Thursday, December 17, 1987

Al knocked gently on the open door before walking in. “Hey, you ready to get out of here?” he asked stepping into the room. Receiving no answer from the room’s occupant, Al walked over to where he was sitting by the window. “Sam? You ready to go?” he asked again before noticing that Sam had fallen asleep sitting up in the chair. “Hey, Sam, wakey, wakey,” he called out nudging the sleeping man’s shoulder.

Sam’s eyes snapped open at the touch of the older man. “Huh? Wha?’

“I asked if you were ready to go,” Al repeated once again. “Dr. Stone’s on his way in here with your discharge papers.”

“I’m ready.” Sam rubbed a hand over his face trying to dispel the lingering sleepiness and got up from the chair. He wobbled for a bit until his balance steadied. “I think I’ve had enough of hospitals to last me for a while.”

Sam had come into the hospital that morning for surgical repair of the damage his shoulder had suffered in the plane crash three months prior. After some discussion, Sam and his doctor had agreed that the best option for him was an open Bankart repair. There was a newer, arthroscopic method being used but Dr. Stone had felt it best to go with the tried and true method. In his estimation, the open surgery provided a better repair. There was no change in how long Sam had to remain in the hospital since both forms of the surgery were done as day surgery under general anesthesia.

Sam took one, unsteady step in Al’s direction and started to list heavily to his left. Al quickly put out a hand to steady him.

“Whoa, I don’t think you’re up to moving around much yet. It looks like you’re still feeling the effects of the anesthesia.” Al guided Sam back to the chair. “Let’s just wait ‘til they get in here with a wheelchair before you try moving around.”

“Um, okay,” Sam easily agreed sitting back down heavily.

“What did they give you anyway?” Al asked in wonder.

Sam shrugged his good shoulder. “I don’t know. I think someone told me but I don’t ‘member.” His eyes started to drift shut again before he finished talking.

“Don’t go back to sleep now,” Al said reinforcing his words with a nudge to Sam’s shoulder. “Are you in a lot of pain right now?”

Sam had to think hard to before he could answer Al’s simple question. In all honesty it looked more like he’d been asked to explain the theory of relativity to kindergartners instead of how much pain he was in. “To be honest, I’m not feeling much of anything right now.”

Al let out a laugh. “I can see that.”

Sam leaned his elbow on the arm of chair and propped his chin up on his hand. His eyes started to slide closed again and he opened them wide trying to force himself awake. It was a comical sight to see and Al had to fight back a laugh. “I guess it should hurt, but it doesn’t.” Sam’s words were slightly slurred.

Another knock sounded on the door prompting Al to turn to see who was there. Dr. Stone stood in the doorway for a moment before coming into the room. “I see you’re ready to go. The nurse should be right in with your transportation and you’ll be free to leave us.”

“That’s nice,” Sam answered. His attention was fixed on a spot on the floor and he barely glanced at Dr. Stone in recognition.

The doctor laughed softly and turned his attention to Al. “He’ll be like this for the next couple of hours until the anesthesia is completely out of his system.” He handed Al several sheets of papers. “Here’s a copy of his post-op care. I went over it with him this morning before the surgery but in the event he doesn’t remember, it’s all in here. There’s also a prescription for painkillers. He might not be feeling any pain now but he probably will in a few hours.”

Al accepted the papers from Dr. Stone and flipped through them. “You mind going over the highlights with me?” he asked.

“The main thing right now is that he needs to keep that arm immobilized. He’s going to need to use the sling constantly for the next two weeks. The only time it should be off is for him to dress and for hygiene purposes.”

“How about at night when he’s sleeping?” Al asked eyeing the sling that was supporting Sam’s arm skeptically as well as the immobilizer that bound his arm to his chest. “That doesn’t look like a very comfortable way to sleep.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not,” Dr. Stone agreed. “It’s necessary, though. He’ll also need to keep using the immobilizer at night when he’s sleeping to prevent any unconscious movement of his arm. Once he’s a bit more coherent, he can go ahead and take it off while he’s awake. He should make sure to move his elbow and wrist around when the sling’s not on to prevent any stiffening in those joints.”

“I’ll make sure he knows that. Is there anything else?”

“No, that about covers the highlights for right now. If there’s anything you or Sam have a question about later, feel free to contact the office. The procedure went well and I don’t foresee him having any problems in the future as long as he follows the post-op care to the letter and sticks with the rehab. I’d say within about six months he’ll have full mobility and strength back in his shoulder if he follows a careful rehab regimen.”

“It doesn’t hurt right now,” Sam said interrupting the conversation between Al and Dr. Stone.

“No, I’m sure there isn’t any pain right now,” Dr. Stone agreed. “That probably won’t be the case once all the drugs are out of your system.”

Al looked at Sam skeptically. “You sure he’s ready to leave, Doc? He looks like maybe he should stay a little longer.”

“He may seem out of it right now, Admiral, but I can assure you, he’s fit to go home. He shouldn’t drive or operate any heavy machinery for at least the next 12 hours, though.”

“You mean like the TV remote or coffee maker,” Al joked.

Dr. Stone laughed again at Al’s joke. “Exactly.”

Sam attempted to join the conversation. “I like tea.” The doctor and Al both began to laugh at Sam’s pronouncement. “I do,” Sam defended himself not quite understanding what was so funny. To his drug-numbed mind, Al and the doctor were laughing at him, not at what he’d said.

“Okay, Sam. You can’t boil water then,” Al said through his laughter to appease the confused man.

Once the laughter died down, Dr. Stone finished his instructions. “I should warn you, as the anesthesia leaves his system he might start to feel nauseated or complain of a headache. That’s perfectly normal but if the headache is too intense or there’s any prolonged vomiting, you should get him back here right away.”

“Trust me, I will.” Al assured Dr. Stone.

Dr. Stone smiled at Al’s firm assurance that he’d bring Sam back to the hospital at the slightest sign of trouble. “An appointment has been set up for tomorrow so I can check his dressing. He shouldn’t shower or get the surgical site wet until after that. Icing his shoulder will also help to control the pain and bring down any swelling.”

As Dr. Stone was finishing his instructions, a nurse came in pushing an empty wheelchair. “Well, it looks like your ride’s here, Sam,” he said. He put out his hand to Sam. “I’ll see you tomorrow. The Admiral has all the information you’ll need but if there are any questions I want you to call the office.”

“Ok,” Sam genially answered. “Call you if I have questions.”

The genial mood dissipated when Al started to help Sam into his coat. “I’m not cold. I don’t need this,” he protested trying to push the coat away.

“I know you’re not cold now,” Al began to patiently explain, “but it’s kind of cold outside so let’s just put it on already.” He finished slipping the coat onto Sam’s good arm and zipped it up before Sam could protest anymore. Sam attempted to pull the zipper down but his fingers were uncoordinated and he gave up.

With the assistance of Al and the nurse, Sam safely moved from the chair he was sitting in to the wheelchair with no mishaps.

“I can walk you know,” he pointed out as the nurse wheeled him from the room.

“I know you can walk,” Al agreed. “You can drive, too, but let’s just hold off on both of those until you’re not so loopy.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Sam pouted. Al had to smother another laugh. He’d had no idea the strong drugs used for the general anesthesia would have this kind of effect.

“If the guys at MIT could see you now,” Al muttered following the nurse out of the room. Behind him Dr. Stone began to laugh softly again.

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Al was sitting on the couch in the living room reading when the noise reached his ears. Getting up he walked through Sam’s bedroom to the master bath to check on the younger man and found him hunched over the toilet. Just as Al walked through the door, the rest of the soup Sam had eaten an hour before made a reappearance.

The first few hours Sam was home from the hospital had been relatively easy. He’d been content to lie on the couch napping as the anesthesia finished working its way out of his system. He hadn’t experienced much pain and what little he did feel was alleviated by the use of the icepack Al offered him. As evening fell, Al suggested that he might be more comfortable in bed rather than lying on the sofa. Sam had agreed, retiring there after eating some soup that Al heated up for him.

“You doing okay?” Al asked kneeling beside the huddled form and resting a hand on the sweaty back.

“Been better. I think the gum I swallowed when I was a kid just made an appearance.” Sam tried a smile but it didn’t do much to hide how he was feeling. “Whatever they gave me, I don’t think I ever want it again.”

Sure that Sam was suffering from no more than the nausea and vomiting Dr. Stone had warned about, Al tried to lighten the mood. “That’s not what you were saying earlier.” He leaned over to flush the toilet before getting up to get a glass of water that he handed over to Sam. “Wanna go back to bed?” he asked once Sam had rinsed his mouth out.

Sam sighed softly and mulled over the question. “No. It’s too much like work if I have to come back.” He sat so that the corner formed by the bathtub and the wall braced his back. That’s when he saw them hiding on the floor under the vanity and the sight of them nearly brought on another bought of vomiting.

“What? What’s wrong?” Al asked alarmed when Sam’s face seemed to turn a shade whiter. He tried to follow Sam’s line of sight to see what he’d fixated on but saw nothing out of the ordinary beyond a few stray dust bunnies.

“My mother’s coming on Tuesday,” Sam flatly stated still staring at the dust bunnies.

“I know that,” Al answered deciding that humoring Sam might be the best way to find out just what was wrong. “Why’s that got you so worked up and sounding like it’s the end of the world? I thought you’d be happy to see her.”

Sam started to gaze around the small room they were in noticing, as if for the first time, just how bad it looked. In a corner, the hamper overflowed, laundry spilling out to accumulate on the floor. The bathtub had a built up layer of soap scum on it and from the angle he was at, Sam could see the mildew that had taken up residence at the bottom of the built-in soap dish. More dust bunnies gathered in other corners of the small room. If the bathroom looked like this, he knew the rest of the house had to be just as bad. “This place is a mess. How am I gonna clean it up before she gets here?” he groaned.

Still not understanding just what had Sam upset, Al forged ahead. “Sam, your mother knows you just had surgery. I’m sure she’s not expecting the Taj Mahal when she gets here. Don’t forget, she knows you’ve had to go back and forth to DC a couple of times, too.”

Sam shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. I need to get this place cleaned up. She’ll just give me the Look if I don’t.” As Sam said this, Al noticed the way that word seemed cause nearly as much fear in Sam as he suffered during their time on mountain.

“‘The Look?’” Al asked growing amused once more. “Maybe they gave you too much of that stuff.”

“Yeah…the Look. You know…the one that says she’s so disappointed in me and didn’t she raise me better than that and what was I thinking all rolled into one.” Sam looked wildly around the bathroom again, his voice bordering on panic. “You've got to help me clean this place up, Al. I can’t do it like this and it can’t be a mess when she gets here.” Another thought crossed his mind ratcheting up the level of his anxiety. “Oh man, it’s less than a week ‘til Christmas and there’s no tree or anything. I have to make this place look like it’s Christmas. You have to help me, Al,” he helplessly begged grabbing at Al’s arm.

“Okay, okay. Just calm down,” Al said pushing Sam gently to lean against the wall again and extricating his arm from his grip. “Geesh, you’re acting like this is the end of the world. I’ll help you get this place ready for your mother but right now, you just need to calm down. There’s nothing you can do about it tonight and getting yourself all worked up is just gonna get you sick again.”

Before Al had finished speaking, Sam lurched forward again emptying the remaining contents of his stomach into the toilet. There wasn’t much which brought on a bought of dry heaving.

Once he’d brought the dry heaves under control, Sam sagged back against the wall and closed his eyes. “You had to say that, didn’t you?”

Wordlessly, Al refilled the glass with more water, handing it to Sam to rinse his mouth out again. before taking it back and handing him a wet washcloth to wipe his mouth. He helped Sam up from the floor and walked him back to the bedroom.

“Just answer one thing for me,” Al said when Sam was seated on the edge of the bed. “Why’d you decide to have the surgery today knowing your mother was coming a few days later?”

“It was either today or the earliest would be in February just before the wedding. After that I would have had to wait until March. I figured Katie might kill me if I showed up for her wedding after just having surgery. This seemed like the best option. I didn’t want to have to wait another three months and constantly worry about it popping out again.” Sam kept his face angled down but flicked his eyes up to meet Al’s. “I guess I should have thought about all this before today, but it seemed like there was always so much going on.”

“Before today might have been a good time to think about this,” Al agreed. “There’s not much you can do about it right now so why don’t you stop worrying about it for tonight, lie back down and get some sleep. I’ll help you start to tackle it in the morning. You’ll see, by the time your mother gets here everything will be all set.”

“Thanks, Al.” Sam lay back in bed trying his best to get comfortable. It wasn’t easy to accomplish with the immobilizer still in place and he was restricted to lying either on his back semi-reclined to keep his shoulder in the correct position or on his right side. “Do you mind grabbing me some Tylenol?” he asked. “My head’s pounding and my shoulder’s starting to throb.”

Al was ready to walk out of the room and get the Tylenol Sam had asked for when it occurred to him that, in this instance, something stronger might be better. “You want me to get you one of those painkillers Dr. Stone prescribed.”

Sam considered Al’s offer before answering. Ordinarily, he’d eschew the stronger drugs but in this situation thought it might be wise to make an exception. “What did he give me?”

“Percoset.”

Sam remembered taking Percoset once before when he’d had his wisdom teeth removed and couldn’t remember having any side effects from it other than being groggy. “Yeah, I guess that’d be better than the Tylenol.”

Al nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

Once he’d returned to the room with the pill and another glass of water, Al waited until Sam had swallowed them and then pulled the blanket over him when he lay back down. “Do me a favor, Kid. Sleep now and we’ll worry about the house tomorrow,” he said on his way to the door. “Yell if you need anything.”

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Leaving the door to Sam’s bedroom partially ajar, Al went back to the living room and stood in the middle of it trying to see it as Thelma would. Sam was right, he decided. The place was a mess. Though untidy could occasionally describe Sam's housekeeping style, the current state of the house went far beyond that. Since getting back from Colorado, Sam had been too busy to do anything with it. Between recovering from the injuries he’d suffered, starting in on the project and then flying to Washington, DC, it was clear that housekeeping had slipped way down on his list of priorities. Judging by the state of some parts of the house, it didn’t look like it had been very high on his list for a lot longer than that. If Al had to venture a guess, he’d say the last time Sam’s house had had a thorough cleaning was when Thelma had been there in June when she’d stayed with Sam for a couple of weeks after the wedding that wasn’t.

The coffee table was a mess of accumulated papers, magazines and newspapers. A fine coat of dust covered nearly every flat surface of the living room and families of dust bunnies had sought homes here too. On the other end of the room, Sam’s piano was covered with sheet music he’d pulled from the wood file cabinet but hadn’t put away. Al sighed knowing that the rest of the house would be in a similar state.

A quick look in the entry foyer confirmed his guess. Mail that had been dropped and forgotten covered the table by the door there. For Sam’s sake, Al hoped it was only junkmail that was accumulating and nothing important.

Walking back through the living room and down the hall, Al entered Sam’s office to see that it was no better, and in fact was probably worse, than the living room had been Haphazard piles of papers, folders and notebooks surrounded the computer on the desk or were piled up on the floor beside it. Various papers, books, and other items also covered the couch across the room from the desk. The only spot in the whole office that had survived the clutter tornado was the shelf Sam had hung over the couch to display the medal and diploma announcing that he was the 1986 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in Neural Holography1.. A portion of he cash award of just under $300,000 that accompanied the medal and diploma had been used as a sizeable down payment on the house keeping the monthly mortgage low.

The guest bedroom across from the office, though not as cluttered, was still in need of a thorough cleaning.

He completed his tour of the house in the kitchen and looked dismayed at the dishes piled next to the sink waiting to be washed. The counters surrounding the periphery of the kitchen had become catch alls for more clutter and a series of open folders and unrolled blueprints covered the kitchen table. The only surface that hadn’t fallen prey to Sam’s bout with untidiness was the island in the middle where he normally ate his meals.

Though Thelma might forgive her son for not keeping neat in the days following his surgery, Al had a pretty good idea she’d probably take him to task for letting things get the way they were in the days leading up to it. In all honesty, Al had to acknowledge that he was to blame for some of the mess. He’d been spending nearly as much time here as he had at his own apartment and had contributed to some of the accumulating clutter. They’d have their work cut out for them over the next couple of days getting the house to what would pass muster for Thelma Beckett – or what Sam thought it had to be to pass muster. Then there was the issue of decorating for the upcoming holiday as well. Al told, they’d probably cut it close to the wire.

“No time to start like the present,” Al muttered as he started sorting through the mess on the kitchen table.

1 Ernst Ruska was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize in Physics “for his fundamental work in electron optics and for the design of the first electron microscope”. Also sharing the prize that year was Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Roher “for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope”.