I approached the box circumspectly and nudged it with my boot. Nothing. Crap! I picked it up and jiggled it forcefully. Skunky shot out like a bat out of hell and raced for the tree line. She stopped about 50 feet away and turned around to watch me warily. With one eye on Skunky, I gently shook the eight babies out. I took a few steps back and waited for them to trundle off to their mother. Instead, they all came to me. I backed away some more, but they continued following me and making mewling noises. Then it dawned on me. They want me to feed them again! I pulled the last tin of sardines out of my pocket, opened it and put the fish on the ground. Eight baby skunks huddled at my feet and had an early supper. While they were busy eating I picked up the trap box and walked to the truck. When I turned for one final look Skunky was strolling over to join her offspring.

For This I Went to Med School? (Quiet, Sméagol!)

I call the 60 minutes between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. the Jethro Hour. That’s when the bars close and dozens of our city’s brightest and best stagger out into the streets to engage in the time-honoured tradition of nocturnal brawling. Once the punch-ups have concluded, the vanquished slowly make their way to the nearest ER to get their boo-boos fixed. It’s les gueules cassées, ‘Peg-style. Funny, but I can’t seem to recall anyone mentioning this aspect of medicine during the Career Week lectures I attended in Grade 12. Stimulating work, saving lives, good pay: yes. Mangled drunks hurling on your shoes: no. Perhaps I nodded off during that part of the presentation.

A few nights ago I was working a shift at my regular ER. At about 2:00 a.m. the charge nurse handed me a chart and said, “Wait’ll you see this guy!” Man, I hate it when she says that. Nine times out of 10 it ends up being something that makes me pine for early retirement. “Sorry I wasn’t able to get much of a history,” she continued. “His friend basically dragged him in, poured him onto the triage desk and took off. When I asked him what the big hurry was he said something about wanting to get back to the bar before last call.” Ah, true loyalty. I went in to have a gander at my latest prize.

The patient dozing on the stretcher was a 25-year-old man in a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, disintegrating jeans and a pair of army boots several decades past their prime. An impressive array of contusions and abrasions covered his face. His brown, shoulder-length mullet was thoroughly caked with dried blood.

“Whoa, what happened to you?” I asked.

He opened his eyes, sat up groggily and gave me a lopsided grin.

“I have no idea, doc.”

The facial contusions didn’t look too bad, but he had four or five scalp lacerations that were going to require stitches. As I gathered my suturing paraphernalia I tried to jog his memory.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Pulling up to the bar in my buddy Dave’s old beater. We finished off our road beers in the car before we went inside.”

“And then… ?”

“Totally blank.”

I gave him my patented Gregorian monk head shave and sutured the gashes on his scalp. He was a good sport about it. In fact, he monologued non-stop the entire time. After 20 minutes of listening to him rabbit on about his top-10 retro bands, his all-time favourite concert experiences and why stoned is so much more mellow than drunk, I turfed him down the hall to the radiology suite for a CT scan of his head.

Half an hour later he was back.

“Hey, doc, I can remember some more now!”

“Yes?”

“Inside the bar I got into a major argument with this guy over who was the greatest band of all time. I said obviously Guns N’ Roses ruled, but he kept insisting it was Mötley Crüe. Can you believe that? What a moron!”

“Indeed. So, what happened next?”

“Not a clue.”

An ambulance arrived with a patient in florid congestive heart failure. After dealing with that case I logged on to one of the diagnostic imaging computers and reviewed Amnesia Boy’s CT scan. It looked fine. On my way past his room I popped in to give him a quick update.

“Good news – your scan’s normal.”

“Excellent! Rock on, dude! Hey, I remember even more now!”

“Yes?”

“Yeah, I remember me and Dave snuck out to the parking lot around 1:30 to have a little hoot of sinsemilla. It was, like, totally wicked, man!”

“Great. And then… ?”

“After we finished we looked up and saw the Crüe fanboy staring at us from across the parking lot.”

“Uh-huh… .”

“He was holding a baseball bat.”

I could see where this was heading.

“For some reason Dave took off, but I was kinda curious about something, so I jogged over to the guy to ask him a question.”

“What did you ask him?”

“Hey dude, what’s the bat for?”

So There You Have It, Folks

         A brief account of how a city slicker wound up becoming a denizen of the country. As you can probably tell, I thoroughly enjoyed rural living. For those of you who have never ventured beyond your city’s perimeter for any prolonged duration, perhaps you should consider giving it a try. You may be pleasantly surprised!

         A glimpse into the world of medicine and the mind of your average family physician and ER doc. Now you can almost hazard a guess as to what the person on the other end of the stethoscope is thinking. As you can see, it's generally something positive. Except for when it isn’t. JK!

         The tale of how Jan and I met, had three daughters, and raised them. Ellen is now 19, Kristen is 18 and Alanna is 17. As you can imagine, there’s a whole lot of estrogen floating around in our house. Living with three teenage girls is a real challenge. Some days I feel like pulling my hair out! Oh, wait a minute – I have no hair… .

Biography

Donovan Gray was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1962. After spending several years in Jamaica, Bermuda and Quebec, his family eventually moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Donovan has always enjoyed both writing and the sciences, and in 1983 he found himself having to make an unusual choice: honours English or medical school? In the end, he opted for the latter. In 1990 he graduated from the University of Manitoba with a degree in family and emergency medicine. After a year of ER work in downtown Winnipeg he moved to rural Ontario to start a practice, and shortly thereafter, a family.

Rural medicine's perpetual challenges and unpredictable work hours often led to Donovan being wide awake in a silent home in the middle of the night - optimal conditions for writing! Over the years an eclectic series of short stories, anecdotes and vignettes emerged. Much like primary care medicine, the collection covers the full spectrum of the human experience – from birth to death; from the trivial to the life-threatening; from the uproarious to the sombre. There are even occasional detours into the realm of the bizarre.

In 2004 Donovan, his wife Janet and their three daughters heeded the call of extended family and returned to Winnipeg. He is currently a full-time ER physician at the Victoria General Hospital. Once the north gets into your blood it’s hard to get it out, though, so he continues to do regular locums in northern Ontario.

In the one hour per day when he isn't working, parenting, writing or miles deep in REM, Donovan enjoys gym-ratting, running, comics, movies, photography and participating in zany meetings with an all-guy book club.

Donovan has contributed medical short stories to the Medical Post as well as the National Post. Front-running titles for his next book are Night of the Living Jethros and Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be ER Docs. He also hasn’t ruled out Fifty Years of Gray!