Across the street, an army of sodden rush-hour commuters jostled their way into the maw of the MBTA’s Downtown Crossing station. Elovitz pulled the hood of his rubber slicker up over his head and tightened the drawstring beneath his chin. The olive-colored raincoat had actually been a birthday present to him from Devorah a few years ago, but he had only worn it four or five times if that.
The shallow Filene’s entryway offered little protection from the wind-whipped squall. Elovitz was seventy-four years old and retired. There was never anyplace he had to be badly enough to venture out in such a storm. Two boys, laughing and shouting to each other, charged past him and splashed out onto the street.
“It’s nice to be young,” the elderly woman standing next to him said.
“It’s nice to be at all,” Elovitz replied. “Well, I don’t think this rain is about to stop. Have a nice day.”
He adjusted his grip on the large shopping bag and plunged across to the station. By the time he reached the stairway, he was gasping for breath. He braced himself against a wall for nearly a minute before he felt safe descending to the tracks. He knew the wet, heavy air was partly responsible for his difficulty, but he was also certain there was something else going on. For weeks now, his tolerance for even modest exercise had been slipping. Sooner or later he would have to have the problem checked. But right now, what he had to do was to get home.
He started down the stairs. Ahead of him, a woman slipped on the wet concrete. The collision with the husky man in front of her was all that kept her from a nasty tumble. Elovitz was normally quite placid and easygoing. But the crush of wet, harried people and the dense air had him very much on edge.
Charlestown, where Elovitz and his wife had lived and worked for the past twenty-five years, was on the Orange Line, just half a dozen or so stops from Downtown Crossing. By the time he reached the platform, he was experiencing persistent air hunger and an oppressive sense of claustrophobia. He felt frantic to find some space away from the crowd—space where he might be able to draw a deep, satisfying breath.
The concrete platform, an island serving inbound commuters on one side and outbound on the other, was jammed. The smell of wet clothing, wet hair, and perspiration was unpleasant and strangely frightening.
“Excuse me, please. Excuse me,” Elovitz panted, squeezing between bodies on his way to the track side. “Excuse me. I’m sorry. Excuse me, please.”
The platform was four feet or so above the track. Once Elovitz reached the front row, he was certain he would be able to breathe.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!” a man behind him snapped.
“Fuck you,” another man growled.
Elovitz clutched his package, kept his eyes on the open space ahead, and pushed on. Finally, at the moment when he thought he might collapse, he forced himself between two women right to the edge of the platform. The air wafting from the nearby tunnel actually tasted light and sweet. Elovitz allowed the crush of bodies to help hold him upright as he gratefully filled his lungs. Off to the right, he could hear the rumble of the oncoming train.
Suddenly, just as the lights of the approaching engine appeared, there was a shift in the crowd. The intense pressure from behind caused Elovitz to stumble forward. His knees buckled as his foot slipped off the edge of the platform. Amid screams from above, he fell, landing heavily on the railbed. The bones in his left wrist snapped, sending white pain up his arm. His head slammed against the rail. Dazed, he rolled over and tried to force himself to his knees. The air brakes shrieked deafeningly as the train careened down the track in a full emergency stop. Thirty feet … twenty … ten … Elovitz lurched to his feet and stumbled several steps backward. Those few steps made the difference. The screeching stopped with the nose of the engine just a foot away.
Now, it seemed, everyone on the platform was screaming at him.
“Stop!” they were hollering. “The third rail!” … “Stay away from the third rail!” … “Don’t move!” … “That’s high-voltage!” … “Don’t move!”
Stunned and disoriented, Elovitz turned toward the cacophony, blinking up at the crowd and the lights.
“Don’t move!” … “Voltage!” … “Stay!” … “No!”
A man leaped onto the tracks and started toward him. Reflexively, Elovitz stepped to his left. His shoe caught on the rail, sending him reeling awkwardly backward. The screams from above intensified as he lost his balance entirely and in agonizing slow motion, fell heavily onto the high-voltage rail.
Phil still hadn’t returned, so Brian took the time to call and check in on his father. Jack could certainly be left alone at times, but with Brian gone most of the day, nutritious meals and intermittent companionship were a priority. The steady concern of Jack’s friends and neighbors had been astounding. One woman actually made up a coverage schedule and got people to sign up. It was more evidence of how poorly the coach was feeling that he didn’t grumble about the arrangement or the attention.
“Pop, how’re you holding up?”
“No complaints.”
His voice sounded shaky.
“You been up walking and stretching?”
“A little.”
“Any pain?”
“Not much.”
Jesus, Coach, Brian wanted to scream. Will you stop the macho act and tell me what’s going on?
“The visiting nurse will be there to check on you in half an hour,” he said instead. “Ask her to beep me here to give me a report. You have my pager number.”
“How are you doing? Saved any lives yet?”
“No, but I haven’t killed anybody, either. That’s all I wanted.”
“Five bucks says you save someone’s life in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Dad, it really doesn’t work like that. Only on TV, where they have to keep their ratings up.”
“Five bucks.”
“Okay, you’re on. You going to watch the Sox tonight?… Jack?” The silence was too prolonged. “Jack, what’re you doing?”
“Nothing,” his father said finally, his voice even more strained than before. “I’m fine.”
Brian knew he had just put a nitro under his tongue. Chest pain at rest was not a good sign.
“Just have the nurse call me,” he said.
Phil returned with coffee and doughnuts.
“A little sustenance for two starving docs before we finish the orientation tour,” he announced.
“Phil, you’re a cardiologist. How can you keep eating that junk?”
“What can I say? I’m weak. Just ask Ms. Carrie. But on the bright side, at least I’m not going to lose my license from being strung out on crullers.”
“Good point. Once I get settled in on this job, though, we’re going on a health-and-exercise kick together.”
“If you thought getting off the pills was tough, wait until you try getting me into a gym.”
They walked through the clinical ward—a twenty-five-bed unit with excellent staffing, then upstairs and through the surgical unit—Laj Randa’s fiefdom.
“Okay,” Phil said. “How about we go through the labs? BHI has more than its share of research geeks. I, myself, have a little lab where I am trying to stress and feed a bunch of hamsters into developing coronary artery disease.”
“Are you succeeding?”
“Who cares? The publications I’ve gotten out of those furry little buggers have helped to get me tenured. That’s all the experiments are really about anyhow. Academic medicine, my friend. Hamster or perish.”
“Got it. Listen, if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon skip the labs and go see the Vasclear clinic. I’m on the schedule there tomorrow evening. Besides, one of the reasons I never got too wrapped up in academic medicine was my desire to avoid the research.”
“Vasclear clinic it is,” Gianatasio said. “Only, if it’s okay with you, I’ll turn this part over to Lucy Kendall, the head nurse there. I have a packed house this afternoon in the office, and getting a little head star
t would be a huge help.”
“Fine by me. Tell me something, Phil. How much have people been told about me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this Lucy Kendall, for instance. Does she know I just got my license back and why?”
Gianatasio shrugged.
“If the gossip doesn’t involve Lucy, I doubt she’d pay any attention to it,” he said. “But hospitals are hospitals. People like to grind up other people, and we doctors are prime chuck. I gave up caring who knows about me and Carrie and who doesn’t. It’s much easier that way. People may be talking about you, especially after your save with Stormy in the ER. But so far, I haven’t heard anything. I’ll keep you posted if I do.”
“Do that, Phil. Please.”
The Vasclear clinic was, not surprisingly, a jewel—ten medication-administration rooms, carpeted, professionally decorated, with electronically controlled space-age recliners and individual patient-choice sound systems. Lucy Kendall, the Vasclear nurse practitioner, showed Brian around and managed to fit in a good portion of her life story at the same time. She was married to a GP in the suburbs and had just given birth to her second child—a boy.
Generally, Brian was oblivious to a woman’s flirtatiousness. Throughout their marriage, Phoebe was constantly pointing out to him the differences between a woman being sociable and coming on. But even for him, Lucy Kendall was an easy read. She was overly touchy and familiar from the start, and told him more than once how pleased she was with how quickly her figure had bounced back after her pregnancy. She seemed positively giddy when Brian picked up on her heavy-handed hints and agreed with her.
Brian actually was relieved that he would be working with someone so wrapped up in herself that she would likely remain uninterested in him and his background. He also didn’t think she realized that, at every opportunity, he was alternating questions about her and her life with queries about Vasclear.
He knew what he was doing as he pumped her for more and more information on how the drug was handled, where it was stored, how it was labeled, how it was administered, and where the records were kept. He knew precisely what he was doing, but it was still hard to accept.
He was casing the place—casing it as he had the pharmacy at Suburban Hospital. He was taking advantage of Lucy Kendall the same way he had taken advantage of the young hospital pharmacist at Suburban, searching for a softness in the system that he could exploit. Only this time, he wasn’t looking for pills to feed his addiction. This time, he was developing a plan in case Jessup and Weber refused to admit Jack into the Vasclear study, or in case they did and he was not randomized into the beta group.
Brian felt himself begin to tremble. Less than one day back at work and already he was plotting how to steal a drug. Was there really any difference between stealing an experimental medication to help save his father and stealing pills to stop his own discomfort—his own pain? His recovery program was built on a bedrock of uncompromising honesty. Was he emotionally ready to begin cheating the system again, however worried he was feeling, however noble the reason? After all the meetings and therapy sessions and soul-searchings, was it possible that he really hadn’t changed at all—that he had been fooling all his therapists, his sponsor, and worse, himself?
The questions made Brian queasy … but they didn’t make him stop.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WASHINGTON POST
FDA Accused of Dragging
Feet on Miracle Heart Drug
Senate Government Affairs Committee Chairman, Senator Walter Louderman (R-Mass.) has accused FDA Commissioner Dr. Alexander Baird of dragging his feet on approval of a drug that Louderman says could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.…
AFTERNOON SHADOWS WERE LENGTHENING WHEN LUCY Kendall reluctantly concluded Brian’s orientation and headed off to see patients. Through her garrulousness, Brian had learned a great deal about the handling and administration of Vasclear, but there were still some missing pieces—pieces that would be filled in when he actually worked a shift in the clinic.
Outside, from five stories up, he could see that rush-hour traffic was snarled in a heavy rain. The twenty-minute drive to Reading would be doubled or even tripled. The visiting nurse’s report gave him no cause for alarm about Jack, and anticipating a long day of orientation, he had asked their neighbor to schedule people until nine. There was no reason to hurry home, and every reason to become more familiar with White Memorial Hospital and Boston Heart Institute.
He was about to call Lexington to say good-night to the girls and to let Phoebe know that he had survived day one, when his pager went off. Phil answered his call.
“Bri, you done up there?”
“Just about. Why?”
“I’m heading for the ER to do a consult and I thought you might want to meet me down there. I want to hear how it went in the clinic.”
“I’ll just check in with my kids first, Phil. But after that, sure, I’ll be down. Whatcha got?”
“Oh, just the usual run-of-the-mill stuff. Seventy-four-year-old gent who fell onto the third rail in the Downtown Crossing T station.”
“And he’s alive?”
“Not only alive, but apparently ready to sign out of the ER.”
“Sounds like my kinda guy. You get started. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Brian punched in the numbers of Phoebe’s house, wondering if he would ever do so again without bracing himself for the note of disapproval and cynicism he still detected in her voice.
When Brian and Phoebe first met, he was already dependent on painkillers, although it took her years to realize it. Confronting him with her concerns only precipitated angry rebuttals, followed by additional years of lies, denial, and deception. Few things, Freeman had pointed out, were more powerful than loss of trust. Phoebe had her fears surrounding his dishonesty and her feelings about drug addiction, and there was nothing that would alter them except time—time and the changes in Brian that only continued recovery could bring.
Caitlin answered his call on the first ring. She was nine—bookish and intense like her mother and so similar to her in appearance that Brian sometimes thought it was Phoebe sitting curled up in the chair, reading. Even two years after he left the house, Caitlin was still unwilling to accept the situation and seldom spoke about it. Tonight she was anxious to talk about her French class at school, Heidi, which she had just finished reading, and her latest piano piece. She reacted mildly to Brian’s news about coming to spend the day with him and Jack. Apparently, Phoebe had yet to explain that because their father’s medical license had been restored, Caitlin and Becky were free to go wherever they and their father wished. The supervised visitations were over.
“Je t’aime, Papa,” Caitlin said before turning the phone over to her younger sister.
“I love you, too, babe,” Brian said, swallowing against the baseball that had suddenly materialized in his throat.
“Knock knock,” Becky chirped without bothering with a greeting.
Nearly seven, she was radiant, high-energy, athletic, and as down-to-earth as Caitlin was ethereal. Brian had once asked the girls if they ever agreed on anything. Not surprisingly, one replied yes, and the other, no.
“Who’s there?” he responded.
“Ivan.”
“Ivan who?
“Ivan workin’ on the railroad. Here’s Mommy. Bye.”
“Becky!” Phoebe called out. “Come back here and talk some more with your father.… Gone.”
“That’s okay. I got a knock-knock joke out of her that was actually a knock-knock joke. I’ll settle for that.”
“She’s doing great.”
“I know. They both are.… So, I’m officially on board.”
“Congratulations. You should be very proud of yourself.”
“I get paid next week. Postdocs don’t earn too much more than fellows, but the check I’ll be able to send you will be increased by almost fifty percent.”
&nbs
p; “Good for all of us,” Phoebe said, out front as always. “My bank account echoes when I deposit money in it. If what you say is true, pretty soon I might be able to cut back a couple of hours a week at work—maybe get involved in Brownies.”
“Good idea,” he replied, carefully avoiding any reaction to her not-so-subtle reminder of his years of broken promises.
There was silence, during which Brian knew she was waiting for his retort.
“You know,” she said finally, “as angry and frustrated as I was with you, I always sensed you could make it through this thing.”
It’s still a day at a time, Brian wanted to warn her. Instead, he thanked her. The sentiment was one she had never expressed before.
The ER was in a rainstorm-induced lull. Brian crossed the muddied reception area and caught up with Gianatasio in the hallway just outside room 4. Phil was hunched over a man in a wheelchair, listening with his stethoscope inside the man’s unbuttoned shirt. His patient, who looked every bit of seventy-four years, had his left wrist in a cast and his arm in a sling. His unruly hair was a pile of silver straw. His thick-featured, deeply etched face had a pleasing quality to it, although at the moment he appeared anxious. A man who had endured hard times and prevailed, Brian thought.
Phil worked the stethoscope from his ears and straightened up.
“Wilhelm Elovitz, meet Dr. Brian Holbrook.”
“Bill. Everyone calls me Bill,” Elovitz replied with a totally engaging smile and a modest Jewish accent. He gestured to the middle-aged woman pushing his chair. “This is my neighbor, Mrs. Levine. She’s here to take me home.”
“Bill is going to be on the ten o’clock news,” Phil said. “Maybe even on CNN, and possibly in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The MBTA platform at Downtown Crossing was so crowded, he got shoved off in front of an oncoming train. The conductor managed to stop just in time, but then Bill stumbled trying to get up and fell right on the third rail. This rubber raincoat kept him from becoming a crispy critter, and all he ended up with was a broken wrist.”
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