Music of the Day, 10 October 2024
happy birthday to a very dear friend
Last year on this date, I wrote about the start of hockey season in the US and featured a great Warren Zevon song. I remember it well because not long after I’d published that piece, my phone chimed, telling me it was a very dear friend’s birthday. Sure that it was several days early, I texted her and discovered that my phone’s memory was correct. Thus it was that I drafted this MotD a year ago, so that I wouldn’t miss marking TEB’s birthday again.
TEB and I met via my first job after graduating college; we were pharmacy technicians. She’d been at the hospital for some time before I was hired, and in all honesty I don’t recall how our paths crossed (very likely during my training). But they did, and my life has been much better for it.
I do remember that she endeared herself to me by volunteering to take her turn on night shift sooner than her seniority allowed, so that she and I would rotate from day shift to nights together. I was still pretty new at the job and stressed by its demands, so this was significant support to me. We saw each other at check-in and if we could, we’d take a quick break together to get snacks from the vending machines in the basement. And we’d walk out together at the end of our shift, having survived another challenging night of covering two units.
We also survived Michael Swango. That was a much closer thing for her, as he was a neurosurgery resident and sometimes brought food for the unit.1 He was creepy to be around,2 and we avoided him as best we could.3
During this time, a huge hit from a British band became unavoidable. To this day, whenever I hear it, I have flashbacks to working nights on the main internal medicine unit; more often than not, I’d hear it at least once per shift on the radio there.
“That’s All” was Genesis’ first single to crack the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. It’s a great song and I do still like it, even though it still triggers flashbacks to 11 East Rhodes Hall. The video provides a nice diversion from them, as I can’t help but wonder why Collins et al. chose a Dickensian look and setting for it. I bought the CD years later, having forgotten how many singles Genesis generated in the mid ‘80s. “Home By the Sea” might be my favorite track from the album.
After I quit that job to go to grad school, TEB and I drifted apart. After she married and had her first child, we reconnected briefly. That was our pattern for a few years, but after I divorced my then-spouse and fell in to a more itinerant lifestyle, I thought I’d never hear from her again, which made me sad.
I underestimated her tenacity. While living in Qatar over a decade later, she somehow found me on Ravelry, a large website devoted to fiber arts. It was an unexpected treasure to reconnect with her, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. We’re still separated by a border4 and a couple of time zones, but it’s always a highlight of my day to connect with TEB. Happy birthday, dear friend! (And apologies if needed for the Genesis earworm!)
yes, people did sometimes get sick after eating the food he brought in. But it’s hard to say in hindsight whether memories have changed as a result of knowing what he did elsewhere, before he got caught
occasionally, neurosurgery (NS) patients would come to my floor if the regular unit was full (my unit was also a surgical one), so I worked with him more than I wanted. There were whispers about Swango always seeming to be on call when NS patients coded
our experiences with him is a big reason why I listen to and trust my intuition
it’s now the 49th parallel north, though