Doctors (41 page)

Wow, Barney thought to himself, “God bless us every one!” Good for Maury. They didn’t zap the fire out of him.

This looked like it was going to be a helluva New Year, especially if the letter
he
was about to write got a favorable response.

He had just pulled out pen and paper when he thought he heard the phone ring down the hall. Never mind, it can’t be for me. Then there was a knock on his door and the sleepy (and slightly annoyed) voice of Lance Mortimer hoarsely announced, “Phone, Livingston. Don’t your admirers ever sleep?”

Barney dropped his pen and sprinted to the phone. Good old Suzie, she misses me already. In a matter of seconds the receiver was in his hand, and he gasped out, “Hi, baby.”

The voice at the other end was timidly apologetic. “Barney, I’m really sorry to disturb you so late—”

It was Laura.

“Actually,” she continued, “I’ve been trying to reach you for the past hour and a half. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“That’s okay, Castellano. What’s up?”

“Nothing monumental. Just my whole world falling apart. I suppose it could wait till morning.”

“Nothing doing. I’ll meet you in the lobby right away.”

“Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked forlornly.

“Don’t be an idiot. I’ll be there in a sec.”

Barney hung up and went back to his room.

He bent over and began to lace up his sneakers. A second later, as he stood up ready to rush off, he remembered that all-important letter he had been writing.

He went over to his desk and looked at it.

Everything was there but the signature.

Should he sign it and drop it in her mailbox on the way?

No, it no longer seemed the proper time. He picked up the paper, crunched it into a ball and tossed it with an expert hook shot into the wastebasket.

And walked down to see Laura.

“C
astellano, are you sure you haven’t taken LSD?”

They were the only two people sitting in the lobby at that hour and their whispers echoed in the dome.

“Believe me, Barn, I wish I had. I’d like nothing better than to block out the reality of what I’ve just told you. I mean, who ever heard of a mother becoming a nun?”

“Well, she’s not exactly taking Holy Orders. Didn’t you say she’ll only be a kind of lay sister?”

“What the hell’s the difference? The point is my whole family’s suddenly vanishing. I’m gonna be the only orphan in the world with two living parents.” Her despair was palpable. How well Barney understood. For he himself had been grieving at the imminent loss of the beloved house of his youth. But at least he had the comfort of knowing his family would still be within reach. She had no place to go except a lousy little room in the Deanery.

“Laura,” he said softly, “listen to me. First of all, your
mother’s convent is just a few hours’ drive from the city. And even Cuba’s only ninety miles off the coast of Florida. If you get in shape you could practically swim there.…”

The absurd image of herself flailing through the ocean waves made her smile—but just for an instant.

“Anyway,” Barney continued with quiet fervor, “remember you’ve still got me. And you’ll always have a place to come home to. I mean, Estelle just bought this great big apartment in Miami.”

She lowered her head and began to whimper.

“Listen, kiddo. I’m gonna take over the role of parent and give you a strict order. I want you to go up to your room, drink a glass of warm milk, and go right to bed. Now will you do what I say?”

She nodded and stood up. Barney also rose. And for a moment they both stood there motionless, inches from each other.

“Oh God, Barney,” she murmured fondly, “what would I ever do without you?”

“Castellano, that’s one problem you’ll never have to face.”

“Cheryl, dammit, can’t you keep those kids quiet?”

“They may be twins, but they’re separate people, Hank. They wake up at different times, they get hungry at different times, they get wet—”

“You don’t have to tell
me
, for God’s sake. How the hell am I supposed to study with this infernal racket?”

“And you don’t have to shout, Hank.”

“Oh, wonderful,” he replied sardonically, “you can tell
me
to shut up, but you can’t quiet two lousy little babies.”

“Is that a way to refer to your children?”

“Oh, get off my back, willya?” He stood up, clapped his book shut, picked up his notes, and grabbed his coat.

“Where are you going?” Cheryl pleaded.

“Someplace quiet—the library. I’ve gotta learn every tiny detail of Physical Examination by tomorrow.”

“Try examining your head while you’re at it,” she called after him. But her words were drowned out by the slamming of the door.

Let it not be said that Harvard Medical School was all work and no play. For, to be precise, it was all work and
one
play: the traditional second-year show. It was the uncensored product of
exhausted, regressed, vengeful minds and a masterpiece of transcendental vulgarity.

It afforded a dramatic experience unique since Aristophanes. For the students knew that the targets of their wit (if you could call it that) were actually sitting in the theater as they were insulted.

This year’s offering, entitled “Pubic Relations,” marked a new high for low blows.

As in the rhapsody to their Anatomy teacher:

The triumph was due in large measure to the creative talents of Lance Mortimer. As soon as the curtain fell, Dean Holmes rushed over to compliment the author.

“Mortimer, you’ve got a truly amazing gift for filth. I think you should have become a pornographer, not a doctor.”

“I may have to, sir, if I don’t pass Biochem.” As he proceeded to the reception. Lance congratulated himself on his instinct. Tonight’s scatological extravaganza had won the hearts and dirty minds of the guys that count.

To help them put their studies in a proper context, the students were offered a brief series of lectures under the generic title Social Medicine. Those expecting spiritual uplift were disappointed when the first speaker, a representative of the American Medical Association, inveighed against socialized medicine. “Let us not forget that Lenin declared that ‘socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.’ ”

And he went on to denounce disability insurance as “another step toward wholesale nationalization of medical care.”

“What do you think?” Barney asked Lance as they shuffled out of the room after the passionate harangue.

“Oh, I don’t know, he had some interesting things to say.”

Laura arrived just in time to hear Lance’s comment.

“Lance, it’s a fact that poor people get sicker and have shorter lifespans than rich people. Do you think that’s fair? That guy was preaching a sort of elitist medicine: ‘pay now, live later.’ I only wish I’d had eggs to throw at that bastard.”

Barney smiled at her outburst, while Lance meekly countered, “Well, Laura, different strokes for different folks.”

“No, Lance, the
same
strokes for the
same
folks. And I hope you notice we’ve not heard anything from the opposition. I mean, they should have had somebody here from the Committee for the Nation’s Health. They’re good guys—only they’re practically as poor as the people they’re fighting for. The AMA spends millions of dollars every year just to undercut any kind of national health insurance.”

“Well,” Lance allowed liberally, “it’s a free country, Laura.”

“No, it isn’t, Lance, in the world of health care it’s a very expensive country.”

“Oh, come on, get off your soapbox, willya?”

Laura did not deign to answer. She merely turned and walked off.

“Is she some kind of Communist?” Lance asked Barney.

“No, old buddy, she’s just a sensitive human being with a real social conscience.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” Mortimer quipped, “she’s certainly come to the wrong place.”

None of the men could sleep the night before the next class exercise. What, they asked themselves—and sometimes each other—were they so afraid of?

“After all,” Barney reasoned, “we’re acting as if we’re going into uncharted territory. But the vagina is really one part of the body we’ve actually been on
both
sides of. In one way we could look at it as a sort of homecoming.”

“That is first-class bullshit,” Bennett countered as he distributed bottles of Heineken to the coterie that had gathered in his room to share—and hopefully exorcise—their anxieties about having to perform their first pelvic exam on the morrow.

“Yeah,” Lance agreed, “why don’t you admit it, Livingston, you’re scared. We all are.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t scared, I was just trying to help us ‘calm out.’ Anyway, why don’t we listen to the voice of experience?”

He pointed to Skip Elsas, his one-time basketball teammate, a fourth-year student and therefore someone who had actually been through this ordeal.

“Come on, Elsas, give out,” Bennett urged.

“To be absolutely frank, guys,” Skip began, “that first
pelvic exam is one of the scariest things you’ll ever have to do. I don’t care how much experience you studs have had, you’ve never shone a lamp a few inches from the honeypot and examined it clinically. Besides, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can cause the woman a lot of pain. The first thing to remember is to warm the damn speculum. I mean, how would
you
feel if somebody put a pair of cold metal tongs into one of your orifices?”

A hand rose for a question. “Can’t we use lubricant?” asked Hank Dwyer.

“No, no. Your first job is to take clean cell samples—Pap smear, that kind of thing. Oh, yeah, and a culture for gonorrhea, too.”

“You mean we’re going to be sticking our noses right into potential VD land?” Lance complained with outrage.

“Nobody said anything about using your nose,” Skip responded with a tiny smile.

There was scattered nervous laughter.

“Okay,” he continued, “when you get the speculum in, you open it, and—if you’ve positioned it right—you’ll be able to get a view of the cervix, which is down and posterior. You’ll know when you’ve found it ’cause it looks like a big pink eye. Then you do your smears and gently get the hell out.”

Now a collective sigh of relief.

“Wait,” Skip protested, his arms raised like a policeman stopping traffic, “that’s only half the job. Now you can put some K-Y jelly on the second and third fingers of your examining hand” (he demonstrated) “and do your bimanual exam. That’s two fingers into the vagina—which may be a more familiar procedure to some of you.”

He waited for appreciative chuckles, but they were not forthcoming.

“Anyway, you put your other hand on the abdomen and try to assess the size and condition of the uterus—which normally feels sort of like a lemon. The secret is trying to look like you know what you’re doing. The whole damn thing should take less than five minutes. Oh—and one last thing, you’re going to have to keep a tight rein on your feelings because, believe it or not, the first few times it can be kinda … sexually stimulating.”

He paused and then said, “Any questions?”

Hank Dwyer’s hand shot up frantically.

“Yeah?” Skip inquired.

“You did say that the cervix is
pink
, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“Well,” Hank continued self-consciously, “I’ve been, uh, doing a little practice. You know—with my wife—”

“Yeah?” Skip urged him on. “And what seems to be the problem?”

“Well, I kinda flipped my lid at what you said. I mean, my wife’s cervix looks—well—
blue.
Could something be wrong?”

“Well,” their expert replied, “I can see you haven’t studied your textbook, old buddy. That’s called ‘Chadwick’s sign.’ ”

Hank’s usual pallor turned white. “Is that serious?”

“Well,” Elsas said, “that depends on you and your wife. A blue cervix means she’s pregnant.”

To which the erstwhile priest replied, “Holy shit!”

The murderer struck again. A year after his first visit he (or she) entered the dog labs in the dead of night and randomly killed six specimens.

The faculty was tempted to call in the police but Dean Holmes cautioned against it. The Humane Society had always been agitating against the use of animals for lab experiments and this unfortunate incident would only be a call to arms for them.

“I think the best course is, as it were, to let sleeping dogs lie,” he suggested in a secret strategy session with Professor Lloyd Cruikshank and the lab assistants. “We’ve got to solve this mystery in-house.”

The dean pressed on. “Do we have any clues? We know he used overdoses of the usual painkiller, but is there any kind of pattern to this character’s behavior? I mean, did he always kill the same breed—bigger ones, smaller ones …”

Mike, one of the assistants, raised his hand. “Well, the dogs were pretty well mutilated, sir.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Well, as you know, some of those students are better with their scalpels than others. The lousy ones can really butcher the dogs’ insides.”

“And cause them pain,” the dean suggested.

“Well, they’re anesthetized but, yes, some of the dogs probably suffer during the last few procedures.”

“I take your point, Courtney,” said Professor Cruikshank, speaking directly to the dean. “Do you think we’re dealing with a self-styled mercy killer?”

Holmes nodded. “I think all the evidence points in that direction.”

Professor Cruikshank continued, “This started last year so wouldn’t it be safe to say it would be someone now in the sophomore class?”

“Do any of you know any crackpots or nutty overaltruistic types from last year? Usually they make themselves known by delivering a sermon on cruelty to animals.”