Phi Beta Kappa

***Disclaimer: I don't know if this would be considered inappropriate for this site, but if it is, I apologize.

My dad always had this annoying way substituting analogies for answers. When I was twelve I asked him how to get a girl to notice me and he said that women are attracted to confidence and humor. I asked him just how I was supposed to do that when I didn’t consider myself to be either, and he said, “Picture this… James Dean mixed with a little Johnny Carson.”
Apparently they were the pinnacle of both as far as he was concerned.
It was four more years before I got a girl to talk to me more than once.

When I was seventeen, the night of my senior prom, he pulled me aside and discreetly handed me a condom like I was buying a bag of pot on the corner.
He said, “Son, it only takes a few extra seconds to protect your self from a lifetime of troubles.” After assuring him that I understood, he added, “It’s really quite easy, you know.”
“What’s that, dad?”
“Just picture rolling your gym sock up and down your leg.”
Oddly amused and completely uncomfortable, I left it at that proceeded to take my date to the prom, where she proceeded to get completely ****-faced-drunk and make out all night with that douche-bag, Ronnie Sheldon.
Ronnie Sheldon. How can I best describe Ronnie Sheldon? Well, to borrow a line from my dad, picture…
No, douche-bag pretty much sums it up.
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“This is how it works in a normal body,” he said, “as opposed to this.”
I was reminded of the picture on my dad’s fridge from his last fishing trip. Him and his friends proudly holding up their catch.
He stared down at a middle-aged woman who had died the day before after a recent bypass surgery and colonic resection.
When an autopsy is performed on a healthy human body–with the exception of being dead, of course–the organs all come out at once. After cutting open the chest and the abdomen and slicing the neck just above the thyroid, you can pretty much grab the throat and pull everything out.
Have you ever seen someone clean a fish by grabbing its bottom lip and pulling out its entrails? Picture that.
Imran stood there holding on to this guy’s aorta while the rest of his plumbing dangled below.
“This is what we hope for everyday when we come in,” he said, proudly lifting his catch. “Cleaning her out’s gonna take all day.”
When someone dies after surgery, everything is a mess. The inside of the abdominal cavity is wallpapered with adhesions. Organs discolor and swell with gas and fluids, morphing into unrecognizable globs that don’t resemble anything in a text book. There’s bruising and blood everywhere.

A couple of weeks ago the head-pathologist, Dr. Auerbach, came in to observe an autopsy. Stretched-out, faded blue scrubs hung off his bony shoulders like a storefront mannequin, barely revealing a pair of old flip-flops and crusted yellow toes. Setting his lunch down and plunging in with bare hands, he sorted through her insides like he was digging through a pile of nickels, looking for a quarter. The rest of us cringed behind our protective face masks and neoprene aprons.
The woman had a swollen mass in the back of her abdomen that looked like a rotten red onion. We all stood around puzzled, throwing out guesses as to what it could be.
Picture… a game of anatomical-charades.
After inventorying the rest of her organs and eliminating everything else, we figured out that it was her gull-bladder, which usually looks like a piece of calamari.
“Lets cut it open and see what’s in there,” Dr. Auerbach said.
Grasping the scalpel, Imran pinched the organ with two fingers and inserted the blade. As soon as the steel touched the outer-membrane, a stream of dark-green bile shot out of the bloated organ like a pinhole in a water balloon, spraying Dr. Auerbach diagonally from his chin to his hip.
“Holy-****!” I yelled. “Are you alright?”
It looked like he had just lost a sword fight.
“Aww… I guess I kinda’ had that comin’,” dabbing at the stain with a napkin. “Screw-it, I’m leaving in a couple hours. Now where’d I put that apple?”

About a month ago I started coming a few days a week to observe the pathology department at Stolhardt Hospital. My English professor, Dr. Whitmore, told us that we needed to go out and observe a profession that interested us and write a story about it.
Dr. Whitmore and his rotting, corn-kernel teeth.
His Colombian roast breath.
Constantly stroking his yellow-gray goat-tee.
I knew from day-one that we were not going to get along.
The self-righteous little prick.
His paisley suspenders and matching bow tie.
His Phi Beta Kappa paddle hanging on the wall. I’d like to smack the **** out of him with it.
The first assignment he gave us was to turn something in that showed our talents as writers. I turned in a poem about my childhood dog, Roxy. How her beautiful coat glistened in the sun as she danced across the yard. How I’d awake in the morning to the soft, loving laps of her pink tongue against my cheek. How she was the best memory of my otherwise mundane adolescence. My senior year of high school, my teacher gave me an A and told me it was beautiful and moving.
Whitmore gave me a C minus and wrote at the top, “Seems a bit clichéd and melodramatic. I’ll expect more from you if you want to be successful in this class.”
Did I mention that he’s a self-righteous little prick?

I wasn’t particularly interested in pathology, but when my sister’s friend Imran offered, I figured, why not? Some of my classmates were observing their father’s car dealership or their dental hygienist-mothers. Compared to watching cars get sold or teeth get cleaned, pathology sounded promising. I thought I might even get to see some tits. Even if they were a dead tits.

“So, how’s the story comin’ along?”
“I don’t know, man. Alright, I guess. Not really sure what I’m gonna write about. It’s a stupid assignment if you ask me.”
Imran held a piece of gravel that he had dug out of a motorcycle victim’s amputated arm up to the light, a jeweler studying a fine gem, and plunked it into the specimen dish. “Don’t worry, man. I’m sure you’ll figure somethin’ out. Besides, you should be thankful.”
“Thankful? For what?”
Imran slid his glasses down his nose, peeking over the wire rims at the pale blue information card. “Well, it doesn’t look like ol’ Steve-O here is gonna be writing stories anytime soon.”
“True, I guess.”
“He’ll probably have to learn how to beat off with his other hand, too. At least you don’t have to do that.”
“You should be writing greeting cards, dude.”

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Remember when you were in biology class dissecting frogs? You’d pop the top off the jar of formaldehyde and fish Kermit out as the vapors rose and stung your eyes. Two hours in the pathology department and you’ll smell it on your skin for days.
Pathologists don’t call it dissecting. It’s called grossing. They cut and describe, weigh and measure that day’s tumors, cists, and amputated parts. Grossing is a verb, but it’s the most accurately-descriptive verb I’ve ever seen done.
Off course, when you get a diabetic’s amputated, gangrenous foot, the smell of formaldehyde is like sweet, sweet roses by comparison. It’s what you concentrate on so you don’t puke.
Picture… bleu cheese dressing and acetone.

Every once in a while, you get five gallon buckets full of discarded liposuction fat. Most people think that it’s just like sucking the fat out with a vacuum cleaner. But when that’s done, there’s a lot of extra skin left over. Surgeons take thick, triangle-shaped slices of skin and subcutaneous fat and sew the two ends back together. Triangles make the scaring less noticeable.
When the five gallon buckets come down to the pathology department, everyone seems to have something else to do.
In order to gross it, you have to pull out each piece and run your hands over every inch, feeling for tumors or anything else that shouldn’t be there. It feels like… well, it feels exactly like how you would expect it to feel. A sample is taken from each piece and saved. The rest is weighed and sent away to be incinerated.

By the end of the first month, things really started getting pretty routine. Every day was one biopsy followed by another. Skin cancer. After-births. Ovarian cists. Bisect. Weigh. Describe.
I think Imran began noticing when I started bringing my iPod in with me.
“What’s the matter, man?”
“It’s always the same stuff everyday,” I said. “It’s amazing how fast you get used to seeing someone’s insides.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. But you’ve just gotta have a little faith.”
“Faith? For what?”
“Eventually,” Imran assured me, “you’ll get something that blows you away.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, eventually we’re bound to get another Easter Egg.”

Easter Eggs are how pathologists refer to the various objects that get lodged in people’s rectums and vaginas. It’s more common than you might think. The average emergency room sees a dozen or more cases every month.
“It’s never too much longer until the Easter Bunny comes again.”
He told me about this woman who came in after being assaulted by a man who broke into her home. She told the paramedics and police that he said he was going to rape her, but stopped once she started screaming. But, before he left, he stripped her clothes off and crammed her cell phone deep inside her.
“That sick ****!” she kept screaming over and over between sobs and tears. “You have to find that sick **** before he does this to someone else!”
The paramedics assured her that she would be fine and that the police would investigate the matter.
Of course, the police investigated and found no evidence of a break-in. It was a month before they finally decided to check her phone records. Turns out that in the almost three hours leading up to the alleged assault, the woman had made one hundred eighty seven calls from her house phone to her cell. When the police returned to ask her about the calls, she admitted that there was never a burglar. She said that the batteries in her vibrator had run out and she decided to improvise. Then it got stuck and she was too embarrassed to admit the truth.
You may be asking yourself how it is that these people can get objects stuck in themselves so easily. The problem isn’t always sticking them in too far. The problems come when the swelling starts.
Here you are, bored and horny, looking for something to satisfy yourself. You spot a parsnip in the vegetable crisper or broom handle in the pantry closet and you’re… lets say… inspired.
At first it slides in easily. But as you start grinding away, the tissues start to stretch and tear. Add to that the body’s natural reaction to sexual arousal—blood rushing to the genitals—and holes start swelling shut like Rocky’s eye in the tenth round.
You end up a human roach motel. Cucumbers check in, but they don’t check out.
“I only wish I had known about it when they sent the phone down after surgery,” Imran said. “I could’ve called her.”
“Why would you want to call her? What could you possibly have to tell her?”
“Nothing,” Imran said. “I wouldn’t have told her anything. I would have had only one question for her.”
“Oh yeah.” I was afraid to ask.
Imran looked up from the table and with a smirk, lifted his mask. “Can you hear me now?”

He told me about this other time when a guy came in with a light bulb stuck in his rectal cavity. Imran said that it was immediately obvious that this guy had been doing it for a long time. When I asked him how he knew, he told me the guy had tied a string around the bulb before he inserted it, so that just in case it slipped all the way in, he could still pull it out. It’s called leashing.
Picture… a tampon. A tampon made of frosted glass and filled with argon gas.
“There’s only one reason a person thinks ahead that much… EXPERIENCE!”
The fact that he had a light bulb in his *** wasn’t his biggest problem, though. While he was smart enough to think ahead and attach a leash, he miscalculated exactly what would happen when he tried to pull it out. The bulb started to flip over and turn inside him. The pain was so excruciating that he eventually had to stop and call 911. It wasn’t bad enough that he had a sixty-watt stuck up his ***, but now it was turned sideways, too.
Of course, the doctors had to be very careful in removing it, because the only thing worse that having a light bulb in your ass… is having a broken light bulb in your ***.

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When I walked in for my final week of observations, Imran was hard at work grossing a section of stomach from a gastric bypass. Sitting in the produce scale, it seemed to wiggle on its own accord like a fresh jell-o mold.
Picture… a pink Jabba the Hut covered in a spider web of blue veins.
Imran seemed distracted and barely acknowledged me as I sat at the desk in the corner, unpacking my school-bag.
“What’s the matter, man? You seem down.”
“Ehhh…Bida had me up all night.”
Bida was his miniature schnauzer that if there was such a thing, could undoubtedly qualify for K9 social security. He’s spent thousands caring for this aging relic of a pet because he just can’t bring himself to put her down. She had her hip replaced, only to lose the leg a year later after she wandered into traffic. Now, if you pet her too hard on the head, she topples over like a bowling pin. She’s got milky, cataract-covered eyes and is completely deaf. Last year she had to have all the teeth pulled out of one side of her mouth when she started getting infections. Now he has to soak her food into a mush so that she can gum her kibble.
It really is truly amazing. How pets become our parents. They fall apart like an old Chevy and we’re stuck caring for them because we’re too guilty to put them out of their misery. We grind up their heartworm or blood pressure medication and hide it in their mashed up food. Then again, Imran’s mother is stuck in the only nursing home in town that takes medicare, while Bida is taken to physical therapy twice a week.
“I wasn’t sure if you were gonna be coming in today. Isn’t your assignment due this week?”
“Yup. Friday”
“So, how’s it lookin?”
“Like I’m gonna fail. I’ve been sitting here for almost two months and still don’t have anything.”
“Well, I’ve got something that might cheer you up. Do you wanna know what it is?”
I’m always a little frightened when Imran is acting secretive.
“I heard… and, I’m not exactly sure… but I’m pretty sure… at least Suzy upstairs said… and she’s usually pretty solid…”
“Dude! What the **** are you talking about! Spit it out!”
“Well, I heard that someone just came into the ER with an Easter Egg.”
“Oh, really,” I said, feeling the curiosity rising in my gut.
“Yeah. It should be comin’ down anytime now.”
“Cool. Well, at least I might get a laugh before failing out of college. I’m gonna try to get something done. Lemme know when it gets here.”

I sat at the desk, staring at the blank screen on my laptop, trying to will myself into writing something even remotely interesting.
Pathology is the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of organs, tissues, bodily fluids, and whole bodies.
I could already hear that self-righteous little prick’s gravely voice in my ear. “Well, I was hoping for something interesting, but this is what I get,” he’d say.
Select-all. Delete.
Pathology is derived from the Greek root pathos, meaning “feeling or suffereing.” It got it’s start in Western Europe during the Italian Renaissance.
“Gee. I didn’t know this was history class,” the sandpaper sound of stroking that discolored goat-tee.
Select-all. Delete.
Pathology is almost as boring as this bull**** English class and its worthless dick of a professor.
Select-all. Delete.

“Hey dude, I don’t want to interrupt you if you’re on a roll, but it’s here.”
“No. Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty much resigned to failure at this point. What do we got?”
Imran grabbed the specimen bag and threw it on the examination table with a thud. “Wow, looks like someone was ambitious. Definitely not a light bulb if they had to put it in the big bag.” Grabbing a pair of scissors, Imran sliced the top off the bag and reached in, the anticipation building in both of us.
“Holy ****, man! What the hell is this?”
As Imran slowly coaxed the object out of its sterile bag, like a magician teasing the audience with his top hat, I saw a smooth wooden handle followed by the three loveliest words I’ve ever seen.
“What the hell is this thing, dude?” Imran asked again.
“I believe it’s an A.”

This story has a lot of very strong points. Firstly, you use strong descriptive details and they really add to the story. I liked the detail about the poem about your dog and it got you a A in high school but a C - in college. I also liked your plot device of saying "Picture..." You did it twice I believe and it really helped me picture what I couldn't have otherwise. However, I am still not sure what the object, the final Easter Egg, at the end is and am very interested to hear.

Anyway, I liked the story, well done.

Nevermind I just figured out what the object is :P simply re-read the title. Hhaaha great ending! Very nice twist and surprising and I like the full circle effect. Hahaaha wow, that's great. Great job, keep on writing.

Thanks Grit. Actually, the original title of this piece was Easter Eggs, and the original ending was a little more obvious in regards to what the object was. I liked that title better, but wanted the end to be a little less obvious, and then felt like I better give the reader a clue in the title if I was going to pull off an ending like this. Your reaction to the ending is actually exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted the reader to be confused for a second, and then have it hit them. Thanks again for taking the time to read and comment! Much appreciated.

Forgive my British pov - I enjoyed the story, but the meaning of 'Phi Beta Kappa' (Greek alphabet - that much I do know) is totally lost this side of the water.

Could you let us in on the secret? if I say please???

It's an academic honors society... technically a fraternity (but not the beer guzzling kind). Graduating from college Phi Beta Kappa is essentially like graduating with high honors. Didn't really think about it, but I guess it might be strictly an American university thing. Traditionally, if you're in a fraternity you would recieve a commemorative wooden paddle adorned with your fraternity letters. Hope this helps, Hillwalker. Thanks for reading my story!

Thanks - now it makes sense (the wooden paddle part).

I've seen my share of Frat-House movies (and you're right - there's nothing of the sort over here) so I guessed there was some reference to graduating with honours or the like.

Thanks for the explanation, H