Private Practices

by Linda Wolfe

  Ben sat forward attentively, relieved that at last Alithorn had raised a matter that worried him more than any other, the possibility that Sidney might injure a patient.

  “It takes a screw-up or two,” Alithorn muttered sadly. “After that, it’s a different story. If we’ve suggested to a man that he get help, and he hasn’t paid attention to us, and he’s had a screw-up or two, then we can begin to find a way of dealing with the situation.” He emitted a long, drawn-out sigh from between slightly parted lips.

  “I think I see what you mean,” Ben said.

  “We wouldn’t want any screw-ups,” Alithorn commented.

  “Yes. I see that. But I’m not sure under the circumstances that they can be prevented.”

  Alithorn stood up, as if ready to dismiss Ben. “Well, I wouldn’t be so skeptical,” he said, smiling now. “Psychiatric clinics can do wonders these days, don’t you think? With these personality problems, I mean.”

  “If a person checks into one of them.”

  “Well sure. Of course,” Alithorn smiled. “That’s up to you, isn’t it? You and Mrs. Zauber. The people who are close to Sidney. Who can influence him.” He put his carving back into his pocket and extended a hand. “He’s a great doctor, your brother,” he said, grasping Ben’s fingers and shaking them hard. “A credit to the profession.”

  A half-hour later, walking through the hospital lobby on his way back to his office, Ben decided that although he had promised Claudia on the day of Mulenberg’s funeral that he would himself take over the onerous job of talking Sidney out of the barbiturates, he would have to renege on that promise and demand her assistance. She had given him almost none, he had to admit. In fact, she had acted distinctly uninvolved in Sidney’s condition once she had assigned the task to him.

  She had stayed up in Boston for an entire week after Sidney had lost his grant. Then she had returned to the city briefly, only to set off for St. Louis to visit an old friend. She had called Ben several times from St. Louis to ask about Sidney, but seemed reluctant to come home even when he told her that he thought her absence was contributing to Sidney’s accelerating deterioration.

  He had assumed that she found Sidney difficult to be around just now. God knows, he did too. But she never said this. Instead, she excused her absence in terms of other people’s needs: her mother’s depression, her friend Bootie’s problems with her difficult five-year-old. Well, he would have to get her to come back. Alithorn had as much as said that the responsibility for Sidney lay with both of them. And he couldn’t work on Sidney all on his own any longer. For one thing, he couldn’t supervise him adequately. More and more he could see that someone ought to be with Sidney at all times. Someone ought to determine whether or not he could be believed when he said he felt steady enough to go over to the hospital, calm enough to operate. He could do this himself during the daytime hours, and would do it, but there were the middle of the night emergencies and the early morning summonses and the sudden after-dinner calls. Claudia would simply have to come back.

  Backtracking, he entered a phone booth in the hospital lobby. But when he telephoned the number in St. Louis Claudia had given him, Bootie told him casually that Claudia had left several days ago.

  “Are you sure?” He found the information incredible.

  “Sure I’m sure. She’s in New York.”

  “She hasn’t called me,” he murmured.

  “I didn’t know she was in the habit of calling you,” Bootie said.

  He was disconcerted by her tone and got off the phone a moment later, barely saying goodbye. Then he dialed Claudia at home, but there was no answer.

  He tried her again from a luncheonette on Third Avenue, and a third time when he reached Park Avenue, stopping at an open phone booth. For some reason, he didn’t want to go into his office and make the call from his desk telephone. But again he got no answer. Then it occurred to him that of course Claudia wouldn’t be at home. It was after two, and she always worked at the museum in the afternoons. He dialed her there and asked the switchboard operator to put him through to her. But when he finally got Claudia’s extension an unfamiliar woman’s voice said, “Mrs. Zauber? Oh. Well, I’m afraid you can’t reach her here. She’s no longer working at the museum.”

  He was shocked. He’d had no idea that Claudia was planning to quit her job, let alone that she had done so. She’d worked at the museum for years. Been a junior curator there even before she’d met Sidney. He’d assumed she would stay at the museum forever. How annoying that he’d failed to take an interest in her plans. And how annoying that she herself had been so close-mouthed about them. He’d have to ask Sidney about her decision to quit as soon as he got to the office.

  Unfortunately, however, Sidney was over at the hospital, Miss Viviani reported to him as soon as he walked in and picked up his phone messages from her. “He didn’t want to go,” she gossiped, shaking her head from side to side. “You should have heard the argument he got into.”

  “With whom?” Ben asked, although he knew he was being nosy.

  “Some woman whose boy he delivered two days ago,” the aging, heavy-bodied Miss Viviani replied easily. “She suddenly took it into her head to leave the hospital early, and she wanted the baby circumcised immediately.”

  “I see.” He was disappointed. For a moment he had imagined that Alithorn, after reconsidering their conversation, had changed his mind about merely delegating responsibility for Sidney and had called him up to take a firm, aggressive stand.

  Ben saw his patients and then, finishing up swiftly, decided to go back to the hospital. He hadn’t planned on returning there until it was time for his evening rounds, but Sidney hadn’t come back to the office and he did want to catch him and speak with him about Claudia. Anyway, it was just as well that he went over early. He and Naomi were planning on having a fast dinner at her loft tonight, then going to Petey’s school to see his class perform The Pied Piper of Hamelin. He could get his rounds out of the way and not have to worry about being late.

  He walked expeditiously back to the hospital and took the back elevator up to the maternity floor. Would Sidney still be there? Stepping off the elevator, he started hurriedly down the corridor. But before he’d gone more than a few yards a gray-haired nurse came bursting through swinging doors at the far end. Her crown of braids was slipping out from under her cap and her chest was heaving. He stopped to stare at her as she ran past him and to his astonishment she changed the direction of her flight and scurried back. “Dr. Zauber! Thank God you’re here!” she cried and clutched his arm.

  “What’s the matter?” He pulled back. She had dug her nails into his arm so hard he had felt them through his suit jacket.

  “It’s your brother! He’s in the circumcision room.”

  And then they were both running in the direction from which she had come. Ben was ahead of the nurse but he called out over his shoulder, “Who’s with him?”

  “Miss Field. She sent me for help.”

  A moment later he pushed breathlessly through the swinging doors and into the circumcision cubicle off the nurses’ station. He saw Sidney and the head nurst first, their white uniforms and Sidney’s right hand smeared with blood. Miss Field was holding Sidney’s scalpel behind her back and she was struggling to keep it there, as Sidney wrenched and wrenched at her arm.

  Ben threw himself between them at the same moment that he saw the baby. It was lying in its rounded, scale-like bassinet, its tiny wrists bound to the side of the scooped-out basket by little cords. Its waist and plump thighs were slippery and smeared with blood. But it was howling, emitting a shriek that burst from its lungs with the urgency of a siren.

  The howl was a good sign, Ben had time to think, before he tightened his fist, jerked back his arm and, with Miss Field behind him and only inches between himself and Sidney, pushed his fist into Sidney’s stomach. Sidney doubled over and Ben caught him, so that he wouldn’t stumble forward.

  Miss Field ran out of the cubicle
and slammed the scalpel into a desk drawer, just outside. Then she was back, helping the gray-haired nurse untie the baby from its surgical bassinet. A few seconds later the two nurses had extricated the infant and were running down the corridor with it toward the pediatric wing.

  Ben let Sidney slump onto the floor. He looked dazed, his eyes still uncomprehending, his lungs gasping for breath. Waiting for him to stop his heavy breathing, Ben marveled at how easy it had been to immobilize him. It had never been easy in the past when, as adolescents, he and Sidney had tangled physically. In fact, it had always been Sidney who had bested him. He couldn’t recall a single time when he had won one of their youthful battles. The more he had tried, the harder Sidney had always fought, striking out with ever-increasing vigor. He had learned something just now, he thought. Sidney had lost so much weight that their strengths were almost equal. Surprised, he bent over Sidney and helped him to his feet. Miss Field was returning, accompanied by a youthful mustachioed resident. “Stand up,” he whispered to Sidney.

  “The baby’s all right,” Miss Field said, slamming the door behind herself and the resident. “The blood was Dr. Zauber’s blood, from the cut on his hand.” Examining her unsightly uniform, she added, “I’ve put the child back in the nursery, but what are we to tell the mother?”

  Before Ben could speak, the pediatric resident interrupted, “I don’t see that we have to mention the incident to the mother at all, except to say that Dr. Zauber was called away for an emergency. If she really wants to leave tonight, I’ll do the procedure.” He turned respectfully to Sidney who had begun to look more alert although he still seemed unsteady on his feet. “Are you all right, Dr. Zauber?”

  “I’m all right,” Sidney muttered. “I’ll be all right in a minute or two.” He too looked down at his stained white coat and abstractedly started to unbutton and then rebutton it. Then his eyes began to focus on the people around him and, shifting his glance from face to face, he at last concentrated his gaze on Miss Field. “The floor in here was slippery,” he said to her, his voice turning belligerent. “When I picked up the scalpel I slipped. It twisted in my hand.”

  Miss Field responded with astonishment. “You took it up by the blade. Mrs. Olding saw you do it. And you were staggering.”

  “You and Mrs. Olding interfered between me and my patient.” Sidney’s voice was controlled and icy.

  “You were practically bouncing off the walls. You didn’t know what you were doing! You cut your own hand! God knows what you might have done to the baby if we hadn’t interfered.”

  Sidney gave Miss Field a scathing contemptuous look. Ben was awed. Sidney’s belief in himself, his conviction that in all circumstances he himself was right and others wrong, was still utterly intact, whatever else about him was disintegrating. “That floor should have been dry,” he went on. “Jesus Christ. What are you running in here? A city pool?” He gestured at the floor and the resident smiled ingratiatingly.

  Ben looked where Sidney pointed. Indeed, there were drops of water just below the baby’s surgical bassinet. Would Miss Field have to accept responsibility for the accident? He wanted to say something to her, to hint to her that with the amount of drugs he was taking, Sidney might have slipped in a desert. But he didn’t dare speak. Not in front of Sidney. In any event, Miss Field seemed able to take care of herself. Scowling, she withdrew into her professional persona and said coldly, “You’d better go down to Emergency and have that hand looked at.”

  “She’s right, Dr. Zauber,” the resident fawned.

  “I’m going,” Sidney flung out. “Come on, Ben. Let’s go.”

  He followed Sidney.

  Outside, Sidney paused for a moment at a supply cupboard, looking for gauze with which to wrap his hand. “Help me with this, will you?” he said. Unexpectedly Ben surprised himself by answering, “Wait a minute. I want to ask Miss Field something.” She’d been amazingly unflustered by Sidney’s attack on her, he thought. He had to know why. Sidney looked at him angrily as he turned back toward the circumcision cubicle, but he ignored his irate glance and pushed open the door.

  The resident was already gone and Miss Field was alone, staring down at the floor under the bassinet table and shaking her head. “Was Mrs. Olding with Dr. Zauber the whole time?” Ben asked her.

  “Yes. That is, until she ran for me.”

  “Is that customary? I’ve rarely had a nurse in attendance during a circumcision.”

  “Dr. Alithorn left instructions this morning for a nurse to be with Dr. Zauber on all occasions,” Miss Field said. “And for us to let him know if anything unorthodox occurs.”

  “I see.” Suddenly he felt cheered. At least Alithorn was doing something. “Thank you,” he said warmly to Miss Field.

  Sidney’s hand required several stitches and while Ben waited for the emergency doctor to finish with his brother, he went into the staff room and called Naomi, telling her not to expect him in time for Petey’s play tonight. He had a woman in labor, he lied, and it looked as if it was going to be complicated and time-consuming. He would call Naomi later and tell her whether he could meet her at all that night.

  “Poor Petey,” Naomi said. “He’ll be so disappointed.”

  Her words struck him as bizarre. Here his brother could have castrated an infant and Naomi was complaining about how upset Petey would be over Ben’s missing him in The Pied Piper. For the first time since he had conceived his plan for marrying Naomi he found her ridiculously trivial. “Petey was really counting on your seeing him,” she was still going on.

  “I’m sorry,” he answered coolly. “Some things are more important than a seven-year-old’s disappointments.”

  “Ouch,” Naomi said. “You’re certainly fierce tonight. Maybe Petey’s lucky you’re not going to see him.”

  It did occur to him then that, to be absolutely fair, he was himself the person responsible for Naomi’s talking so trivially at so serious a moment as this one. If she failed to comprehend the darkness of his mood, it was because he had kept her uninformed about what was happening to Sidney, had continuously hidden from her scrutiny this disturbing aspect of his life. He would have to tell her about Sidney soon, if just to keep himself from feeling utterly isolated from her. But it was going to be difficult. She would be wounded at having been kept in the dark so long.

  He couldn’t face launching into the stressful subject now. Promising again to call her later, he hung up and tried Claudia at home once more. But still there was no answer.

  In the cab going uptown, his hand neatly bandaged, Sidney was silent, subdued, not needing to pretend with Ben, as he had with Miss Field and the pediatric resident, that he was in total control of himself. After a while, he even let his head slump sideways into the corner of the cab. “I guess I’ll come upstairs with you,” Ben offered, thinking of Claudia and more anxious than ever to speak with her. Perhaps he could get a minute alone with her to tell her what had happened, before Sidney launched into some inaccurate defensive version of the event.

  “Thanks,” Sidney said, sounding surprisingly grateful for his offer. “I’m not quite as steady as I could be.” He half-smiled in his peculiar slack way, his mouth open but his lips straight.

  Ben kept silent. The cab careened up Third Avenue, making all the lights, until at last it was forced to a screeching halt by traffic heading east on Sixty-fifth Street. Then, in the sudden absence of motion, Sidney said, “Well, what the hell. I have no future anyway.”

  Ben found his brother’s new self-pitying tone even less appealing than his earlier self-righteous one. He twisted forward in his seat, concentrating on the terrible driver they had chosen, surprised at how little sympathy for Sidney he was able to summon up. He was looking after him, looking out for his interests. But he felt little of the awe or even respect Sidney had always drawn from him in the past. “There’s something I should tell you before you come up with me,” Sidney said, scattering his thoughts. “Claudia and I have separated.”

  The
cab jolted forward and Ben’s head whipped around. “When? What happened?”

  “When I lost my grant,” Sidney said bitterly. “She cleared out like a bat out of hell. The way everyone else is going to, once they know.” He shut his eyes, “Maybe you will too, old buddy.”

  Ben clutched the leather strap of the speeding cab.

  “I always figured her for a starfucker,” Sidney said, his eyes still closed. “I don’t give a shit. I really don’t.”

  Ben clung to the strap and kept his eyes forward. He was more unsettled by Sidney’s information about Claudia than by the disconcerting events of the day. “You didn’t tell me,” he whispered, although he almost said, “She didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Sidney opened his eyes, sat forward, and began fiddling with his pants pocket, trying to extricate his wallet with his good hand.

  “Where is she living?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know. She calls once in a while, but she won’t tell me where she’s staying. She quit her job so I wouldn’t be able to track her down. As if I would. Who needs her?”

  Ben turned and looked closely at Sidney who had not yet succeeded in drawing the wallet out of his back pocket. “I’ll pay,” he said, and quickly produced his own wallet.

  “Maybe I ought to stay with you for a while,” Sidney murmured, interrupting Ben’s activity.

  Ben concentrated on drawing change out of his jacket pocket.

  “I’m worried about being alone.” Sidney reached across with his good hand and tried to stop Ben’s motion. “ODing,” he whispered.

  “Right,” Ben said rapidly. “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Or maybe you ought to stay with me. Though I’d rather we stayed at your place. The co-op’s hers. I never really felt it was mine.” Still trying to reach Ben’s hand, Sidney added in his self-pitying tone, “I never really felt that she was mine.”