Scope 2006 - SIU School of Medicine

Cover Art 

Esterina 

montage 

Allona Beasley Mitchell 

Medical Humanities 

First Place, Art 

SCOPE 

Volume XIII 2006 

Editorial Staff 

Editors-in-Chief 

Ben Cady, MSII 

Blaine Eubanks, MSII 

Associate Editors Layout Editors 

Lacey Ufkes, MSI Anne Elliott, MSIV 

Omonigho Ekhomu, MSI Janice Vandeveer, MSII 

Matthew Ashley, MSI 

Torie Johnson, MSI 

Review Edito Art Editor 

Seth Hahs, MSIV Holly Eltrevoog, MSII 

Poetry Reading Publicity 

Sarah Dyrstad, MSIII Nereida Rojas, MSII 

Andy Coombs 

Faculty Advisors Staff Editors 

Phil Davis, Ph.D. Karen Carlson 

Jacqueline Scolari, Ph.D. Jim Hawker 

Jean Afflerbach 

We would like to send out a special thank you to all those who 

reviewed the entries and helped create SCOPE 2006.

iv 

From the Editors: 

SCOPE 2006 

Though we thought we'd never see it 

SCOPE 13, our solemn mission 

Through threats & screams, hopes & dreams 

Has at last come to fruition 

No SIU Med students 

Were gagged or kicked down stairs 

Phil Davis, PhD esquire 

Was not thrown in pits with bears 

Many thanks go to Jim Hawker 

For his visual direction 

We won't tell, and you'll be cared for well 

In federal witness protection 

And to the Alumni Affairs Council 

We'd like you all to know 

Your generous hearts strengthened the arts 

Somewhere in Mexico 

From the writings of our submittors 

So much that we have learned 

Not a single page was torn in rage 

Shot with pistols, speared, or burned 

For editors must be equal 

Of favoritism, leave no traces 

We hope no one sees our fake IDs 

Or asks us our birthplaces 

Throughout our creative process 

Without violence, minds were meeting 

Karen Carlson did not use her gun 

And led all without one beating 

Dr. J. Kevin Dorsey 

Titled M.D., Ph.D. 

All fears allay, he did not pay 

To set any inmates free 

Dr. Jacqueline Scolari 

Led by beauty, charm and grace 

And were these three not sufficiency 

The electric prod kept pace 

We thank our staffers, one and all 

For their time and laborous struggling 

Their artistic skills prevented thrills 

We were never charged with smuggling 

Our mutilation was a rumor 

Untrue thus far, we hope 

We were both told in jail we'd grow old 

If our poems appeared in SCOPE 

And so we humbly present to you 

A SCOPE free from our rhyme 

After our long night, if some verse delight 

Please pray we escape in time 

––Ben Cady & Blaine Eubanks, MSII 

Editors-in-Chief 

SCOPE 2006 v

Contents 

Prose Page 

The Other Side of the Clipboard 6 

Kourtney Bradford 

Second Place 

Instinct 10 


My Dearest Reader 15 

John Grace, M.D. 

Third Place 

Celebrants 30 

Stewart Massad, M.D. 

First Place 

Tibilletti’s Boots 34 

Wesley G. Robinson-McNeese, M.D. 

Visual Art 

Esterina 

Allona Beasley Mitchell cover 

First Place, Art 

Reflections From the Sky 5 

Janice Vandeveer 

Self Portrait 13 

April Hlad 

Second Place 

Torn 18 

Christopher Erick Rivera 

 

Third Place 

Interpretation of R. Mapplethorpe’s ‘Ken Moody, 1984” 24 

April Hlad 

Conversations 29 

Ross Silverman 

Turtles Sun Bathing 32 

George Burklin 

Poetry Page 

Mount St. Helens Reflects 4 

Sandra L. Shea, Ph.D. 

Third Place 

Wanted 14 


When Owls Become Roosters 16 


A-sailing 17 

Vera N. Guertler, M.D. 

Sucre de Pomme Belle de Boskoop 19 


Second Place 

Of Kin 20 

Shannon Keith Kelley 

First Place 

A. Green 22 

Omonigho Ekhomu 

She Who Also Sits and Waits 23 

Sue Brooks 

Are Beauty and Mankind Compatible? 25 


Fairy Tale (Reality Check) 26 

Kimberly M. Servi 

Excuse Me, Please 33 

Sue Brooks 

Traveling I55 38 


2 SCOPE 2006 

SCOPE 2006 3 

 

 

 

Denotes winning entries

Mount St. Helens Reflects 

4 


Family Medicine 3rd place, poetry 

“Tomorrow creeps in this petty pace,” Shakespeare said. 

Means nothing to me. 

I breathed quietly for an eon. 

Napped for an epoch or two. 

Snored through the dinosaurs’ period. 

Whose tomorrow should we use? 

You weren’t here when I last rose a thousand meters. 

Your Sequoias’ parents were seedlings when I coughed a few times. 

By your clock, a score and a few past I gave back a thousand feet. 

It matters not. 

The rock is my clay, the magma my blood. 

I sigh steam dusted with ash as I muse on my choices. 

The snow melts from my lava dome. 

Tickles. 

Tomorrow, yours or mine, 

I’ll grow again. 

Or I’ll shrink. 

Or I’ll sleep. 

Watch me. 

As long as you can. 

I’ll be here. 


Reflections From the Sky 

Janice Vandeveer 3.5”x5” photograph 

MSII 

SCOPE 2006 5

The Other Side of the Clipboard 

6 


MSIII 2nd place, prose 

I watched through the dusty gray aluminum blinds as the cold January rain 

mockingly rapped lightly against the tall office window. Each wave taunting me with an 

“I told you so” tone reminiscent of how mother would sadly hold my broken hearted 16 

year-old body and remind me of her warnings about boys my age. I wish she were here 

now. I smell her lilac perfume and a fleeting glint of hope and warmth begins to surround 

me until I hear the hospital paging system remind a certain Dr. Bellows that his 

nurse is still holding on line two and I am jolted back to the fluorescent light-filled box I 

am suffocating in. The coarse paper on the examining table. The new, young nurse 

who had mispronounced my dead husband’s first gift to me. The four-month-old magazines 

on fishing and home re-decorating that seemed so much more inviting six years 

ago. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. I can see John’s shrunken physique sitting next to me in 

the hard plastic chair, clammy hand in mine. How I loved him for explaining what a 

“lymph node” was and how “cancer” had decided to take up residence in mine. No sir. 

No family history of cancer. No sir. No tobacco or alcohol use. I was always the 

healthy one. I had to be since John’s first heart attack in ’93 had induced a stroke and 

left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. Now it was his turn to comfort and care 

for me, of which he did so adoringly until the week of my last chemo treatment. He 

must have thought I was going to be okay, and that he could finally go home. My 

family quietly celebrated my remission as we paid our last respects to my dear love, my 

soul mate, and tried to console me with thoughts of “at least now you have your 

health.” Yes, I suppose I did. But, what good was my health without my heart? I had 

wept unrelentingly at my good fortune. 

In the past four years, however, I had learned to deal with John’s passing as I 

rationalized his advanced years, his debilitating condition and how he had fought till the 

end to make sure I would make it. The single, thin, gold band on my twisted and 

swollen left ring finger is all I have of him with me today. Looking past my deformed 

hand, I notice the doctor has installed new floor tiles. Well, probably not the doctor 

himself. They look cold. I wonder how they will feel when I collapse onto them, trying 

to pull them up over my head and hide under them, after he tells me I am dying. No. I 

will not fall. I will clutch my light blue cardigan tighter around my 94 pound frame and 

defiantly refuse any further treatment. I am 84 years old. I will lose neither the hair I 

have spent the past two years growing back, nor my lunch…or any other meal for that 

matter. 

I suppose when they had said there is a chance it will return, the cancer that 

is, that I would have preferred it if they had been a little more clear. Thirty percent 

chance. Well, does that not leave a 70 percent chance that it will not? That seemed like 


a lot of percent until last week when I had walked to the mailbox to collect the post, 

trying to ignore my ever-increasing breathlessness, and returned to the house only to 

cough up a handful of blood. Fresh. Candy apple red like my first tube of lipstick. I 

hadn’t felt right for months, but that is what brought me here four days ago and 

prompted a pleasant array of poking, prodding, and testing. I had just finished rinsing 

my teacup this morning when the nurse phoned. Of course I could come in this afternoon. 

Her tone of voice was similar to that you would expect of an invite to luncheon 

with the ladies or a friend’s birthday party. Some party this was going to be. I had left 

the water in the sink running a good 15 minutes before the incessant beeping of the disconnected 

phone line reminded me of my RSVP. 

Now, I sit and wait. Confused. Resigned. Proud. I am relishing how I have 

come full circle and am ready to strongly face this alone when there is a knock at the 

door. A solitary tear silently emerged from my right eye and plotted a course over my 

freshly rouged cheek and to the corner of my 

quivering wrinkled mouth. 

SCOPE 2006 7 

7

Instinct 

10 


MSIII 

Tuesday 

I still remember that Tuesday, that feeling. My 4 year-old son, tethered tightly 

into the metal cart, and I were slowly traversing the shiny, tiled, wide aisles as I filled the 

cart with the week’s menu items. Doritos. Cool Ranch. My waistline and brain were 

in the middle of a heated debate over the chips’ fate when Jack’s high-pitched version of 

“Yankee Doodle Dandy” faded out. I focused, not so much on the bag, but on the fact 

that it was Tuesday. Not just any Tuesday, but the Tuesday that follows the dreadfully 

punctual monthly Monday that had spent the last 11 years of my life, save a precious 12 

months thanks to my first child, making me desperately want to phone God to discuss 

why he hated women so much. It’s a strange feeling, instinct. 

As I snatched the blue bag from the shelf and tossed it into the cart with one 

hand, my other was already busy rifling through the eight pounds of necessities in my 

oversized purse in search of my day planner. Although the box springs would vehemently 

argue, we really weren’t trying to get pregnant again. A frightening calm settled 

as I moved past the toiletry aisle and made my way to the checkout, phone numbers in 

hand. There was no point in procuring a pregnancy test when I already knew that I 

was pregnant, as if by holding the doctor’s number in my hand was enough to confirm 

it. That was the beginning of my relationship with John. 

The tub 

An energetic young voice, followed by quick and increasingly louder footsteps 

echoed into the second floor bathroom. “Mom…mom, where are you?” From my teetering 

position, one foot in the metal soap alcove of the wall and the other desperately 

clinging to the lima bean green porcelain of the tub edge, I announced my location and 

returned to my merciless attack on the last colony of rebellious soap scum trying to 

stake its claim on my shower tile. The small hand grabbed my calf and I was reminded 

that I was not ready to pass on because when my life flashed before me, it left me somewhat 

wanting. I carefully stepped down from my perch and tried to act as if I hadn’t 

just had a brush with death as I settled onto the tub wall, eye-to-eye with my 3-year-old 

son John. “Life is hope, Mom…life is hope.” I’d have thought that I would have 

broken my neck the way my focus shifted from the half-attached Barney Band-Aid on 

his skinny left knee to his innocent, yet sure brown eyes. “Okay,” I responded, a 

pleasant reminder that just because we are older does not mean that we are any wiser. 

“That’s all,” he shrugged as he slipped back out the white, wooden doorway and 

snatched away my chance for a mother-son deeply intimate conversation. My jaw 

fought to avoid the floor as my mind raced back to my college Intro to Philosophy class 


and decided that he might have proven useful back then. I pondered my little Dali 

Lama as I resumed my post, oblivious to how important those three words would be. 

My family 

I sat in the third row of red, velvety cushioned seats of the high school auditorium 

that night, since the first two rows are just too close, with my husband and other 

two sons as I watched 16 year-old John conversing on the elaborately designed stage. 

Mesmerizing. We were a musical family and had all been in one production or another, 

displaying our lucky genes, but even fending off a bit of a cold, he commanded attention 

and made you forget where you were the way a 25 foot away hallway glimpse of 

your high school crush could freeze everyone else and allow you to follow every wisp of 

silky brown hair on his head settle into place as he stopped at his locker three feet from 

you... and then you realized you weren’t breathing. The thunderous applause was no 

match for my galloping heart as I stood to cheer, so full of pride and love for my son 

that I was sure I would explode. Man. I glanced at my family next to me and back to 

John, graciously beaming as he bowed, and knew that I had truly been blessed 

With the play finishing tonight and John’s hectic schedule easing up, we were 

finally able to convince him to get to the doctor to take care of this achy, exhausting 

cold he’d been trying to knock. Instinct. Left me out to dry on that one. 

The bed 

Lifting my head off my hands and not bothering to wonder, or care, whether 

it was tears or slobber matting my two-day-old hair to the corner of my mouth, my 

glazed eyes begin to focus on the blinking green light a foot from John’s head. I sat up 

straight in my chair-turned-bed of the last three years and ignored the protests of my 

lower back. His heart is still beating. He is still alive. There is still hope. He’d gotten 

sick so quickly. In and out of hospital after hospital, seeing doctor after doctor and getting 

medication then surgery then medication then surgery. Not once did he lose hope. 

Now he lies in this aluminum bed, in this cold room, hooked up to seemingly 

endless cords and machines. It is almost over. Earlier this week, things had gotten hairy. 

While my husband and I, with our newfound medical knowledge courtesy of a three 

year medical crash course in trying to divide and conquer my son’s assailant, were 

weighing the options of different treatment alterations to try next, he said it. “I’m 

ready.” In unimaginable pain and confined to a bed where each position hurt worse 

than the next, he was still able to floor me with his succinct wisdom. As a mother about 

to lose her child to disease and wanting to spare him as much pain as possible, I agreed. 

He’d been so valiant, and vicariously through him, I’d never allowed myself to give up 


either. Now, in the midst of the end, he lays unconscious except for invaluable seconds 

of clarity when he reassures us that he is going on his terms; then fades back into a restless 

sleep. 

I stare at my 20 year-old baby and remind myself that he is better off without 

his feeding tube. Pain meds and love are the treatment of choice from here out. He’s 

going home. Ignoring the now second nature flow of tears down my cheek, I tell him 

how proud I am of him and how much we all love him and how he’ll always be with 

me. “Life is hope, Mom…life is hope.” 

For Deej 

12 


Self Portrait 

April Hlad 24”x 30” Oil on 

canvas 

Community 2nd place, art 


WANTED 

14 


Office of the Dean 

female friend, 

confidante; 

fiftyish, 

slightly overweight, but with a warm smile; 

must understand, talk, cook and care 

like a mother, 

but above all, must not die. 

Apply. 

Please apply 

within 


My Dearest Reader 


Class of 2000 3rd place, prose 

Is this where we are? Is this what we’ve come to? You sitting here reading 

this, expecting to get something from it. Me sitting where I was months ago, years ago, 

writing this thing hoping to connect to someone who I haven’t even met and maybe 

never will. Who is the voyeur here? Me or you? 

I suppose there is an argument for each of us. I am opening my mind...a 

piece of it anyway...for you to come and see...come and look at...and if that is the case 

then it is my privacy that is being violated. But I also have choice in what I choose to 

show you and perhaps you tell me too much of yourself by your reaction to what I have 

let you see. I’m showing you a movie but while you’re watching it...I’m watching you. 

Perhaps we could make this interaction a tad more...shall we say...antagonistic? 

The interplay between writer and reader has been too kind for too long. Writers 

lead readers on gentle stories...keeping them safe...leading them where they want to go. 

Taking them places they’ve already been. There is this kind, benevolent, warm feeling 

the writer is there to take care of you. That’s boring. Whoever told you that I was on 

your side? 

As a matter of fact I don’t think I like you! And the more that I’m talking to 

you the more convinced I am. I mean what the hell did you ever do in life! Give me a 

break! Who are you? What are you doing reading this? And what do I get from it in 

return? 

Do you want to keep going? I do. Why stop here? Let’s talk about you just a 

little. Why are you reading this? What kind of person would keep going? Are you 

stupid? A glutton for punishment? Intrigued? Curious? Lost? Let’s give you the benefit 

of the doubt and go with “curious.” Yeah...that feels better doesn’t it? 

Relationships...yeah how are those going in your life...crappy huh? Why in 

the world do you keep trying? I think you’re a wonderful person...or a pathetic loser! If 

I can’t make up my mind...can you tell me? 

Now...now the real question begins. Who has seen more...me or you? React 

and reveal. Let me see who you are. 

For your last glimpse into me...let me say...honestly, truthfully that I love you! I 

really do. And whether or not you believe that...tells me everything about you. 


15

When Owls Become Roosters 


Family Medicine 

When owls become roosters 

All dreams will take flight 

Morning comes singing 

As dawn swallows night. 


Stars pull back their light 

Foxes go hungry 

The moon says good night. 


Clouds pinken to white 

Diamonds crown grasses 

A new day’s delight. 

A- sailing 

Vera N. Guertler, M.D. 

Class of 1990 

On a ship 

battered by waves 

bearing bones that the sea 

could not bury, 

the growing echo 

of the dead 

ferries from 

below deck. 

Amidst the wreck 

of sanity 

and all other vanity, 

I hear you calling me, 

half cursing, half pursing 

to seal me with a kiss. 

Never enough your savior, 

chastised for unholy behavior, 

I dared to sever 

the sailor’s knot. 

I know that the drowning 

cannot save the drowned, 

as I leap away 

reaching for the light of day. 



Torn 

18 

Christopher Erick Rivera 37” x 25” Pencil 

sketcMSII 3rd place, art 


Sucre De Pomme Belle de Boskoop 


Medical Humanities 2nd place, poetry 

That autumn in the apple orchard 

when I saw you at the gate 

I thought I was hidden 

down among the trees. 

I thought of the past 

and saw the future. 

I hid my wedding ring in the hollow of a tree 


Of Kin 


Community 1st place, poetry 

The day my father’s father 

slugged one of the town drunks 

while trying to pour him 

like a measured shot 

in a cab backseat for free 

(on my father) — hit him 

when the drunk turned 

bellicose as the billy goat 

escaped from the neighbor’s tether, 

which chased me 

round my grandmother’s house 

as she napped (so she said) 

on an ocean of swayback mattresses 

and I hammered 

the locked glass-pane storm door 

with fists white with fright, 

and ran the circle of grass again 

on legs seven years slow 

and once more before she opened 

the door and the gruff 

nightmare of fur 

and animal anger 

pushed its hoof — 

a hot poker into still water — 

through the glass in mirrored dismay, 

then ran without reason 

tired rings around the house, 

and she caught me 

in her arms like my father’s 

father caught the day-dead drunk 

he hit for cussing 

Dad’s generosity 

in my presence — that day 

I was thinking 

of the word colostomy, 

new to me because 

Grandpa had 

had one 

and told me so. 



A. Green 

Omonigho Ekhomu 

MSI 

Two weeks before 

maybe three 

and my news could be different. 

In place of helpless posture 

you would see 

an enabler of healing 

what failed? 

My research which 

has not approached the depths 

to remedy your ailment? 

Your kidneys? 

Could they have borne a moment longer 

till relief was afforded... 

Now I come to you without words 

to recall the cocky sureness 

you first greeted me with. 

No speech to comfort your mother 

who must now look to years of looking for a way 

so your blood can be cleaned. 

In wake of my distasteful words 

dreams drop to the earth 

with a clatter that resounds 

the dull finality 

I witness with my soul 

in your eyes as you 

understand 

I cannot heal. 

She Who Also Sits and Waits 

Sue Brooks 

Surgery 

She holds his old gray shirt and breathes in memories, some stale, some sweet… 

When will they come to her with news? Can it really be two hours now? 

The phone call came just after dawn. No coffee yet, eyes filled with sleep. 

“They’ll send someone,” he said. 

“Just send him,” she says, meaning it, too. 

Too young, this boy, to fight a war. Yet that’s what it is, isn’t it? 

Drug addicts, homies, prostitutes… 

Who waits for them to come home in the dark hours before dawn? 

Mothers…? Wives…? Children…? 

Do they hear the shots ring out and wonder if this time the bullet is serious? 

Do they care as much as she who waits? 



I n t e rpretation of R. Mapplethorp e ’s 

“ Ken Moody, 1984” 

24 

April Hlad 30” x 40” Oil on canvas 

Community 


Are Beauty and Mankind Compatible? 


Class of 2000 

Please plug a sky into my brain. 

Let the heaven slip under my skull. 

Fold an endless range, 

In my mind that waits for something more. 

Tie the sunset, 

And rope the waves crashing on the shore, 

Stuff them into my soul and make the beauty of the world fit into my storm. 

Morrow, Morrow, Marrow, Moral. 

Meat and bone, 

Street and Stone, 

Turmoil, the mortar of man, 

Building altars to Gods we cannot stand. 


If I was locked in a room of straw 

and must spin it to gold every night, 

Rather than guess that little man’s name 

I’d say, “You take Visa, right?” 

So maybe it wasn’t meant to be. 

I guess for all it’s worth, 

Fairy tales aren’t ready for me, 

I’m better off here on Earth! 

28 


Conversations 

Ross Silverman 8”x10” photograph 

Medical Humanities 


Celebrants 

Stewart Massad 

Obstetrics and Gynecology 1st place, prose 

In the last of the day on the Friday before Christmas, rags of cloud scud off 

the prairie, soar over the lake. As they change from lemon to rose, orange to violet, so 

do the cracked terracotta, sand-yellow brick, and old wavy glass of the hospital facade. 

Among the pigeons in Pasteur Park, a man in a quilted coat flings bread 

crumbs at the wind. He tears open his empty sack and shakes it at the sky, body 

uncoiling as he steps toward the hospital doors. Pigeons spring up before him, a billow 

of wings. Then darkness and the halogen lights come on. 

Hanging holly violates the fire code, so inside halls and office walls are decked 

with tinsel, cutout Santas, plastic stockings. Poinsettias sprout from file cabinets. On 

desks and charting tables, open eggnog cartons, empty soda jugs, and shopping bags 

from Fields sit by paper plates strewn with bits of icing, crumbs of cakes and cookies, 

cornbread, pilaf, tamales. Saint Nick is a big woman on the trauma unit in a red felt 

hat with acrylic fur and a brass bell over one ear who’s dishing out Demerol to gangbangers 

who know she brings better joy than any big-bellied reindeer jockey ever could. 

Outside the day’s last operation, an anesthetist in wrinkled pink sits on a steel 

stool, singing carols to an empty hall in gospel-trained tones. Downstairs on the wards, 

the singers are awkward adolescents, girls of every race. In plaid parochial school uniforms, 

they sing to gaunt men dying from alcohol and cigarettes, cancer and AIDS 

about kings and drummer boys, silent nights, and dreams of a Christmas just like the 

ones they used to know. They dance away down high-ceilinged halls and stairwells 

incensed with burnt marijuana: God rest you merry gentlemen. 

Brown leaves blow down the main hallway every time somebody ducks out for 

a smoke. A crowd jams the lobby, and the pharmacy line rounds the corner and doubles 

back. The dead leaves skitter past unshaven, unwashed panhandlers asleep on 

benches outside the MRI scanner. One opens an eye on a passing Azteca in jeans tight 

as a tomato skin, in lipstick dark as a cracked scab. An old Filipina sits next to him, settles 

against the plastic grocery bag that is both purse and pillow to wait with him for 

morning. 

A medical resident throws open steel fire doors and trots toward the emergency 

room, his shined black shoes and sober white coat drab beneath an electric blue 

turban and Sikh warrior’s beard. Squat women with the round faces of Mayan figurines 

herd flocks of children out of his way. The open coat that flaps behind him 

brushes a viejo with skin tanned by cigarettes and the Mexican sun who moves as fast as 

arthritis and emphysema allow, almost keeping up with the young inmate in a tan jail 

uniform and leg irons that clank like jingle bells all gone to rust. 

Elegant as night in silver, navy, and black leather, two cops chat up a chunky 

blonde in stirrup pants and earrings hung with chips of colored glass that jingle when 

she laughs at them. Three kids in baggy pants, hightops, bits of beard as big as they 


can grow, and parkas bulky as grown men’s muscles run up and down the stairs from the 

ward where their homeboy lies recovering from three bullets in the belly. They whoop 

and shout as they vault the steps, rounding square iron banisters cast with black florets: 

they might be mistaken for children, but for eyes careless and black as gun muzzles. 

And when they jog laughing down a hallway past the men in wheelchairs who wear 

green cotton gowns open to show off chest hair and bandaged gunshot, they pause no 

more than does the commissioner in the gray double-breasted who’s through big glass 

doors for the taxi that will carry him away. 

In the bad light just behind him, a dark man hides a white cardboard box 

inside his long green coat. He sidles up to men and women waiting for the Harrison 

Street bus like a dope peddler, one eye out for cops who have no time for him. He 

works the queues, the crowds, the solitary idlers, red light from a passing ambulance 

spilling over all. Like a hoarse beer seller at a Sox game he cries his wares in a whisper: 

“Sugar cookies? Sugar cookies? I got sugar cookies here. Come on, people: it’s 

Christmas!” 


Turtles Sunbathing Excuse Me, Please 

32 

George Burklin 4”x10” photograph 

Community 


Sue Brooks 

Surgery 

Excuse me if I take a look at what you’re reading in that book. 

I’ve often thought I might — buy one myself to read at night. 

But every morning on the train, I just read yours — it’s not a strain 

To lean in close, take in each word, and thus, it really seems absurd 

To spend the money that I earn, when I can follow as you turn 

Each page you read on this commute, your choices always quite astute. 

Excuse me but could I suggest, something easier to digest? 

What’s that I hear you say? You’ll gladly do it if I pay? 


Tibiletti’s Boots 

34 


Office of the Dean 

I don’t remember the exact day Tibiletti got the boots. He ran into the barracks 

that day and told a story of a wild send-off given to this Special Forces sergeant. 

Tibiletti said the sarge threw the boots from the back of a cargo plane as it lifted off the 

runway. The boots were genuine — not the ordinary, puke-green, canvass-tops worn by 

most G.I.s in Vietnam, but leather with a zipper up the middle and just a hint of the 

former shine. These were flight boots for sure! 

“Damn!” Tibiletti, the newest of the new in Vietnam had had a pair of 

jump-boots literally fall into his possession from the sky. I was as envious as hell. 

Already three months into Vietnam, I had not so much as a shoestring handed down to 

me by a vet, and here, Tibiletti had a pair of Special Forces jump-boots. “Damn!” 

Seemingly every Vietnam soldier either had in his possession, or was actively 

seeking, some special lucky piece. These charms were acquired by design mostly, but 

these boots came to Tibiletti by blind luck — so unlike what typically befell him. 

Tibiletti, a past, basic training spastic, was as likely to trip over a pair of boots 

as to wear them. Nevertheless, he had the boots and for the next weeks would keep 

them with him constantly, either on his feet, or under his bunk. 

At DaNang it was customary to send off a buddy with an all-night beer bash. 

The Bien Hoa-bound C-141s would drone into DaNang around 0500 hours and by that 

time we would be a drunken rabble. The whole event served as group anesthesia from 

the pain of being left behind. A fire would have been started, and the soldier who was 

leaving would have burned nearly everything except the clothes on his back, the contraband 

that he intended to slip through customs, and that special piece of gear that would 

be left behind for some lucky soldier. 

It was an accepted, howbeit asinine ritual that showed more bravado than 

brains. If Charlie had chosen that hour to lob a few 125-millimeter shells onto the base, 

our fire would have been like a homing beacon guiding the rockets in. But when a 

buddy had done his time in Vietnam and was headed back to the States in something 

other than a box, his good fortune was a special event, and we celebrated. With a mixture 

of relief and suppressed resentment, his barracks-mates ushered him through his 

final day in ’Nam in the spirit of teammates carrying a star player on their shoulders. A 

bonfire and beer seemed little enough to acknowledge the occasion. And to end the 

occasion with a special piece of gear being left behind by a departing vet, that made it 


even more worthwhile. The thinking was that if it had been lucky for him, it just might 

be lucky for you. Still, guys who were leaving typically passed on their treasures to some 

special buddy who had been in Vietnam with them for a while. My God, Tibiletti was 

just a newk! He had only been there two weeks. 

I had first met Tibiletti in basic training. He was from California, Los 

Angeles, I think, but he didn’t look or act like the proverbial, sun worshipping, 

Californian. Rotund and loping, he was constantly poking his glasses back atop his nose 

as he moved awkwardly through one basic training exercise after another. His full name 

was Raymond Charles Tibiletti. His father was some big shot in radio. I’m sure that 

somewhere along the line one of the family’s lawyers had goofed and Tibiletti had been 

issued induction papers. He quickly became the drill instructor’s whipping boy. Believe 

me, he was nobody’s soldier back then, just a slow, uncoordinated, mild-mannered guy 

who had gotten drafted. It was because of this, or maybe it was in spite of this, that I 

befriended him. 

Tibiletti had the uncanny ability to tell which city you came from if you 

would give him the call letters of a hometown radio station. I had tried to stump him 

with “WESL,” but he shouted back without hesitation, “East St. Louis, Illinois.” 

He had come to DaNang two months after I had arrived. He was assigned to 

my squad and from that day on we shared a stall in the barracks and just about everything 

else, except those newly acquired boots of his. It was on the night that Tibiletti 

was teaching me the subtleties of Bob Dylan’s music that sappers got onto the base and 

blew up an ammo barge. After we got off the floor, I noticed that Tibiletti was 

clutching his boots and stroking them the way you would a talisman. 

On that early morning when rockets slammed into the barracks area killing 

seven guys, everyone had run for the bunkers with little thought of anything else but 

getting there. Tibiletti, on the other hand, stopped long enough to get his boots. 

Huddled in the darkness of the bunker, we talked in whispers of the dead outside. No 

one had seen them die, but we had heard the unmistakable sounds — the whistle of the 

falling shell, the slightly muffled explosion that signaled the splattering of bunks and 

flesh. In the darkness Tibiletti did not talk, but just held onto his boots. 

“Direct hit,” the first-shirt had said. The first-shirt knew the sound all too 

well. 

As the days went on, Tibiletti took to spit-shining the boots and calling attention 

to them during conversations. “These babies are gonna take me home,” he would 

say, “They’re going to take me home!” 

Hell, maybe he knew what he was talking about, I thought. After all, he had 

begun to act more like a soldier than ever before. On patrols he was as cool as anyone 

and his reaction time was getting faster. I had given up believing in charms, but 


espected whatever “ism” got a guy through this mess and back home. Tibiletti and his 

boots were as good a device as any, I felt. 

We were on our way back to the compound following duty one night, about 

ten of us in all. Tibiletti was behind me about 20 paces, those boots of his snug on his 

feet. Jack and Vince had the point. The others were screwing around further back, 

throwing rocks. The mood was light. 

If you can will your mind past the reality of the situation, it is easy to lose 

yourself in the blackness of the Vietnam sky after dark. A conical canopy, it seems no 

more than a couple of hundred yards overhead at its highest, all atwitter with stars 

fighting for a view of the earth below. Darkness had the habit of sneaking onto 

DaNang Airbase. Slipping over the mountains at the base’s southern perimeter, it 

would smother the sun’s rays and then claim all but the defiant searchlights and road 

markers that winking, pointed the way back to the compound. Breezes came too at 

those times, but never as stealthily — rolling heavily over the base, they were pervasive. 

It was in this kind of setting that we picked our way leisurely back to the barracks, 

easing up to a run-off ditch along the right side of the road. My thoughts were 

back on Lawrence Avenue — summer nights in the ’50s, wandering from yard to yard 

playing games, the old folks sitting on the porches waving at the heat with newspapers, 

smoke-pots choking off attacking mosquito hordes. In my mind I saw my mother. . .saw 

my girl. 

It was Vince’s voice that broke the mood. 

“Sarge, look. Look!” 

I had spotted the orange-red tails of the rockets before Vince could finish 

shouting. They curved across the darkness in all directions. 

“Incoming,” Vince shouted, “Incoming!” 

Instinctively I turned to my right and dove for the ditch. As I landed I saw 

Tibiletti and the others entering the same ditch a few feet back from my position. 

Tibiletti had been the last one in, as usual, but he made it. We all burrowed our faces in 

the mud as the base siren wailed. Engineers shut down generators giving DaNang back 

to the night and we each found a private, muddy womb in which to ride out the attack. 

The rockets fell without pattern or rhythm for nearly half-an-hour. The barrage 

was heavy, but hit mostly in other areas of the base. Only a few had hit nearby. I 

had actually felt the impact of one as I lay buried in the mud — a thudding, slightly 

muffled sound — probably the result of the shell slamming into the moist earth. 

Fifteen minutes of silence was enough to bring us from our muddy hideouts. I 

spent another minute removing the goop from my eyes. Up on the road the guys were 

scurrying around searching the shadows with their flashlights. 

“What’s wrong,” I shouted. 

36 


“Tibiletti. Tibiletti’s missing,” a frantic voiced responded! 

I ran towards them, thinking as I went, “I saw him go into the ditch. He 

made it in time. Damn, I know he did. He’s just slow. He’s always slow.” I stopped 

near the spot where I had seen Tibiletti dive in. The others were grouped behind me. 

The eeriness of the situation chilled me, even in the warm DaNang air. Our flashlights 

shown on the spot where Tibiletti had gone into the ditch. He was not there, but the 

earth was splayed before us — black clumps in an irregular, oval pattern, with the odor 

of sulphur. 

He was not there. Instead, in his place, in the midst of the clumps of dirt, 

smoldering in the half-light, twisted and torn, lay Tibiletti’s boots. 


Traveling I55 

38 


Community 

Gone are the sunburned boys, 

the men with sagging belly dancers 

on their heavy chests, 

and their arms 

skin and ink testimonies 

to girls also long gone. 

This ghosts back to me, 

like an abandoned poem, 

as I drive a wedge of highway 

I helped pour: my sweat ran 

with that of men’s whose 

waking hours hinged 

on the quiet nod of the sun. 

Once, a young foreman 

pushing for production 

platooned the fleet 

too soon after a rain. 

The dump trucks roared in mire, 

mastodons trapped in a tar pit. 

Now, all seems 

more distant than miles. 

The only words: Madison Avenue scroll 

the length of a hilltop, 

ensconced phrases without rhythm 

in rural Missouri — 

a scar that will not form. 


This and past editions of SCOPE 

are available on the SCOPE Web site, 

http://edaff.siumed.edu/SCOPE/index.htm 

Submissions for the 2007 edition of SCOPE 

will be accepted from October to December 2006. 

Rules and entry forms may be obtained 

via the SCOPE Web page later this year; 

by contacting the Medical Humanities office at 

913 N. Rutledge St., Springfield, IL. 62794, 

217-545-4261; 

or by e-mailing scope@siumed.edu.

Scope 2006 - SIU School of Medicine

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