Doctors (89 page)

Not wishing to risk Congressional disapproval, Pasquale withdrew his veto and murmured, “Actually, we were holding a table for two but the clients appear to be late. Would you come this way, please?”

Laura smiled gratefully at Otis, who reiterated, “You’re still welcome to join Amanda and me—even if it’s just for coffee.”

“Another time, Senator,” Laura replied. “Dr. Livingston and I have to discuss an important case. But I’m very grateful for your help.”

“Not at all, Laura. Any time I can be of assistance, just call my office.”

As they were being led to their (excellently placed) booth, Barney glanced over at the Senator’s table and commented, “Jeez, that guy has a beautiful daughter.”

“She’s not his daughter,” Laura replied matter-of-factly.

“His wife?”

“Guess again, Livingston,” she retorted.

“Wow! Is that one of the perks of being a U.S. Senator?”

Laura nodded affirmatively. “I told you the ratio of women to men in this city is five to one. So imagine the possibilities.”

“Yeah,” Barney answered, “that means every guy could have his own girls’ basketball team.”

After ordering fettuccine and a large, straw-bottomed
fiasco
of Chianti Ruffino, Barney got down to the serious business of his troubled friend.

He made her recount all the details of the Rhodes-Karvonen skullduggery—sometimes even jotting down notes, which he assured her would be useful for his work-in-progress on the mind of the physician. From there it was a short step—down—to Marshall Jaffe.

“I know this sounds sanctimonious, Castellano,” he preached. “But as I’ve told you maybe a million times, one complete human being deserves another complete human being. Love isn’t a part-time job.”

“That’s a good line,” she responded. “You ought to use it in your book.”

“I already have,” he smiled. “But it bears repetition. When the hell are you going to believe that you’re a terrific person who deserves a terrific marriage and terrific children?”

“I won’t have any children. I don’t believe in marriage. I don’t even believe in love.”

“Bullshit, Castellano! I don’t believe you don’t believe. You know, Hippocrates said—”

“Screw Hippocrates. He didn’t have to live in Washington.”

“Neither do you, for that matter. Have you thought about what you’re going to do after July?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. Every so often some med school writes to see if I’m interested in a job. Columbia P & S asked me to head a new neonatology program. Last time I heard, they still hadn’t filled the slot.”

“That’s great,” he exclaimed. “Then you’ll be in New York.”

“Yeah,” she said glumly, “that’s the drawback. It’s the worst city in the world to be alone in.”

“How can you say that, Castellano? I’m there, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, sure. But you have Ursula to take care of. You don’t need me around. It’s just that the idea of starting over in a new place really scares me. And at the moment there are too many black clouds in my mind to think of next week, much less next year.”

“I can imagine,” he said softly. “You probably feel like walking straight into the sea—like Virginia Woolf. Am I right?”

“Pretty close. I feel like a wounded animal that ought to be taken to the vet and put to sleep.”

“That’s a pity. The world would lose a good doctor.” He paused and said gently, “And I would lose my best friend.”

At this she raised her head and gazed into his eyes.

“You’d never do that to me, would you, Castellano?”

She did not answer. But inwardly she acknowledged that he was still one of the few things worth living for.

“Honest to God, Laura, you’ve gotta learn to be happy—even if it means taking lessons at Berlitz or something. I mean, I don’t know if
you
notice, but I can feel that fortieth birthday breathing down my neck. I mean, by now we’re supposed to be middle-aged parents, worrying about the braces on our kids’ teeth—and stuff like that. At the rate time is moving I feel like I’m in a crucial basketball game and playing so damn hard that when I finally look up at the clock I’ll have only thirty seconds left.…”

She merely nodded.

They talked on until at last they were the only patrons in the
restaurant. A cordon of waiters stood around them, emitting polite coughs.

“Seems to be a lot of bronchial problems among the personnel here, don’t you think, Dr. Castellano?”

“Barney, you’re smashed,” she replied.

“So are you,” he countered.

“Then why don’t we leave?”

“Because I don’t think I can stand up, that’s why.”

By some miracle they were able to pour themselves into a taxi and head for Bethesda.

“I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the Castro,” Laura said, her speech blurry but her mood lifted.

“Not at all,” he replied, “I regard sleeping on a memento of the great Fidel as a sort of homage to Luis.”

Half an hour later Laura unlocked her apartment door and asked, “Do you want some coffee, Barn?”

“Actually,” he said apologetically, “I sobered up during the ride, and since I’m gonna have a headache anyway …”

He did not need to finish the sentence. Laura merely smiled, went to the refrigerator, and withdrew a bottle—the one she had originally intended to share with Marshall.

They sat facing each other and continued to pour out their thoughts.

“Barney, something you said this evening bothers me—something about us both being unhappy.”

“Yeah—what’s so astonishing about that?”

“It wasn’t news to me that I’m incapable of happiness—but I thought at least
you
were okay. I mean, you were analyzed and everything.”

“Analysis makes you aware. It doesn’t automatically make you stop acting in the way you’ve discovered to be self-destructive. No, Castellano, I’ve been thinking all tonight how ironic it is that we’ve both made it in the outside world and yet screwed up in our private lives. Was it maybe the fluoride in the Brooklyn water?”

They sat in silence.

Had they run out of conversation? No, Barney thought. The best thing about the two of us is that we’ve never been at a loss for things to say to each other.

After another moment, Laura said, “You know, Barn, I don’t think a therapist could help me, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because probably what’s wrong with me is like a tumor that’s inoperable. It’s too metastasized through my self-esteem.”

Then she confessed what she had long been pondering. “Maybe, deep down, somewhere, I really don’t like men.”

“You know that’s not true,” he responded.

“I mean in the sense of trust, Barn,” she explained. “I’ve never really trusted any man.”

“But you trust me.”

“That’s different,” she responded quickly.

They were again silent for a moment.

And then Barney whispered, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why am I different from other men?”

She could not reply. She had never really thought about it.

No
, of course she had.

Finally she said, “I don’t know, Barn. I mean, for as far back as I can remember, you’ve always been the most important person in my life.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Laura. Why am I different from other men?”

She shrugged. “I guess because we’ve always been … such good friends.”

He looked at her and then asked softly, “And that precludes everything else, huh?”

She was silent again, so he continued his catechism.

“Can you honestly say that you’ve never thought of us as … a real couple? I confess that I have. I mean, I’ve always chased those fantasies away because I didn’t want to run the risk of losing the special thing we have.…”

Laura smiled self-consciously, then found the courage to admit, “Of course I’ve had those thoughts. I mean, I’ve spent my life explaining to the world why we were just friends and not, you know … lovers.”

“That makes two of us. But Laura, I can’t do that any more.”

“What?”

He answered her with another question.

“Which of us do you think is the most afraid, Laura?”

The question came from left field, but the answer had always been central to her inner thoughts.

“Me,” she answered. “I always thought you knew me too well—I mean all my secret faults—to like me that way.”

“But I
do
like you in that way,” he said. “I love you in every way, Laura.”

Her head was lowered, and even without being able to see her face he knew she was crying.

“Hey, Castellano. Tell the truth. Have I just lost my best pal?”

She looked up at him, the tears on her cheeks contradicting the smile on her face.

“I hope so,” she said softly. “Because I’ve always wished that you could … you know … love me as a woman.” She paused, and then added, “The way I love you.”

Barney stood up.

“I’m sober, Castellano. How do you feel?”

“I’m sober. I know what I’m saying.”

There was no further conversation. Barney walked over and took Laura’s hand. They started slowly to the other room.

And that night ended their platonic friendship.

T
he next morning Barney and Laura found themselves experiencing a phenomenon that they had never known existed: an indescribable feeling of wholeness.

For here, if anywhere on earth, were a man and a woman who did not need priest or clerk to sanctify their union.

“How do you feel?” Barney asked.

“Happy, really happy.”

That
was the real miracle.

At first they kept their joy a secret, like a treasure that was richer still for being shared by only two. But by July Laura’s Fellowship was over, and to celebrate her moving to New York they took fifteen minutes of a judge’s time to make themselves “respectable.”

As the couple walked arm in arm down the courthouse steps, Laura Castellano, M.D., newly appointed Professor of
Neonatology at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, confessed to Barney Livingston, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at NYU Medical School, “Things have happened so fast that I never really had the time to tell you.”

“What?”

“When I saw Luis last year in Mexico, he said something that really shook me up. I mean, it seemed so crazy.”

“What? What?”

“It was just two words,” she answered. “He leaned over and whispered, ‘Marry Barney.’ ”

S
eth Lazarus feared that he was going mad.

Too frightened of the dreams now haunting him, he spent whole nights awake. His actions, like Macbeth’s, had “murdered sleep.”

It had been more than ten years since he had helped Mel Gatkowicz to die. And in the interim there had been three—no, four. At times he wasn’t sure how many ghosts were lurking.

There was Mrs. Carson, then that teenage girl so cruelly injured in a car crash she could only blink her eyelids—and whose brain could only function well enough to let her feel the pain.

Then there was … who? Why did his memory betray him? Perhaps it was instinct in his psyche fighting to preserve his sanity. If it could just obliterate them
all
—a merciful amnesia to assuage his conscience.

Except for Howie, he had never acted merely on his own initiative. Had he intervened in every instance where he’d seen a life reduced to nothing but a mass of suffering, he would have helped—
how many others, Seth?

For in every other case, he had been implored—by words and circumstances, external forces that would finally erode his will to let remorseless Nature take its course (and let
him
sleep).

There had always been distraught petitioners, anguished
families in pain almost as great as that which racked their loved ones.

And even then, he always had made certain that the patient was aware and had consented to the termination of his life.

Though his faith was strong, Seth was aware that he was moving into that shadowy area claimed by both God and Satan as their eminent domain.

The Lord declared, “Thou shalt not kill.” There was no Holy Book to justify Seth’s belief that Man deserved the same respect as he himself gave to sorely wounded animals—a swift and painless death.

Judy saw how he was haunted, but what could she do? Was there a doctor in the world who could repair such an injured soul?

She saw catastrophe ahead. Either Seth would be caught—because, despite his promises to her, she knew that he would be unable to refuse the pleas of yet another tortured family—or he would simply break under the weight of his enormous burden.

He brooded in his study late at night.

One evening she went down to talk to him.

“What are you doing, Seth?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just reading the journals. I barely understand the stuff these days—genetic engineers are taking over from physicians. Pretty soon we’ll all be put away just like an old Corvair.”

“Corvairs were faulty, Seth, ‘unsafe at any speed.’ Are you implying that there’s something wrong with you?”

He looked at her. “Judy—you and I both know it. I fall in the category of what the psychiatrists call an ‘impaired physician.’ ”

He tossed her the publication he’d been looking at.

“Here, read for yourself.”

The article was called “The Wounded Healer: Crises in the Lives of Practicing Physicians.” It was by Barney Livingston, M.D.

“Didn’t you go to school with him?”

Seth nodded.

“Yes. He was a good man. From that paper I gather that he’s lately come to specialize in ‘psycho’ doctors. If you believe his statistics, it’s almost an axiom: To care is to crack.”

“And you have other pressures, too,” she added.

“Yes,” he said, “I—”

He paused in midsentence as if reconsidering what he was about to say. Or not say.

Judy walked over and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

A voice suddenly emerged from the innermost recesses of his being. “Where does it end?”

She sat on the desk and faced him.

“Here. Right here and now. You’ll take a leave of absence and we’ll go someplace far away so you can heal.”