Part 1 was published yesterday, 12/28/23
Since Forbes was a relatively small base, there were only ten physicians assigned to care for all the personnel – soldiers, wives, and kids. Every tenth night it was my turn to work in the ER.
One evening, a few months after my experience with Capt. Daniels, I was treating a ten-year-old boy for a sore throat, when Corporal Lewis, my medical corpsman, came into the treatment room with a confused look on his face.
“What’s going on, Corporal?”
“There’s a Capt. Daniels in the waiting room. When he came in, he saw your name on the board, and said, “What the fuck! Is there another doctor on call?”
“You can come back tomorrow, I said. He showed me his hand. He has a six-inch laceration that can’t wait. Definitely needs suturing.”
I smiled.
“What?”
“Tell you later. Please put him in the other treatment room and prep him.”
Five minutes later I entered the treatment room, and Daniels could hardly look at me. “Hi, Capt. Daniels,” I said, with a smile. “What happened?”
“I was doing some woodworking at home. Cut myself.”
I looked at the cut and nodded. “Okay. I’ll take care of it.”
I whispered to Corporal Lewis to get me a few things. He came back in the room with an eight-inch suturing needle, big enough to sew up an elephant, and a saw used to perform amputations.
He placed them on the table next to Daniels, stifled a grin and faced away.
“What the fuck! What’s that shit for? Doc! What are you doing?”
“It won’t hurt. It’s best that I do this without anesthesia. It’ll heal better.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind. Doc, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did. Please. This isn’t right!”
For twenty seconds I kept a straight face and then burst out laughing.
Daniels stared at me, trying to fathom what this was all about.
I walked over, patted him on the back, and told him to relax. I took a tiny suture needle out of the drawer, drew up some lidocaine, numbed the area, and carefully sutured his laceration.
When I was done, he gave me a hug. “We good now, doc?”
I smiled. “We’re good, captain.”
Have a wonderful holiday! Enjoy a good read.
#Airforce, #Vietnamwar, #humor, #airforcepsychiatrist, #mysterynovels
Inside The Mind of a Psychiatrist 