Little Known Facts: A Novel (9 page)

But he isn’t free. He has a wife and two sons, both of them teenagers, one a soccer player, the other a talented pianist. He rarely talks about his personal life, but with all the time she and the other students in her rotation spend with him, they do sometimes speak about their lives outside of the hospital. He has only mentioned his wife once, to say that she had asked him to pick up a dozen quail’s eggs for a dinner party, and did anyone know where he might find a store that sold them? Jim Lewin knew, because, in part, he knew everything. Anna did not know where to buy quail’s eggs and couldn’t imagine what Dr. Glass’s wife planned to do with them. She went home that night and looked them up on the web and found two stores that sold them, both within an eight-mile drive of the medical center. She sent an e-mail to Dr. Glass with the store names and addresses, but he didn’t respond, not even to thank her, until an entire week had passed. In the days preceding his belated thank-you, she hadn’t dared to ask if he had received her message.

The quail eggs had come up in the spring of Anna’s fourth year during a six-week internal medicine rotation—six whole weeks with Dr. Glass Monday through Thursday and Dr. Fitch on Friday and Saturday. Dr. Kaczmerski hadn’t yet been assigned to her group. After this rotation, she spent four weeks in ob-gyn, her attending Dr. Hlvacek, who was from Bratislava, but at twenty-one had moved to Boston to study medicine at Tufts—fiercely homesick and barely proficient in English, she had confided to Anna with a sheepish smile. Her English was now nearly flawless, and she was also beautiful, but not, it seemed, overly preoccupied with the power this beauty imparted her. Anna often caught herself wondering if Dr. Glass had a crush on Dr. Hlvacek, as most of the male doctors whose paths they crossed seemed to. When they discussed Anna’s performance on the last day of her obstetrics rotation, Dr. Hlvacek had startled her by saying, “What is the expression? A double threat, brains and beauty? Whatever it is, you will be just fine, Dr. Ivins. I am sure of this.” For days afterward, Anna had replayed Dr. Hlvacek’s words in her head, not certain if she was more happy to be called pretty than intelligent, though she knew which one she should value more.

Her family and friends are impressed that Anna is studying to become a doctor, but on the phone, when her father called her after the Cannes festival, where
Bourbon at Dusk
had done well but the Palme d’Or had gone to
Ten Pretty Girls,
an Israeli film about a child prostitution ring, he asked if she was sure that she wanted to make a career out of giving people bad news. She couldn’t tell if he was kidding, knowing that he has bragged many times to his friends and acquaintances about her chosen career.

“Most of the bad news is given by specialists,” she told him. “Potentially serious problems get farmed out.”

“But won’t you get tired of doing immunizations and physicals?”

“I don’t think so. They’ll be a relief because I’ll have to do other things like lancing boils and stitching split lips.” She laughed. “No, seriously, what I want is to have real relationships with my patients, like a lot of doctors used to before the insurance companies took over and made everything so bureaucratic.”

“Those insurance companies are your bread and butter,” he said. “Or they would be if it weren’t for, well, if it weren’t for me.”

If Dr. Glass knows who her father is, he isn’t interested, or else he refuses to show it. She can’t see him asking her the usual questions: What was it like to grow up with a movie star as your father? Why didn’t you go into acting too? Or did you and it didn’t work out? Which of his movies is your favorite? Is he a decent guy? For real? Come on, you can tell me.

She does know that Dr. Glass likes movies, that he sees them when he has time, though he has said that he stays away from films about doctors because they often contain errors, or else some important element in them has been altered in order to keep a mainstream audience happy. “Contrary to what Hollywood might tell us, there are no perfect doctors,” Anna remembers him saying the day he appeared at work with his very short new haircut. “Just like there are no perfect people. You’ll make mistakes; everyone does. Thankfully, most of them can be corrected. Your duty, however, is not to make the same mistake twice.”

“What if we do make the same mistake twice?” asked Jim Lewin, who, despite having the highest grade-point average in the class, had confounded many of his professors and classmates by declaring, like Anna and a dozen or so others, a family medicine concentration rather than a specialization like oncology or neurology.

“You could lose your malpractice insurance,” said Dr. Glass. “Because you’re likely to get sued, if you haven’t been already. Small mistakes. Those are the kind you want to make.”

“I don’t want to make any, big or small,” said Jim.

“Of course you don’t. No one does. That’s the spirit, Dr. Lewin.” Dr. Glass looked at Anna and smiled. “What about you, Dr. Ivins? Are you planning to make any mistakes?”

She hesitated. “No, but I probably will. I keep wanting to knock on wood, but I’d feel embarrassed if anyone saw me.”

Dr. Glass shook his head, still smiling. “You’re superstitious. Almost every new doctor is. A lot of older doctors are too.”

She felt her face redden. “I wish that I weren’t.”

“It’s perfectly normal. We know how fast things can change for any one of us. Aneurysms, heart attacks, strokes—they happen to healthy people too.”

“We have such a hard job,” said Jim, his brown-eyed gaze unnerving in its directness. His upper lip was sweating, something that happened whenever he was excited, which seemed to be most of the time. For the first two years of medical school he had had a crush on Anna but had never found the nerve to ask her out. She is glad that he didn’t because she would have said no and felt bad about it. She does not find him attractive, despite his pleasant face and lean, tall body. If he weren’t so earnest and so intent on knowing all of the answers, she is sure that he would do better with the available women in their class.

Dr. Glass regarded him. “Yes, we do, and not everyone can handle it. You’ll know a lot more about yourself by the end of the summer.”

The first time her path crosses his outside of the hospital is pure coincidence. She is walking past a sandwich shop in Marina del Rey after visiting Jill at her new apartment, her friend having moved from North Hollywood where she had lived since college because, she said, only half joking, that she had used up all of the interesting straight men there. Her new place has a view of the Pacific and is so pleasant and spacious that for a few minutes Anna thought about looking at a unit for sale on another floor, but the effort required to move when she is already so busy makes the idea too daunting. Dr. Glass is sitting by himself at an outdoor table, eating a salad and reading a book, one whose title she can’t see. She isn’t sure if she should bother him and timidly turns her face away, but he looks up at the same moment and calls her name. Her heart begins to beat so forcefully that she wonders if he will see it pounding beneath the thin fabric of her blouse. With her denim miniskirt and hair in two long ponytails, she knows that she doesn’t look professional. She suspects that she might even look silly, hardly a woman to take seriously, let alone to entrust anyone’s life to. At the hospital she always gathers her light brown hair, which is the same color as her father’s and as thick, into a bun.

“I didn’t know you lived in Marina,” says Dr. Glass, motioning for her to sit down. He is wearing a pale green cotton shirt, a color that suits him. His hair is starting to grow out too, and with his dark stubble and wire-rimmed glasses, he looks especially handsome.

“I don’t, but I have a friend who just moved here. She wanted to be close to the beach, and she doesn’t mind the crowds.” She sits in the chair across from him, careful to pull her skirt down as far as it will go, but it stays well above her knees, one of which has a blue-green bruise the size of a quarter.

“But you do?”

Anna nods. “I like it quiet when I’m home. There are too many cars here anyway. It took me fifteen minutes to find a parking spot.”

“There are too many cars everywhere.”

She smiles. “That’s true.”

“Where do you live, if not here?” he asks, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. His salad is only half eaten, and she realizes later that he didn’t eat any more of it while they were talking. She wonders if he worried about looking graceless, as she does when she eats, especially on first dates.

“Silver Lake.”

“Do you own your own place?”

“Yes. For a few years now.”

“Any roommates?”

She shakes her head. “I rent out the first floor to someone because it’s a big house, but she’s a tenant, not a friend.”

He smiles and shakes his head. “Sorry for all of the questions. I’m not usually so nosy.”

“You can ask me anything you’d like to,” she says, then looks down, embarrassed by her brashness. It is as if she has never before talked to a man she finds attractive. She doesn’t quite understand why Dr. Glass affects her as he does, especially in view of her many interactions with her father’s glamorous friends—some of them among the most accomplished, and the most handsome, actors in the world.

“You’re going to be an excellent doctor, Anna,” says Dr. Glass.

“Do you really think so?” she asks, blushing. “I’m trying to learn everything I can, but it still feels like I’ll never know enough.”

“You’re already very good, and I don’t say that about everyone.”

“Jim’s better than I am,” she says, then cringes inwardly.

He shakes his head. “He’s different, not better.”

“He notices everything.”

“That won’t always be the case. But he is very bright. There are plenty of more experienced doctors out there who aren’t as sharp as you two.”

She wonders if he will remember this conversation later and wish that he hadn’t been so frank. She has no idea if he is flirting or simply being indiscreet. She glances at the hand that rests next to his water glass and sees his platinum wedding band, an intricate ivy pattern etched onto it. “I should let you get back to your lunch,” she says.

“No, no, please stay as long as you’d like to. You’re not interrupting me. It’s nice to see you outside of the hospital.” He pauses. “I know it was a while ago, but I want to thank you again for sending that e-mail about the quail’s eggs. I felt bad about not replying sooner. I didn’t end up needing them. All my wife talked about for a week were those ridiculous eggs, and then at the last minute, she changed her mind.”

She looks at him, surprised. “Really? If you need them in the future, at least you’ll know where to go now.”

“I don’t think we will. No more dinner parties, at least not for a while, if I have my way. They’re always much more disappointing and expensive than my wife thinks they’ll be.”

“I’ve only hosted one. It was small, but it was still a lot of work.”

“I’d rather just go to a restaurant.” He smiles, motioning to his plate. “I guess that’s obvious.”

“I should let you finish your salad,” she says and stands up, wondering if he will see the bruise on her knee. The sudden wild thought arrives: Will he think that she got it during sex? She doesn’t remember how it happened, but it wasn’t from sex. She hasn’t slept with anyone in four months, since an ex-boyfriend visited from Tucson. Because they were both single, she let him stay with her while he was in town for a conference. During medical school, it has been hard to find time to date, and aside from her classmates, many of whom are already attached, she meets so few men she would consider dating. Her mother and brother, both unhappily single, wonder why she doesn’t complain more about not having a boyfriend; what she doesn’t tell them is that she misses having a sex life but not the effort of keeping a relationship from going flat and finding the time and space for a boyfriend in her already crowded life.

Dr. Glass is the first man in a while to whom she has had an immediate visceral response, but the ethics of their situation are undebatable: a professional relationship, nothing else. Even a platonic friendship outside of the hospital would be frowned upon, at least while she is still his intern.

“You were the only one in your group who suggested that the zoster virus Grace Whiting is suffering from might be a sign that her breast cancer is out of remission. Not everyone remembers this possibility.”

She smiles, her eyes on the table. The pleasure of his praise is almost unbearable. And her competitiveness shames her; she hadn’t realized before today just how much it bothered her that Jim Lewin is considered more of a star student than she is. “I hope I’m wrong, for Mrs. Whiting’s sake,” she murmurs.

“I do too, but what’s most important is that you thought of it. I ordered some tests, and we’ll know more in a couple of days.”

She glances toward the street where a group of shirtless boys in swim trunks are walking noisily by. She would like very much to stay with Dr. Glass for a while longer, but she can’t believe that he truly wants her company. There is also the chance that his wife and sons will ambush them, and that he will act like it is the most ordinary thing in the world for him to be sitting at a restaurant with one of his young interns, a woman who also happens to have a crush on him, something he must sense. Something his wife would also be likely to sense. Oh, and by the way, did Mrs. Glass know that the intern’s father is Renn Ivins, the movie star? though Anna and Dr. Glass have never discussed this. She does not want her father’s shadow to intrude on this private area of her life, this guilty but sexy possibility, at least not until she gets to know Dr. Glass better, if she will be given the chance.

And it seems likely that she will be. When she has made up her mind not to linger any longer, he smiles and says in a light tone, “I’m here at this time on most Sundays. You have an open invitation to join me whenever you’re in the neighborhood.” He extends his hand and she grasps it, realizing that this is the first time they have made a point of touching each other, aside from the day they met when they also shook hands. Her palm keeps tingling as she walks to her car, and she nearly forgets where she parked it. It is as if she is in ninth grade again and has just received the first love letter of her life.