Private Practices (6 page)

Still, it didn't prevent him from tagging behind after Sidney and his friends in the empty lots and alleys in which they played stickball and ring-a-levio, although it sometimes prevented him from explaining to Sara at night his frequent torn pants and cut knees and bruised arms. Or something did. He feared the loss of Sidney's company more than he feared scrapes and cuts and punches and the stinging flesh-reddening searing that Sidney called an Indian burn.

But Sidney was not always cruel to him. His cruelty was chiefly a public display, name-calling and tricks and physical abuse whenever Ben followed behind in the pack of boys.

When they were alone, Sidney was different. When they were alone, he would let Ben listen to his radio or play with the doctor kit Sara bought him on his eighth birthday, or the chemistry set he was given at nine. Ben would be Sidney's patient, forever getting his temperature taken and his heart listened to and his back thumped hard and his mouth stuffed to overflowing with delicious candy pills. And Ben would be Sidney's taster, sniffing, then gulping, the foul drinks Sidney concocted. Holding his nose, Ben would bravely swear the marvelous oaths by which Sidney bound him, the secret curses prompted by scatology and the movies. “I'll be fucked to shit if I ever fail you,” “I'll be your faithful servant forevermore.”

Later there were rituals inspired by Sidney's extensive reading: the hand in the gas flame, the hairs pulled out close to the temples, the bloody signatures on folded scraps of paper. Ben never tired of time spent with Sidney, even when Sidney abused him. Sara said Sidney was a genius and that genius had its own ways. And Ben was inclined to agree with her, although he didn't know what genius was. Still, he knew that Sidney was endowed with a unique gift.

He called it imagination, a quality he found grievously lacking in himself. He felt uninventive, dull, shallow. Sidney was exciting, unpredictable, full of undercurrents. What was a kick in the shins compared to experiencing the world through Sidney's eyes?

Ben submerged himself in Sidney's depths and felt, drowning, that he had landed somewhere.

He had slept. When he drifted to consciousness, he saw that it was after six. The office was silent. Cora and the other two nurses had undoubtedly gone home long ago. He sat up, astonished, startled that he had fallen asleep at his desk without any preparation for sleep. He had taken no pills since the night before. Still sleepy, he felt inordinately pleased with himself. Then he remembered Annette Kinney and her baby and dissatisfaction replaced his contentment. Quickly he stood up and drew on his overcoat. He had yet to take his promised second look at the mother and child.

Annette was tearful when he saw her. “You said I'd have the baby by afternoon,” she said accusingly.

“I said maybe by afternoon,” he reminded her gently. She turned her head away and began to sob.

“I don't blame you for being angry with me,” he offered, then wished he hadn't. But it was all right. She wasn't listening to him, but was crying loudly now.

“Please stop,” he cajoled. “The more you cry, the worse you'll feel.” He made himself smile briskly and add in a stern voice, “If you go on crying, we'll have to give you tranquilizers and that won't be good for your milk.”

Her tears subsided and he went on. “I think you'd better begin using a breast pump. Just to keep yourself ready. I'm going to tell the nurses to get you started.”

“You are? You really think the baby's going to be all right?”

“Of course I do. I'm sure of it.”

He had almost convinced himself until he stopped in the nursery and saw the baby's pale grayish color. Diehl was there too, agitated and ashen faced himself. “I'm sorry,” Ben said to him.

The obstetrical resident didn't reply.

“Any improvement?” Ben asked.

“Not yet,” Diehl finally muttered.

Ben looked down at the baby in its glass nest.

“I called you in time,” the younger man said then, speaking up.

“Sure you did.”

“I thought you were going to say I called you late,” Diehl went on nervously. “It's been known to happen. I have a friend who got kicked out of Midstate because an attending lied about when my friend called him.”

“You don't have much confidence in me, do you?” Ben frowned.

“It isn't you. It's this place. The buck-passing.” Behind Diehl's bravado, Ben could hear how worried he was.

“You don't need to worry,” Ben said. “I'm not like that.”

The resident looked up, suddenly grateful.
“I'm
sorry,” he said, and Ben realized how young he was. No more than twenty-seven, he thought. “You should get some sleep,” he advised him paternally.

“I can't. Who can sleep around here? I'd give my right arm for two full nights of sleep.”

Ben lingered a while, feeling close to Diehl, understanding the depths of his exhaustion and anxiety. But there was nothing else he could think of saying to the younger man and, finally, taking a last look at the baby, he excused himself and hurried out of the nursery. Sidney would be back from Washington by now and would be coming to the hospital to do his rounds. He didn't want to run into Sidney. Not now. Not yet. Tomorrow, when the baby pulled through, then he could talk to Sidney about it.

He raced for the back elevator but to his dismay when it stopped for him he saw Sidney, looking elegant in a new blue cashmere coat and carrying a bulging briefcase, pushing out from behind a crowd of strangers. And immediately after Sidney emerged, so too did Thomas Alithorn, the chief of ob-gyn. Ben backtracked, turning toward the direction from which he had come, but Sidney saw him and called out, “Hey, Ben. Wait up a minute.”

Ben walked reluctantly back. Sidney and Alithorn were deep in conversation. “Fascinating,” Alithorn was saying. “Absolutely fascinating.” Alithorn's aging face was well tanned, the result of daily tennis. When he saw Ben, he nodded, but his eyes seemed to stare right through him. Looking at Sidney again he said, “Come on over to my office and let's talk about it further.”

Ben was used to being ignored by Alithorn. A political man, Alithorn picked his friends carefully, concentrating on the powerful old-timers or the up-and-coming stars. Still, he ran the department efficiently and was well thought of by the administration because he brought in a lot of money in the form of bequests and endowments. “I'll need to hear more,” he was saying to Sidney, “But sure, it sounds possible. We'd like to help out.”

Sidney set his briefcase down between his legs and pulled out a reprint, handing it to Alithorn. “I'm afraid I'm going to be tied up for a while. But here. Read this, and maybe we can talk about it Saturday.”

“Fine. See you Saturday at eight.” Alithorn, taking the reprint, hurried down the corridor.

As soon as he was gone, Ben said, “I've got to go, too,” and pressed the elevator button again, but Sidney asked, “What's your hurry?”

“I thought you were in a hurry,” Ben said nervously, still not wanting to talk with Sidney.

“Why? Oh, you mean what I said to Alithorn?” Sidney glanced at the chief's retreating back. “That was just politicking. Never seem eager when someone wants to do you a favor.” He gave Ben a paternal smile. Then he bent down and closed his briefcase. “Alithorn may let me take over some more lab space. And use some of the residents. A couple of them are very keen to do research. Matthews, Diehl. Diehl called me this morning and asked to work with me.”

“Diehl?” Ben said edgily.

“Yeah. By the way, he said you'd had a bad baby last night.” Pulling off a paisley silk scarf, Sidney asked, “Still bad?”

“Yeah,” Ben nodded disconsolately.

“Well, don't worry about it. You win some, you lose some. Anyway, Kinney's not exactly what you could call unlucky. Doesn't she have two kids already?”

“The baby's not lost yet,” Ben said, disheartened by Sidney's casualness. “It may pull through.”

“Yes, but if it does, it'll probably be a vegetable.” Sidney shrugged again. He prided himself on always taking a realistic approach to problems and saw pessimism as realism.

“Not necessarily.”

“Well, I hope you're right, old buddy. I'll keep my fingers crossed.” Sidney picked up his briefcase, stooping a little from the weight. Then suddenly he set it down again and said, “What went wrong with the delivery?”

“I was late. I had the baby delayed.”

Sidney leaned closer to Ben. “Sleeping?”

“Yeah.”

“If I were you, I wouldn't tell anyone about that.” Sidney had lowered his voice. “Let them think Diehl called you late.”

“I can't do that.”

“Why not? Don't be a schmuck.” Sidney rubbed a still-gloved hand across his forehead. “There's liable to be a malpractice suit,” he whispered. “There'll be one for sure if the baby dies. But even if it lives, if it's retarded, there could be one. And how do you think that'll look for our practice?”

“I'm sorry,” Ben said. “I wasn't thinking about that.”

“Damn right you weren't.” Sidney was struggling to keep his voice low. “Well, forget it. Just let me take care of it. Diehl's very anxious to get into research.”

“I can't let him take the blame.

“I'm not asking you. I'm telling you.”

“But I already told Diehl it was my fault and that I'd stick by him.”

“Well, you're not going to.” Suddenly Sidney pulled off his gloves and stretched out a hand toward Ben's jacket. “For Diehl, it'll all blow over in a while,” he said. “It wouldn't for you.” Sidney's fingers groped, then closed around the plastic container in Ben's pocket. “You have too much to hide,” Sidney whispered. “So don't act like a damn fool.”

A moment later, Sidney was gone and Ben was standing alone in the corridor, ashamed. He hated Sidney's advice and himself for having provoked it. He wanted to kick something. Anything.

Alone, he left the hospital and began to wander, first to the icy river, then across town and into the park, a snowy polar terrain. There was nothing new in Sidney's urging him to compromise himself, he thought as he walked, feeling like a lonely arctic explorer left behind by hardier comrades.

It had happened so many times before. He remembered the time he had written on limnology for his high school biology course. Visiting the Museum of Natural History, he had become fascinated by the museum's replicas and diagrams of freshwater ponds, the mysterious balance between the big fish and the small, the way the waters teemed with life. And so he had decided to write his term report on the subject, the very decision giving him a sense of purpose and accomplishment. And the research went so well that gradually he began to change his mind about science. He had disliked it at the start of high school, and had done mediocre work in chemistry. But he felt enthusiastic about biology.

Sidney was off at Cornell taking pre-med, and one day Ben wrote to him and told him that perhaps he too would, after all, plan on a career in science, perhaps become a biologist or even a doctor. Sidney had written back, “Fantastic! Who knows? If you become a doctor, maybe we could share a practice someday.”

But he had warned Ben that he'd better get a top grade in biology. “You got a B in chemistry. You'll have to pull an A in biology or else you won't get into a college with a good science program. And if you don't do that, you won't stand a chance of getting into a good med school.”

Ben increased his efforts on the term paper and when Sidney was home at Easter vacation, showed it to him. But Sidney hated it. “Why'd you choose limnology?” he had asked. “You should have picked the cell. Or the circulatory system. Something important.” Ben had explained limply, “I liked it.” Sidney had shrugged and said, “Tell you what. I'll write a paper for you while I'm home.” Ben demurred, but Sidney was insistent. “You picked the wrong topic, old buddy,” he said. “You'll never get as good a grade with this as you'd get if you did the cell.” Ben had finally acquiesced, and he got an A in biology, although he was never quite certain what grade he would have gotten if he had used his own paper.

In college—unlike Sidney he went to City and lived at home to save Sara money—he and Sidney had similar altercations. To Sidney, anything short of glowing success was failure, and he was always predicting failure for Ben and trying to get him to forestall it through deceit, urging him to cheat on exams, hire a fellow student to go over his papers for him, even to subscribe to a thesis-writing service he had read about somewhere.

Sidney never practiced deceit to advance his own career. He didn't have to. But when it came to Ben's career, he believed it was essential.

It wasn't that Ben was doing badly in college. He was as smart as the next fellow, if not as brilliant as Sidney. But, knowing Ben's early slowness, Sidney never quite trusted his advances during adolescence and young manhood. It was as if the past had greater reality than the present. When Ben found the work in medical school extremely difficult, Sidney said, “There's only one way a guy like you can make it through. You're going to have to start studying all night.”

Ben promised to try. But he couldn't do it. To help him, Sidney, already an intern, produced amphetamines to keep him awake for hours on end, and barbiturates to permit him brief restorative naps. “No harm in these,” Sidney said. “No harm in anything but failure.”

Following Sidney's advice, Ben had made it through medical school, and later through a grueling internship and residency, and at last he had become, like Sidney himself, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. Yet he always felt himself to be an inferior doctor. Years later, thoroughly disillusioned with himself, he returned to the barbiturates he had first come to enjoy during medical school. He monitored his habit, tried to keep it from overwhelming his life. But he never tried to give it up. It made failure tolerable.