Medicine Men (3 page)

Small wonder, then, that after such an exciting, deeply felt triumph he should feel himself excited in a sexual way, as well as in his own heart.

Not surprisingly, Sandy thought considerably about that organ, that marvelous muscle: his personal heart. He admired its strength, and its clear superiority to those lesser hearts that he operated on, and fixed: hearts enlarged or those with leaking valves, those damaged by early rheumatic fever, or simply born bad, defective. As his heart was born strong and good. A superior heart.

And he had kept in shape. Played racquetball and tennis at his club, swam at Tahoe in the summer and worked out on an exercise bike almost every day. Made love to lively Felicia a lot, in recent years, and sometimes laid nurses.

No wonder that even his hair was still so enviably thick and lively. He wondered about those guys, like Dave Jacobs, who went bald.

A long time ago, when Sandy was an intern at Mass. General Hospital, he and some of his doctor friends had a shared bachelor apartment down on Chambers Street. Connie Knowles was
a tall, blonde Boston deb, and she had seemed the perfect girl for him, with her family house on Chestnut Street, Louisburg Square, and the summer place in Magnolia. She was even fairly smart. Unlike most of the debs who only dabbled in some kind of social work, Connie went to Radcliffe, where she studied sociology (well, that did seem a little eccentric; he might have known there was some sort of trouble ahead. Why not fine arts, or French?—something that would come in handy in later life). But she was very wellborn, and beautiful and rich, and to cap her perfections she fell madly in love with Raleigh Sanderson, out from Iowa. “Raleigh.” Connie always called him that, turning his name into a beautiful Boston word, the first syllable long and drawn out, the second light, barely there. (Raleigh never told anyone that he got that name because his mother came from that town, Raleigh, North Carolina, and made it worse by naming his brother Durham. Jesus! But she missed it there.) Connie was crazy about her tall dark Dr. Raleigh; she wanted to get married and have a lot of children as soon as possible. Maybe even then she drank a little too much—“tee many martoonies,” as they said on Chambers Street. But she let him do it to her, she was very passionate. First in the back seat of his car, parked behind some dunes, at Crane’s Beach, in Ipswich. And then quite often, every chance they got, in the upstairs room on Chambers Street, even if the other guys with their dates were all downstairs.

That is how Sandy thought of what happened between them, her “letting him do it to her.” He more or less discouraged active participation from Connie; it didn’t seem right, especially once they were married.

In any case, Connie got her wish. She got her Dr. Raleigh Sanderson, in a huge June wedding with a big outdoor garden reception up in Magnolia. And, within the first six years, four children. All born out in San Francisco, where they moved for Raleigh’s residency at Presbyterian Hospital—and bought a big house, in Pacific Heights, and stayed.

In the years since then Sandy successfully attached the phrase “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome” to explain his children, none of whom had turned out well, or even reasonably all right, by his standards. None of them are speaking to him just now, and he has disinherited them all. He has even been known to murmur that acronym, FAS, in response to inquiries about his family. This not only lets him off the hook, or covers his ass (to use a phrase that Sandy himself would never employ), it glosses over the fact that Connie as a pregnant woman and then as a very young mother drank almost not at all. She started up drinking in a serious way about the time of the first drug arrest of their youngest child, who was twelve and dealing LSD at the Town School for Boys. For Connie, that was the last straw. She began to go a little crazy after that, drinking and gaining weight, of course, and developing these crazy, irrational jealousies. Making scenes. Seeing shrinks, thousands of dollars on shrinks.

These days Connie still describes herself as an alcoholic, although she does not drink, not at all. Just Perrier, and other ridiculous expensive waters. She is still quite fat, although a recent accusation was that he had not noticed her loss of twenty pounds, some crazy so-called spiritual spa she went to. God knows what she does with her time all day: probably women’s meetings, nature and animals and refugees, the things she mentions briefly at dinner; they do have dinner together, usually; they go to the requisite parties, they give the occasional obligatory reception.

But do not talk to Raleigh Sanderson about the sixties. These were the years that wrecked his family, finishing off the work of FAS. Since then it’s been a series of drug arrests and crazy marriages, divorces and bastard children. (He has three half-black grandchildren, probably in Oakland; he no longer even asks Connie where they are.) Most recently, there have been lawsuits; they want his money.

What Sandy feels worst about is the grandchildren aspect of
all this trouble. He adores little tiny girls, even half-black ones. He is completely nuts about them, he admits it. When he sees one in a store or on the street, with her fat little cheeks and her big wide innocent eyes and her little ruffled panties, Sandy feels the most terrible pangs of longing, and of loss. Even, his eyes tear up.

And then he reads in the paper that some man has molested one of those babies—has actually done it to her. Sandy feels his blood pressure dangerously rise, and rage grips his throat. Those guys should be castrated, Sandy thinks. The chair or, God knows, lethal injection is too good for them. Just cut it off, without anesthetic, let them bleed to death. He can’t even think about child molestation, it makes him crazy.

Felicia. What a woman! That was Sandy’s first thought on seeing Miss Felicia Flood walk into his office. A classical big blonde woman, built like the Varga girls in the
Esquire
of his young manhood. But with a classier face, and a kind of style about her, and as soon as she spoke he could tell: real class. (Sandy is dead accurate on accents, an expertise fueled by ferocious snobbery. When a couple of other doctors suggested that Dr. Dave Jacobs might not be Jewish, despite the name, Sandy countered, “Of course he’s Jewish, just listen to him talk.” And of course he was right.) Sandy is also snobbish, and accurate about Midwestern accents, forgetting his own origins. No more Cedar Falls.

But Miss Flood, Felicia, his new temporary secretary, was something else. He read sexual compliance in her lively smile, but not right away, he knew that. She was too good-looking for anything immediate; old Sandy knew the rules. She liked him a lot, though; he could tell. She kept those big dark-blue eyes on his face (true sapphire eyes, like expensive jewels), and she smiled at his smallest jokes. So interested. She seemed intrigued by anything he had to say, fascinated by surgery, hospital politics.
By professional tennis and water problems at Lake Tahoe and the general decline of life in San Francisco.

Strangely, their first time together was on the day of one of Sandy’s worst surgeries: the old bastard (the patient) expired on him. A bad aortic, but Sandy had done a lot of bad aortics before, no need for this one to die. He was sitting in his office an hour or so later, feeling terrible, too terrible even to call in a nurse, as he had meant to do (had even thought of doing when he was right there in the OR; he had one all picked out, a plain girl with enormous cans), and suddenly there was Miss Flood, Felicia, who took one look at him and said, “You poor guy, can I feed you some lunch, for a change? My house isn’t far from here.”

And although he had carefully never touched her before, there was no playing around once they got inside her house.
They fell upon each other.
Knowing these words to be trite, that was still how Sandy described (to himself) what almost immediately happened with him and Felicia, that day, as she reached to close her front door. He grabbed her toward him, she turned and grasped his neck; his mouth plunged down to hers, which instantly opened for him. Wild! For a moment he thought they would have to do it right there, on the bright hall rug, but then Felicia jerked away, pulling him into a room where there was a bed, both of them ripping off clothes. As they fell upon each other.

Jesus Christ. The greatest experience of his life, bar none. Making love with Felicia was like—was like nothing else he could possibly imagine. Maybe like reaching the top of Mont Blanc—and then some.

For a while after that—in fact for quite a while—Sandy felt that his life was perfect. His work was going well—actually it always had: he was about the best in the business, well paid and well known too. And he had a lady in his life, the sexiest woman
alive, probably, and also very intelligent and
nice
, and the most fantastic cook; often Felicia would bring him a pretty little bowl of soup in bed, always something amazing, sorrel or hazelnuts, mussels and spinach. And sometimes when Connie was out of town, back to Boston to see her family or some women’s meeting somewhere, Sandy would boldly take Felicia out to a well-known restaurant—he favored the old ones, Jack’s or Trader Vic’s, or even Ernie’s. Whereas she always had heard of a new place, with handsome boyish waiters, a lot of fruit and vegetables mixed in with the meat, or fish.

“I suppose this is where you come with your other boyfriends,” he sometimes teased her.

And she would laugh. “Sandy darling, how would I possibly have the energy? You know I’m basically lazy.”

It was certainly true that he kept her satisfied (that was a word he liked; it seemed both accurate and understated, in Felicia’s case and in his), but he did feel an occasional pang at the thought of all the nights that she necessarily spent at home alone. When he was with Connie and couldn’t even call her. Sometimes Felicia did go out to a movie or a restaurant or a party, and she had explained that she didn’t like going alone, so she usually called a friend—warm, gregarious Felicia had lots of friends. Mostly women, of course. And queers. She didn’t like it when Sandy used that word, so he kept on doing it, to tease her.

Once he saw her at a party, an enormous museum do, an AIDS benefit. (Connie had really twisted his arm, insisting that they go.) Felicia was with a handsome guy, even younger than she was, it seemed to Sandy. And so the next day (in bed, in the early afternoon; she had made a terrific lunch) he quizzed her—teasing, of course: “What’s all this going out with good-looking younger men behind my back?”

She gave it right back to him: “What do you care? Charlie’s only what you would call ‘some queer.’ ” She added, “And a party like that is hardly behind your back.”

She had him there, on both counts.

Rarely, he would come to a party that Felicia gave, at her house. He liked the sense of sharing in her life, being part of it; he liked meeting her friends, he liked to know who they were, and what they talked about (although he secretly disliked quite a few of them, including her good friend Molly Bonner and most of the queers). But he wanted her friends to know that he was there, a large, important presence in Felicia’s life. She was not just some woman alone. And she was most certainly not “available.”

Felicia’s fidelity, then (to be fair about it), would seem implicitly to require his own—and for quite a long time Sandy took that unspoken demand quite seriously. No problem with Connie: he hadn’t touched her for years, didn’t want to touch her; nor did she want him, although occasionally she made some gesture that could have been interpreted in that way. But he could hardly believe that they ever had. Done it together. And look what came of that unhappy coupling: four really rotten human beings, his progeny.

Too bad he and Felicia would not have children. He sometimes had fantasies of their plump blonde little baby girls, all frolicking in the bathtub, bare bottoms and dear little vaginal slits among the bubbles. He could help them wash.

But with nurses the fidelity thing was a little different. Sex with them was something he was used to. Laying nurses, whenever he felt the need. For one thing, there were certain women, nurses, who were used to him—who expected it of him, so to speak. Who would think it was really strange and maybe be hurt if he never called them into his office. And smiled, and locked the door.

And so, without giving it much thought, or guilt, Sandy got back into the sex-with-nurses habit, although perhaps less frequently than before; after all, if he was going to see Felicia later that same day, there was really no need.

One of the nurses he was most used to—and she to him, probably—was his surgical nurse, Jane White, as plain as her name but with beautiful bazooms. And, incidentally, exceptionally quick and smart in the OR. Certainly Jane would have been hurt if many months passed without those particular calls. Without her getting laid. By Dr. Raleigh Sanderson, the Chief of Surgery.

On Fridays of every week there were so-called surgical conferences held, although in fact the cardiologists talked as much as if not more than the surgeons did. (It had struck Sandy quite often that the cardiologists, including the interns and residents, were usually Jewish; the surgeons were not. Sandy dimly felt that this was as it should be, although he could not have said quite why.) Cases were presented and discussed, procedures argued. The cardiologists, naturally, wanted to medicate forever—until death itself, it sometimes seemed; the surgeons often favored a more aggressive approach. As Sandy himself liked to put it, and often did: “A life like that is simply not worth living.” By which he meant that if a given patient is in the terrible shape just described, the possible risks and discomforts of surgery are well worth it.

And so it went on the Friday following Felicia’s party. One of the cardiology residents, Dr. Bluestone, from Brookline, Massachusetts, and Harvard, and with that
accent
, those Harvard vowels (despite his name)—Dr. Bluestone described a sixty-year-old woman, a Mrs. Miller, a widow with a history of problems: possible childhood rheumatic fever, and the familiar litany of symptoms—dyspnea on exertion, mildly cyanotic, etc. The only original feature in all this was what sounded like a classic surgery phobia: something about a botched hysterectomy, way back. Though what that could have to do with repairing her mitral valve Sandy could not quite see, and he felt that Bluestone was making too much of this woman’s fears. She sounded to him
like a very good candidate, just healthy enough to withstand the surgery, and sick enough to need it.