Some discoveries are best left unfound, as a ‘player’ in love with two women learns
Diary,
There’s a famous story that nearly everyone in our medical profession loves to share. A century ago, anything from child birth to a minor cut had the potential to kill due to bacterial infection.
That lasted until 1928, when Dr Alexander Fleming returned from a holiday to find mould growing on a Petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria. The mould seemed to prevent the bacteria around it from growing. He later discovered that the mould produced a self-defence chemical that could kill bacteria. He named the substance penicillin, and the rest is history.
Accidental discovery, is what I’m talking about.
The other day, something similar (but in a more tragic way) happened at the hospital where I work. Like the story of penicillin, where a careless lab assistant forgot to clean a dirty Petri dish, our story begins with a careless driver who decides to text while driving and hits a travelling salesman, sending him to our ICU in a deep coma.
I did say tragic, right?
Well, then. A woman comes to visit him. We’ll call her the First Woman.
“Only close family, ma’am,” says the attending nurse.
“I’m his wife,” First Woman says.
“Okay. This way, please.”
Half an hour later, another woman (Let’s call her the Second Woman) comes asking to see the patient.
“Only close family, ma’am,” repeats the attending nurse.
“That’s alright,” says Second Woman. “I’m his wife.”
“What?” The nurse is understandably stupefied. “But… but…”
“Get out of the way, please. I need to be with my husband.”
What follows next, is a tale to rival Shakespeare’s ‘The Comedy of Errors’. Turns out Second Woman was the patient’s first wife, although he had met First Woman years before meeting his wife, but First Woman was by then married to someone else. Are you with me so far?
A year after marrying Second Woman and having a baby girl, the man reconnects with First Woman and sparks fly. He tells her he, too, got married but only recently got divorced. Naturally (right?), the two get hitched and get a baby boy. Now the man has to juggle two households, but being a travelling salesman, he plays the two roles like a pro.
Fast-forward 10 years later, and the man has a girl and a boy with Second Woman, and a boy and a girl with First Woman. Then a darned driving-texter runs him over and breaks open the can of worms.
Once the tea gets to me, I visit the man at the HDU.
“Nice to see you recovering well,” I say.
“Tell you what, doc?” he says, trying to sit up with some difficulty. “Is there a way you can put me back into the coma?”
“Why?”
“In my coma dreams, I was single, man.”
