Private Practices (4 page)

“There were problems. But they overdosed. They often do with animals.”

“Nothing new in that,” Mulenberg commented. “Still, are you sure you're really ready to start large-scale domestic testing? I understand you've applied to the Deutsch Foundation to start testing here in the States this summer.”

“Of course we're ready.” Impatiently, Sidney directed Claudia to fill his glass and swallowed the golden liquid down thirstily. “I wouldn't have asked for the grant otherwise. And it's none too soon. We've got a world teetering on the edge of self-destruction through overpopulation. How long can we afford to wait without finding a solution?”

“Bullshit. We've already got some good solutions.”

“But none as effective and easy to use as this one.”

Mulenberg squinted at Sidney. “You really believe in it, don't you? You're a man with a mission.”

“For God's sake, Harry,” Sidney exploded. “Just because you ended up a clinician, you don't have to go around trying to keep me one!”

Claudia said, “Please, Sidney,” her pale porcelain skin turning an infinitesimal shade lighter.

“Stay out of it,” Sidney warned her. “This is between me and Harry. He keeps needling me.”

“Sidney feels you haven't exactly supported him in this endeavor,” Claudia interposed, still trying to make peace.

“I don't need an interpreter!” Sidney shouted.

Mulenberg set down his utensils noisily. “There's no talking to you anymore, Sid. You're so bent on the Nobel Prize you won't even answer questions.”

“I don't have to listen to this!” Sidney pushed his chair away from the table and stalked into the kitchen.

“I'm sorry,” Claudia apologized to Mulenberg and, rising, hastily followed Sidney.

“He's impossible,” Mulenberg growled to Ben as soon as Claudia was gone. “Always was, but he's getting worse.”

Ben kept a loyal silence, staring down into his wineglass.

Mulenberg shook his head and drew a packet of cigars out of his pocket. “Want one?” Ben nodded, and the two of them smoked, not talking, but noisily filling the silence by puffing on their cigars. After a while, Ben felt himself growing sleepy again. The stuffy air was oppressive and he had to force himself to stay awake by trying to concentrate on the sounds of his brother and sister-in-law in the kitchen, their voices raised but the words indistinct, muffled by the closed swinging door and the noise of water running hard and plates clinking. And then suddenly, just as Mulenberg emitted a perfect smoke ring, Ben thought he heard a cry from the kitchen, a high-pitched catlike sound of pain.

He sat forward. Mulenberg too must have heard the sound for he seemed to start to rise from his chair and only then remember his stroke-wounded leg and sink back, scowling. Then the water stopped running and Ben relaxed, convinced that what they had heard was the mechanical shriek of a faucet turned too far.

Sidney and Claudia came in only moments afterward, Sidney with a coffee pot, Claudia carrying a fluted white bowl of chocolate soufflé. “Anyone for dessert?” she said brightly. Ben said, “Great idea,” and Mulenberg too nodded enthusiastically, trying to rescue the evening. Claudia came around the table and set the bowl down between her place and Ben's and he saw a small red patch of skin just above her wrist on the inside of her arm. She saw him looking and pulled her hand away.

“Burn?” he asked.

“I had the hot water on too strong.”

“She's careless in the kitchen,” Sidney said. “Too cocky.”

After Mulenberg called his driver and left, Claudia finally told Ben her news. “I'm pregnant,” she said quietly, while Sidney busied himself pouring a cognac. “We wanted you to be the first to know.”

Ben glanced at Claudia with guarded eyes and couldn't, at first, trust himself to speak. Jealousy welled up in him like an acid, spreading from his stomach to the back of his throat. He envied not only Claudia and Sidney their child, but the unborn child its parentage. But he was psychologically sophisticated, and used to his despairing jealousies whenever other people's lives seemed richer than his own. “I'm glad,” he finally managed to say to them. “How wonderful. How terrific for you.”

Once the words were out of his mouth, he was even able to give Claudia a hug and to act, if not feel, as if he were indeed pleased for her and Sidney. Acts were what counted, he reminded himself. Everyone had angry, infantile thoughts, and such thoughts were harmless as long as they were never accompanied by harmful acts or words.

“You needn't feel left out,” Claudia rewarded his congratulations by saying. “We'd like you to be the doctor. That is, if you'll take the case.”

Ben let go of her and stepped back, amazed. He had thought Sidney, with his penchant for excellence, would have chosen someone far more distinguished than himself. Martin Stearns, perhaps, or even their department chief, Thomas Alithorn. “Surely Stearns would be a better choice,” he began, pleased at being offered a role in the birth of his nephew or niece, but puzzled by it nevertheless. “Or Alithorn. Can't you get him, Sid? He still takes some maternity cases, doesn't he?”

Sidney said emphatically, “Cut it out. You're the man we want.” Then he added teasingly, “Besides, your flaws I know. Better the known than the unknown.”

Ben grimaced. He wanted to be sure they really wanted him. “What about you, Claudia?” he asked. “How do you feel about having me as the doctor?”

“She feels fine about it,” Sidney said gruffly. “Now forget it. It's settled.” He stood up, swallowing the last of his cognac, and went to the teak bar in the corner of the room to pour himself another. “The truth is,” he added, his back turned, “I like the idea of keeping it in the family.”

Claudia pursed her lips, started to say something, and then thought better of it. “You want a brandy?” Sidney asked, turning and gesticulating with the bottle. Both Ben and Claudia shook their heads and Sidney sat back down on the couch, the bottle still in one hand, his brandy snifter in the other. “Come,” Claudia said, suddenly taking Ben's arm. “I want to show you something. A present I got.”

She held him and began leading him rapidly through the dining room and the kitchen, heading for the unused maid's room in the back of the apartment. “Don't mind Sidney,” she said as they passed through the darkened corridor. “He's had a lot to drink tonight. It makes him jumpy.”

He felt grateful for her concern and remembered that at the time Sidney had married her he had also gone through a turbulent period, replete with fears of loss and abandonment. But his fears had proved foolish. If anything Claudia, with her meticulous manners, had brought him and Sidney into even greater contact than they had had before the wedding, had ritualized their meetings by organizing a wealth of family dinners and celebrations.

It made him feel better about the baby. He would bring it into the world and would share in its world. All would be as it had been before. Reassured, he said to Claudia, “Thanks. Thanks for worrying about me.” Claudia's politeness usually struck him as superficial and automatic rather than sincere. But he had to admit that she was going out of her way to be kind to him tonight.

In the maid's room Claudia switched on a lamp and Ben saw in front of him an elaborate waist-high, wrought-iron cradle surrounded with layers of lacy white curtains. “Isn't it marvelous!” Claudia exclaimed. “My friend Bootie got it in Paris. Remember Bootie from the wedding?”

He nodded, remembering her old roommate, and no longer feeling at all out of sorts. He knew all of Sidney's friends, and even Sidney's wife's friends. Clearly he had a place in Sidney's life, even if Sidney was soon to be the father of a proper child, and no longer of his dependent younger brother alone. He said, “It's absolutely wonderful,” and shared with Claudia in admiring the cradle's unique ornamentation.

Just then Sidney entered the room, brandy glass in hand, and seeing Claudia bent over the cradle, slapped her playfully on the buttocks. Claudia straightened up with a start and Sidney, high on cognac, reached unsteadily past her. Grinning, he grabbed a satin pillow from the cradle and shoved it into Claudia's arms. “Smile!” he commanded and stepped back, pretending to take a picture of Claudia and the pillow with the brandy snifter. “Oh, what a good-looking kid,” he said, his thumb poised on the edge of the brandy glass. “Spitting image of its dad.” Clowning, he pressed down on the glass.

Ben laughed, amused by Sidney's performance. And then Sidney turned toward him and said, “What's so funny?” his voice stentorian, a clown's challenge to an audience. “Who said you could laugh?”

Ben grew suddenly wary. “I guess I ought to be going now. It's getting late.”

“Good thinking!” Sidney set his glass down in the middle of the cradle, came up to Ben and, grimacing and clowning still, pinched Ben's cheeks with both his hands. “Good thinking,” he repeated, his thumbs and forefingers shaking Ben's skin vigorously. “Whoever said my baby brother was dull-witted?”

Ben pulled away and left the room hurriedly. At the door he turned back for a moment and saw Sidney drawing Claudia close to him, his fingers sliding inside the neckline of her silvery dress. In the elevator he decided that tonight he would allow himself an extra pill or two.

He was already asleep when, around midnight, his phone began to ring. He heard its clamor but he was flying over a green lake, his body suspended between two perfect gossamer wings, and in his mind the phone was a miniature powerful bow releasing piercing arrows. He tried to fly higher, to soar above the danger, and concentrated on escape. Then he felt one of the arrows tear into his wing and his heart began to beat so loudly he thought it too might tear and he felt himself plummeting, plunging toward the brutal bow of the phone. He forced himself higher, his wounded wing flapping painfully. And then at last he was safe again, his wing miraculously healed. The jangling of the phone continued, but he was out of its reach, gliding. Then it grew silent.

A while later it rang again. This time he came awake but his fingers felt thick and numb. When he reached for the receiver he knocked it off the night table and as he struggled to retrieve it from the floor he heard Arnie Diehl, the obstetrical resident on duty at the hospital, begin talking hurriedly. “Dr. Zauber? Diehl. I've been trying and trying to get you.”

Grasping the receiver, Ben muttered, “I was asleep,” his lips feeling as deadened as his fingers.

“Sounds like you still are,” Diehl commented. His voice was as crisp and forceful as that of a radio news announcer. Ben longed to reduce its impact. “What's up?” he asked and, turning onto his side, rested the receiver on the pillow so that he could push the earpiece away from his ear.

“It's Annette Kinney,” Diehl said, his voice more tolerable now. Ben's eyes closed and he felt sleep clutch and draw at him as if it were quicksand. “She got here about an hour ago and I've been calling you ever since. She's almost ready to go.”

“What's that?” He was in his flying dream again. He was poised at the edge of a broad chasm, about to traverse it with straining, fluttering wings. He forced himself not to take off yet but to talk intelligibly to Diehl. “What do you mean by almost ready?” he managed. “Won't she keep till morning?”

“I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

“It's going fast.”

The chasm loomed black. He had to soar now or he would fall, crash against cliffs and brittle stones. “Call me when she's ready,” he mumbled. “Really ready.”

“But I'm telling you it's going to be very soon.”

“Right,” Ben said, “That's right,” and with a swooping gesture thrust out his arm and let the phone receiver descend into the cradle.

CHAPTER TWO

FEBRUARY

“Dr. Zauber? She's ready.”

Diehl's words in Ben's ear were meaningless at first. He had come awake as soon as the phone began its imperious ringing, but he had no memory of Diehl's previous call. “Who?” he shot out. “Who's ready?”

“Mrs. Kinney. She's eight centimeters.”

“Why the hell didn't you call me earlier?” he said. “Goddamn it, why'd you wait until the last minute?”

“I did call.” Diehl was indignant. “You said to get back to you when she was really ready.”

Slowly, their previous conversation drifted back into Ben's mind. “Oh, Christ,” he sighed. “Yeah. That's right. I did say that.”

“I could deliver her,” Diehl offered eagerly.

“No. She'd never forgive me.” He was wide awake now. “I've known her for seven years. Delivered both her other kids.” Standing, he began groping for his shoes. “Just snow her for a few moments. I'll be there faster than you can wheel her into the delivery room.”

“Snow her?”

“Delay her. Give her a shot. And have the nurse tell her not to push.”

“You sure you don't want me to deliver her?”

But Ben was already hanging up and within seconds he was into his shoes and coat and out the door. Rushing along the windy street that separated his apartment from the hospital, his coat flapping behind him, he was racing as in his dream.

Annette Kinney was in the delivery room wide awake, and Angela Rogers, one of the nurses, was holding her legs together and telling her in her soft Southern drawl not to bear down, not yet. Annette's face was contorted, but when she saw Ben she managed a smile. “I'm so glad you're here,” she whispered and then her body heaved.

“Have I ever let you down?” Angela checked the fetal heart while another nurse dried his arms. Water was still running down to his wrists from his double-quick scrubbing. Then he heard Angela say, “Heart rate's gone down to 115” and suddenly he was intensely at work, ordering oxygen for Annette in order to keep the baby's own supply mighty and telling her now to push, push hard, as hard as she could.