“Hi, Frightened. I’m Perplexed. How do you do?”
“You know, you could use a little better sense of timing yourself.”
“Okay, folks, here we go. It’s time once again to play let’s-jump-all-over-everything-Jared-says. Well, please, before you get rolling, count me out. I’m going to bed.”
“I’ll be in in a while.”
“Don’t wake me.”
The section from Beverly Vitale’s left ovary was unlike any pathology Kate had ever encountered. The stroma—cells providing support and, according to theory, critical feminizing hormones—were perfectly normal in appearance. But the follicles—the pockets of nutrient cells surrounding the ova—were selectively and completely destroyed, replaced by the spindle-shaped, deep pink cells of sclerosis—scarring. Assuming the pattern held true throughout both ovaries—and there was no reason to assume otherwise—Beverly Vitale’s reproductive potential was as close to zero as estimate would allow.
For nearly an hour, Kate sat there, scanning section after section, taking notes on a yellow legal pad. Why couldn’t Jared understand what it all really meant to her? Why couldn’t he see what a godsend medicine had been to a life marked by aimlessness and a self-doubt bordering on self-loathing.
“My God, woman, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were a model the Zeiss Company had hired to plug their latest line of microscopes.”
“Aha,” Kate said melodramatically, her eyes still fixed on the microscope, “a closet male chauvinist pig. I expected as much all along, Dr. Willoughby.” She swung around and, as always, felt a warm jet of affection at the sight of her department head. In his early sixties, Stan Willoughby was egg bald save for a pure white monk’s fringe. The pencil-thin moustache partially obscured by his bulbous nose was a similar shade. His eyes sparkled from beneath brows resembling end-stage dandelions. In all, Jared’s likening him to the wise imp Yoda was, though inappropriate, not inaccurate.
Willoughby packed his pipe and straddled the stool across the table from Kate. “The young lady on Ashburton Five?” he asked. Kate nodded. “This a good time for me to take a look-see?”
Although Willoughby’s primary area of interest was histochemistry, thirty-five years of experience had made him an expert in almost every phase of pathology. Every phase, that is, except how to administer a department. Willoughby was simply too passive, too nice for the dog-maim-dog world of hospital politics, especially the free-for-all for an adequate portion of a limited pool of funds.
“Stan, I swear I’ve never seen, or even heard of, anything like this.”
The chief peered into the student eyepieces on the teaching microscope—a setup enabling two people to view the same specimen at the same time. “All right if I focus?” Kate nodded. Ritualistically, he went from low power magnification to intermediate, to high, and finally to thousand-fold oil-immersion, punctuating each maneuver with a “hmm” or an “uh huh.” Through the other set of oculars, Kate followed.
They looked so innocent, those cells, so deceptively innocent, detached from their source and set out for viewing. They were in one sense a work of art, a delicate, geometrically perfect montage that was the antithesis of the huge, cluttered metal sculptures Kate had built and displayed during her troubled Mount Holyoke years. The irony in that thought was immense. Form follows function. The essential law of structural design. Yet here were cells perfect in form, produced by a biologic cataclysm tantamount to a volcano. A virus? A toxin? An antibody suddenly transformed? The art of pathology demanded that the cells and tissues, though fixed and stained, never be viewed as static.
“Did you send sections over to the electron microscopy unit?” Willoughby asked.
“Not yet, but I will.”
“And the young woman is bleeding as well?”
“Platelets thirty thousand. Fibrinogen fifteen percent of normal.”
“Ouch!”
“Yes, ouch. I spoke with her at some length last night. No significant family history, no serious diseases, nonsmoker, social drinker, no meds.…”
“None?”
“Vitamins and iron, but that’s all. No operations except an abortion at the Omnicenter about five years ago.” The two continued to study the cells as they talked. “She’s a cellist with the Pops.”
“Travel history?”
“Europe, China, Japan. None to third world spots. I told her how envious I was of people who could play music, and she just smiled this wistful smile and said that every time she picked up her cello, she felt as rich and fulfilled as she could ever want to feel. I only talked to her for half an hour or so, Stan, but I came away feeling like we were … I don’t know, like we were friends.” Spend a day here sometime, Jared. Come to work with me and see what I do, how I do it. “The hematology people are talking autoimmune phenomenon. They think the ovarian problem is long-standing, a coincidental finding at this point.”
“Never postulate two diseases when one will explain things.” Willoughby restated the maxim he had long since engrained upon her. “I suppose they’re pouring in steroids.”
“Stan, she’s in trouble. Real trouble.”
“Ah, yes. Forgive me. Sometimes I forget that there’s more to this medicine business than just making a correct diagnosis. Thanks for not letting me get away with that kind of talk. Well, Doctor, I think you may really have something here. I have never encountered anything quite like it either.”
“Neither had Dr. Bartholomew.”
“That fossil? He probably has trouble recognizing his own shoes in the morning. Talk about a menace. All by himself he’s an epidemic.”
“No comment.”
“Good. I have enough comments for both of us. Listen, Kate. Do you mind if I try a couple of my new silver stains on this material? The technique seems perfect for this type of pathology.”
“I was about to ask if you would.”
Willoughby engaged the intercom on the speaker-phone system—one of the few innovations he had managed to bring into the department. “Sheila, is that you?”
“No, Doctor Willoughby, it’s Jane Fonda. Of course it’s me. You buzzed my office.”
“Could you come into Dr. Bennett’s office, please?” There was no response. “Sheila, are you still there?”
“It’s not what it sounds like, Dr. Willoughby,” she said finally.
“Not what what sounds like?”
“Sheila,” Kate cut in firmly, “it’s me. We’re calling because we have a specimen we’d like to try the silver stain on.”
For a few moments there was silence. “I … I’ll be over shortly,” the technician said.
Willoughby turned to Kate, his thick brows presaging his question. “Now what was that little ditty all about?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Nothing? Kate, that woman has worked for me for fifteen years. Maybe more. She’s cynical, impertinent, abrasive, aggressive, and at times as bossy as my wife, but she’s also the best and brightest technician I’ve ever known. If there’s trouble between the two of you, perhaps I’d best know about it. Is it that study of the department I commissioned you and your computer friend, Sebastian, to do?”
“It’s nothing, Stan. I mean it. Like most people who are very good at what they do, Sheila has a lot of pride. Especially when it comes to her boss of fifteen years. I know it’s not my place to decide, but if it’s okay, I’d like the chance to work through our differences without involving you. Okay?”
Willoughby hesitated and then shrugged and nodded.
“Thanks,” she said. “If I were ever to take over the chairmanship of the department, I’d like to know I had a solid relationship with my chief technician—especially if she were someone as invaluable as Sheila Pierce.”
“Invaluable is right. I keep giving her raises and bonuses even though she puts a knot in my ninny just about every time she opens her mouth. Say, did I hear you just give me the green light to submit your name to Reese?”
“I said ‘if�
�� and you know it.”
Willoughby grinned mischievously. “Your voice said ‘if,’ but your eyes …”
“You rang?” Sheila Pierce saved Kate from a response. Fortyish, with a trim, efficient attractiveness, she had, Kate knew, earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees while working in the department. By the time Kate had begun her residence, the one-time laboratory assistant had become chief pathology technician.
“Ah, Sheila,” Willoughby said. “Come in.”
“Hi, Sheila.” Kate hoped there was enough reassurance in her expression and her voice to keep the woman from any further outburst, at least until they had a chance to talk privately.
Their eyes locked for a fraction of a second; then, mercifully, Sheila returned the greeting. The problem between them had, as Stan Willoughby suspected, arisen during Kate’s computer-aided study of the pathology department’s budget and expenditures, specifically in regard to a six hundred and fifty dollar payment for an educational meeting in Miami that Sheila could not document ever having attended. Kate had decided to drop the matter without involving the department chief, but the technician was clearly unconvinced that she had done so.
“How’s my new batch of silver stain coming?” Willoughby asked.
“It’s much, much thicker than the old stuff,” Sheila said, settling on a high stool, equidistant from the two physicians. “Fourteen hours may be too long to heat it.”
“I seem to recall your warning me about that when I suggested fourteen hours in the first place. Is it a total loss?”
“Well, actually I split about half of it off and cooked that part for only seven hours.”
“And …?”
“And it looks fine … perfect, even.”
Willoughby’s sigh of relief was pronounced. “Do you know how much that stain costs to make? How much you just saved me by …?”
“Of course I know. Who do you think ordered the material in the first place, the Ghost of Christmas Past?”
Willoughby shot Kate a what-did-I-tell-you glance; then he picked up the slides and paraffin blocks containing tissue from Beverly Vitale’s ovary. “Dr. Bennett has an interesting problem here that I think might be well suited to my silver stain. Do you think you could make some sections and try it out?”
“Your command is my command,” Pierce said, bowing. “Give me an hour, and your stain will be ready.” She turned to Kate. “Dr. Bennett, I think you should have a little review session with our chief here on the basics of hypertension. On his desk, right next to his blood pressure pills, is a half-eaten bag of Doritos. Bye, now.”
* * *
Sheila Pierce dropped off the paraffin block in histology and then returned to her office. On her desk was the stain Willoughby had referred to as “his.” Pierce laughed disdainfully. If it weren’t for her, the stain that was soon to be known by his name would be little more than an expensive beaker of shit. There they sat, she thought, Willoughby and that goddamn Bennett, sharing their little physician jokes and performing their physician mental masturbations and issuing orders to a woman with an IQ—a proven IQ—higher than either of theirs could possibly be. One-fifty. That’s what her mother said. Genius level. One hundred and fucking fifty. So where was the MD degree that would have put her where she deserved to be?
Pierce glared at the small framed photo of her parents, carefully placed to one side of her desk. Then her expression softened. It wasn’t their fault, being poor. Just their fate. They didn’t want the stroke or the cancer that had forced their daughter to shelve her dreams and begin a life of taking orders from privileged brats who, more often than not, couldn’t come close to her intellectual capacity. One hundred and fifty. What was Kate Bennett? One-ten? One-twenty tops. Yet there she was with the degree and the power and the future.
Listen, Sheila, you’re terrific at your job. I don’t see that there’s anything to gain by bringing this up to Dr. Willoughby, or even by making you reimburse the department. But never again, okay?
“Patronizing bitch.”
“Who’s a bitch?”
Startled, Sheila whirled. Norton Reese stood propped against the doorjamb, eyeing her curiously.
“Jesus, you scared me.”
“Who’s a bitch?” Reese checked the corridor in both directions then stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Bennett, that’s who.”
“Ah, yes. What’s our little Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm up to now?”
“Oh, nothing new. It’s that damn American Society meeting.”
“Miami?”
“Yes. The time you assured me there was no way anyone would ever find out I didn’t go.”
“She is a resourceful cunt,” Reese mumbled. “I’ll say that for her.”
“What?”
“Didn’t she say she was going to do her Girl Scout good deed for the month and let the whole matter drop?”
“That’s what she said, but she and Dr. Willoughby are like that.” Sheila held up crossed fingers. “Either she’s already told him or she’s going to hold the thing over my head forever. Either way …” She shook her head angrily.
“Easy, baby, easy,” Reese said, crossing to her and slipping his hands beneath her lab coat.
Sheila grimaced, but allowed herself to be embraced. Balding, moderately overweight, and wedded to three-piece suits, Reese had never held sex appeal for her in any visceral sense. Still, he was the administrator of the entire hospital complex, and time and experience had taught her that true sex appeal was based not so much on what a man could do to her as for her.
“You have the most beautiful tits of any woman I’ve ever known,” Reese whispered. “Baby, do you know how long it’s been?”
She blocked his move toward her breasts with an outstretched hand. “It’s not my fault, Norty. I’m divorced. You’re the one with all the family commitments. Remember?”
Reese gauged the determination in her eyes and decided against another advance. “So,” he said, settling into the chair by her desk, “Wonder Woman has been at it again, huh? Well, believe it or not, she’s the reason—one of the reasons—I came down here.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe you’d better sit down.” Reese motioned her to her chair and then waited until she had complied. “Did you know that old Willoughby has decided to resign?”
“No. No, I didn’t, actually.” She felt some hurt that Reese had been told of the decision before she was.
“He’s giving health as a reason, but I think the old goat just can’t cut it anymore. Never could, really.”
Sheila shot him a look warning against any further deprecation of the man she had worked under for fifteen years. “That’s too bad,” she murmured.
“Yeah? Well, baby, hang onto your seat. You don’t know what bad is. For his successor, your Willoughby wants to recommend one K. Bennett, MD.”
Sheila fought a sudden urge to be sick. For years she had, in effect, run the pathology department, using Willoughby for little more than his signature on purchase orders and personnel decisions. With Bennett as chief, she would be lucky to keep her job, much less her power and influence. “You said wants to recommend,” she managed.
“Bennett refuses to give him the go-ahead until she’s talked it over with her husband.”
She picked a tiny Smurf doctor doll off her desk and absently twisted its arm. “How do you feel about it?” she asked.
“After what she did last year, writing what amounted to a letter of complaint about me to the board? How do you think I feel?”
“So?” The blue rubber arm snapped off in Sheila’s hand.
“I won’t have that woman heading a department in my hospital, and that’s that.”
“What can you do?”
The forcefulness in Reese’s voice softened. “There, at least for the moment, is the rub. I’ve started talking to some of the members of the board of trustees and some of the department heads. It turns out that as things stand, she would have no troubl
e getting approval. It seems only a few beside me—” he smiled conspiratorially, “and now you—know what an incredible pain in the ass she is.”
Sheila flipped the arm and then the body of the doll into the trash. “So we both know,” she said.
“Baby, I need something on her. Anything that I can use to influence some people. The prospect of dealing with Bennett’s crusades month after month is more than I can take. Keep your eyes and ears open. Dig around. There’s got to be something.”
“If I do find something,” Sheila said, “I’ll expect you to be grateful.”
“I’ll be very grateful.”
“Good,” Sheila said sweetly. “Then we shall see what we shall see.” She rose and kissed him on the forehead, her breasts inches from his eyes. “Very grateful,” she whispered. “Now don’t you forget that.” She backed away at the moment Reese reached for her. “Next time, Norty. Right now I’ve got work to do.”
The Braxton Building was more impressive as an address than it was as a structure. At one time, the twenty-eight story granite obelisk had been the centerpiece of Boston’s downtown financial district. Now, surrounded by high-rise glass and steel, the building seemed somehow ill at ease. No uninformed passerby could possibly have predicted from the building’s exterior the opulence of the lobby and office suites within, especially the grandeur of the twenty-eighth floor, most elegant of the three floors occupied by the law firm of Minton/Samuels.
J. Winfield Samuels selected a Havana-made panatella from a crystal humidor and offered it to his son. Jared, seated to one side of the huge, inlaid Louis Quatorze desk, groaned. “Dad, it’s not even eleven o’clock. Didn’t Dr. What’s-his-face limit the number you’re supposed to smoke in a day?”
“I pay Shrigley to fix me up so I can do whatever the hell I want to do, not to tell me how many cigars I can smoke.” He snipped the tip with a bone-handled trimmer and lit it from the smokestack of a sterling silver replica of the QE II. “I swear, if Castro had found a way to keep these little beauties from making it to the States, I would have found a way to cancel the bastard’s ticket years ago. Think of it. We’d probably have world peace by now because of a cigar.” He took a long, loving draw, blew half of it out, inhaled the rest, and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling window at the harbor and the airport beyond.
Side Effects (1984) Page 6