Memories of BG

I remember that he liked a big glass of red wine. 

I remember that he brought in stout and champagne to make us Black Velvets in the last session of the respiratory block that he tutored me for.  He'd been in and out of hospital the whole time so we'd hardly seen him, but he lobbed into the final tute determined to make amends.

I remember that he ate cheese in preposterous proportions.  It made me sad to watch him because it made me think of my father.  It also made me happy because that was good cheese so why hold back? 

I remember meeting him for the first time, one day in the central markets the year before I started med school.  My Smaller Half had recently finished his cardiovascular block, and so when we saw him walk by as we sat at the Russian stall eating our dumplings and our pork and cabbage rolls, she called out to him and he came over for a chat.  We invited him to join us to eat, and to our surprise he did.  We mentioned that I had applied to get into medicine, but he wasn't really interested.  He wanted to talk politics as the federal election was looming.  It turns out he was a raging Leftie, so we sat for an hour over brunch gleefully forecasting Howard's downfall and stoking each others' outrage about the sins of the past.

I remember the informal viva exam at the end of the anatomy subject he taught last year, when he patiently coaxed me into remembering the course and location of the subclavian vein despite my best efforts to forget. 

I remember him teaching us the muscles of the abdomen and hips, and relating them to the various cuts of beef. 

I remember discussing his health problems with him last year.  He told me about the balloon pump catheter that they used to keep him alive after his first heart attack and drew some pressure/time curves on the whiteboard to explain it to me.  He took off his shirt to show our tute group the dobutamine infusion pump on his hip and how the tubes snaked up his shoulder and plugged into his arm.  He casually mentioned that it was a last resort of sorts.  It seemed like a teaching opportunity to him.

I remember wondering why he continued to come into uni and teach us lazy, ungrateful students.  I remember realizing that I might be lazy, but I wasn't ungrateful. 

I remember watching his ups and downs over the months, scrying his face for a sign of how he was going.  Despite his openness about his health, I didn't want to ask, didn't want to pry.  I wish I had.  I wish I had showed him that I cared.