Botch

— So, what did you do before this?
— I was a surgeon.
— No shit?
— No shit.
— How do you go from being a surgeon to doing this?
— How did I fall so low?
— Sorry, I–
— Nah, don’t worry about it. OK. I’ll tell you. So, one day, I’m having lunch with one of my old professors. Guy practically mentored me through med school. And you know, it’s a lunch, catching up, how ya doing – all that stuff. I’m telling him about the baby, and about Susan being pregnant again, and how I’m not getting any sleep, and he says: Oh yes, I remember those days. These days it’s not babies that make lose sleep at night. It’s getting up to pee three times a night! So I say to him: You know, Giovanni – his parents were Italian – I can fix that. Snip, snip, boom. Problem solved. You sleep through the night.
— Snip snip, boom?
— He says: I’ve read the literature, and incontinence is not an unusual outcome. Something like 30%. So I say to him: Maestro, would I let that happen to you?
— Lemme guess.
— Yup. Everything looked good at first. Some post-surgical incontinence is to be expected. We used to joke about it during his followups. “You know, Lane, if I’m still wetting the bed in October, I’m pulling your license.”
— What happened?
— He became incontinent.
— No!
— He couldn’t control his peeing.
— You broke his dick!
— Pretty much. At first I was all “These things happen” and, y’know, “probability.” Those follow up appointments got harder and harder.
— Whoa!
— The worst part was when he said: The objective was to let the patient sleep through the night without his waking up to urinate. You succeeded: I don’t wake up to urinate. In fact, I don’t know I’m urinating even when I’m awake.
— Wow.
— That’s when I lost it.
— Your license?
— I wish! The guy just wanted to sleep through the night, and I fucked that up. I never wanted to be responsible for something like that again. So, I got a new job.
— Wow. I have to go take a leak. I’ll be thinking about this the whole time.
— Another beer for when you come back?
— You bet!