Dog Tags (28 page)

“That cigar smells good,” someone said.

“Honduras,” Benny said. It was a fine Havana, Colorado. “All I can tell you is what I think,” he said, “and some of it you've heard before. But people don't listen to me. I'm not very forceful.”

“Just a moment,” Taubeneck said. “We're particularly interested this time because you know some of these people better than we do. I think you know that we all have the greatest respect for you, and if we don't agree with you—well, it's an honest difference of opinion.”

“Right,” Benny said. “That's what it is, all right. I know some of these people pretty well, right you are. Marcia,” he said, sunny, “a bit more tea? A spot, I believe.”

Alarmed, she sprang to serve him, frisky little Brown Swiss, udders bobbing, dark eyes moist. Marian Lacey smiled primly and winked again. A conquest. The widdy-woman, so chic, blue suit, Liberty scarf, chiming silver earrings. If they two were younger. That lovely tension: he with his fingers crossed, she with her legs. Finlay blew his nose. Finlay's left hand was cramped and arthritic.

How to begin? When I was in Korea. Yessir. They would be attentive and respectful. The way the Chinese army handled this. I think we should ask Frank Cole to shoot them down, and start fresh. Unemployment is high. Perhaps the board too. He thanked Marcia Hargum. He sipped; he blew blue smoke. “First,” he said, “this hospital is not run at a profit and never was. It was built mainly with federal money, and if you had to pay that off you'd never see a profit. Second, the place does half what it could. Twenty years ago they pumped all that money into the countryside because that's where we had no hospitals. Then everybody moved to the big city, and big city hospitals are a mess now, and all over the country little rural hospitals, much like ours, are turning into nursing homes and such. We run at about sixty percent of capacity, so you jack up the prices, and people who can't afford it don't come, and pretty soon it will be fifty percent, health insurance or no. Now, by the terms of that federal grant we're supposed to give at least ten percent of ourselves to charity, more if we can—free clinics, beds for indigents, emergency care for poor people. We don't. The glaucoma clinic, for God's sake. Two hours a week?”

“If they don't pay,” Bolden said, “they don't appreciate the care and they don't follow instructions.”

Certain elegant crudities, the relics of a distinguished military career, leaped to Benny's tongue and expired there. He tugged grandly at his lapels instead. “That's absolutely not true in my experience,” he said. “And how would you know? You make them pay.”

“Medical care is a privilege, Benny, not a right,” Lindahl said.

“Ah yes, I've heard that,” Benny said. “And the doctors who favor free care are always the doctors who wouldn't make it in a competitive situation, we've all heard that too; and if we treat the poor we only assure the survival of the unfit, we've heard that too; and anyway we have no health problems around here, and if we give out a free aspirin it's the end of the American way—”

“It's no sin to turn a profit,” Finlay said.

“Maybe it is. We sell life, not gaskets.”

“What's your point?” Taubeneck asked.

“Hell, I've got a dozen,” Benny said, with a patrician wave of his cigar. “A strange day. My birthday, ladies and gentlemen. Upon this day in nineteen twenty-four—” They murmured felicitations. “I have premonitions and tremors. Fire-drakes and aerolites tonight. Mars in the house of Venus. An Aries trembling on a sharp cusp.”

“There he goes,” Thilmany said.

“Nay,” Benny said, “I do but begin. I mean, take this tea set. Eight hundred bucks, I believe. And half your hospital was contributed to start with, the Westerdonck Pavilion and the Schirmer therapy room and the Lazenby staff room, television and pool, and for all I know the Agatha Mergendahler Featherstonehaugh duckbill speculum. And on Elm Street there are no elms, and there's TB, rickets, anemia, honest-to-God malnutrition. What kind of health boutique are you running? You took the federal money and then broke the contract—that's what it amounts to. You're liars and cheats and possibly murderers. Other than that I refrain from moral judgment.”

Taubeneck said sternly, “That's enough, Benny.”

“No. It isn't enough.” He hitched himself higher in his leather armchair. “What's my point, you said. One: give in on this strike. Just give in. What they want is pitiful. Don't make it a matter of principle. Two: put some blacks on this board and some poor whites too. You people have no idea what this county needs. A computer, for God's sake! Do you know how many outpatient visits a computer would cost? Why not a hyperbaric chamber to use twice a year, or an open-heart unit to use once? Three: preventive medicine. A free checkup once a year for everybody in the county who makes less than a certain amount. Four: take Bolden and Thilmany and Lindahl and Finlay off the board—nothing personal—or at least make sure that a majority of the board, a working majority, is at all times non-medical. Why should us docs make policy and lay down priorities and set fees; who checks on
us?
We're prosecutor, judge and jury. We're the only industry in the whole damn country with no quality control, no cost control and no inspectors. Five: when people like Lipscomb try to set up a prepaid group practice, or any damn new thing whatever, don't keep denying them hospital privileges. We're going to need a whole lot of new ways. All you free enterprisers—any kind of competition comes along and you call out the cavalry. This isn't a hospital, it's a club.”

“All very generous,” Taubeneck said. “Do you suggest that we abolish fees altogether?”

“Why not?” Benny was delighted. “We're all rich. Right, Cassini? Cassini knows. I've been here fifteen years and I'm fat as a hog. Wheat and soybeans keep closing higher, though pork bellies are lower. Tell you what: you're making socialized medicine the only alternative. Won't be the hairy radicals bring it in; it'll be you.”

“Not immediately, I trust,” Taubeneck murmured. “This is all very idealistic, Benny, but we have a practical problem too.”

“You sure have. I suggest,” Benny said formally, rising, “that you consider Comrade Beer's five-point program. Otherwise you may have to melt down that tea set for bullets.” He paused for a general view of his colleagues: the men barbered, concealing bad hearts, livers, arches; the ladies lacquered, bewildered—he was mystically aware of straps and harnesses, unguents and mascaras, tiny pads within tight shoes; and Finlay wearing a truss. He stared, fascinated, a trifle wild-eyed, at the complex reticulation of minuscule capillaries on the wings of Taubeneck's nose.

“Benny's right,” Runge said.

Startled, Benny sought irony, but Runge meant it. His muddy hazel eyes, pouched above a fat nose, held steady on Taubeneck; with full lips, a wide mouth and an irrepressible black stubble, stolid Runge sat like a champion bull about to bellow. Benny admitted hope, and modest affection: Runge the voice of America, the good honest dealer whose men turned out at four of a winter's morn when the burner broke down.

“My boy says the same thing,” Runge added. “People are talking against doctors—and not just poor people.”

“Against doctors!” Lindahl glowered. “We gave them health insurance.”

“Hell you did,” Runge said. “They took it. You fought it every inch of the way for fifty years. And as soon as they got it we doubled our prices. Soon as we knew the money was there. Doubled in five years. These orderlies and all, their pay went up about ten percent. If that. Can't blame it on them.”

“He's right,” Cassini said. “My last baby cost so much I almost sent it back.” They laughed, relieved, the strain diminished, a neutral unfunny joke.

“You should have brought figures,” Runge said to Taubeneck. “You ought to bring figures and sit down with that Burris fellow. Or I will if you like.”

“Who elected Burris?” Bolden complained.

Benny said, “His colleagues elected him. Who elected us?”

“God,” Taubeneck said, and grinned. “I was brought up to think so.”

“I don't like any of this,” Bolden said.

“That's not the point,” Benny said.

Marian Lacey said, “I just heard you were going to run for mayor.”

Jean Diehl's chart. He rooted among files, extracted one and made himself comfortable, sucking pleasantly at his cigar. Sad biographies, facts and figures, pompous comments. Psychiatric reports. He read carefully, replaced the file and said, “Damn.”

Coughlin nagged at him: the uncontrolled particle, smashing arbitrarily through random chambers. Tanking up; Benny hoped that he was drunk, unconscious. The deranged were unknowns, eerie. From a booth in the corridor he called Frank Cole.

“Here and there and around and about.” Cole was exasperated. “But in the neighborhood. Not doing any of the smart things you might expect. Quite a boy.”

“Quite a boy,” Benny said. “If the baby dies it's manslaughter.”

“At least,” Cole said.

“Rosalie's gone home. Can somebody check her house now and then?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem. We'll find him, don't you worry. Any trouble at the hospital?”

“The strike, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“No. No trouble and I don't think there will be, and I think Don Runge agrees with me. Can I ask you to go very easy? Forget it, unless we call?”

“That's not what Taubeneck said. We've got a man there now. Peattie.”

“Taubeneck. Well, my advice is to call him off. Nothing's going to happen before morning, and don't forget Artie's a pacifist. Strictly non-violent. He's also smart.”

“Yeah. I'll think about it.”

“Please. I mean it.”

“Well, I'll try, doc, but it's my job to keep an eye on troublemakers. We haven't had much of that here, and maybe the best thing is just to come down hard the first time.”

“No guns,” Benny said.

“Oh now, doc. Can't send a man to do a job without tools.”

“What job?”

After a silence Cole said, “We'll keep the peace.”

Benny surrendered. “Good luck. I'm off tomorrow but if you need me call me. Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Cole chuckled. “That's what they used to call the old forty-four.”

“If you find Coughlin let me know.”

“You'll hear,” Cole said.

“McCook,” he said, “can I see you?”

“Doctor Beer. By all means.” McCook gestured grandly toward an armchair. “How's the youth of America?” Crinkly graying hair, modeled features, about the eyes an impressive air of sanity.

“They're all fine,” Benny said. “It's one of your patients.”

McCook had caught his tone, and fell solemn: “Oh?”

“The Diehl woman,” Benny said.

“Ah yes. Damn shame. Husband and four kids and she just can't make it.” McCook was dashing. He sported half-spectacles and wide ties with sunbursts and Fibonacci spirals.

“How come?”

“Tight as a drum,” McCook said. “Conflicted to the core. Upbringing, sex, God, politics even. She needs a long stay in good hands.”

“Well,” Benny said, and chose clemency, “I've found something new.”

McCook chuckled. “It's late. She's due to leave tomorrow. I have the papers here.”

“It's not too late.”

Warily McCook raised a brow. “You've got a theory. You're going to give me hell about something.”

“I'd like to,” Benny said, “but I could be wrong.”

More cheerily, McCook sat back, tapped at the edge of his desk with a golden pencil and assumed an aspect of intelligence. Benny was incredulous. Perhaps the man practiced before a mirror.

Benny strode hunched and fretful toward the heavy glass doors; somewhere out there Coughlin marauded. Or lay in ambush. He paused at the doors and rocked on his feet, planted them wide and gauged the afternoon like a sailor; the rain had slacked, the wind had backed, to the west the skies were lighter. Behind him footsteps whispered and he knew as he turned that it would be Mary; day's end, going home. Sadly he scanned her black face, the soft dark eyes, the wide nose, the full lips, all in a perfect round, crowned by a flocculent Afro. They flew to Cuba, and in a white frame clinic on a green mountain they healed little children, and at sunset they drank coconut milk and made love while the distant fringe of sea turned purple. “Want a ride, little girl?”

“Have to ask my daddy.”

“Leave him alone. His feet hurt.” Benny held the door against a warm breeze, and refrained from taking her hand.

“What's this about Diehl, Jean?”

“Diehl, Jean.” Why should his heart be heavy? Carefully he collected thought. “Poor lady. She's been on cortisone for a year and McCook never knew, and it may be only cortisone depression.”

“Dear God,” Mary said.

“Anyway, we caught it.”

“Thank heaven. Hard to get into that place and harder to get out. What now?”

“We'll take her off it and see.”

“How'd you catch it?”

“I stopped in to say hello, and we chatted.”

“Yes. Old Doc Hello.”

“Don't make fun of me. Damn.” Pull yourself together, m'lad. “I'm a little depressed myself.”

“Baby Roland?”

“Among other small matters.”

She touched his hand. “Dear Benny.”

“Did everything right,” he said, and a tremor shook him. “Should have known better. It all turns to shit. You get old and it all goes away.”

She was silent; they paced along, and gravel crackled. “You need a vacation.”

“I need … God knows what I need. Mary, Mary!” he burst out. “I'm forty-six. Today. And I don't love anybody.”

“Happy birthday,” she said. “I'm thirty-two and nobody loves me.”