Escape From Colombia

By Jim Morse

As he’s recovering from injuries he received in the traffic accident that took his wife’s life, Jim Morgan, a recently retired Army doctor, decides to make an extended working visit to Colombia, the South American country where he and his wife had at one time been medical missionaries.
While working in the same old clinic he happens to meet an attractive widow whose father has become one of his patients. When one day she conducts him to a secret location to see her sick brother, Jim doesn’t realize that the brother is part of a guerrilla organization until he learns the police are seeking to arrest both of them. Jim feels he has no choice but to flee to the jungle and hide out with the guerrillas.
There he must decide whether or not to lend assistance to a group which his own State Department has designated a terrorist organization. That question becomes acute when circumstances stretch his involvement beyond just providing medical care to the guerrillas and their kidnap victims.
On day, while helping hospitalize one of those hostages who has suffered a heart attack, he is recognized and imprisoned by the police. The detention center is delighted to receive another doctor and soon puts him to work. Before long he learns that his romantic interest has also been confined there. Somewhat later, and with the help of a sympathetic prison doctor, he devises a ruse that he hopes will make it possible for him and his girlfriend to escape to the United States

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Morse
• Release date: Aug 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9780985620936

Jim Morse

Jim Morse grew up in a very small town in southeastern Oklahoma, majored in physics at the A&M College of Texas, received a medical degree from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, and was board certified in internal medicine and the subspecialty of pulmonary medicine. He served six years in the US Army (Japan, Korea, and Germany), eight years in a mission hospital in Colombia, and twenty-one years in teaching hospitals of the Department of Veterans Affairs and their affiliated medical schools. He has previously published writing of scientific articles in professional journals. In retirement, he pursued fiction and non-fiction writing. In his fifth novel, Long Way Home, he returns to his roots in a fictional town in Oklahoma, loosely basing the first part of his story on the town and people he grew up with the second part a composite of the experience of such people going off to fight in World War II.

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I had no sooner pulled out of the parking lot of the HEB supermarket in Hewitt, Texas and onto Highway 84 West when I realized that this was going to be one of those troublesome fall days when the track of the setting sun follows almost exactly that of the highway. By the time we had reached the rural crossroads at which we needed to turn left, my view of the oncoming two lanes was almost blanked out by the blazing solar disk which was about to take a dive below the horizon.

The speed limit at that point was still 70 mph, and most of the other vehicles seemed to be using all of it. Although it wouldn’t be dark for several minutes yet, some wise drivers approaching from the West had already turned on their headlights. I could clearly see one pair of oncoming lights some distance ahead. My wife Esther, as usual wanting to be helpful, called out, Go on! You can make it, and I, not so wisely, pulled forward.

Almost immediately, I heard a loud crash and felt a severe jolt as the Saab was flipped onto its left side and shoved several feet back to the East. The driver’s air bag had deployed, but it hadn’t kept me from being pinned against the side door. I was aware that blood was trickling down my face, but what was bothering me most was a shortness of breath that was growing steadily worse and a pain in my chest that was aggravated by my efforts to take deeper breaths. The odor of gasoline was strong.

Esther’s limp body was lying on top of mine, and I could see that the passenger door had been smashed in to occupy about a third of the front seat. I could hear several voices outside where people apparently were struggling to turn the car upright. From what I could hear, their efforts were frustrated by the smashed remains of what had been an oncoming pickup truck.

It seemed to take forever for the rescue team to arrive and still longer for wreckers to pull the two vehicles apart so that their occupants could be extracted. Firemen sprayed foam over the area, and fortunately, the gasoline did not ignite. It must have been obvious to the emergency workers that both Esther and the driver of the other vehicle were already dead for I was the only one they placed in an ambulance and sent it speeding off to the emergency room at Providence Hospital. There a physician quickly inserted a tube into the left side of my chest with hardly a pause to inject a local anesthetic.

Of course, the procedure was painful, but I was grateful for the immediate improvement in my breathing it afforded, especially after the doctor had injected lidocaine below several ribs on my left side. That helped the pain but only for a few hours. I suspected I had fractures of several ribs and that the broken end of at least one had torn a hole in my left lung. The trauma surgeon later confirmed this as he displayed the x ray pictures in my ICU cubicle. Fortunately, I had been spared any serious head injury and had no evidence of rupture of the spleen or bowel.

I was sedated with pain medication by the time a chaplain came in and confirmed that Esther was indeed dead. Probably, she never even knew what hit her, but I knew and could only blame myself for having driven into the path of that oncoming pickup truck. Its driver was also dead. I was only partly comforted by the news that he had no wife or children to leave behind. According to witnesses, the pickup had not had its lights on. It was certainly invisible to us. The driver couldn’t be considered legally at fault, of course. With the sun at his back there was nothing to impair his visibility and so require that he turn on his lights. Whether or not his parents would sue didn’t concern me at that moment.

Esther’s funeral was held three days later, but I, with my chest tube still bubbling from the leak in my lung, wasn’t able to attend. One of our daughters videotaped the service for me to view later. My sister in Oklahoma City made the arrangements for the gravesite preparation in the family plot in my hometown. Despite the pain medication, I was alert enough to insist that copies of a map with the route to the site clearly marked be supplied to the drivers of all vehicles. More than once hearses from elsewhere had arrived late for a graveside service in that little town tucked away in the hills alongside the South Canadian River. As it turned out, there were no glitches, and the service was held on schedule. Even some of the local residents who still remembered me attended.

After three more days, the chest tube drainage apparatus stopped bubbling, and the vacuum was turned off. Another day with no change in the chest radiograph, and the tube was removed. Serious pain now occurred only when I coughed, and I was getting around behind a wheelchair instead of in it. That means readiness for discharge in most hospitals nowadays, and the following day I was released.

From Oklahoma City our younger daughter Sarah sent one of her stepsons, conveniently out of a job at the moment, to stay with me until I could take care of myself and the house. Buck wasn’t a great cook, but on most days, I considered his results to be superior to usual hospital food. I began to work through stacks of unread books and unwatched videotapes and try to think about the future.

Esther and I had decided to settle near Waco after I retired from the Army because the cultural atmosphere appealed to her, the Baylor graduate, and because it was sort of midway between the two daughters. It held no special attraction for me then and even less now. In fact, it was difficult for me to think of any location in which I might be content.

After all, what does one do when he's fifty-nine years old and has just lost the only wife he ever had and he blames himself for her death? Wouldn’t many spouses left in such circumstances like to get away from the scene of the accident and from anything else that might remind them of it? Even the large house and the six acres of grass and trees surrounding it now seemed uncomfortably spacious.

I had applied earlier for a position in the local veterans’ hospital, but my application to double dip, that is, to continue to draw my military retirement check as well as a salary from Veterans Affairs, was still working its way through the bureaucracy in Washington. I was thinking that maybe I could just withdraw my application and travel. But travel to where? And do what when I got there? To return to one of those overseas Army posts where I had previously been stationed would be disappointing, I knew. With the usual turnover in staff, there would probably be few if any people there whom I would even know or, much less, had been friends with.

I recalled the case of one retired Army obstetrician who had returned to Germany after his wife’s death and worked for a while as a civilian doctor before retiring a second time. He seemed to have made a number of new friends and to be content, but then his life was centered around completing more and more volksmarches, and I didn’t think that I could keep up an interest in that activity for very long. In fact, I suspected I might become depressed if I had no structured way of helping people.

Then Colombia reentered my mind. Although the climate, at least on the Coast, had never appealed to me, the deciding factor in my leaving there before had been the unwanted task of trying to manage a business, for that is what the hospital had become. But if I could just take care of sick people? Couldn’t I tolerate that, at least for a few months? My medical diploma was still good in Colombia, which is all one needs to practice medicine there.

Nevertheless, I would need a work visa if I were going to practice again in Colombia, but then I would have to have a job offer before I could apply for the visa. To get my old permanent resident visa reinstated would probably take months, money, and an attorney on the spot. I didn’t want to invest all that effort if I wasn’t going to like the situation after all. I presumed that I could get by with just a tourist visa so long as I didn’t receive pay for any work done.

Maybe the Baptist Hospital wouldn’t hesitate to let me use office space again if the administration realized that it might profit by the business I generated. I could probably get the tourist visa extended to four months, then, if necessary, travel next door to Venezuela or Panama and reenter after a week. I didn’t know then, of course, that before I reached that point, I would be glad just to get out of Colombia alive and not return.

It was almost Christmas before I felt well enough to travel. After spending that holiday with daughter Kathleen, I arranged with our nearest neighbor, Paul, to look after the house and care for the dog. When I contacted a travel agent about a roundtrip ticket and a tourist visa, she tried to discourage me from making the trip since the State Department had recently issued a Warning Letter on Colombia, the only country in the Western Hemisphere to have that distinction at the time (1999). The letter asserted that the risk of being kidnapped in Colombia was the highest of any country in the world and that the murder rate was at least eight times that of the United States. Of course, there were several other reasons my daughters gave as to why I shouldn’t make the trip. And you are not to even consider dating anyone more than ten years younger than you! Kathleen insisted.

Colombia’s climate is more vertical than seasonal. That is, the temperature one needs to dress for is determined much more by the altitude of the place visited than by the month of the year. Of course, there may be a rainy season and a dry season in that locale and a wise traveler is never far from an umbrella in the wet one. Since I would be arriving in Barranquilla in the relatively dry season, which could offer even an occasional cool, breezy evening, fall and summer clothing should be adequate. For occasional trips to Bogota a heavier suit would feel comfortable, but it would be more practical to just include a suit of long underwear and a water-resistant trench coat for the drearier days. I hoped to get everything I needed into a large suitcase and one duffel bag.

During my earlier stay in Colombia, I had passed up opportunities to join medical teams on trips to rural preaching points with the excuse that there was already more than enough work at the hospital in Barranquilla. Actually, I had never felt very comfortable practicing shade-tree medicine, especially when carried out in a hit-and-run fashion. Usually a number of those showing up for such free clinics don’t need to see a doctor anyway. The major attraction seems to be that it’s free and that they might at least get some vitamin samples out of the deal. On the other hand, nothing could be more frustrating than seeing patients with serious problems that one is not equipped to handle or even refer.

Others will have chronic conditions that might well respond to medications the medical team has brought along (e.g. diabetes and hypertension); however, a one-time treatment is unlikely to be of much help when the real need is for longterm follow-up with dosage adjustments. This is in contrast to the relief that dentists can often provide with just one visit or the good that surgeons, if they have the facilities and equipment, can accomplish fixing cleft palates and removing cataracts.

Nevertheless, this time I considered that I might attempt at least one such trip. I also had ideas about seeing more of the countryside than I had been able to before. For this purpose, I had included some field items, both military and civilian. I never suspected that before long I would need them for a more desperate journey.

Chapter 2

When I left the States on Tuesday, February 1, 2000, there didn't appear to be many Americans on the Avianca flight out of Miami, although I assumed that several of the passengers were Colombians living in the States and that some probably were by now naturalized citizens. This long after Christmas, a likely reason for making visits back to Colombia could be an illness or a death in the family.

Once the plane was aloft and passengers began to move about, a slender man stopped by my seat, stared at me for a moment, then broke into a smile. Doctor Morgan! I thought that was you, he exclaimed. I quickly stood up to receive an abrazo as I wracked my memory for a name. Rogelio? He was only a young pastor when I had left Colombia, but I’d since heard he’d been enticed away to Florida by one of those more prosperous Hispanic Baptist churches.

He confirmed that he was indeed the one and that he was returning to Barranquilla to bury his father, who after eighty years of excellent health had suddenly sickened and died before the family could even be gathered. Rogelio’s own children, now grown, were too busy to come with him, and his wife could find no one to take over the care of the two small grandchildren whose mothers had jobs. So, here he was, making the trip alone. Surprisingly, he had already heard of Esther's death and even apologized for not having traveled to Texas for the funeral.

Rogelio returned to his seat to see if the man seated by him would agree to swap seats with me. He did, so I moved up to continue our conversation, although the flight time would be less than three hours. I had no more than started to ask questions about family and friends still living in Colombia—such as the Insignares brothers--when Rogelio startled me by taking a notepad from his briefcase and writing, Careful what you say. There are government agents on every flight. It hadn't occurred to me that nowadays one had to be careful what he said in Colombia or he might throw suspicion on himself or on his friends.

I left off the questioning and just let Rogelio tell what he must have considered to be noncontroversial--graduations, marriages, births, and natural deaths. And the progress of Baptist churches throughout the country, of course. He seemed concerned that I was making a visit at that time. Some of the missionaries had already left to avoid being kidnapped, he said.

I explained my own reasons for being there as best I could understand them myself, and Rogelio seemed to appreciate my frame of mind. After all, I thought, he's not the green seminary student I once knew. He's had several years of experience as a pastor in counseling the bereaved and is not likely to just give easy, off-the-cuff answers anymore. I asked if he had any suggestions as to how to avoid being kidnapped.

Look poor, he said with a twinkle in his eye.

I suppose you have a Bible verse to back up that advice? I teased.

Of course. One of your modern versions says it exactly in the Book of Proverbs: ‘The rich may have to pay a ransom, but the poor don’t have that problem.’ Of course, there is no way to disguise a tall, white-haired American and make him look destitute, especially when he arrives on a plane from Miami loaded down with luggage and carrying a camcorder. Nevertheless, I supposed it wouldn't hurt to avoid some of the places frequented by wealthy tourists and business people. Anyway, I hadn't planned to stay in the El Prado Hotel Intercontinental and now would probably not even venture to eat there. Surely there must still be a modest hotel or two downtown that had good food from a clean kitchen. Rogelio recommended one. I would look for a boarding house in a day or two.

I was more concerned about transportation. Rogelio assured me that, unlike in Bogotá, most taxis in Barranquilla were safe, and the hijacking of city buses was unheard of. His father's funeral was scheduled for the next morning, and he promised to send someone to the hotel to take me to the church in time for the service. Making excuses not to attend was out of the question. Besides, I would probably see some old friends.

Among those I was not anxious to see were the three women who had at various times brazenly announced their desire to have a child by me. At least, they would now be beyond childbearing age and not likely to repeat those requests. Even back then, I hadn’t been misled into thinking that they must have found me to be irresistibly attractive. Nevertheless, I had no doubt that they meant what they said. They were all single or widowed and with no prospect of marriage, and yet each desperately wanted a child. They probably saw in me only an opportunity to get one with built-in child support. I reminded myself that I hadn’t come back to Colombia just to look for a good-looking younger woman desperate enough to marry an old gringo.

I was still wearing my wedding ring and supposed that it might continue to provide some defense against unattached women of whatever age. No, if I were looking for anything in the female line in Colombia, it would be memories, memories of good times with the good wife I had just lost--and even of the bad times when she was down with a herniated disk and also had a mastectomy. And, memories that every good father has of daughters while they are still daddy's little girls.

The airport terminal didn’t appear overly busy at six in the evening. The major difference from the old days was the increased number of police standing around and the automatic weapons they were carrying. Did they actually think a band of guerrillas might sweep in and hijack a plane on the ground? Or was it to reassure the citizenry that they were being protected from the criminal element?

The customs folk showed more interest in my camcorder than in anything else I was carrying. One inspector, who seemed to be trying to be helpful rather than threatening, warned me that it was against the law to take pictures of demonstrations, riots, or even arrests, and that one risked having his camera confiscated if he appeared to be doing so. I thanked him.

One of Rogelio's nephews picked the two of us up in a rather classy automobile, which turned out to be rented since he actually lived in Medellín and had only flown in a few hours earlier. From his expensive clothing, multiple rings, and bejeweled wrist watch, I suspected he must be in the drug business. His English was good.

The Hotel Canadiense did have a room, so I thanked Carlos for the ride and said goodnight to Rogelio. Dinner was still being served--not elegant but good with the standard arroz con pollo, fried plantains, half an avocado, and flan for dessert. I passed up the tinto, a demitasse of strong black coffee that was offered at the end.

The funeral began more or less at ten the next morning in the Getsemaní Baptist Church. I discovered that it was still the custom for at least the men to walk slowly behind the hearse from the church to the municipal cemetery. This was actually quite an improvement over the original custom, which was for teams of pallbearers to carry the casket the entire distance. What with special music, a long sermon, and the hike to the cemetery it was well after one o'clock when we returned to the Sarmiento home for refrescos and lunch. I was ready for anything wet.

Things seemed peaceful enough as we sat around slurping up bowls of sancocho before returning to the table to get a plate of the meat and vegetables that had earlier been fished out of the soup--where most of the flavor unfortunately had remained. Then one of the grandsons of the deceased asked another, Hey, Rodolfo, have you and your police buddies killed anybody yet today?

I'm in the traffic police, Rodolfo retorted. We don't kill people. We fine them!

Oh, ho! Then who is it that's killing all the people? Guerrillas in police uniforms?

Rodolfo's mother jumped in. If you would just read the papers, you would know that it's the police themselves who are being killed. Every time the guerrillas go through a town, they kill the mayor and all the police they can find.

Jaime, the first grandson, came back. It wasn't the guerrillas who chopped off the head of an eight-year-old schoolboy and threw it in the classroom where the mayor of Apartadó was speaking last August.

How do you know that? shouted Rodolfo. They're just a bunch of Communists who will say and do anything if they think it will help them win this war. Now they're even growing cocaine and selling it to buy weapons. They’re no better than the drug dealers, he said as he gave a sideways glance at Carlos. Uncle Rogelio, what are people saying in the States?

Rogelio, speaking calmly with the hope that he could get the others to do the same, looked around at the faces of his relatives. None were laughing. Two of his sisters were sobbing. Since the majority of the members of my church are Cubans, it would be difficult to find any who would have anything nice to say about the guerrillas in Colombia, whom they believe Castro is supporting. They would also be strongly opposed to anyone who is growing, making, or shipping cocaine to the States. Too many have family members who are enslaved to that drug and are ruining their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.

I ventured to ask a question that might divert the discussion to a higher level and get past the personal animosities in the younger set. Why is it, do you think, that while Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador have all come to an understanding between their rebel forces and the government and gotten past most of the violence, in Colombia it hasn't worked? The killing just gets worse and worse, and now the whole country is teetering on bankruptcy?

Manuel, Rogelio's older brother, and also a pastor, hadn't said anything as yet, but now he cleared his throat, looked at me, and said, "I think the problem is basically that the United States is supporting both sides in this conflict and, therefore, neither has much incentive to give in and compromise. In those other countries the rebels saw that they were losing the support they had been getting from the Soviet Union through Cuba. At the same time the American government was putting pressure on the governments of those countries to let up on the rebels and compromise.

In Colombia, on the other hand, the rebels have been able to make up what they lost from Cuba by getting into the drug business, so every cocaine user in the States is paying for the rebels to continue the war. The American government, of course, can't admit that it's losing the war on drugs so it keeps pouring more and more money into the Colombian government side. This could go on forever. or at least until we Colombians have killed each other all off and the jungle has taken back over.

No one answered Manuel. Certainly not I, the lone representative of the country on which all the blame had been heaped. Maybe it was time for me to go. I again expressed my condolences to the family. Then Carlos, also somewhat in the doghouse, and I left. I needed a siesta.

Chapter 3

After breakfast the next morning, I walked over to Carrera 38 and rode a minibus up the long hill to the Baptist Hospital on Calle 70. As I had done in years past, I entered by the parking lot gate although it was now set further back, and it was obvious that the Hospital had acquired additional property in that direction. I hoped that meant that the finances of the institution had improved since I left.

Although the administrator had been only a seminary student when I left Colombia, he seemed to have no difficulty in remembering me and readily invited me into his office. When I explained my desire to spend some time in the outpatient clinic, however, he grew cautious and said he would need to check around before he could allow me to work, even as a volunteer.

With so many refugees now living in Barranquilla, I didn't doubt that there was plenty of work available, but doctors do tend to get suspicious of anyone who might possibly take patients away from them, even when those patients can’t pay him or her very much. I presumed the administrator probably wanted to run my request by the medical director and some members of the medical staff before turning me loose in their facilities. Their lone missionary doctor was currently spending a few weeks in the States, but I gathered that credentials and privileges were still only a minor concern in comparison to the prominent place they hold in the American health care system.

Before leaving, I strolled through the hospital, including the business office, the kitchen, and the maintenance shop to greet the small number of older employees whom I had known before. It wouldn't hurt to have them explaining to the younger ones who I was and asking the administrator when I was going to start to work.

While reading the patient list on one of the wards, I discovered a patient whom I had successfully treated for tetantus not long before leaving the country. He had been only a teenager back then, but he immediately introduced me to his wife and children as the doctor who had once saved his life. This time, he was only convalescing from gallbladder surgery.

After lunch in the employees’ dining room, I took a taxi and set off to locate the office of the German consulate, which was in a business out on Vía 40. I thought perhaps they could give me some friendly advice about lodgings although they certainly had no obligation, of course, to give a non-German even the time of day.

I entered and asked if someone could tell me about the existence of a boarding house once called the Pensión Alemán. I hadn't been able to find it in the telephone directory. I explained to the woman at the front desk that, although I was not a German citizen, I would prefer to stay in a place where I could practice the language and possibly enjoy German food from time to time. I knew that back in the Thirties the Pensión Alemán had been a popular landing place for refugees (mainly Jewish) from Germany.

She immediately went back to an inner office to explain the purpose of my visit. A Herr Schnabel came out and introduced himself. Once I had responded in German, he appeared to quickly decide that it would be easier to continue the conversation in Spanish. He smiled and explained that yes, the Pensión Alemán was still in business but the name had been changed to the Pensión Europea. He had stayed there himself some years ago. The proprietors were apparently grandchildren of the original owner and actually spoke little German themselves; however, the tradition of Schnitzel, Würst, Spätzel, and red cabbage had been maintained better than the language. A guest could count on a German menu about two evenings a week.

Schnabel wrote down the address and phone number and even called to see if they had a vacancy. They did, and after a nod toward me, he informed them that the new guest would be over soon. I thanked him, told him how much our family had enjoyed our five years in Germany, and caught a taxi on the street outside.

Since I had occasionally been mistaken for a German, even in Germany, I had sometimes said jokingly that if I ever got caught up in one of those Yanqui, go home! demonstrations, I would politely ask the leader, What about us Germans? This time it might not be a joke. Since some of the original impetus for kidnapping Americans had come from the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States, it might be safer if those drug people thought I was some kind of European. Another reason to stay in the Pensión Europea, I thought.

I was impressed with the tidiness of the boardinghouse and, although my room would not have a private bath, I arranged to move in the next day. It was an old two-story stone building with a central courtyard and, like almost every home in Colombia, had bars on all the outside windows. The most noticeable modern touch was window airconditioners in each bedroom. Not in the windows, of course, but each sat in its own special hole in the wall cut out of the masonry and neatly framed. The ceilings were high and old fans still hung from them.

When I met the other guests at dinner the following evening, most of them appeared to be either German or Eastern European. One was from Scotland, however, and said he was a sales representative for Coats and Clark, the sewing thread company. I didn't inquire about the business of the rest although I doubted that anyone involved in drug running would be staying in such humble surroundings. Conversation was in Spanish, or German, or English. So far as I could tell, the language used was determined more by the ease of the speaker than by the needs of the listener.

I rented a car for the weekend, an old Fiat that wouldn't be seen even on an Ugly Duckling lot in the States. Saturday morning I drove around the expanded city, out beyond the airport where the electric lines and the water mains ended and the shantytowns really began. I could imagine some of the public health nightmares those conditions presented. Even in the closer-in middle-aged barrios, it was apparent that the inhabitants of many shacks could not afford to have the electricity connected. Everyone there did seem to be fortunate enough to at least have a water faucet in the front yard, however. Deep pit privies were in the rear of the houses in those sections not yet supplied with sewer lines.

Having forced myself to look at the worst, I now turned to what I expected to be a more pleasant part of the tour. About ten miles to the north was the shore of the Caribbean and the little beach town of Puerto Colombia. The beach was still sandy, but the water had grown muddier as part of the silt carried down the Magdalena River was washed ashore there. Still it was a beach, and I parked and took a walk on it.

Vendors were selling fresh coconuts. I paid for one and waited until a hole was opened in it and a straw inserted for the milk. When I had finished the milk, I handed the nut back for the machete man to split it open. A few bites of the soft meat were enough for me, however, and I turned the rest over to the group of small children who were following me. They soon had the shell scraped clean.

On the way back to Barranquilla, I found the road that led to the beach of Salgar, where an isolated house still served as a seafood restaurant. Everything on the menu could be considered catch-of-the-day--red snapper, haddock, shrimp, and arroz con chipi chipi. I had been craving this last item for years. It was only rice cooked with a very small shellfish, but this creature had a distinctive strong taste like nothing I had ever encountered anywhere else. One must admit that at first it takes some getting used to, but then it becomes addictive. I enjoyed a large plateful as well as an order of haddock.

Chapter 4

After my first week of work in the cut-rate outpatient clinic of the Baptist Hospital, I began to see an occasional patient who had known me when I was practicing there twenty years earlier. For the small fee patients paid for a visit there, they were not supposed to have a choice of physician, but I suspected that some had connections among the clerks or nursing personnel who worked there and had managed to