Free The Nine Lessons by Kevin Alan Milne Page A

know?”
    “Believe me, I know.”
    Skip sighed audibly. “I guess I should be grateful that store was out of goldfish.”
    Once I understood his plight, I promised Skip that I would do everything in my power to save Fertile, and it wouldn’t cost him a dime. Heck, for all I knew Mrs. Jenkins had secretly slipped poor Fertile some bad cabbage, and far be it from me to send a poisoned turtle to the grave prematurely.
    I stayed late that night running all sorts of tests. Against all odds, after doing an ultrasound with equipment designed for rabbits, I spotted what looked like a small blockage in the creature’s intestines. The next day, with all of my assistants at the ready, I performed my first—and only—turtle trans-rectal surgery. Every person in the room, with the exception of myself, fully expected the little critter to die right there on the operating table. But Fertile had other plans. Somehow his heart kept on beating throughout the entire ordeal. I found the blockage and was just about to remove it when my receptionist, Janet, came running through the doors of our little operating room.
    “Doctor Witte!” she screamed, “Let the turtle die! You’ve got to go!”
    I’d known Janet for about two and a half years, and during that time I found her to be an exceptionally jittery sort, always overreacting to the smallest things. She was an excellent receptionist, but not the kind of calm, steady personality you’d want around if there were a real crisis.
    “Janet,” I said smoothly while removing a small scope from the animal’s tough hide, “whatever it is I’m sure it can wait another twenty minutes for me to wrap this up. Believe it or not, I think this lucky little guy is going to make it. Skip Jenkins really owes me for—”
    “For the love of Pete!” she yelled back. “It’s Erin! She’s been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. A friend at work found her on the floor with blood all over!”
    I immediately dropped everything on the table and rushed out the door as fast as I could. I never saw Fertile—or Skip—again.
    When I arrived at the hospital Erin was sitting up in bed in the emergency room connected to an IV drip. Her nose was wrapped in bandages and her eyes were black and blue.
    “What happened?” I said as I rushed to her side.
    She smiled bravely. “Dehydration. I guess I’ve been puking out more that I’ve been taking in. I passed out while vomiting in the bathroom during my break.”
    “So why the bandages?”
    She blushed slightly. “When I passed out I was leaning over the toilet. My face hit the porcelain as I was falling and I broke my nose. I’m told it bled all over the place.”
    For as bad as she looked, I was thankful that Erin’s condition wasn’t any worse. The friend who’d found her was waiting in the lobby downstairs, and I took a few minutes to thank her for coming to the rescue. Erin’s doctors decided that they did not want her to undergo surgery to reset her nose until after the baby was born, so a few hours later she was given a prescription to help with the nausea and released to go home with a crooked nose.

    The rest of the third month was more or less uneventful. I kept my promise to my father and showed up at the appointed time to play golf. He was waiting for me on a wet bench under the protection of an extra-large umbrella. The next installment of his odd scorecard diaries was resting on his lap in a sealed plastic bag to keep them dry. It was raining hard enough outside that large puddles were forming on the fairways, and golf carts were strictly prohibited from going anywhere but on the paved cart path.
    I joined London beneath his handheld shelter. “You really want to play in this mess?” I asked, hoping he would say no.
    My father was staring off into the distance. He didn’t respond immediately, which made me wonder whether my question had even registered. When he did eventually speak, his voice was almost fragile. “Rain