Category: Rants

Relationships don’t work the way they do on television and in the movies: Will they, won’t they, and then they finally do and they’re happy forever — gimme a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren’t right for each other to begin with, and half the ones that get married get divorced, anyway. And I’m telling you right now, through all this stuff, I have not become a cynic, I haven’t. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate-covered candies and, you know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don’t care, ’cause I do…believe in it. Bottom line…is the couples that are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but, the big difference is, they don’t let it take ’em down.

Look, Gwyneth, you’re old enough now to hear this from me: Every time I go out of my way to help you children, I get nothing but trouble. Now this is the first five-minute window I’ve had in the last week to be with my son. And I’m just not gonna have you pirouetting around in here while my heart is breaking inside.

Lookit, it’s just that aortic dissections are a doctor’s worst nightmare. If you don’t catch ’em early, there’s about a ninety percent mortality rate. I mean, honestly, unless your patient was lucky enough to trip and fall into a CAT-scan machine, he wasn’t gonna have a happy ending. Newbie, we didn’t have a chance on this one.

Bob, people have a private life and people have a professional life, and usually those two hells are kept pretty separate. For instance, I don’t know that much about your home life, other than the fact that you treat your wife like a dog, your dog like a wife, and your son like an androgynous ne’er-do-well who drained your retirement nest-egg to open up a yarn shop in Minneapolis.

She’s mad. But she can’t give me the silent treatment because she knows I’d actually love that, so she’s giving me the talk-until-I-want-to-commit-suicide treatment.

Relationships don’t work the way they do on television and in the movies: Will they, won’t they, and then they finally do and they’re happy forever — gimme a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren’t right for each other to begin with, and half the ones that get married get divorced, anyway. And I’m telling you right now, through all this stuff, I have not become a cynic, I haven’t. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate-covered candies and, you know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don’t care, ’cause I do…believe in it. Bottom line…is the couples that are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but, the big difference is, they don’t let it take ’em down.

No. Well…yes, but I am honestly trying to tell you that I don’t think I was being clear with you before. In fact, I think I was being a pretty lousy teacher. Look, I think putting one in the win” column every now and then is what gives us the juice to keep plugging along in games that we know deep down we’re not gonna win. And that’s why I locked in so intensely to that patient. Because opportunities, they…God, they come along so rarely in this place. And when they do, you just can’t let them slip through your fingers. You cannot. You know?”

Look, I hate to question your three years of wisdom, but your pain guy is just like a million other drug addicts walking the hospitals every year with their aches, and their pains, and their spasms, and their cramps, and their myalgia, and their neuralgia, and their otalgia, and their every other -algia they can possibly think of just so they can get a fix.

Lindsay, by you reaching the level of attending physician, you have somehow managed to become a member of a club that I belong to. Obviously there was no vote. Because if there had been, you would still hear the sound of my voice screaming, Nay, nay, oh, dear God, one thousand times nay!” That being said, it’s my obligation to let you in on the organization’s one and only bylaw: We’re men. The women are men. The children are men. The men – of course – men! So, I went ahead and took the liberty of making you five Man Cards. Hold them very dear, because every time you drop the ball, man-wise, I’m going to take one from you.”

A coffee place in a hospital? What’s next, Bob, an ice cream parlor in the morgue? Admittedly not a horrible idea, seeing as the freezers are already down there, plus it’ll be a perfect place for kids — one of our famous vanilla malteds definitely takes the sting out of having to identify the freshly charred remains of your father!