Man, not another one.  He nodded to the head nurse, who retreated to contact the police.

"Ain't you gonna bring him back?"  The woman focused on the doors again, shifting repeatedly from one foot to the other.  "You guys is smart.  You can do it, can’t ya?"

***

Mike turned to his running partner.  "Hey, Jim, did you ever take a course at med school on how to be a god?"

"No need.  Everyone at Harvard was already a god."

The two men half-laughed and continued their run through Lincoln Park, in the Windy City—Chicago.

Mike thought about that bumper sticker again.  He might have accepted killing himself with stress, but to kill someone else….  Unacceptable.

And so he ran not just to keep himself in top physical form, or for the sheer love of how it made him feel—he would run regardless of the circumstances.  He also ran to destroy the conniving villainess, to burn stress on the pyres of his determined will.  He settled for running—the second-best destroyer of stress—because as a single man who worked upwards of eighty hours a week, he enjoyed too few opportunities for the preferred alternative.

"Damn, Jim, I really need to get laid."

"Don't look at me, buddy.  It's bad enough listening to you huff and puff behind me on these runs.  I wouldn't care to experience that under different circumstances."

"But don't you think I'm pretty?"

"Yeah.  Pretty ugly."

Running merely required determination and self-discipline, and Doc could do it any time, almost any place, and in almost any kind of weather.  The amusing exchanges he enjoyed with his partner merely lightened the load and improved the impact a bit—the perfect medicine.

"You know, Jim, I'm stuck in a major rut these days.  Might be time to make a change."

"Oh, come on!  Things at General Mercy aren't that bad, are they?"

"It's not just the hospital.  It's the cases I get, the routine—the sad, repetitive, sad, preventable, sad, maddening, sad, disgusting, sad same-old-same-old.  Did I happen to mention how sad it is?"

"Once or twice."

"Hell, I'm not making any difference there.  I wanted to be a doctor for… I don't know… something more."

"What, you want to do a stint as Mother Theresa?"

"But with a stethoscope and a scalpel."

"You're serious."

"Yeah, I think I am."

The two men drifted into a contemplative trance, lost in their zones, running on auto-pilot.  After completing the final two miles of their routine, they purchased bottles of water from a street vendor and sat at a picnic table.

"You know," Jim said, "A friend of mine is one of the top dogs at Doctors without Borders.  I could put you in touch with her."

Mike perked up.  "I've read about them, heard some discussion about the program, but I never really looked into it."

"They're all over the world, so they're pretty wide open, provided you're willing to commit at least six months of your time.  They'd prefer a year."

"Not so long in the grand scheme of things, but would I be happy with the kind of work they do?"

"You might repair cleft palates, set broken bones, perform appendectomies or tonsillectomies, or just give shots and treat malaria or flu.  Depends on where you go and what they need."

When Mike just nodded, Jim continued.  "It's all about the people, Mike.  Isn't that what you're looking for, what you're lacking now?"

"Yeah, I think so.  I need an atmosphere that's a little more… positive."  He wanted to give something back, but more than that, he yearned to make a real difference, to get right into the nitty-gritty of medicine—even better in an environment where he might discover the kind of work that drove him to become a surgeon in the first place.

"I'll call my friend and give her your number.  She can answer all your questions."

"Thanks, that might be just the medicine I need."

Jim shook his head and sighed.  "Of course, that means I have to find someone else to run with—someone as ugly as you so all the girls still look at me."

"You should really invest in a mirror."

***

Six weeks later, Doc Sheehan shuffled through the airport in Buenos Aires.  He discovered, with considerable discomfort, that his destination of Coralinda, Argentina, was too small for the big jets.  Passengers transferred to what he derisively called a puddle-jumper, though what they really needed was a mountain-climber.

Turbulence over the eastern edge of the Andes Mountains converted the small propeller craft into a roller coaster without rails.  Doc looped his feet around the base of the seat in front of him, tightened his white-knuckled death claw on the armrests, and stared at the barf bag sticking out of the pocket in front of him.

I'm not going to puke.  I'm not going to puke.  He couldn’t understand why humans insisted on engaging in the supremely unnatural act of flying.

A teenage girl across the aisle acted as if this was old hat, something over which she needn't even break a sweat.

Geez, Mikey-boy, you’re such a sissy.

One hour, one full barf bag, and zero ounces of remaining pride later, he managed to get his legs under him long enough to wave down a taxi.  He could never get away from an airport fast enough.

The bone-crushing fatigue of jetlag, the last fading remnants of fear, the stress born of the certain knowledge that he would die in a fiery plane crash: these lingered like the remnants of a sweaty nightmare.  Now that he'd survived his ordeal and arrived at his hotel in Coralinda, he needed to de-stress.

He threw on his running gear and hustled out without bothering to unpack.  The concierge directed him to a nearby park with a trail suitable to his requirements.

"Prepare to die, stress," he whispered to no one.

—And there's lots more (I know: I'm such a tease!), but….
The full story is now available as a $0.99 eSingle:

http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Tunnel-Short-Story-ebook/dp/B005G84ARU/ref=sr_1_1::QM...

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/79411

http://www.bookiejar.com/Home/Book/390?cat=17039360