Mikkelus M. VagusMikkelus M. Vagus
Doctor, Teacher, Volunteer, Alien in New York
Mikkelus
seems a quiet. middle-aged man, easily overlooked in a crowd. Hours of working
in Central Park as a volunteer responder has left
his
short-cropped hair bleached by the sun and given him a deep permanent tan.
Time, too, has begun to etch lines in his
features, making it hard to guess his age. When
he smiles or laughs, which is often when he's talking to people in his office or
sharing fresh home-grown vegetables, the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth seem to melt away the
years.
Officially, Mikkelus Vagus entered New York City as part of medical aid for the recovery effort in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center. Months of contact with the emergency medical community and Syracuse University Hospital trauma center led to an offer of a teaching position as part of an international medical exchange program and a work visa. In addition to working with residents in the ER program, he maintains a small clinic near Central Park, and volunteers with the Central Park Medical unit.
Unofficially? Mikkelus came to New York City to recover and recuperate. Years of responding to medical crises spawned by wars, presumably in unstable countries spanning the globe, had left him on the edge of burn-out. Sometimes, when prompted about his past, he'll fall into silence, his face becomes an impassive mask, and his eyes stare off into the very far distance, filled with unshed tears and the ghosts that haunt him.
His passport, issued in Switzerland, lists his the date of his birth as June 21, 1956, though in unguarded moments he seems either much older or much younger. The oldest medical degree hanging on his wall, conferred by Universität Ulm in 1982, is flanked by additional degrees in numerous languages denoting specializations, licensure in additional countries, or perhaps his inability to have yet found a university anywhere on the European continent that prints diplomas in English.
By most appearances, Mikkelus favors functional and
comfortable over fashionable in his personal life: scrubs
or
grey utility uniform, sensible shoes or comfortable boots,
the
subway over a taxi or limousine. A brownstone apartment off 58th overlooking the
south end of Central Park serves as office, dwelling-place and garden-space,
thanks to planters on the fire escape railings. Somehow, nobody has been able to
impress upon him that doctors deserve to flaunt the best of everything.
One could well argue that Mikkelus prefers functional at work as well. Little about the outward appearance of his private clinic suggests that it is anything but an apartment. Inside, the clinic more resembles a house than a medical treatment facility: one out-patient treatment room on the main floor and one room set up for in-patient care on the second floor very much resemble the bedrooms they once were. Indeed, with the absence of anything that might be immediately recognized as medical equipment, the comfortable rooms in the clinic could easily be mistaken for guest rooms at a bed-and-breakfast. Until, of course, the portable scanners and medical healing lasers come out.
