Stranger than Fiction.

                                                  Strange than Fiction.   Pt.1.

                             

            When I got home there was a message that Tom had been admitted to hospital again  and he wanted to talk to me.  I dropped in to see him the following  morning.    I could see he was quite agitated as well as depressed.

            "How are you?" I asked.  It was obvious he was not good.

            "Not so good," he said.  He looked awful.  "I wanted to talk to you".

            "About what?"

            "Well, remember the last time I was in hospital with depression and you came to see me?"

              I nodded

            "I told you that there were three major problems that were troubling me,” he said.
              I nodded again.

            "I told you about two of them. One was the upsetting circumstances around my father's death, and the other related to a medical malpractice case, still ongoing in the old country.”.

            "Yes, I recall," I said.

            "The third issue I've never told you or anyone else about," he said diffidently.  "I want you to promise me you'll never breathe a word of this to anyone.  I think this has a lot to  do with my depression."  He looked at me expectantly, awaiting an answer.. 

              If  he'd never told this to anyone before. I wondered why he had decided to tell  me.  We always got on well enough together but we'd never been particularly close friends.

            "All right," I said.

            "I was about twenty-eight at the time and I'd had a really severe couple of bouts of depression that required hospitalization.   I had decided I would never want children, depression ran in the family.  My father had committed suicide.  After a lot of talking and support by my psychiatrist,  I managed to convince one of urologists that I should have a vasectomy.   That done, I went about the business of living, my disorder under control and things going along quite satisfactorily.

            He looked at me as though expecting some sort of comment.  I said nothing.

            He continued, "Soon after that I met Ann and fell in love with her.  We had a whirlwind romance and I asked her to marry me.  I told her about my depression but not about my vasectomy.   I decided to have the vasectomy reversed and knew the technique was improving daily."

            He stopped, took a drink of water from the bedside table and then continued.

            "I talked about a reversal of the procedure to a urological colleague and he agreed.  I made up my mind to tell Ann that weekend.  Now the idea of starting a family seemed desirable and with the progress psychiatry had made  in the management of depression I decided that was what I'd  like to do.  It had suddenly become urgent that I explained all this to Ann.  

            His gazed expressionlessly at me as he thought about the way things had unfolded. He told me he had come home ready to discuss and explain.  It was a Tuesday night and he came into the house as the sun was setting. 

            "Hi darling," Ann called, cheerfully.

            "Hello," he said Putting his arms around her as she stood at the sink.

            “Darling,” she said, “I have some wonderful news for you.” 

            He had no idea what she was about to tell him, he felt nervous, for some reason.

            “Oh what? he asked.

            “Darling, I went to see Dr. Woolfe today and guess what.  I'm pregnant!”

            He felt his heat racing and he said he thought for a moment he was going to faint. 

            He stopped his narrative and came back to the present.  He looked at me for a moment as  and tears seemed to well up in his eyes.

            Then he went on.  “I couldn't say anything to her, and I told her I was delighted..  We went to dinner that Saturday night and Ann had a wonderful evening.”

            I stole a look at my watch.  I had a clinical conference due to start five minutes ago.

            He saw me.  “Just give me another minute,” he said, “There’s worse to come. We had a lovely little boy and I grew to love him, even though I knew he wasn’t mine. She got pregnant again a year later and I didn't say anything then, either.  I was desperately afraid of  losing her.  Of course I hadn't had my vasectomy reversed and so here I am with two children who weren’t mine and a wife who was impregnated by someone else..

            The story certainly surprised me and I didn't have much to say.   I muttered that if there was anything I could do, to let me know and I'd got to go now.

            A couple of weeks later Tom seemed to have responded well to his treatment and seemed to be functioning normally again.  I thought might be able to function in  his normal capacity as the head of the Department of Neurosurgery.. However, when I talked to my friends who worked in the same department, the Department of Neurosurgery, they seemed to feel differently and thought he was functioning marginally at best.

            Some days later, I was sitting in my office going through the mountain of useless mail that department heads waste a great deal of time reading carefully in case of missing something of vital importance.  I was not disturbed by a knock on my office door.

            “Come in,” I said relieved to be interrupted. 

            The door opened and Hugh Dalton edge round it.

            “Listen. old man,” he said,”  I hope it’s not inconvenient but can I have a few moments of your time?”

            He surreptitiously pulled his still smoking pipe out of his pocket.  This was just at the beginning of the days when the witch hunt against smokers was gathering momentum.

            “Certainly, sit down,” I said. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

            “No,” he said.  I want to talk to about Tom; I know you're a friend of his.”

            “Somewhere between a friend and an acquaintance,” I said, “but we have had some social and professional interaction and he does confide in me on occasion.”

            Hugh looked serious. “As you probably know, the department members are not wildly enthusiastic about him as a department head.  I think they're prepared to give him a chance but they are certainly not unanimous in their support of him.  Recently there have been some funny goings on and as a previous department head they asked me to look into the situation.  Maybe the job is just too much for him.” 

            “What sort of goings on, Hugh,” I asked.

            “Well there was a Board Meeting going on, on April the first, to discuss the future of the Neurosurgery Department.   When Tom finished up in the operating room,  he excused himself for a few moments, apparently for a bathroom break and then came back and remarked with a grin on his face, in an inappropriate manner, that April fools day was a very appropriate day for the board to be meeting.  Just as he was saying this an acute emergency call came over the intercom directing the 99 Team to the boardroom.  Of course all the emergency measures were put into action and when the emergency team burst into the boardroom with the crash cart and all the paraphernalia, the astonished board members assured them that no one was ill or had collapsed or was in danger.  After the confusion subsided it was recognized that this was someone's sick idea of an April Fool's joke”.

             He paused and a grave look crossed his face. 

            “The problem is,” he continued, “that one of the operating room nurses who was passing by the phone outside the operating room heard Tom making a call and overheard the words “emergency in the board room”.

            He stopped and looked as though he expected me to say something.

            “What are you going to do about it? I asked him.

            “Look Old  Man,” he said pulling his pipe out of his pocket again, “do you mind if I smoke?.”  Hugh closed the door.

            “No I don't mind.” I said. I still enjoyed the aromatic smell of pipe tobacco although I had given up my pipe a couple of years earlier.

            He tamped down the partially smoked tobacco in his pipe, pulled out his matches and puffed pleasurably at his pipe, all the time in deep thought.  For a moment he seemed to vanish in a cloud of bluish smoke and then he continued. 

            “To tell you the truth, the members of the department really want to get rid of this fellow.  To make things worse, he recently wrote his Canadian Fellowship and failed.  Since his license is only provisional the question arises as to whether it will be renewed at the end of the year.  I really don't know what the outcome of this will be.”

            I had promised Tom I would tell no one of his personal problems and didn't know how much of this, if any, Hugh was aware of.

            “Perhaps,” I said,” the solution would be to have him step down as department head and to function as a surgeon within the department.  I think all this administrative responsibility may be just too much for him.”

            “That's another problem,” Hugh said, “his surgical skills are also in question, at least by some members of the department.  We recently found out that there is some medico- legal matter in U.K. that is still unresolved.

            Of course I knew about that but said nothing and was thinking about how to reply when there was a knock at the door.

            The nurse opened the office door, looked shocked at the cloud of smoke within, and had the obligatory coughing spell that non-smokers feel compelled to display in the presence of a smoker before speaking.

            “Dr.” she said, “you have patients waiting.” 

             I said, “I’ll be right there.”

            Hugh stood up to leave, stuffing his still fuming pipe back into his pocket.

             “I better let you carry on with your work,” he said and a thin line of smoke followed him out of the room.

            “Yes,” I said and went back to work.
Look next week for the rest of this Stranger than Fiction  story!