JANUARY 24, 2024 – Blogger’s note: Having concluded three posts ago my series, The Sales Job, I now commence another series of job-related posts under the rubric, War Stories. For the most part they are light-hearted, but in the course of amusement, some tales will offer my observations about law, business, politics, and more general facets of the human condition. I hope that at one level or another you will find the stories interesting, entertaining or otherwise fetching. Here goes . . .
INTRODUCTION
Everyone who has ever held a job has stories about it; more and longer jobs—more and longer stories. I know many people who’ve had head-twirling experiences in the line of vocational duty. Invariably their stories entertain; often they edify. Some tales are so improbable, they warrant special framing and display.
An example of the “you can’t make this up” kind is the story our Czech friend, Dr. Pavel Šebesta, told about his ER job early in his career. Now a long-time heart surgeon and all-but-professional photographer living in Praha, Pavel began his professional life during the Communist regime. Fresh out of medical school, he was sent to an outpost serving a rural area some distance from home—from the three-in-one capital of high culture, the old Holy Roman Empire, and erstwhile Czechoslovakia, now the venerable Czech Republic.
He was assigned to the graveyard shift in the emergency section of the provincial hospital, so-called. One night his peace and boredom were shattered by the clamorous entrance of an old but feisty farm couple. The two country Czechs—man and woman—were shouting venom and striking each other with angry blows. Neither combatant was getting much physical purchase on the other, but their profane words were full of barbs, casting off sparks and dripping with acid.
What focused Pavel’s attention, however, was not the couple’s mutually obstreperous behavior but the very large spike sticking out of the top of the not-so-gentlemanly gentleman’s rustic head.
Had the man not been standing, shouting, and fighting, Pavel would’ve declared the guy in extremis. After all, how many humans could survive a big rusty NAIL being jammed through the skull and deep into the brain?
Yet, except for marginal blood flow—it was a head injury, after all—the guy showed no sign of diminished vitality. With an incongruous mix of shock and amusement, Pavel shifted into his professional role. Instinctively, he called upon his knowledge of basic cranial anatomy and realized that the walk-in patient had been incredibly lucky, thanks to the double-hemispheric structure of the brain. In a medical school operating theater, at least, if a student (or professor) of anatomy were to pound a nail through the center-top of the skull, the spike will pass innocuously into largely vacant space between the brain’s two hemispheres. Pavel knew instantly that once he removed the spike, cleaned up the farmer’s pate, and administered a tetanus shot for good prophylactic measure, the rustic could be on his way to live another day.
Nevertheless, being naturally curious as well as a superbly personable physician[1], Pavel was compelled to ask, “How in the world did you wind up with a spike in the top of your head?”
Pavel posed the question at the exact moment when the two belligerents inhaled simultaneously to inflate their lungs with the next round of vitriol. His inquiry extended the momentary break, giving Spike Man time and space to reply.
“She came into my workshop,” he told Pavel, “and started yelling at me again for things I hadn’t done that I should have done and for things I had done that I should not have done. But this time I got so fed up I decided to kill myself, so I grabbed the biggest spike I could find on the tool bench and jammed it into my head. That made my wife twice as mad at me, so here we are.”
By comparison my own work stories are less dramatic, if no less improbable. After all, I don’t deal with blood—I’m a lawyer but not an ambulance chaser, and I don’t prosecute or defend suspects accused of gory crimes. Nevertheless, a life in law has produced its share of odd-ball experiences replete with humorous and surprising twists and turns. None of my stories involves a spike in the skull, but a good many of my work-related encounters can amuse, tantalize, and stir a worthy degree of contemplation. Tales generated by over four decades of “work” are for me, worth writing—and for you, I trust, worth reading.
Thus begins my new blog series entitled, War Stories.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] On the occasion of our initial meeting—at the patio café of a youth hostel in Delphi Greece in 1979—I’d witnessed Pavel’s bedside manner. While he and I were getting acquainted at the café, three young Swedish women whom I’d met days before aboard the ferry from Brindisi to Corfu, shouted greetings from the hostel balcony above. The trio soon joined us. One, “Elisabeth,” complained of a lesion on her forearm, a wound that refused to heal. The young Czech doctor Pavel offered to have a look. In perfect English, he asked many questions, offered practical advice and attention, and reassured the patient. The Swedes—including me by heritage—were duly impressed. This remarkable sojourner from “behind the Iron Curtain” possessed medical skill, a command of language, and maturity far beyond his age. I knew then that he was destined for greatness in his chosen profession. Only later would I discover his extraordinary talent behind the lens of a camera. The featured image, by the way was taken of Pavel and me (imitating Leon Trotsky) at the base of Pražky hrad (Prague Castle) in 1985.
