Doctors (36 page)

Seth could walk and talk, could dress and feed himself, while Howie needed help for everything.

When they were through in the kitchen, Seth went out and took a walk to clear his mind so he could complete the paperwork he’d brought home from the hospital. When he returned, his mother had already closed the bedroom door and Nat was jeering loudly at the Cubs’ shortstop who had maladroitly muffed a double play.

Aware that Nat was mercifully sedated by his black-and-white sixteen-inch opiate, Seth did not disturb him. Instead he climbed up to the room which, as a child, had been his own domain, his kingdom—and was now his laboratory. He switched on his desk fluorescent light and plunged himself into the world’s pathologies. For this was
his
way of forgetting Howie.

“I’d recommend the tuna fish or chicken salad,” Judy Gordon said. “They taste about the same—in fact, I have had suspicions that they really
are.
”

“Why don’t we have one of each and then compare,” suggested Seth.

She nodded and he flagged a waitress to take their order.

“So,” she said, “I guess we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“I guess.”

They reminisced and joked all through their indistinguishable salads. She had a way of making him relax, perhaps because she was so calm, so confident and outgoing.

He ordered chocolate ice cream for dessert, she ordered Jell-O. (“I’ve got to be careful—it’s the bikini season, after all!”)

Curiously, Seth could not conjure up an image of her in a
skimpy bathing suit, although his knowledge of anatomy enabled him to picture her naked—which was nice enough.

“Do you still live at home?” she asked as they were finishing their coffee.

“Yeah. Guess I’m kind of socially retarded. I still live with Mom and Dad, but I’m only here for the summer.”

“Too bad,” she murmured, half to herself.

And Seth immediately wondered, What’s too bad? The fact I’m living home or that I’m going back to Boston?

As they walked toward the bank of elevators, he mustered the confidence to ask, “Can we maybe go to dinner sometime?”

“Sure. How about tomorrow night?”

“Fine. That would be fine.”

“I’ve got a car—if you could call it that,” she said lightheartedly. “But at least it takes me where I want to go. What time do you get off?”

“That’s really up to me,” he answered. “The patients up in Path don’t get upset if we leave early.”

“Let’s say half-past six? And if there’s some emergency I’ll phone you in the lab.”

“Sure, great. I mean, that’s fine,” he repeated.

They had an elevator to themselves. Judy pressed five—the Cancer Ward, then eight for his lab.

“Tell me, Seth,” she asked, “does working with dead people ever get to you? Do you sometimes feel like you’re going crazy?”

“No, I think you’ve got the harder job. I get them when their suffering is over. You have to watch them die. Isn’t that depressing?”

She nodded. “Yeah, and I go home every day and realize how damn lucky I am just to be alive.”

They discussed it over dinner at Armando’s venerable North Rush eatery, where Seth had never been and still could not afford to be. But this was special.

“You’d be amazed how perfectly normal people are petrified of a dying relative,” Judy said. “They shy away because they somehow think that death’s contagious. Families force themselves to come, but old friends always seem to have some excuse. So these patients I look after are unbelievably grateful for the slightest kindness we show them. Anyway, if I were on my deathbed I’d sure as heck be grateful to have someone—even if it’s a nurse I barely knew—to hold my hand in those last
minutes. And frankly, if you’ll excuse the insult to your profession—you rarely find a doctor there if he can possibly avoid it.”

“Well,” he answered, his admiration for her growing by the second, “there are all kinds of doctors, just the way there are all kinds of nurses.” Damn, he cursed himself, she’ll probably think I’m a callous bastard.

“Is Pathology the kind of medicine you want to always do?” she asked.

“I’m still not sure, to tell the truth. First it was just a summer job I knew would help me get to Med School, then it seemed like it would give me a head start in Anatomy. And I’ve really learned a lot this past year.”

Shyness prevented him from mentioning that Professor Lubar had given him an A-plus—the only time in recent memory that such an honor had been bestowed. “Dr. Matthews thinks our work can ultimately be of use to help prevent some of the things we find as cause of death.”

“Oh, I admire that,” Judy commented. “But don’t you think you’re missing something—you know—the emotional aspect that brought us to medicine in the first place?” She sighed and continued, “I think there’s nothing more gratifying in the entire world than to hear ‘Thank you’ from a patient you’ve been kind to.”

Well, he told himself, that’s a pretty overt denigration of my work. But do I dare defend myself?

And for the second time in as many days, he found himself saying something that emanated from a part of him he obviously could not control. “Maybe it’s because I’m afraid.”
Why the hell did I say that?

“You mean of losing a patient?” she asked. “I know a lot of doctors are that way. It’s only human, Seth.”

“That isn’t what I’m scared of,” he confessed again. “It’s—it’s—the suffering. I think I like Pathology because whatever agony the person’s gone through is all over. Even if they’re riddled with carcinomas they don’t feel it anymore. I just don’t think that I could bear to watch a patient in excruciating pain or hooked to a machine that kept him breathing while the rest of him was dead. I guess I don’t have the guts to be a real doctor.”

As Judy drove him home, Seth became increasingly convinced that he suffered from some rare psychiatric aberration—like a variant of the Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome—which
forced him to say things his conscious mind could not suppress. Honest things. But when the hell did honesty impress a girl?

As they neared the bus terminal, he thought it best to liberate her from his craven company.

“It’s okay, Judy, I can walk from here.”

“No, that’s all right. It’s nothing for me to take you one or two more blocks.”

He nodded and she drove the additional distance again without making conversation. She stopped in front of his parents’ grocery, the window illumined only by a neon ad for Schlitz, “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.”

“Thanks for the ride,” he said. “I’ll see you around the hospital.”

“No, Seth,” she said, “I’m not going to let you go that easily.”

Seth was surprised to learn that passion could compensate for inexperience. As she brought her lips close to his, he put his arms around her and held her close as they kissed.

After a moment, as they both came up for air, he asked, “Can we do this again sometime?”

“Which part? The dinner or my shameless pass?”

“Are they mutually exclusive?” he asked. “In any case, I’d better warn you, next time I’ll be the one who makes the first move.”

“Fine. Who knows where that might lead? ‘Night, Seth, and thanks again.”

And, had his parents not been asleep, he would have danced all the way to the third floor in an ebullient imitation of Fred Astaire.

If ever a list were compiled of where
not
to be in the United States during the month of August, Boston would certainly make the top ten. Of course, Pfeifer’s lab was air-conditioned—to maintain a constant scientific environment. But Vanderbilt Hall was not. And it was logical. Certain specimens if overheated would be irreplaceable, whereas lab assistants were a dime a dozen.

As she toiled well into the night, Laura began to entertain the paranoid fantasy that Pfeifer obviously counted on the weather to further his research by keeping his minions in the refreshing comfort of the lab as long as possible.

At first she suffered pangs of conscience over Palmer, which she tried to assuage by reminding herself that at least it
wasn’t wartime. Still she knew he would be dissipating some of the best years of his life polishing his boots, cleaning his rifle—and perhaps even the latrine as well—although she was not sure whether officers ever had to do that sort of thing.

Then gradually she began to think that she had done what in the long run would be best for them both.

And she started dating again.

At first it was just beer and pizza with one or another of her colleagues in the lab. (Wyman excepted, of course. But he did not fraternize with nontenured people, anyway.)

She went to a Pops concert on the banks of the Charles River with Gary Arnold, a handsome first-year resident in Neurology. As did several thousand other couples, they sat on a blanket eating sandwiches, drinking wine from a Thermos, while they watched the legendary Arthur Fiedler conduct musical smorgasbords from the latest Broadway shows and a few snippets from the classics. And when they stood with all the others for the grand finale, Sousa’s rousing “Stars and Stripes Forever,” Gary put his arm around Laura, pulling her close. He was charming, tall, and had a sense of humor. Perhaps most importantly, he was there. And she was lonely. So they finished the evening in his apartment on the Fenway.

He visited the lab the evening after to make certain Laura understood that he had no intention of a “serious relationship.” She reassured him she had never had the slightest notion that they would be anything but friends. For she was well aware that he’d be leaving for Wisconsin at the beginning of September.

“Look, Gary,” she explained with friendly candor, “I was horny, you were horny. When we woke up, neither one of us was horny. That was all there was and that was all there ever will be. Have a nice life.”

Inwardly fuming at Laura’s beating him to the brush-off, Gary stalked out of the lab muttering something about her being “a real ball breaker.”

Her other dates that summer were neither as pompous nor as passionate. Which suited her fine.

Sometimes if she was working late she’d get a call from Barney (at eleven, when the rates went down). He’d usually be phoning from a public booth in Canarsie or some other godforsaken place and always with an entertaining anecdote about his latest passengers. Like the call girl who had offered to pay him in kind.

“It sounds more interesting than medicine. Maybe you ought to consider it as a career.”

“Thank you, Laura. Staying up all night is what I always aspired to.” Then he would act paternal. “Which reminds me, why the hell are you still working? Even chain gangs have it easier than you. Why not go home and get some sleep?”

“Thank you, Dr. Livingston, I think I’m whacked enough to do just that. Goodnight.”

She hung up, went to scrub her hands, and just as she was leaving heard the annoyed voice of Peter Wyman. “Castellano, telephone for you—again. I’m not your private secretary, you know.”

Laura hesitated for a moment. If it was Palmer she was not in shape for any kind of conversation. But who else would be calling close to midnight? Maybe something’s wrong at home.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Laura, it’s me—Hank Dwyer.”

“Hank,” she said, with a happy sigh of relief, “how the hell are you?”

“I tried to call your room at Vanderbilt. They said you might be here—”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just the opposite. I need someone to talk to badly.” Then Hank announced, “I’m a father and Cheryl’s a mother.”

“Hey, that’s great. Everybody healthy?”

“Yes,
Deo gratias.
But, Laura, I’m in shock—there were
two
of them. I’m the father of twins. I mean, I don’t know what to do.”

Laura certainly didn’t know what he wanted
her
to do.

“I’ll tell you what, Hank, when the whole gang’s back in town we’ll have a monster party for all four of you.”

“That would be nice,” he replied, in surprisingly solemn tones. “But there’s something more important, which is why I’m calling. I mean, you’re Catholic, Laura, aren’t you?”

“Sort of by birth. But if you’ll forgive the irreverence, I’ve hailed more cabs than I’ve Hailed Marys.”

Hank single-mindedly persisted. “Laura, will you come with me to church?”

“Tonight?”

“Of course. God sent a miracle tonight and who am I to wait till morning to say thank you.”

“Sure, Hank,” she said softly, “I’d be glad to.”

“Oh, that’s great. That’s really great. Look, Cheryl’s mom’s here and I can use her car. I’ll come around to get you in a second.”

They stood in the wide emptiness of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. That is, Laura stood while Hank knelt and prayed. As he was lost in prayer, she was lost in thought.

I wish I were religious, she lamented inwardly. I don’t mean church religious. I just wish I could believe in some Supreme Intelligence to help me steer the boat, to let me know what’s right or wrong. As it is, I’m drowning in a sea of doubts. Oh God, I wish I could believe like Dwyer.

When he was saying goodnight to her outside Vanderbilt, Hank was so brimming with joy that he embraced her.

And Laura was sure it was merely by accident that, as he let her go, one of his hands brushed by her breast.

T
heir second year began with water and ended with blood.

The first event (not listed in the Course Catalogue) was the christening of Hank and Cheryl Dwyer’s twin daughters, Marie and Michelle. Barney and Laura stood in the front pew as the priest sprinkled holy water on the little girls’ brows, each time intoning in Latin that he was baptizing them “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

It was late September and they had been medical students for more than a year without yet having seen a live patient. And there was still eight months of deadening basic science to wade through before they reached the real stuff in the spring—Introduction to the Clinic, and Physical Diagnosis. They took some consolation in the fact that this would be the last winter of their discontent. Spring would bring them into the presence of sick people. But for now they still had no idea what medicine was really about.