by Ames Sheldon
“I’m not crazy!”
“Of course you’re not. But I think he could help you feel better.” As her husband, he’s torn between anger and pity. As a physician, he’s frightened by the state she’s in.
“I’ll try harder.”
“That’s not good enough. We’ve had this conversation too many times over the last few years. I want you to get help. You need help.”
“If only I could have another baby, then I’d feel better.” Tears start leaking out her eyes and down her cheeks.
He groans as an image of a pregnant Dorie wearing one of her checked maternity smocks, looking terribly proud, assails him. “Dorie, you can’t have another baby.”
Her face turns red. “I know. And you had no right to tell the doctor to tie my tubes after Violet was born!”
“During that C-section you were out, so I couldn’t ask your permission, but it was the right thing to do. I could see you were barely managing to care for the children we already had.”
“You had no right,” she says angrily. She sits up. “You’re just like your father, making decisions about my life the way he did to you.”
Clenching his fists, he stands and walks away from her. The thought that he could in any way be like his father appalls him.
Chastened, he returns. “I may have been a little presumptuous, but I was thinking of the welfare of our entire family. We don’t need any more children.”
“I can’t talk to you.” She slides back down under the covers and shuts her eyes.
Years ago, as he got to know Dorie well, he became deeply discouraged to discover that their making music together was simply not enough. Sometimes he still feels brokenhearted at the death of the life he thought they would have together. Once in a while, late at night while he sits alone with a drink and a cigarette, he feels as if his heart will burst with how much he wanted a different outcome. His father was right. He never should have married Dorie. He is so lonely with her.
That summer, instead of going to Sea View, he takes his family to a cabin on Lake Superior for vacation, hoping a change will cheer Dorie up. It doesn’t work.
At the staff Christmas party in early December, Nat stands with his back against a wall, watching Dorie, who is holding court, surrounded by a group of nurses and the wives of his colleagues. Last week he suggested she buy herself a new outfit for this occasion, and she chose well. The pink crepe dress becomes her, though she’s put on a lot of eye makeup. Holding a cocktail in one hand, she gesticulates with the other, and he’s glad that she seems to be having a good time. He’s reminded of what she was like when they first met. She comes alive in front of an audience. Maybe she should go back to singing in clubs?
Down the hall, he hears a woman protest, “No! Take your hands off me.” A door slams. One of the senior cardiologists emerges from the hallway, his face flushed.
What just happened? A few moments later, Lucy Anderson appears, her eyes more sparkly than they should be. Has she been crying?
He moves over to her. “Are you all right, Nurse Anderson?”
“Please, Dr. Sutton, I’m Lucy outside the hospital.”
“I’ll call you Lucy if you call me Nat.”
Smiling, she sticks out her hand. “It’s a deal.”
As they shake, Nat becomes aware of how warm her hand feels.
“Was Dr. Howard bothering you?” He and Lucy have worked together at Variety Club Heart for a few years, but he’s never directed a personal comment to her before.
“Yes. I guess I’m fair game since I’m not married. But he is. And I wasn’t flirting with him.”
“I’m sorry he treated you badly. Should I speak to him?”
“No! I don’t want to make trouble. But tell me, Dr. S … Nat—why do so many married men assume that because I’m a widow, I must be dying for a roll in the hay with them?”
She is so real and honest and direct. She reminds him of his first girlfriend, Emma, who was like that. He could tell Emma anything, and she would laugh when he hoped she would, and she always seemed to understand what he was saying. He felt sad when she didn’t return to school at Abbot the next fall. Now he tells Lucy, “I didn’t know you’d lost your husband. I’m sorry.”
“We’ve never discussed anything except the patients.”
“That’s true. I guess I’m pretty focused on work.”
“As you should be. Heart surgery is a matter of life or death. Each operation is very high risk.”
“You’re right.”
“Well, I should get back to the ladies. I don’t want another encounter with you know who.” She grins meaningfully at him before going over to take a vacant seat in the circle around Dorie.
He watches Lucy lean forward and ask his wife some question, which Dorie proceeds to answer at length. As he gazes at Lucy, he feels so much longing that he has to shut his eyes. He can’t allow himself to feel this way. He turns and heads toward the bar.
One afternoon two weeks later Nat is bent over a patient’s chart. The patient in the bed, a small boy with lips that are tinged blue, gasps for breath. Lucy takes the boy’s pulse.
“I’m afraid this ventricular septal defect is large enough that we’ll need to operate. What do you think?” He passes Wilbur Wagner’s chart to her, inadvertently brushing his hand against hers.
“What did you say?” She sounds startled.
Jolted by touching her, he clears his throat. “Um. Ah. I was asking your opinion.”
“I’ve never had a physician do that before,” she states, her blue eyes twinkling.
“I guess I’m not typical.”
“That’s for sure! It’s too bad there aren’t more docs like you.”
He blushes.
She goes on. “Wilbur is cyanotic. Look at his skin, his fingernails. He’s tiny for a four-year-old.”
“Sewing up the hole in his septum shouldn’t be complicated. Let’s get him scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
As she nods, a fetching tendril of strawberry-blonde hair comes loose from under her white cap.
Moving toward the door, he says, “Did you hear about the heart transplant that guy performed in South Africa last week? What was his name? Christiaan Barnard. He trained here a few years ago.”
“Was it successful?”
They pause outside the room.
“So far. It’s terribly exciting to think about all the new developments in heart surgery. Just a couple of weeks ago René Favaloro performed the first successful heart bypass surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.”
She asks, “What does bypass surgery involve?”
“It’s complicated. Maybe I could explain over a drink sometime.”
“Really?”
“Are you available later today? I should be done with my work at the clinic around five-thirty.”
She looks up and down the hallway, which is momentarily empty. “I suppose I could.” She sounds a little nervous.
“I just want to talk with you.”
“All right.”
When he gets to the Triangle Bar, he walks around until he spots Lucy sitting in a booth far from the front door. Is she afraid to be seen with him?
As he sits down across from her, he says, “That’s a nice blouse.”
She stands up. “It’s actually a dress, the style is called a shirtwaist. I went home to change out of my uniform and get my daughter some dinner.”
“I didn’t know you have a daughter. How old is she?”
A waiter appears to take their orders. Lucy asks for a beer, Nat a Manhattan.
“Olivia is fourteen.”
“When did your husband die?”
“Five years ago. Bert was going to see a client in South Dakota when his plane crashed.”
“That must have been a terrible shock.”
She looks right into his eyes. “Yes. I had to reconsider my whole life.” She’s so strong, he thinks.
She pauses, picking up the round cardboard coaster in front of her. Then she goes
on. “Having to stop and consider what matters most to me led me to leave orthopedics. I moved over to the heart hospital, where patients and their families are especially vulnerable and the stakes are high. I feel I can make more of a difference here at Variety Club. Every day I’m floored by the patients’ courage and the love of their families.”
“I want to make a difference too.”
Wordlessly, they beam at each other.
When the waiter arrives with their drinks, Lucy takes a sip of her beer. “You said you’d explain heart bypass surgery to me.”
“Right. To treat a blocked coronary artery, Dr. Favaloro cut open the patient’s chest. Then he took a blood vessel from the patient’s leg and grafted it directly onto an artery, thus bypassing the blockage and creating a new route for the blood to reach the heart. He did this while the heart was still beating.”
“Wow!”
“I expect we’ll see many more of these procedures in the years to come.” He lifts his glass and swallows. Then he pulls out his cigarettes. “Would you like one?”
“I’d love a cigarette, but after Bert died, I knew I’d better give them up. With only one parent, Olivia needs to be able to rely on me.”
“Good for you.” And he needs to be the parent his kids can count on. “I know I should quit—I have asthma, after all. I’ve tried to give up smoking, but it’s not easy, especially these days.”
She inclines her head. “These days?”
He pauses a moment, then decides to answer honestly. “My wife is having some trouble with depression.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Her depression is dragging me down too. And there have been so many changes at the hospital. I enjoyed working with Walt Lillehei. I understand his leaving Minnesota to head the surgery department at Cornell Medical Center, but I miss him. And with Dr. Wangensteen’s upcoming retirement, I’m afraid the culture of the hospital will change. Dr. Wangensteen created such a great atmosphere of open inquiry, where every question is welcome, every serious hypothesis worth testing. That’s critical in a research hospital.”
“Hopefully Dr. Wangensteen left enough of an impression on you and the other surgeons that you’ll continue along the same lines.”
“What got you into medicine, Lucy?”
“I always knew I wanted to help people, so nursing was the obvious choice for me. I grew up in Rochester around lots of docs from Mayo and St. Mary’s—fathers of my friends, customers at my parents’ supper club. I saw arrogant doctors who thought they were next to God and others who cared about healing others. I knew doctors who treated nurses like slaves and others who respected nurses and worked with them.”
He wishes he could sit here all night talking with Lucy, but he has to glance at his wristwatch. “I should get going pretty soon. I’ve got to see to my own children.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Abby, the oldest, is fifteen, and then there’s Ned at thirteen, Ernie’s eleven, and Violet is nine. They’re all budding musicians. I’m very proud of them.”
“Music runs in the family?”
“Their mother was a singer, and I played sax in jazz clubs.”
“Do you still play?”
“I don’t have time to be in a group, but I love to make music with my kids. Fortunately they don’t notice that I’ve gotten a little rusty.”
She smiles.
He observes, “Our daughters are almost the same age. What is Olivia like?”
“She’s very creative. She wants to be a writer when she grows up, and she’s a pretty good student too. She’s a huge Beatles fan.”
“So is Abby.”
“I kind of like their music myself. But if I sing along with their songs, Olivia cringes. These days she seems to find everything I do incredibly embarrassing.”
“She’s a teenager.”
“Exactly.”
He finishes his drink. “I really must go now. But I’ve enjoyed getting together so much.”
She looks down. “Me too—very much.”
“Can we do this again sometime?”
“That’s probably not a good idea, Nat.” Now she looks sad.
“Why not? Can’t we be friends?”
“I don’t know. That’s the question. You’re married. I’m not.”
“I understand.” He’s disappointed, but he doesn’t feel rejected exactly, because he senses her regret. Placing a twenty-dollar bill on the table, he rises.
She pulls on her coat and hat. “Thank you, Nat. It’s been lovely.”
They leave the bar together and move in separate directions to their cars.
March 1968
The next year Nat accepts his father’s offer to serve as medical advisor to the Sutton Foundation, which means he has to fly east for the board meeting in mid-March. He’s dying to get away for a few days. Dorie will simply have to cope with the children on her own. He doesn’t plan to say anything to his parents about his troubles at home, but he can’t wait to see his best friend. They talk to each other on the phone pretty often, but there’s much he can’t say when he could be overheard by his wife or one of his children.
At Peter’s suggestion, they meet for dinner at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central.
Nat likes the feeling of warmth in the brightly lit windowless restaurant on the lower level of the train terminal. It feels very private.
Peter is already seated at a small table in the corner. When he sees Nat, he stands. He’s wearing a light tan suit with an eye-popping navy tie featuring gold bursts behind little navy squares.
“Wow, Peter, you look so spiffy you could be in a Courvoisier ad!” Nat leans forward and fingers Peter’s tie. “Silk!”
As they shake hands, Peter replies, “You look very cool yourself, Nat.” He signals to a passing waiter.
Sitting, Nat jokes, “Would you believe I can finally afford more than one suit? I actually have two now, one for summer, one for winter. Of course I don’t wear them at the hospital—I’m in scrubs most of the time.”
The waiter comes over. Nat orders a Manhattan. Peter orders another martini—the one in front of him is half gone.
“Your sideburns are so long, Peter!”
“As an employee at the Museum of Modern Art, I must show that I am au courant when it comes to fashion.” He raises his eyebrows in a characteristic show of self-deprecation.
“I suppose if we were at Andover now, you’d draw your Sammy Phillips cartoon with sideburns down to his jaw.”
Peter chortles. “I’m so glad to see you, friend. No one else remembers my cartoons.”
“I loved your Sammy Phillips!” Nat tells him.
“You’ve come east for some sort of meeting?”
“Father created a philanthropic foundation with most of the money he made selling Sutton Industries two years ago. He’s still figuring out the foundation’s priorities for funding, but one of them is medical research. I’m here to help him define those parameters.”
“Interesting.”
“It is. He’s getting advice from all sorts of people. I believe the arts is another one of his focus areas.”
“Tell him I’d be happy to talk with him about art any time he wants.”
“I will.”
Nat’s drink arrives and he takes a sip. It’s a little stronger than the ones he gets in Minneapolis. Then he takes a closer look at his friend, who has crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and long lines that dent his forehead. He looks older than thirty-nine.
“How are you, Peter?”
“I’m fine. But I can’t believe what’s going on these days. It seems like the world is going to hell in a handbasket. The assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis two weeks ago by some unknown white guy. How hard are the police actually trying to find King’s killer?”
“It’s such a tragedy for all of us.”
“And the war in Vietnam. I’m dying to take part in anti-war demonstrations, but I’m afraid to. As a homosexual, I’ve got to be com
pletely circumspect about what I say and do and where I’m seen, or I could lose my job.”
Nat says, “I’ve never heard you use that word before.”
“We danced around it at Andover, but you knew I swing that way.”
“Of course I did. And I remember telling you that I don’t.”
“I’m following the black power movement too. I know what it’s like to be discriminated against.”
“I don’t know much about the Black Panthers,” Nat admits. “But tell me, how is your work going?”
“I love it! Right now I’m working on a fabulous exhibit of pieces from the Paul J. Sachs Collection called The Taste of a Connoisseur. We’re showing drawings from Pollaiuolo’s Fighting Nudes and even Ben Shahn’s Sacco and Vanzetti.”
Nat grins. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s okay.” Peter finishes his first martini and moves on to the second. “How about you, Nat? How’s everything in your world?”
“Awful, frankly. My marriage is a mess. Dorie is so depressed that she can barely function, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve read up on depression and learned that sadness and fatigue can be symptomatic of hypothyroidism, especially in women, so I got her to go to our family physician, but apparently that’s not the problem—she doesn’t have an underactive thyroid. I think she needs to find a psychiatrist she likes, someone she can talk to, but she refuses to seek one out, even though I’ve given her the names of three who’ve been recommended to us. I can’t force her to call them.”
“How bad is it?”
“Really bad.”
“I’m sorry, Nat. I was a little surprised that you married her—”
“I had to! The truth is she trapped me. She became pregnant before I’d even gotten to know her properly.” He feels terrible revealing this—he’s never said such a thing before to anyone else, but it’s the truth and he trusts Peter completely. He knows Peter won’t betray his confidence. It feels good to admit the truth, however embarrassing it is. He should have been smarter.
“Oh, no,” Peter groans.
“Now it’s as though she’s paralyzed. I don’t know how to move her out of the state she’s in.”