Milk, Cookies and Mnemonics
“I thought you’d be at the airport with Gramps to pick us up!”
Melissa dashed into her sister’s room through the bathroom that connected their bedrooms at Miller’s Bluff. One look from her twin stopped her in her tracks.
“Oh, Cake, what’s wrong?”
Helena Thompson looked up from her desk. There were three text books opened on the table and a notebook she was filling with copious notes in her small but utterly neat handwriting. Without hesitation she flew into her sister’s arms. “Oh Mel.” She spoke softly, less a whisper than a quiet sob.
“What is it Helena? What’s wrong?” Melissa hugged her sister tightly, realizing quickly that Helena had lost weight since she’d last seen her.
“I can’t do this Sis! I’m going to flunk out! And I can’t talk to Dad or Gramp about it, and so I can’t talk to Mom or Gramma either or they’d tell. All I could do was wait for you to get here.” Helena clung tightly and buried her face against her sister’s shoulder and wept.
“Flunk out?” Melissa immediately dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. She understood completely why Helena couldn’t talk to parents or grandparents. Helena was carrying the banner of Medical Doctor into the next generation. A banner Melissa herself had been ducking since she was about six. But Helena wanted this, and declared her intentions at about that same age. Besides, Helena was a perfectionist, trying to think of her doing less than stellar at anything was almost impossible. “How could you possibly flunk out? You’ve been wanting this your whole life.”
Helena backed a pace away and nodded, trying to stop the tears. “Wanting this, yes. But I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”
Melissa glanced toward the door, expecting parental units to burst through at any moment. She put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “Look pal, I’ve gotta go get my suitcase before Dad decides to bring it up for me and spots you. But I’ll tell ‘em you’re already sacked out and I’m tired too. I’ll be right back, then you’ll spill all, okay?”
Helena nodded. “Okay.” She nodded again and leaned forward to kiss her sister’s cheek. “Okay. I’ll be right here.”
“Good. Be right back.” Melissa locked the door to the hallway and vanished back through the bathroom to her own bedroom.
Helena took one of the large books from the desk and curled up in the middle of her bed with it, once again pouring over its contents.
In a jiffy, Mel dashed down the back stairs to the kitchen. Her father was just walking in the back door with her bright red suitcase. “I’ll take it, Dad.”
Robert Thompson nodded. “Tell your sister to come down for a while. Your mother says she’s been up there studying all evening.”
“I just checked on her and she’s sound asleep,” Melissa said, taking a bowl from a cupboard and snatching a handful of freshly baked cookies to fill it. She opened the refrigerator and took a carton of milk as well, balancing the bowl and carton in one hand and suitcase in the other. “And I’m really bushed too. We’ll see you in the morning.” She reached up to kiss her father and he bent down to offer her his cheek. With a quick smack, Melissa headed up the stairs, suitcase thump-thump-thumping behind her.
In short order she had exchanged her traveling clothes for a pair of flannel pajamas from the chest of drawers in her room and returned to her sister’s room with the cookies and milk.
“Did you talk to Mom and Gram at all?” Helena asked, moving from the bed to don her own pajamas.
“Yeah, briefly. They’ll be cool with it. I already told Mama I’d ride with her at the crack of dawn, and Gram is in full party mode anyhow. I’m still holding a grudge over you sending Gramps alone to pick up me and Dad. Gramps did give me a chance to grab some coffee and a quick sandwich before Dad’s plane got in, but afterwards, there was no stopping for dinner, and the car was like a tomb!”
Mel pulled back the antique quilt and climbed under the covers. Texas could be hot and humid for Thanksgiving, or cold and blustery, depending on which way the wind blew. This year cold was winning over hot and the old furnace rarely pushed much warm air to the second floor. Melissa took a bite of one of the cookies she brought, cut and decorated like an angel, it was a work of art, but Mel barely noticed. She drank milk directly from the carton.
“That’s what you get for showing up so late. If you’d flown in yesterday I would have been there with you when my ride dropped me off.”
“Your ride? Wait a minute, you were flying in from New Orleans!”
Helena gave a sly smile. “Well, I did fly. Lee flew me over from Houston.”
“Lee? The space guy you’d told me about?”
“He’s an astronaut.”
“Sister dear, we have a lot to talk about.” She held the covers open and Helena crawled in beside her, taking a large round cookie of her own that was decorated to look like a turkey with multicolored feathers and a large red waddle. “Where do you want to start, Lee, or flunking out of med school?”
At the reminder Helena looked distressed again. “Mel, what will I tell them all? It’s not like they won’t find out at the end of the semester when they see my grades.”
“I’m still trying to figure out how the great brain of the Thompson family can flunk out. Honey, if you can’t pass med school, no one can.”
Helena looked miserable and began tracing the zig-zag pattern of the old quilt in her lap. “It’s my fault. First of all, I let myself get distracted.”
“By Lee?”
Helena nodded. Melissa urged her to take another cookie and passed her the carton of milk. Helena took a long swallow then began telling her story.
She had been so excited about starting medical school. She and Caprice rented an apartment in New Orleans close to the campus and she was more than ready to go back to school in the fall. Melissa had left school as if shot out of a cannon, and hadn’t returned to the US until this week. Helena had readied herself for med school. She bought her school books and plunged into her classes and bookwork with her usual verve.
Labor Day weekend, she was invited to a party on Saturday night. Caprice had insisted she attend. The party was at a friend’s apartment which was soon overflowing. Caprice and a couple of others swept Helena away to the French Quarter and in one of the clubs they met up with a party of Air Force Officers on leave. One of them was Lee. Tall, dark and handsome, he caught Helena’s attention and held it. As many weekends as possible, he had returned to New Orleans from Houston, where he was stationed. Helena studied during the week, but it wasn’t enough and she knew it.
“So you’ve got to pull your test scores up?” Melissa asked.
“It’s not like that in med school. I’ve got to know this stuff. It’s not just cram for the next test and forget it. I have to know it without hesitation. Someone’s life may depend on it.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Helena took Melissa’s arm as she reached for the last cookie. “Things like the bones in your wrist. Every one of them has a different name, a different function.” She took Melissa’s hand and moved it so that the wrist flexed in each direction. “All those bones work together to make your wrist move smoothly. If you need to give orders to treat one of those bones, you better treat the right one, or someone would be crippled for life.”
Melissa looked at her wrist, flexing it herself as her sister let go. She didn’t notice Helena snatch the last cookie until it was in her hand. Helena smiled and broke the cookie in half and handed half to Melissa.
“So what are the names of these little bones?” Melissa asked, taking a last swig of milk from the carton, then handing it to Helena to finish off.
Helena counted them off on her fingers. “The Hamate, Trapezoid, Trapezium, Scaphoid, Lunate, Triquetral, Pisiform and…” she sighed. “I always miss one.” She shook her head. “I’m impossible at this.”
“Don’t panic, Cake. You’ll get it. You just need a mnemonic like Mama taught us when we were kids. Remember? Mother Very Easily Made A Jelly Sandwich Under No Protest.”
Helena smiled. “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.”
“That’s it. An important one if you’re going to date an astronaut.”
Both girls giggled.
“Let me see that book of yours.”
Helena pulled the book over between them and opened it up to the page she had been studying. “These are the nerves in the face.
Cranial nerves :
· From I to XII:
Olfactory
Optic
Occulomotor
Trochlear
Trigeminal
Abducens
Facial
Vestibulocochlear
Glossopharyngeal
Vagus
Accessory
Hypoglossal
Melissa spotted her notebook on the desk. Helena saw her glance and bounced out of bed to retrieve it and the purple pen beside it.
“Mmm. Lots of ‘O’s.”
“Well optic is the eye and olfactory has to do with the nose.”
“We’ll have to think up a good one. Do they need to be in order like the planets?”
“I think it would help.”
Melissa listed the words down the page and tapped her pen against the page as she thought. “How about this?”
Helena looked over her shoulder as Melissa wrote ‘On Occasion, Old Tim Taylor Asks For Very Good Vagina And Head’.
Helena gave a gasp. “That was our bio teacher in high school.”
“And he was a dirty old man if there ever was one. You should be able to remember that shouldn’t you?”
“The mental image is now burned into my brain,” Helena said with a laugh.
“You’ll remember it better if it’s spicier.”
“Spicy yes, but Mr. Taylor? Ick.”
“Where are those wrist bones you were telling me about?”
Helena turned to a different chapter, pointed out the diagram and read off the names of the tiny bones: Scaphoid, Lunate, Triquetrium, Pisiform, Trapezium, Trapezoid, Capate, Hamate.”
“Wow, a wrist is more complex than I knew.”
“Remember when we were nine and you broke your wrist while rollerskating? That’s the bone you broke.” Helena pointed out a small bone with a piece that stuck up on one side.
“And you remembered that?” Melissa asked with amazement.
Helena just nodded, studying the diagram again, tracing the way the bones interlocked.
Melissa looked at the names of the bones she had written. With a smile at her sister she quickly wrote: “Some Lovers Try Posititions That They Can’t Handle.”
Helena looked at the sentence. “Who could forget that?”
“So, no worries,” Melissa said brightly, using a phrase picked up on a recent trip. We’ll go through the book together and have you up to speed in a flash and still plenty of time to see Lee.”
First Helena smiled and blushed then she looked bleak. Her sister sensed there was more.
“There’s something else.”
Helena nodded. She gathered up book and notebook and returned it to her desk.
“What is it?”
“You know I told you Lee flew me to Austin yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he picked me up in New Orleans on Saturday and took me to Houston.”
“Ooh, Helena, I want details of all heavy breathing. This is so not like you!”
Helena arranged her things neatly on the desk. Flushing furiously. “Mel!”
“Keep talking. What’s wrong? Did he hurt you or something?” Melissa crawled out of bed, ready to do battle.
Helena headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Melissa followed.
“Nothing like that. He was incredibly sweet. And he had arranged for me to meet Dr. Shaw. Remember, I did a report on his work last year?”
“That space medicine doctor?”
“That’s the one.”
“Hey! Did you sleep with him too?”
Helena’s mouth was full of foam and she splattered it all over the mirror. “Mel? How could you even think such a thing? That’s just… gross.” She snatched a towel and began wiping the foam off the mirror in front of her.
“How would I know. I come home to find you crying and talking about flunking out of med school when we both know it’s what you’ve wanted all your life.” Her eyes narrowed. “Did this Dr. Shaw guy try to hit on you or cop a feel or something.”
Rinsing and spitting, Helena shook her head. She wiped her mouth and said, “No, nothing like that. He was wonderful. Lee met him at some meeting last month and told him about me – that I was interested in space medicine. Dr. Shaw’s sponsorship could mean everything. He told Lee that some time while I was visiting, he would show me around the hospital in Houston. That’s when Lee suggested I spend the weekend with him. My anatomy professor had a family reunion to go to this week and cancelled class, so it seemed like a perfect time. When Lee heard about that, he arranged for me to meet with Dr. Shaw on Monday and spend the day with him and then he flew me over to Austin on Tuesday.”
“Did he meet Gramps?”
“No, I told Mama he was flying me over and begged her to help me keep from this becoming a chance to scrutinize him by the whole family, so she told Granpa that she wanted to do some shopping in Austin and she’d pick me up. So she came alone.”
“Did she meet Lee?”
“Briefly. He shook her hand and was polite and then headed to file his flight plan back to Houston. You know how busy airports are this week. But I was telling you about Dr. Shaw. His specialty is space Medicine and that’s what all his research is in. But he works at a teaching hospital and after visiting with me for a while and talking about his research he turned me over to one of the doctors and we went all over with a group of residents and interns. We saw an amazing array of patients.
“We went into this one room. There were four beds but only two were occupied. The first bed had the curtains drawn and we went to the bed on the other end of the room. The resident was reporting on the case. The man was grossly obese, had diabetes and deteriorating circulation, especially in his feet. He also had dementia.
“Just then, the resident’s pager went off and he excused himself to go return the call, telling the group of interns I was with to take a five minute break. The interns scattered and before I could figure out where to go, I was alone in the room with the two patients. As I turned to leave the patient stirred and I looked back at him. I was curious about what the resident called dry gangrene. He said it was on the patient’s feet, and I thought if I just lifted the edge of the sheet I could see it.”
Helena paused. Melissa lay next to her, sensing that this was what was upsetting Helena the most. “Well? Did you look? Were you totally grossed out? Did you barf or something?”
Helena shook her head and continued. “Dry gangrene isn’t like wet gangrene, the kind people usually hear about, which is smelly and rotten and gooey. With dry gangrene, things just dry out and… flake off. Mel, when I pulled up that sheet, his toes stuck to the sheet and four of them fell off!”
“They what?”
“They fell off! Two were laying on the bed, and two rolled onto the floor and under the bed!”
“Oh how gross! Was he bleeding? Did he scream?”
“He was comatose. I almost screamed. And I couldn’t figure out what to do. I’d just maimed a patient! They’d probably kick me out of the hospital. Maybe even out of med school.”
“What did you do?”
“I crawled under the bed, grabbed the toes and put them back under the sheet. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
”Well I’d have run screaming out of the room by now. And I wouldn’t have touched those toes. So I’m pretty certain of the two of us you’re going to make the
best doctor.”
Helena hugged her sister, crying again. “But you don’t understand. I’m not supposed to harm anyone.”
“Come on, Helena.” Melissa said, trying to comfort her sister. “What could you have done differently? After all, you already said he wasn’t bleeding to death or anything. If he had been, you would have helped, right?”
In the dark room Helena nodded against her sister’s shoulder. Melissa rolled over and grabbed a tissue from the night stand. “What happened next?”
“Just as I got the covers back over the foot and toes, one of the interns came back for me. They realized I hadn’t come along. They were very friendly and I probably looked like an idiot. I was in such a daze. When the resident returned, we went back in to the patient. That’s when I thought I’d get sick. But I just stood there. He talked about the treatment for a kidney problem related to the diabetes and almost as an afterthought pulled back the sheet from the toes. I thought I was going to die.”
“And?”
“And he scooped up the toes and dropped them in the trash without a word. He moved right on to the next patient like it was no big deal. I was too stunned to ask questions. And too embarrassed.”
“No one else asked about it either?”
Helena shook her head.
“Honey, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up about this. If they treated it normally, you have to too.” She gave Helena another tissue. “Look, you could ask Grandpa about this dry gangrene, see if that’s normal.”
“Not exactly something you bring up in dinner conversation.”
“No, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it while I’m eating. Really, Helena, those of us who don’t have the stomach for being a doctor don’t like to hear about body parts falling off while we’re eating. But Grandpa likes this doctor shit. Tell him about it when he sneaks out after breakfast to have a smoke.”
“He what?”
“He goes to ‘check on the quarry’. I go with him a lot. That’s when he has his cigars.”
“But they’re not good for him.”
“Don’t be an old maid, Helena. I think after fifty or sixty years of checking the quarry, he’s not in imminent danger of keeling over. Gramma knows what he’s doing. She just doesn’t like cigar smoke in the house. Go with him in the morning and tell him it happened to a friend. And don’t cry,” she admonished.
“Maybe I will.” Helena said in a small voice. Just having told the story seemed to allow her to relax.
“And tomorrow night, you tell me all about Lee.” Mel smoothed her sister’s hair back fondly.
“Yeah, and you’ll tell me about your trip? Where did you like best?”
Melissa turned onto her back. “There were lots of beautiful places. And friendly people.” She yawned. “But I tell you, those Australians know how to party. And their accent is so incredibly sexy.” She turned as Helena’s breathing evened out and with a smile, joined her sister in sleep.”
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