Chapter 6

Strangers in the Night: 6.

"A job?" she said, "Do you have any idea how badly Dalmar wants you to go to work at Valmaat?"

"I don't want any favors."

"Let me handle it," Wendy said.

She did.

The hospital decided if I was well enough to spend the night in a hospital bed with my naked sister, I was well enough to go home ... until Wendy said we didn't do anything but talk.

When I had been injured read that as in a coma I was first admitted to the University Hospital at Tampere but I had been transferred to the Meilahti.

Meilahti is a neighborhood of Helsinki between the Mannerheimintie (the main entrance road to Helsinki) and a bay named Seurasaarenselkä. Meilahti is home to over 6700 people. Meilahti is the location of the official residence of the Presdent and of the Prime Minister. Several hospitals are located in this district, including the Meilahti, the Helsinki University Central Hospital.

Daddy is important ... so I went where he wanted me.

Some of the students look like Doogie Howser ... and not very much older. That's because they're new high school graduates ... students have contact with patients from the beginning of their studies.

Rounds, they call it in the States. As in, "It's time for rounds," and all the interns make the rounds of interesting patients ... and not so interesting patients ... to see what's up. Who is getting better and who is getting worse and since the prescribed method isn't working with that one but does with this one there must be conditions, "We don't know about," and "Why not, Doctor Jones?" and Jones, the intern, breaks out in a sweat and searches his memory from past classes and says, "Let's try this." That's pretty much rounds ... in an off hand manner of speaking.

Here they call it Clinical. A teaching doctor ... Professor Doctor? ... leads a bunch of Clinicals around the hospital and tells them to decide what's wrong with the patient. So it's Rounds with a different name.

The patient, in this case, is me.

The general consensus was, send him home ... until they saw Wendy. They had moved into the room while she was in the shower and she came out in all her glory.

Discussions ensued ... platonic relationships discussed. It was decided that the lightning strike had done something to my personal parts and they should keep me.

"Ain't nobody gonna spend the night with that and not tap it," was the general opinion.

Sure she was my sister ... but she wasn't. Everybody knew about and accepted transferees. No big deal.

I'll bet the other David wasn't thinking that ... for him it was the biggest of big deals.

I had to stay and talk to two shrinks ... Wendy sat in on one meeting. The morals of MY earth were discussed, disagreed with and we had to 'perform' for the doctor before they let me go. And since, no matter what the morals of my earth were, they still counted with me and I couldn't ... wouldn't ... perform.

So I stayed.

My comfort zone was violated by the sexy nurse and I had no problem "doing the nasty" with her.

The nasty created all sorts of problems ... They don't have derogatory terms for sex.

I had to go to school.

It was too late. "Bring up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it," is the verse you're looking for. Too much church and not enough action.

Eventually, it was decided that I would be an emotional cripple but I could live with it.

Meanwhile, Dalmar was champing at the bit to put me to work ... and he was busy with setting me up in an office with my name on the door and an oh so hot secretary to see to my every need.

I spent the rest of the summer at the mansion laughingly called the cottage and watching the local rally drivers do unbelievably stupid things and survive. Once a year, the WRC (World Rally Cup) drivers, cars and crews came from all over the world and raced in the Thousand Lakes Rally, but the rest of the time, on weekends the locals ran their own series ... FC (Finland Cup). The best of the best FC drivers earned extremely well paying positions with the WRC.

The Thousand Lakes region lakes have collected their share of too fast cars. Finland is rocks and a decent collection of rocks at the roadside have, over the years, collected actual movies of aerial acrobatics by cars not meant to fly ... sometimes ending in exciting demonstrations of swimming by soaking wet drivers exiting rapidly submersing automobiles.