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Kingman, Arizona; 0800 (8AM for the rest of you) on day 4: I awoke to the bewitching aroma of coffee, sizzling bacon, and Southwest omelettes. Melanie (ER nurse) and Kevin (ICU nurse)- the married couple who so graciously took this wayward colleague and his wrecked toe into their home for a day- had just arrived home from their shifts and were preparing what was shaping up to be a smashing breakfast. I pulled the blanket from over my eyes and sat up on their couch, squinting against the brilliant sunlight that streamed in from the living room window. With some...

The deep, exhausted sleep into which I initially fell proved to be woefully short-lived. I was jolted awake around 1AM by the simple act of rolling over. My left great toe, which I had injured the previous morning when I struck it against a heavy chair in Susanville, was proving itself to be in far worse condition than I originally thought. I did not detect any deformation at the time of injury, and I could bend the joint fairly well. I had done everything that we would have done in the emergency department for this type of injury, and had...

Fallon, Nevada to Kingman, Arizona:I have been all over the world, and have seen some interesting terrain in my travels. But the landscape of western Nevada was just, well... eerie. The outside temperature was 110 degrees and rising, and it was only mid-morning. I had cast a lot of glances out of the side windows for the first 100 miles of this leg, but as the environment became more barren and forbidding, and the atmosphere thinner and drier, I found myself retreating inward with a strange sense of isolation and vulnerability. And that only caused me to become more aware...

Day two, 0500: I had not slept so well and so deeply in years. It was the kind of deep and dreamless Rip van Winkle sleep from which one awakens with the impression that no time had passed at all. The first objective data to the contrary was presented by the merciless blaring of the alarm clock in my hotel room. My eyes snapped open and I fumbled hastily across the unfamiliar, darkened room with a single-minded determination to stop that damned bleating instrument of chaos and evil. It was during this effort that I encountered the second (and far...

I rose in the very early morning for my much-anticipated trip to San Diego with a sense of excitement and my three good companions: A cooler full of snack, my souped-up 2007 Ford Mustang named Baby-san, and the open road. Fully-prepped for the trip, waxed, and buffed until her fireglow scarlet paint took on a fathomless gleam, Baby-san communicated her eagerness to boogie with a throaty, crackling snarl as I fired her up and blipped the accelerator. I throttled up, released the clutch and let 320 horses out of the corral. With a saucy chirp from the Pirellis, we lunged...