I'm Not Sure G*o*l*f is Therapy

As Usual, my golf weekend began Friday night with a phone call from my partner, Mr. Rat Regan, the history teacher at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle, Maine, who said, "Hey, Hawkeye, be strong tomorrow. We gotta clock those mothers."

"OK, Rat, I'll do my best."

"And try for the hat trick," Rat urged.

Hawkeye's hat trick assures a score of not over 76. It depends, first, on my ability to complete hospital rounds and get home no later than 10:40 a.m. Then, if my wife is in a happy, receptive mood, if the kids are farmed out and the tide is high, the hat trick has a chance. It is this: (1) Make love to wife at 10:50, (2) mix large gin and tonic at 11:05 and (3) take swim at 11:10.

In a good year, the hat trick may happen twice. August eighth was typical of 1970, which was not a good year at all, but the day started auspiciously. When I arose at six a.m., the sun shone and a glance at the cove indicated that the tide was just starting to come in. Finest swimming at 11:10. Downstairs, a peek in the booze closet revealed a new jug of Beefeater. At 6:10, Mary sleepily entered the kitchen. "Rat says I gotta be strong," I told her. "How about the hat trick? If I win today, I'll take you out to dinner."

"The kids are all going to your parents' and I'd like to go out to dinner."

With visions of hat trick and shooting maybe even 73, I drove 50 miles to the hospital, arriving at 7:15. I wanted to make rounds in an hour and be out before anybody showed up to bug me. First I went to the intensive-care unit, where Al Morton, who'd lost his lower esophagus and upper stomach four days earlier, wasn't breathing too well.

"Get a chest X ray," I ordered and went to other patients. At eight o'clock, having seen the other patients, I went to radiology for a look at Al's X ray, which showed fluid in his right chest.

Back in intensive care, I asked for a thoracentesis set. I put a needle in Al's chest and withdrew a syringeful of thin bloody fluid. Probably, I'd gotten into his right pleural cavity at surgery. "Ok," I said, "gimme the vacuum bottles and let's suck this out."

The nurse gave me the proper bottle and looked happy with her efficiency. "Where's the rigamajig I stick into Al and hook into this bottle?" I asked.

"What?"

"Oh, Lord, it really is Saturday. You mean to tell me--oh, never mind. Just somebody find the tubing I need. It's supposed to come with the set."

Four nurses disappeared in four different directions--just like the day the cake of Ivory sank at Procter & Gamble's. Visions of hat trick blurred. Al Morton sat on the edge of his bed, his arms resting on the bedside stand. "What the hell's wrong, Doc?" he asked.

"All that's wrong, Al," I reassured him, "is that you got a quart of bloody juice in your right chest and nobody will provide me with the simple utensils to remove it. If you find this disturbing, think of me. You're hung here anyhow, but I got a shot at the hat trick and eighteen holes of golf."

Finally, a reluctant genie in central supply produced the proper tubing, Al's right pleural cavity was sucked dry and his breathing improved. I raced for the back door, flicked out the light opposite my name, stepped into the parking lot, visions of the hat trick clearly in focus, and heard the noise box say, "Dr. Hawkeye, emergency room." For a moment I kept going, but changed my mind. If it were important, I'd just have to come back. Better face up to it now.

In the emergency room, Dr. Doggy Moore, the general practitioner who sends me cases, said, "Hey, Hawk, you wanta take out an appendix?"

"No."

"Could you make a living without me?"

"No way."

"Then get ready. Examine the kid and change your clothes. I've already scheduled him. He has it."

By 9:30, the diseased appendix was out and the parents made happy. "I suppose you're in a hurry to get to the course," said Doggy. "I got two gall bladders in. You wanta see them now or Monday?"

"Monday."

"Ok, I guess. One of them said she'd just as soon have someone else."

"I'll say hello to them. You got them all worked up? If so, I'll do one Monday and one Tuesday."

"That's a good boy," said Doggy.

I finally left the hospital at 9:50, drove like bell, got home at 10:40 and found Mary mowing the lawn. "You'd think," she said," that with five children and a husband, I wouldn't have to mow this great big lawn all by myself."

"You going to just complain all the time or do you want to go out to dinner tonight?"

"All I know is you better shoot seventy-six today or It'll be the last hat trick you ever get," she said lovingly as she slipped out of her shorts a few minutes later in our bedroom.

The phone rang. "Hawk, this is Clarence. I never figured to catch you home. I got a guy with a pneumothorax in Damariscotta. I think maybe you oughta see him. He's breathing hard."

Damariscotta is on my way to the golf course. Just time to cure pneumothorax and make tee-off time. "Sorry, honey," I said. "No hat trick. Gotta go. See you."

"How about dinner?"

"Sure. I even pay off on good intentions."

Arriving rapidly in Damariscotta, I put a Foley catheter in the patient's third anterior interspace and passed the time of day with Clarence while the lung expanded. At 11:55, I began the final leg of my journey to the Wawenock Country Club, where Dry Hole Pomerleau, the French well driller, inquired, "Where you been, you quack? You think we're going to keep on waiting for you, year in and year out?"

"Shut up and order me a cheeseburger while I get out my clubs."

"How many you knock off this week?" he persisted.

"None, unless you count Frenchmen. I want lunch. I don't want to listen to you."

Moments later, Dry Hole and I joined Rat Regan and Roy Jenkins, the 76-year-old hustler, for lunch in the combination sandwich and pro shop. "I see you're drivin' Benny's Cadillac today," observed Mr. Jenkins.

A year earlier, I'd operated on Benny for carcinoma of the pancreas. Benny lasted just long enough to make a will that bequeathed, to me, his new Cadillac. He did this with charity in his mind but also, I suspect, with malice in his heart. The word at Wawenock is: Don't buy a new car just before you get operated on by Hawkeye. Mr. Jenkins, every Saturday, mentions Benny's Cadillac just before saying, "Doc, you gotta start me two up."

Roy Jenkins--tall, lean, still strong--was Maine Open Champion in 1938 and I couldn't beat him with a rifle, but I always have to listen to his pitch, which, this day, was, "Gawd, Doc, I went fishin' last night. Got a hook caught in my finger. I shouldn't even be out here. Can't grab aholt of a club."

"Get to be ninety and cut off a hand, you old thief," I goad him, "and maybe I'll start you one up."

"I just don't know. When I was a young feller, I never talked to old folks like that."

The phone rang in the pro shop. "It's for you, Hawk," said the kid in charge.

"Hey, Hawkeye," said a happy. professional voice. "Glad I caught you. This is Joe Davis in Skowhegan. I want to talk to you about a guy who got shot in the chest."

"Talk to me, Joe."

"Well, I don't know. He's OK now, but he's got a lot of blood in there."

"You call it, Joe. I'll lay it on the line. I'd like to play golf and then come see him, but if you say come now, I will."

In the background, Jenkins was saying. "Listen to that. Somebody's sick, but that feller there wants to get out of it and play golf."

"Well, I don't know," said Joe.

"Tell you what, Joe. Tap his chest, see how he does, and if you get worried, call here and say it's an emergency. Someone will get me."

On the first tee, Rat Regan said, "You gotta be strong. You made the hat trick, didn't you? I called Mary at ten and she said it looked good."

"Just hit the ball, Rat. You better be strong."

"I just don't think it's fair, Doc," insisted Jenkins. "A big strong young (concluded on page 222)G*o*l*f is Therapy(continued from page 186) feller like you and I'm livin' on a fixed retirement income and you want to play me even."

"One more word and I'll operate on you with my driver."

"It could be worse, Roy," offered Dry Hole. "He could use a scalpel."

The first green at Wawenock is 349 yards from an elevated tee. A drive and a wedge. Stiff from riding, neither soothed nor relaxed by so much as one leg of the hat trick, I swung awkwardly, nearly fanning the ball, which went downhill about 100 yards.

"OK, Hawkeye, baby," said Rat, "not far, but you rammed it right down the middle."

For my second shot, I used a three wood and created a screaming duck hook that caromed off a rock to the left and 30 yards short of the green, bounced through a sand trap and came to rest eight feet from the pin. Dry Hole Pomerleau and Jenkins ignored me completely, but my partner, Rat, offered hearty congratulations. Just before putting, I looked back toward the clubhouse and saw a kid in a golf cart riding down the fairway. This always means a phone call for me and does not help my concentration. I stabbed the putt two feet short and way off line.

"The delicate hands of the surgeon," commented Dry Hole to Jenkins. "How'd you like to get operated on by him?"

"Hey, Hawk, emergency in Skowhegan," said the kid in the golf cart. He took me back to the clubhouse, where Joe Davis asked if he could send the patient to my hospital. I agreed, called there to leave orders and rode back to join my group on the second tee. Waiting for me, they'd had to allow another foursome, including Dud Clement, the undertaker, to go through.

"Well, well," said the prominent funeral director, "if it isn't the Doctor of the Year. I'm hoping for a quiet weekend. You haven't operated on anyone from this area recently, have you?"

"Hit the ball and shut up," I growled.

"We're having our annual convention at the Samoset next week," said Dud. "You're up for re-election. Just think of it. You got a chance of being Doctor of the Year twice in a row!"

"Hey, Dud," asked old man Jenkins," is it true you and Hawkeye is splittin' fees?"

Finally, even without the hat trick, I got it going. After hitting a trap on three and taking a double bogey, I birdied four and was only two over after eight holes when the golf cart came again. No way out this time. I drove 50 miles back to the hospital, where the patient with the gunshot chest was, it turned out, in no real trouble, but I had to be sure.

Arriving home at 5:30, I poured out my woes. "Oh, my poor dear, you've had a hard day, haven't you?" Mary said as she sat on my lap and kissed me. "Tell you what--the tide's too low for swimming, but you could still have two thirds of a hat trick."

"Get away from me, you sex-crazy maniac," I ordered, pushing her out of my lap. "Just bring me a great big gin and tonic."