New Doctor on Maple Street: An Immigrant Country Doctor’S Tale

By Kenneth K. Suh

Dick is a South Korean immigrant who moves to the United States in 1964.

New Doctor on Maple Street presents a collection of tales exploring the life of this fictional figure as he adapts to a new culture, struggles to settle down in a small American town, and builds a family, experiencing a variety of issues along the way. These tales share the details of those Dick encounters along the way, from a cop who pulls him away from a family vacation to bring him back to the ICU, to his wife, who comes to work in the office to alleviate her boredom. Theres also Charlie, a middle-aged physicians assistant who has always wanted to be a doctor, and a patient dying of cancer who longs to savor food and wine before she dies. Despite the difficulties and changes that his adopted country offers, Dick finds immigrant life in the United States to be less traumatic and more peaceful than the chaos that marked his formative years.

This collection of short stories and essays offers an intriguing look at the United States and Korea through the eyes of a rural doctor from South Korea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532025266

Kenneth K. Suh

Kenneth K. Suh lives in the Midwest with his wife.

Book preview

Part A

Short Stories

Section 1

Early US Life

Uphill Battles

Culture Shock

They want you to call South-Three Nursing Station stat! the hospital operator said to Dick after calling him during his second night in the United States. He was still suffering from jet lag.

He called the station. What’s going on? he asked, and then he said, I’ll be there in a minute.

Oh no! It’s a minor problem. You don’t have to come out at three o’clock. The nurse was very nice, but Dick went anyway.

They put him to work as soon as he arrived, without much orientation, especially in language skills. Routine rounds were not so difficult, but taking night phone calls from nursing stations and the emergency room was not easy. Many times Dick just rushed out rather than talking to them because he did not want to misunderstand and make a mistake. Dick heard later that other friends were in the same predicament, and some guys were named the best house staff members, showing up for even the teeniest problems.

English—spoken English, to be specific—was an immediate and never-ending problem. He was good in writing and could even recite Shakespeare tragedies, but he was not fluent. Back home he was elite—a resident physician and a graduate student at a prestigious university hospital. People respected him there, but here he was an idiot. Competing with smart American and other foreign interns, he’d become dumb by not speaking out and not expressing things correctly.

Born an introvert, Dick had additional handicaps. Even the simplest presentation became a major struggle requiring countless rehearsals. After a while, there seemed to be some progress, and he felt better, but then he’d encounter another hill and then another.

The second major problem was all the new customs. There were many new routines Dick had to learn quickly. But there were many comical incidents as well. On his first Thanksgiving Day, Dick was in the cafeteria. He saw a nice turkey and a few pork chops on the counter. He had picked a chop when a cafeteria worker said, That’s a plastic imitation, sir!

He did not understand what the worker was saying but quickly returned it. He was still puzzled when the guy said, They are just for decoration only. The real things are over there.

The third challenge was what Dick decided to call Out-of-Town Syndrome: comparing things between Korea and the United States. Everything was better back home in Korea, including food and certain customs. Dick was sure this kind of thing occurred to anyone away from home, such as college kids and even tourists: they missed old mundane things at home.

The fourth was being homesick—seemingly intractable. Dick felt like going home from the first day: What in the world am I doing here? he often said. Dick was very homesick in college also, but this was quite different—bottomless, with no easy solution. He could not just hop on an airplane and go home.

But luckily for Dick he did not have much spare time to lament, because his work was demanding, working thirty-six hours straight with a twelve-hour break. They said it was the interns’ duty to work that way. He realized only later that it was the beginning of an American gulag.

FBI

After a while Dick felt like exploring his city. He ventured out to downtown, first for fresh air, then to walk, but it was traumatic. Dick was looking around at the shops and signs downtown when a middle-aged man approached him. He was wearing a trench coat and had a rolled newspaper in one hand. He asked Dick a few questions and tried to figure out what he was doing, and what he was looking at so intently.

Can I see your ID? he finally asked Dick, flashing his FBI badge.

With Dick’s Kim Jong-Il–style hair and overcoat, the agent probably thought he was just off a North Korean ship. Being not too far from the McCarthy era, Dick had thought the FBI was his friend, but he now found it otherwise. They were watching him closely. He felt cold sweat running down his back. He stopped going out, and he confined his life entirely within the hospital, cafeteria, library, and dorm. He went out only for haircuts. He did not have much money anyway. But he spent his spare time watching TV. He was learning English and American customs from TV. For example, Dick tried to learn football rules by watching games on TV.

Chuseok Moon

Holidays and long weekends were hard for Dick, especially when he was the only man in the dorm. He was envious of those Americans who went home. He eagerly switched calls whenever asked. It was the best way to handle holidays.

On his first Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving Day, he saw a huge yellow moon rising between tall buildings. It was beautiful, but it soon disappeared. Dick mourned for the August moon lost in the skyscraper jungle.

Policemen

One of the biggest surprises in the United States was seeing each and every policeman carrying a gun. Dick’s first reaction was to ask, How far away are the enemies?

In Korea, policemen were not armed even though they had had pitched battles with Communists only a few years earlier and even when guerrillas were still active. When armed policemen were in the street, it meant a guerilla or saboteur attack was in progress or imminent. But their primary weapons were carbine rifles, and regular army soldiers carried M1s. Pistols were sidearms for high-ranking army and police officers.

Dick soon noted that American policemen were mostly solitary, relaxed, and not in a hurry, unlike in Korea, where armed policemen always acted together in a squad or platoon. Dick was also impressed that so many American policemen were left-handed, unlike Korean policemen, who were all right-handed or pretended to be.

Fireworks

Dick’s first Fourth of July was frightening. He was sleeping when big explosions shook his dorm windows and bright lights flashed. He rushed to the window but could not see where the big explosions were. He thought a war had broken out, possibly with the USSR, but it didn’t seem to be nuclear, because he was still breathing! No one was in the dorm, so he asked the hospital operator what was going on.

It’s the Fourth of July celebration! she said, laughing.

Celebration? Dick was now confused. He thought it was a rude way to celebrate. It wasn’t the distant thunder of artillery or bombs from B-29s, but these big bangs and flashes were too close for his comfort. He was shocked and shaking.

At home they all knew too well how Chinese began their human wave attacks. They shot up flares first, and then there was a barrage of artillery. Then bugles sounded, followed by infantry assaults with screams, often drunk and bare-handed. Dick thought Chinese soldiers were just about to storm into his dorm, and he looked around for a hiding place.

The word for fear of fireworks is kovtapyroergasoiphobia. Fireworks continued to bother him for ten more years before the fear gradually subsided, thanks to his own children holding his hands.

Later Dick learned that all the fireworks sold in the United States came from China, and he felt his fear of Chinese attack was more than justified. He was suffering from an undeniable post-traumatic stress disorder from the war he had gone through in his youth.

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A Company Town

Dick spent almost three years in Canada. After he received his green card, his research dream popped up again. He went to Chicago for another fellowship position, but it became clear in just a few weeks that his academic future was over.

He had lost in academic competition. He had been away from a research environment for too long and was too old. As he had to give up his research dreams, he was depressed. He had been married in Canada, and he and his wife were going to have another baby soon. Dick decided to go into private practice to support his family. He was now looking for a peaceful place far away from cutthroat academia, and he wanted to be a country doctor. It seemed to be cool and even romantic.

There were many opportunities, but he chose one particular small town because it was the farthest away, in the deepest boondocks. Perhaps he should have sought counseling first, but he decided everything all by himself. His wife, Amy, was as naive as he was.

Then Dick should have learned something from the weather when they went to the town for an interview—the only one he took. Amy had a huge belly but came along to see the town. After flying to a big city, they rented a car and headed to the town about a hundred miles away on a rural road. Initially the weather was clear, but soon it started to snow, which turned into a blizzard.

In a small town at the midpoint, a police car was in the middle of an intersection, blocking all through traffic. A policeman shouted at Dick, You ain’t going anywhere. Go back home! They should have heeded him and gone back, but Amy needed a rest, so they went to a restaurant and stayed there for an hour. Then suddenly the storm stopped and the sun was shining. Although the road-closure sign was still there, the police car wasn’t. So they decided to sneak past it and drove to their destination.

They could not see the town very well because the whole place was covered by a foot of snow, but they were excited. It was going to be their hometown soon. Dick did not realize that settling down in a tiny town would bring many consequences.

The town had twelve hundred people, one traffic light, and one policeman. One of two factories employed 850 people, many of them living in town. The personnel director of the company was the mayor of the town. The hospital’s chairman of the board was a vice president of the company. Most of the board members were departmental heads at the company. One was from the second-largest employer, a cheese company with 150 employees. The hospital itself was the third-largest employer. The townspeople were very friendly, however.

Dick and his family were the only Asians in town. He soon realized that they were raising their kids without immediate family close by, especially their parents. When Dick was growing up, they used to have relatives and friends galore. They were never left alone and had good family support even in Seoul, but not here; here they were all alone.

Dick missed his mother most. His children were missing a grandmother’s advice, wisdom, and many secret formulas. Missing her was not a short-term suffering but permanent, and their children were being deprived of grandparental influence forever. Dick wished they were in Korea. He wished his parents were here with them.

Looking around, Dick saw many young American families with no relatives or even close friends nearby. Americans seemed to be very independent and mobile and lived far away from their parents, yet they did not complain. Dick was surprised to see so many mothers with young children working full-time. He also saw many single mothers working. Yet they all seemed to be doing very well, taking good care of their kids without complaining.

Neighbors and coworkers were very nice and eagerly helped. Dick and Amy’s children soon had godparents. A retired American couple in their housing complex became their kids’ adopted grandparents. They became lifelong friends until they both passed away.

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A Gateway City

There was a big city, a hundred miles to the north. If you see ten Kims in any city phone book, they should have enough Koreans to support one each of a Korean restaurant, church, and grocery store, people counseled Dick. The surname Kim was unique to Korea. They had a joke in Korea also: If you throw a stone to Korea, it will hit one of three: Kim, Lee, or Park. Those three surnames made up perhaps 80 percent of the Korean population.

The city phone book had many Kims and it lived up to expectations, with two each of Korean churches, restaurants, and grocery stores, and even a few classmates. Initially Dick and Amy went there whenever possible, mainly to see classmates. They joined them in picnics and other gatherings. Its airport was their gateway to the rest of the United States and the world.

But traveling to that city took almost two hours one-way in summer through rural highways and longer in winter. At times Dick’s family had to stay in a hotel in case of sudden lake-effect snowstorms. So eventually Dick and Amy ended up seeing them only for some special occasions, such as an annual dinner.

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Paradise

Their Small Town, USA, was hardly utopian. If the streets were paved with gold, they had potholes, and lots of them. Inhabitants looked like and talked like angels, but not everyone behaved like angels. They even had a jail. Guns were popular for self-defense. Lawyers were working overtime for everyone and for everything, but more for themselves.

Even very tiny human conflicts were greatly magnified with fewer ways to resolve them, thus ending up in court. Their books on rules and regulations were so big they could reach the earth below, and farther down to hell. Fine print was more important. Handshakes and verbal agreements were things of the earth, part of its Stone Age.

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Yellow Peril

Americans were well known for their racial prejudices, but in reality they were far better and more tolerant than those shown in books and movies. But Dick saw many incidents. Although most of them were subtle, he thought they were more magnified because they occurred in a tiny rural area.

One example was Dr. Kilgore and his wife. When they came to town, they moved to a suburb next to Dr. Kim, who was married to a Greek woman. But the Kilgores did not like having a mixed couple living next door, and wanted them to move out. They hated Mrs. Kim more than Dr. Kim. They thought the Kims were a bad influence on their kids. Although the Kilgores told their kids not to play with the Kims’, they did, but not openly.

Dr. Kilgore was not in direct competition with Dr. Kim in his rural medical practice, but they soon started a negative campaign against the Kims. When the Kims ignored them, they began harassing them openly, first taking them to court for planting a hedge grove one inch over the property line of the Kilgores’ three-hundred-acre estate.

Soon neighbors noted that the Kilgores’ only daughter, Mary, was spending time with a black high school boyfriend on their huge property when her parents were not home. They eventually learned about it and were heartbroken, according to rumors. Mary and her friend went to a big eastern college, and after graduation they were married.

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Reverse Racism

Dick