Eli's Coming

There is no fear in love; perfect love drives out all fear.

- I John 4:18, King James Version

It's the child He loves that He disciplines; the child he embraces, He also corrects. God is educating you; that's why you must never drop out. He's treating you as dear children. This trouble you're in isn't punishment; it's training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God?

- Hebrews 12:6-8, The Message Paraphrase

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

- II Corinthians 1:3-4, The English Standard Version

Eli's comin'. Girl you better hide your heart; your lovin' heart. Eli's a comin' and the cards say a broken heart.

- Eli's Coming Three Dog Night

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a hierarchy among surgeons.

Urologists and Ob/Gyns are a quiet, generally dignified and an in-obtrusive lot. The older urologists can be generally humorless; not a bad idea for men who make a good deal of the living feeling men's prostates.

One of these older, humorless urologists ambled toward a hospital room on the Urology floor at St. John of God Medical Center in Joplin, Mo. As he passed the nursing station he asked, in a dignified, slow, reserved voice for, "a glove and some jelly" with which to digitally examine (that is with a glove covered finger via the patient's rectum) a new admission's prostate gland.

A (younger and much more humorous) nurse causally asked the doctor, "What flavor?"

Slowly the urologist turned and asked, "What flavor of what, nurse?"

"Jelly," the nurse retorted, barely able to suppress a smile.

For at least 30 seconds the urologist stood in the middle of the hallway looking at those now assembled in the nurse's station waiting to see what this dignified urologist's answer would be.

"I get it. That's a joke," the urologist finally (slowly) said.

The nurse smiled a bedazzling smile (that had absolutely no apparent effect) at the frumpy looking urologist and said, "I'll get you the

KY

Doctor Card and be right with you."

"Thank you, nurse." And with that the dignified urologist turned (slowly) on his heel and proceeded to resume his march to the patient's room to feel the gentleman's prostate.

Next in the pecking order are General Surgeons, who can and do have senses of humor and dignity (sometimes). A general surgeon, whose unofficial sub -specialty was excising and draining pylonidal cysts (extraordinarily painful cysts that principally afflict men at the top of the gluteal maximal cleft (ass crack)) liked to yell, "Thar she blows!" when his scalpel incised the cyst, relieving its pressure and sending a column of blood and pus (under generally high pressure) toward the ceiling of the O.R.

If the column of blood and pus managed to hit the ceiling and shower the O.R. crew with bacterially loaded goo, the general surgeon would then yell, "We gotta gusher, folks!" Other surgeons and O.R. crews, upon hearing "Thar she blows!" would stop whatever they were doing and wait to hear if he had a gusher or not.

The O.R. crew who worked with this particular general surgeon would always make sure they had something plastic to cover themselves with when the surgeon did cysts.

In between the General Surgeons and the "higher specialties" reside the Vascular Surgeons who found, sometime in the late 70's/early 80's, they could make a small mint, appealing to women's vanity and fixing women's legs afflicted with varicose and spider veins.

Until the arrival of the Heart Surgeons and Interventional Cardiologists, Orthopedic and Neuro Surgeons were at the top of the hierarchy. This was not because their specialties required that much special knowledge and experience (Well, there's the thing about brain surgery...) But principally because the Orthopods (and to some extent the Brain Surgeons), almost to a man, were football jocks in college.

This meant they were generally tall, well muscled and accustom to getting whatever they wanted, no matter who said no. That and the fact that hip and knee replacements done by the Orthopods and Carotid Endartrectomies (surgical cleaning of the Carotid arteries in the neck) done by the Brain Surgeons were volume surgeries with low overhead, i.e., there was lots of money to be made for both doctor and hospital.

And then came the Heart Surgeons, officially known as Cardio-Thoracic Surgeons, and loosely known as "Chest Cutters" or simply, to the

cognoscenti

of the heart surgery trade, as "Cutters."

The lesser Cutters walk on water and can turn water into wine.

The stars of the Cardio-Thoracic trade do not walk on water; they walk five feet above it and can create wine from just about anything.

You want this if you are a patient whose Cardiologist has just told you that your Right Coronary Artery is 90 percent blocked and you need heart surgery right away or one day, without warning, you will fall face first into your dinner plate and that, pretty much, is, as they say, that. So you want one of these guys who have no sense of failure. If a Cutter says you're going to live, you can pretty much make book on it. And if you do die, it was someone else's fault. Maybe yours. Definitively

not

your surgeon's.

Of course, having no sense of failure breeds not just simple arrogance but a god complex in the respective surgeon and that can be dangerous.

~~~~~~~~~~

2:30 AM The Basement of an apartment block 155th and Riverside Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City

Sweat trickled down the tortured woman's face and then the grimace of pain and the panting turned to a grimace of pleasure and breath held and released with accompanying sounds of pleasure, agonizing pleasure. The woman rubbed her thighs together and arched her back and belly out, pushing up her breasts to try to maximize the sensations.

"You look so beautiful in pain as well as pleasure Rebekka." And, in a very raw, animalistic way, the woman, bathed in sweat and looking exhausted, did look beautiful.

"Fu...fuck you...Eli. I'll give you another," the woman moaned in pleasure and then gulped for air, "I'll...give you an...another minute of two to get me the fuck down before I make you regret this. Seriously, Eli."

"Ah, Bekka, you sound so harsh." The man pressed the button again that elicited a scream followed by several smaller screams. It was a small electric current passing through the dildos in Rebekkah's tortured sex and ass. The woman frantically pumped her pelvis against air. By this point in their "play" Bekka had been trained to respond to the electrical stimulation as a trigger to intense orgasms.

Rebekka licked sweat off her upper lip and fixed a malevolent stare at Eli. "Do that one more time and I

will

kill you."

Eli looked at the woman, a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit of Beth Israel Medical Center/St. Lukes - Roosevelt hospital, and contemplated her beauty in her bonds and her exhaustion and pain. She was so beautiful, hanging on the Roman Tau cross he had erected in his playroom. Her ankles and wrists were not impaled by spikes but were very well held in place by thick foam pads, ropes and duct tape. She still suffered pain at her bondage points as the ropes cut through the foam to make semi-deep and irritated ligature marks into her tender skin

She sat upon a large dildo deeply embedded in her cunt and a smaller one deeply embedded in her ass.

After dinner and normal (more or less) love making, Eli had drugged (consensually, more or less) his victim and placed her on his cross. Initially, as she was coming out of the drug, the cross and her helplessness excited her but as Eli kept her up and kept forcing orgasms on her she became angry.

Eli stood on a pneumatic platform that could move him up or down the woman's body on the cross. He chose to stop at eye level. He grabbed a handful of her wet, lustrous black hair, arching her throat out from the cross, and with the other hand he jacked himself off and splattered his cum on her belly and thighs. This was the proverbial straw that broke Rebekka's back, figuratively speaking.

10:30 AM, the Next Morning Office of the Chief of Surgery Beth Israel Medical Center Manhattan

"Eli, the only reason the other service chiefs are not here, the only reason your accuser is not here, the only reason that I am speaking in such normal tones is because I won the coin toss on how to handle your off duty proclivities."

Eli Benjamin popped his gum and then attempted to blow a bubble as he looked with falsely concerned eyes at the Chief of Surgery. "Peter, are you talking about that little strumpet I had last night? Christ, I don't even remember her name. I think she got me drunk, maybe drugged me. She's nothing but a third rate whore as I recall. She blew me off in the cab."

The Chief of Surgery smiled a tight little smile that Eli did take notice of because it appeared that the Chief of Surgery, whom Eli thought was born anally retentive and permanently unhappy, was happy; very happy.

"Dr. Benjamin, the name of your little strumpet, the third rate whore? Yeah, her name is Rebekkah Rene Quentin, nee Samuelson. Does her birth name sound familiar?"

"Samuelson? Well, your name is...," and then the depth of Eli's problem became immediately evident to him, "Oh."

Eli became slightly worried.

"Oh, shit, Peter. Well...all I can say is...oops. You know, my bad."

Dr. Peter Samuelson, M.D., smiled his tight little smile. "Yeah, Eli, I learned quite a bit about your sexual perversions while I was suturing my first born child's ligature marks on her wrists, her ankles and her throat at 4 AM this morning. Oh, and I had to throw a couple of sutures in her rectum.

She would not explain how she was torn back there except to remind me that she is a champion amateur skeet shooter. You can draw your own conclusions but I would think it wouldn't be too safe for you to live and work in the greater New York area any longer. Bekka's got this Italian custom over/under 20 gauge skeet gun that is very short and easily concealed.

"I had to sedate her mother. She kept screaming at me to call, let's see, how did she put it? Oh, yes, she kept screaming, 'Peter don't you know any Italians that you could call to cut off the bastard's testicles?' As much as it pained me, I had to tell her that I didn't. But I did one better, I think."

Eli deadpanned, "Peter, I'd let you take one testicle. No anesthesia. It would hurt like hell. But hey, anything for you. And listen, third rate whore? That was only a defensive lie. Your daughter could suck and fuck like no one I've been with for..."

"Eli."

"Yes, Peter."

"Shut up.

"You, my filthy pervert, are black balled. I am fairly certain that by later this afternoon you won't even be able to get a job working for a veterinarian anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard. By this time tomorrow morning I don't think you'll be able to find work in a hospital in Chicago, L.A., San Francisco or Dallas. Of course you had that problem with Baylor sometime back so Dallas, Houston, the Gulf Coast and as far west as Arizona is already closed to you.

"Well, you've, uh, certainly been thorough Peter. And merciful, I might add. You think she's seriously with the shotgun?"

"Quite. Seriously, I'd hire someone to pack up your condo and then hole up in a hotel until you find something - abortions in Newark, maybe? I mean she mentioned the first shot should take off your genitalia and then the second shot would make you an ostomy user for life."

Eli frowned. "Oh."

Dr. Samuelson smiled his tight little smile again. Eli knew Dr. Samuelson was quite serious.

~~~~~~~~~~

Six Months Later

Eli moved to a studio apartment in Parsippany, New Jersey, under an assumed name, and began his job search.

It took Eli six months to find an opening at a medium sized medical center in Southwest Missouri. If anything, Peter Samuelson, in avenging his daughter, had been thorough. Besides St. John of God's in Joplin, there was only a position open in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and one in Missoula, Montana. Eli took the southern most opportunity, reluctantly.

Mike Strauss, the Vice President for Medical Affairs at St. John's made the ultimate decision to offer Eli a position. But before the offer was made Eli met with the two resident chest cutters, a husband and wife team, and the chief of the medical staff, the number two partner in the Orthopedic practice and as Chief of Staff, the most politically powerful doctor on staff.

John Riffen, the chief of the medical staff saw the inevitable and said nothing. When Mike Strauss asked for Riffen's opinion, Riffen nodded 'yes' enigmatically and left the meeting. Richard Morgan and Cynthia Lockley, the husband and wife chest cutters, stayed with the Vice President longer, quite a bit longer according to John Riffen's spies.

Negotiations over who would take each others' surgical calls allowing the surgeons some time off each week. Riffen, who never had been seen to smile, smiled slightly to himself. Morgan and Lockley would take Eli's calls but the majority of the surgical staff at St. John's knew all about the circumstances of Mordecai Elijah Benjamin's journey into the surgical hinterlands. Morgan and Lockley, fair to midland cutters, would take Eli's patient load when he needed a day off but there would be payment involved. And, quite likely, not fair payment either.

~~~~~~~~~~

If the heart surgery world is driven by ego the nurse/nun business is driven by the antithesis of ego: selfless love.

St. John of God Medical Center is owned, operated and administered by the Sisters of Mercy, Omaha Province. About a baker's dozen of local nuns worked at various positions within the hospital.

One of the nuns who serves as a surgical nurse is a bit of an anomaly. Sister Mary Magdalena du Plessiss is in her mid early to mid 30's, stunningly beautiful with a open, broad, oval face and large brown eyes through which the love of Christ focuses on anyone her gaze falls.

Father Benedict Harter, the community's chaplain, had twice tried to discourage Sr. Mary from taking her solemn vows with the Sisterhood. When asked why by the community's prioress, Fr. Harter, in his early 80's, his blush set off by his thinning white hair, had to admit that "she looked too damn good to be a nun. She needed to be more in the mode of the dour, knuckle busting stereotype of a school teacher nun." It did not help the Father's embarrassment when it took the prioress an overly long time to quit laughing - though she had to admit she too noticed that Sr. Mary had the looks of a woman who had once been an all- American college cheerleader who was now pursuing her career and should be driving a minivan with two or three kids and a big dog in the back.

There was no guile in Sr. Mary; what she said was what she meant. What others said she took at face value. Sometimes in surgery when someone told a joke or was being sarcastic a nurse or tech would have to pull Sr. Mary aside to explain. Then she got it. But even if she didn't get it she would laugh politely, always making the person who felt the need to explain or who had told the joke in the first place as if they were the greatest joke teller in the world and Mary's mind was just elsewhere. Silly Sr. Mary.

When Sr. Mary did pastoral care rounds twice a week she changed from her surgical scrubs to her full habit. Her visits were eagerly anticipated by the young men on the Sports Medicine and Orthopedic floors and by the old men on the Oncology and Pulmonary floors. It didn't matter to Sr. Mary that the young men were not Catholic nor did it matter to the old men, who had long ago lost their faith in a god, that Sr. Mary wanted to pray with them.

The Sister's voice carried a certain soft, ethereal peace to it and the soft touch of her hand on the hand or arm of the patient carried an unearthly compassion that left some patients in stunned silence and peace after Sr. Mary had left and caused others to weep uncontrollably for the sensation of spiritual peace that they felt in their few, fleeting minutes with the nun.

An excellent surgical and critical care nurse, Sr. Mary had a Masters degree in nursing. Some in the hospital thought eventually the Sisters would promote Sr. Mary to either the board of directors or to the hospital's executive management.

Everyone at St. Johns loved Sr. Mary. Something she always said was that "nothing was inevitable but the will of God." She was about to find out what that actually meant.

Office of the Nurse Manager, Surgical Services St. John of God Medical Center, Joplin, Mo. Monday, 5AM

Jan Courtney, RN sat behind her desk, her face in her hands. She felt sick and she didn't know what to do though she really did. She just did not want to face up to the duty she had to do. The duty she had to do was tell her best nurse, Sr. Mary that she would have to work with a new doctor and the new doctor, no offense to monsters, was an absolute monster.

~~~~~~~~~~

On the previous Friday afternoon Courtney got to meet Eli at a reception for doctors and management. Eli was to be a "rainmaker," doing very expensive heart and thoracic surgery on high risk patients; patients who would ordinarily go to Tulsa, Kansas City or Springfield.

Five minutes into her first conversation with Eli, Courtney not only knew she didn't like him - she hated him with a passion that bothered her. He was simply, in Courtney's assessment, a perverted, obscene man whom happened to be very gifted in surgery. He was, she angrily mused, an amoral idiot-savant; that or a sociopath.

In those first five minutes of conversation Eli propositioned Courtney no fewer that three times. And on the last time, when she politely refused his personality changed very subtly; he seemed to be threatening. But, then again, maybe not. He said, "I

always

get what I want, even if it means

taking

it."

Then he said, "I bet you have a fat, salty-sweet cunt. I promise I'll taste it and fuck it and then have you suck my cock clean of your cum-slime within out first 30 days working together. You won't be able to resist. It's just a fact. And, oh by the way, you got a sweet ass. I'll take that too if you don't want to give it up. See ya' round the surgery, babe. Monday."

Right then and there Courtney didn't know whether to call her husband, a burly welder and a bare knuckle boxer (for fun) who, when he heard the details, would come to the hospital and beat the doctor to within an inch of his life. Or, did she take her complaint to the administration. The doctor had not even done his first surgery here and already there would be a complaint.

Courtney got control of herself and moved on to the cluster of orthopedic surgeons eating canapes and pealed, cold boiled shrimp. Courtney noted that they were drinking way to much to operate if they had to.

Dr. John Riffen, dipped a shrimp in shrimp sauce and watched as Courtney came over.

"Motherfucker hit on you, didn't he Jan?" Riffen asked quietly, his face the usual indecipherable mask.

"I see you've gotten to know him John."

"Fucker propositioned my wife in terms I don't think I've heard since my first internship rotation at the VA Psych unit."

"Uh, I'm sorry John, did you say you

heard

?"

"Yeah," Riffen said, popping another cold, boiled shrimp in his mouth. "Fucker did it right in front of me. When Sherrie informed him she was married to me, fucker wanted to know how Sherrie was in bed and how well she could suck cock. I almost decked him right then and there. Fucker," Riffen added in a malicious half whisper.