Chapter 19: A Tearful Goodbye.

My recovery was going splendidly, except for developing cirrhosis from drinking so much rubbing alcohol. Dr. Hardbeef assured me that, "pain is the cleanser" and that, "cleanser is even more the cleanser," handing me a bottle of Liquid Plumber to imbibe. "That oughtta flush the evil gnomes right out of you, who I'm positive have taken up residence in your liver and are poking it with their little gnomey hats," he explained.

Dr. Hardbeef had a unique outlook on the field of medicine, one built on years of gritty urban trauma room experience, and the voodoo teachings of the tribe who found him suckling from a she-wolf and taught him their rituals. He had spent three months at the Jamaican Rastafarian School of Interesting Medicine before deciding that he would learn more by cutting up the living instead of the training cadavers. After all, the living could tell him things like, "Ouch!" and "Put that back."

He had briefly played a doctor on television in the Mexican Soap, "Salsa con Queso," appearing in two of its six episodes, and then wore the scrubs to his interview at Fort Lauderdale Presbyterian. They were so impressed that he came dressed and ready to work, they hired him on the spot. They were a very, very bad hospital.

My roommate, having failed in her efforts to transfer to a licensed medical facility, continued to whine and moan about her terminal state. Blah, blah cancer, blah blah constant agony. Sure, she may have been the one with a tumor the size of a European car, but I was the one truly suffering. Dr. Edwards failed to amuse her with his antics, and over time a part of him died. The part that gave a damn and tried to help cheer patients, and the part that took showers. By and by he appeared in our room without his clown nose, and after Dr. Hardbeef dismounted me and went about his rounds, I listened in on their conversation.

"Dr. Edwards," she began, completely refusing to call him "Hawkeye" despite his pleadings, "I've decided to end my life, and I want you to help me." Dr. Edwards looked perplexed at first, and then asked if she preferred to be smothered with her pillow or have an anvil dropped upon her from a great height. Before she could finish her little spiel about saying goodbye to loved ones and amending her will, the kindly doctor tired of waiting and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, wasting her with a shot straight into the face. "Oh no," he muttered to himself, contemplating the mess, "it's just like Pittsburgh General all over again! Oh why, why must I always give in to the sweet, beckoning siren song of the voices?"

Dr. Edwards turned and looked at me. He was panicking. Surely he wouldn't be getting the paid time off he had been looking forward to. "My home planet will never take me back now," he lamented, still in disbelief at his latest failure of control. He then scurried out of the room, screaming the word "Jumanji" over and over again.

Dr. Hardbeef ran in, having heard both the shot and the screaming. "Damn," he said, looking at the bloody fragments of skull and bedpan that littered the room. "He always goes and does this when I'm down in radiology. I always miss out on the fun!" He swiped his gloved finger along a bloody smudge on the wall and then tasted it. "Yep, just as I suspected. Brains."

"But anyway," he said, turning to me, "your insurance has refused to cover your treatment here, and you're being discharged. So I guess this is goodbye." His eyes filled with tears, tears of not getting to screw me silly anymore. He reached into his jacket pocket. "Here, have a handful of loose unpackaged pills. I'm not sure what they all do, but they're all sorts of different shapes and sizes, and I think the blue ones will make you erect for hours." He closed my fist around them, and they felt nice and pill-ish in my grasp.

"Please, Katrina, don't say any more. I want to remember you like this, in a skimpy paper nightgown soaked with pieces of someone else's cranium, reeking of lye-based drain cleaner and the combined genetic material of all the interns who have visited your bedside. And I want you to remember me like I am, a ripe specimen of physical perfection. Goodbye."

But I couldn't leave, I desperately wanted to stay and continue my therapy, or at least take some rubbing alcohol to go. "Damn West Belgium Blue Cross / Purple Horseshoe! I know this is the work of my archnemesis Sergei, for his dream for years has been to increase premiums and copays! Damn them to hell!" I burst into tears and grabbed Dr. Hardbeef by the lapels, smearing half-crushed pills across his milk white coat. "Surely there's some way I can pay for my treatment," I suggested, pulling his face between my breasts and dry-humping his knee.

"Yes, there is," he answered. "Your wages, should you ever have any, will be garnished to cover the cost plus interest." And with those words, he composed himself, smoothed his hair back, leaving little pill bits flecked across his oily mane, and straightened his tie. "Goodbye, Katrina, and no matter what anyone tells you, I'm not the father."

And so I found myself on the curb outside, in a gown that left my ass exposed and with nary an idea what to do next. I was farther than ever from reclaiming my throne, since they generally don't let you have your ass exposed during inaugurations. Pants... Pants were my new mission. But first some rubbing alcohol. All that begging had made me thirsty and sober.