A Proposal for Medical Care

My new best friend, the doctor, the guy with a patch over one eye who keeps saying, "Arrgh!", says he will operate on my hip in about a week. He calls me, "Matey".

"Here is what you should do, Matey!" he said to me. "Best have somebody drive you there in your pickup. It will make it easier to get you aboard when the time comes to send you home."

No food before the operation. He says rum is O.K.; lots of rum. It won't hurt so much, then, he says, until the rum wears off, and then my head will hurt so much my hip won't seem bad.

He says a hip operation is tricky, because if something goes bad, they can't just strap on a peg leg, as they often do for knees. He advises that I think about a new career, now, before I really understand what went wrong; something like bookkeeping, or palm reading.

I kind of wish I had a smaller pickup, lower to the ground.

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