Pretty Ugly: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

among them. And I believe that most, if not all, of those years would not have been quality. So, if I may answer your question with one of my own: Is life itself more important than quality of life?”
    The board didn’t think much of Ray’s professional, medical opinion, or of his “decidedly European” attitude toward patients’ quality of life.
    “Your primary responsibility was to save lives, and you failed that responsibility,” said an elderly physician who looked like a melting wax sculpture of Ronald Reagan. “Therefore, this board believes that the most appropriate punishment is to ban you from practicing medicine in the United States.”
    Ray felt like he’d been granted a divorce from an arranged marriage. He’d wanted out from the beginning, but looking back, he couldn’t say he hadn’t learned something . Reluctant to squander what little knowledge he had retained, Ray moved back to Owensboro and enrolled in a nursing program at the community college. Having a nurse for a son would have killed Dr. Ben Miller if he hadn’t dropped dead of an aneurysm at a tobacco auction two years earlier. And while Ray was a total failure as a doctor, he soon discovered that he was a very competent nurse.
    “I really like it,” he e-mailed an old med school buddy, “less pressure, less responsibility, I don’t have to cure anyone. I just have to help. I can do that. Plus, there’s a lot less stuff I have to know. It’s doctor lite.”
    Ray moved to Owensboro when he was ten. His father had been lured to the area to head up Bluegrass Memorial Hospital’s new Spinal Action Team, a title that exuded more positivity than Dr. Miller ever had about anything in his life. While very proud of being “the Barbeque Capital of the World,” the people of Owensboro always worried that the rest of Kentucky thought of their beloved town as just a smaller, shittier Louisville. Both sat on the Ohio River, but Owensboro was downstream, which created the distinct feeling of being constantly pissed on by the larger city. Louisville was fast becoming a major force in the health-care industry, and Owensboro was not going to stand idly by while its smug, more successful cousin cornered the market on health care and tobacco. A call to action was declared by the Department of Economic Development, charging the city’s four hospitals with the goal of making Owensboro synonymous with back pain. Money soon started flowing like piss down a river.
    THE BACKBONE OF AMERICA bumper stickers started appearing on ambulances and Cadillacs. Hospitals raced to see which could expand faster, one even convinced the city to declare eminent domain on an adjoining neighborhood that overlapped with its planned multimillion-dollar spinal rehab facility. Lawsuits followed, but “progress” won the war, and four blocks of residents could only stand by and watch as the homes they’d lived in their entire lives were bulldozed to make room for someone else’s dream. Six months into the crusade, Baptist Hospitals of Louisville bought Bluegrass Memorial and established the Bluegrass Baptist Spinal Center, “a revolutionary spinal treatment facility that will work hand in hand with our world-class spinal center in Louisville to provide quality care to patients throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky.” The battle was over. Owensboro got its spine center, and those four blocks of razed homes gave the town something else to brag about: the largest parking lot in the state.
    Ray liked Owensboro well enough. It was a nice place to raise a family: safe, good schools. It had the feel of a city—there were four colleges, three Starbucks, and five McDonald’s—but it was really just a town. You could be anonymous if you wanted, or you could be popular if you tried. Like everything else in life, it was kind of like high school.
    The desperate moans of the boat race victims provided a haunting sound track to the brusque demands of the doctors.
    “BP 80 palp!