by LaGreca, Gen
Nonsense! he told himself. He just had indigestion, which made him melancholy. The discomfort worsened when he walked into his study to read a document that he had asked his secretary to prepare for his signature. It was his decision to punish David with the maximum suspension and fine for his unauthorized nerve-repair surgery, thus curtailing further treatment of Nicole Hudson. It was a noble act that would save an enlightened program and only temporarily inhibit his son’s career, he told himself. He wanted to sign it, yet he could not lift his pen to do so. He swallowed two antacid tablets to settle his stomach.
The doorbell rang. He answered it eagerly, relieved to have a moment’s escape from the task at hand.
“Good evening, Mr. Secretary.” Randall Lang bowed from the hallway.
The boyish tangle of blond hair looked as it always had, Warren observed, but the face of the child of his memory had lost its innocence. The once high-pitched voice that had called him Daddy was heavy with contempt.
“Come in, Randall.”
The son followed his father through a granite foyer into the living room. There an array of personal photographs displayed on the walls caught Randy’s attention.
“Now isn’t this quaint? A gallery of your career,” he said, examining the pictures. “Here you are, Mr. Secretary, among the new mommies holding their babies in the maternity ward.” He removed the picture from the wall and waved it at Warren. “No doubt CareFree brought the little cherubs into the world. I think the boys should be named Warren and the girls, well . . . how about Wareena?” He returned the picture to its place and moved to the next one. “Now here’s a nice shot. Mr. Secretary with a baseball cap, throwing out the first ball of the season. Wow! You’ve got to be important to do that! And look at this next pose. You’re in a hard hat breaking ground for the new wing of Buffalo General Hospital. I hope you didn’t get your French cuffs dirty. The hospital must’ve finally gotten through CareFree’s labyrinth of permits and approvals. The man next to you must be the hospital administrator, because his spine looks bowed from groveling. Didn’t that make you feel good, Mr. Secretary?”
“I know you despise me, Randall. What I don’t know is why you came here.”
The open contempt of his sons disturbed Warren. He wondered why he felt unsure of himself in the presence of something intractable within them.
“Excuse me for dallying over your photo gallery. It has special significance to me, because if my brother is destroyed tomorrow, it will have been to give you this wall.”
Randy stood behind a leather chair, leaning his elbows on the high back. His smile was derisive, but his eyes seemed to hold a long-standing pain.
“You’re wrong about me, son.”
“Am I?”
“Why did you come here?”
“Why does anyone come to you? I guess I did it the wrong way. I should have invited you to dinner, poured expensive wine down your throat, and inclined my head in a perpetual bow. I should have filled your gut with the nourishment you thrive on. Then I should only hint, indicate, suggest . . . without ever naming my purpose blatantly. Innuendo is so civilized, honesty so crass. Forgive my lack of finesse, but the plain truth is that I came to make a deal.”
The last word lingered in the room while Warren walked to an antique liquor cabinet. He poured cognac from a crystal flask into two snifters, handing one to Randy. The men sat in leather armchairs before a marble fireplace. Both drank rather than sipped.
“What kind of deal?” Warren asked suspiciously.
“Mack Burrow sends his goon squad to talk to me regularly. He wants the leading hospitals in key voting districts to support CareFree. He wants us to voluntarily educate the community by offering programs and seminars about the glories of CareFree. He calls this ‘enlightening the public through the progressive vision of the providers.’ I think in the old days they called it . . . propaganda.”
“So?”
“So I’m ready to boost Burrow’s campaign with a renowned hospital jumping on his bandwagon. He’ll get lots of votes from converting a disbeliever like me. I’m willing to be born again.”
Warren’s hand stopped in midair, with cognac swaying in a suspended glass. “I don’t suppose that your sudden enlightenment comes without strings attached.”
“You can guess the only thing you have that I want.”
Warren placed his drink on an end table. “Do you realize you just committed a crime?” he said sternly.
“If CareFree operates within the law, then I prefer to be a criminal.” Randy emptied his glass.
“Do you further realize that you hurt me deeply?” Warren’s face was becoming red-hot with anger. “You came here to wave a campaign favor in my face in exchange for exonerating David!” He sprang up to point his finger in Randy’s face. “I’m insulted!”
“But Burrow is waving a campaign favor in your face, isn’t he? He’s dangling his big carrot, the lieutenant governorship, before your eyes in exchange for convicting David. So why should my offer offend?”
“How dare you think that I’m open to bribes? And on the question of my son! Who do you think you’re talking to? Mack Burrow?” he blurted out involuntarily.
Randy laughed bitterly.
“All right, so now you know. I despise Mack. He’s a crude man who loves power for power’s sake.”
“And yet you back him, you work for him, you want to be his running mate, and you believe in all the same causes he does. You allocate CareFree’s resources in ways that win him votes, turning medicine into his personal servant. Forgive me, Your Excellency, but I see two soul mates.”
“Stop those humiliating names you call me! I’m not out for power like Mack. I do what’s right for the public. My motives are pure!”
“Ha!” Randy rose to his feet to stand eye to eye with Warren. “The only person I see who’s doing anything right is somebody who never brags about how noble he is so that we mere mortals can revere him. The only person who’s doing something right is doing it quietly. That’s the person whose motives are pure, the person who has been steadfastly true to his patient, to his profession and to himself. He doesn’t look for ‘little’ people to keep down so that he can arrange their lives for them, because his goodness depends on their wretchedness. But you do. Your motives are not pure, Father!”
“How dare you? You’re saying I’m some kind of monster who craves power. I don’t! I just want to help people.” Warren slumped down in his chair.
“Sure you do. You just want to help people, and that places you beyond reproach. You rub those words over your actions like slick ointment, so you can cover up your infected motives. Remember when you wanted to help our neighbor, Richie Haynes? When Richie was a starving writer and you performed back surgery on him for free, that was fine. You were a doctor, and he was a neighbor in need. But you didn’t stop there. You were always over at his place, helping him fix the roof, paint the house, do things he couldn’t afford to hire someone for. Do you think you were subtle when you wove your good deeds for Richie into every conversation you had with the neighbors? Were you really surprised, as you pretended to be, when someone called a newspaper to suggest a heartwarming story about a neurosurgeon who also repairs a patient’s roof? You were so busy fawning over the reporter who covered the story that you didn’t notice how embarrassed poor Richie was by the whole thing.
“Then when Richie sold his screenplay to Hollywood and made a bundle, you changed, didn’t you? When Richie insisted on paying you for the surgery, why did you look so unhappy to receive his check? Why did you lose interest in Richie as soon as he made good for himself? You went to his place when he was a poor slob who depended on you, but you declined his invitations after he spent a fortune redecorating his place to entertain in style. You wanted him to stay needy so that you could get some kind of perverted kicks out of being his savior. Would you say your motives were pure?”
Randy poured himself another cognac. “I saw things like this all the time as a kid, and i
t was obvious that you were grandstanding. David was so mesmerized by you as a surgeon that he had a blind spot. While he worshipped you in the OR, I saw another side of you. When you took the post as head of the Bureau of Medicine, David was devastated, but I wasn’t surprised.”
Randy angrily swirled his cognac, spilling some on the rug. “If you destroy David tomorrow, I want you to know that someone understands the real nature of your action. Someone knows that you sold your soul for what you call a noble ideal but what is nothing more than the limousine you ride in, the attendants at your fingertips, the reporters who fawn over you, the hospital presidents who tremble in your presence, and the ‘little people’ who give you what you salivate for: superiority, supremacy . . . power. Don’t you see that the same bug that bit Burrow has infected you?”
“Your picture of me is so black, Randall. Everybody gets a little thrill from the glitz and glamour of being a public figure. But I use my power to do good for people.”
“What people? David and Nicole?”
“David, his patient, and all of us are part of a bigger picture that I, in my post, must consider.” There was no hint of the fatherly affection that Randy recalled from a distant past. The stranger before him was the official Warren from the political podiums. “I want so much for you and David to understand that, to help me out here, to give a little!”
With an angry snap of his head Randy emptied his drink. “If you don’t exonerate David, because you won’t let go of this magic balloon you think will pull you to heaven,” Randy said, staring into Warren’s eyes, “then you’ll lose two sons tomorrow, not one.”
A cool draft from the hallway hit Warren’s flushed face as Randy left. The agony over signing the document in his study intensified. He fought the temptation to switch on the television. The talk shows would feature pundits offering him advice. But he was the leader whom people turned to for guidance. Why did he turn to the talk shows? He found it demeaning to consult them, yet unbearable not to know what they said about him. The conflict of opposites. He sat in the silent living room for a while, brooding.
Then the doorbell rang again.
“Mack!” Warren said, opening the door in astonishment.
“Hello, Warren. I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Why no. I’m just surprised to see you. Come in.”
“I’m staying in Manhattan tonight, so I thought I’d swing by and maybe get offered a drink.” Swinging by, for Mack, meant having a limousine and bodyguards covering half of Warren’s block. Yet no one had entered with him.
“Of course. Cognac?”
“Sure.”
Warren nervously poured two cognacs. The governor had never come to his apartment before, nor did Burrow go anywhere without an entourage of aides. His purpose was apparently too important to discuss by telephone and too private for anyone to overhear.
“I figured you’d also be in Manhattan tonight because of the hearing.”
“Yes.” Warren handed Burrow a drink.
The governor’s tie was loose, his hair disheveled, and his paunch bulging from an open suit jacket. Without a podium and a cheering crowd, he looked like a simple, tired, middle-aged man.
“I wondered what you were up to with that jury you appointed. I thought you were going to do things differently than we had discussed. But it’s turning out better this way. There’s suspense building, Warren. People are riveted to the hearing and speculating on what you’ll do. Tomorrow morning you’ll announce your decision, and tomorrow afternoon I’ll announce my running mate. Yup, there’s real drama in this.”
The men sat in armchairs, facing each other across a coffee table. The fireplace along the wall made a cozy setting for a chat.
“So what’s your verdict?” Burrow asked pleasantly.
Seven weeks of insomnia marked Warren’s eyes with dark rings and his gaunt features with a ghostlike pallor. “I haven’t completely committed myself yet,” he said in the tone of one selecting a coffin.
Burrow’s smile vanished. “You mean you’re still wavering?” he asked incredulously.
“It’s not that easy, Mack! David’s work is brilliant, and his patient is a young woman fighting for a normal life. How can we turn our backs on that?” Warren whined like a child asking one last time for permission to do something forbidden. “That can backfire for you at the polls.”
“Not if he doesn’t succeed in curing her!” the governor blurted out involuntarily.
“If David were disreputable or negligent or a disgrace to his profession, it would be so easy to punish him. I wouldn’t blink an eye.”
“I have news for you, Warren,” Burrow said slowly, in measured tones. “Your son is a disgrace to his profession, which is why you will punish him tomorrow.”
“What?! That’s nonsense!”
“I was hoping I could spare you this.” Burrow pulled a paper from his vest pocket. His voice sounded reluctant, yet he offered the document eagerly. “I thought your integrity would lead you to the right decision, but I see how much I can count on that! Read this, and you’ll find the justification you need to make the right choice.”
Warren began reading to himself a letter written in a flowing script that was familiar to him: Dear Nicole, when you fell, the light you hung in the room of my soul came crashing down . . .
Warren was gripped by the words.
I want to hold a mirror to the radiance you poured into my world . . .
For an unguarded moment, Warren felt not like the head of an agency but merely like a father discovering a new aspect of his son. He thought that he should be outraged by the impropriety of the letter, but he could only marvel at the tender sentiment and the beauty of its expression. Warren read in awe, like a spectator of a feat beyond his capacity.
I sent roses to honor the endless summer that once made its home on your sweet face . . .
The way fresh waters sometimes stir murky streams, the letter momentarily roused Warren. It cleared the sediment on his soul, unearthing a tiny gem long buried—the dream of romance and adventure that he had sometimes entertained in his youth. He recalled Nicole’s proud manner and passionate assertions about her own existence, and three words came to Warren in response to the thing he had just learned: But of course.
Reading the letter, he seemed to be an intruder on something sacred in another man’s life. A thought struck him with horror. Was he not now making a far greater intrusion on the lives of these two people?
“That’s a copy. I have the original, of course,” said Burrow. “Three experts inform me that among your son’s many talents is an unusually distinctive handwriting. So they can prove he wrote that letter even though it’s unsigned.”
“How did you get this, Mack?”
“A public-spirited person brought it to me when the patient apparently let it slip from her hands in the hospital. It was near a bouquet of roses that she had received from her lover, your son. You say he’s a good doctor. I say he’s a lousy adulterer. He is married, isn’t he?”
“I’m sure you already checked that out.”
Burrow smiled. “Did you realize that he knew the patient before the operation?”
“Regardless, the medical treatment was sound.”
“Warren, I’m shocked! If Romeo were anybody but your son, you’d see that this letter makes our case perfectly against the doctors. The public needs us to protect them from unscrupulous practices by doctors, like this shameful conduct by your son. Because you can’t see the nose on your face, let me explain the obvious: Your married son was having an affair with a showgirl. She was injured. He was distraught over her accident; he says in his letter that he’d do anything to make her feel better. So in a moment of passion, he makes a desperate attempt to rescue his girlfriend by pushing on her an experimental procedure before it’s ready. He’s her lover and he’s a surgeon, so she believes anything he tells her. He takes advantage of that fact to get her consent to an unlawful brain surgery.
“I thought
your son had a following, and I couldn’t press too hard on him. I thought people would perceive a certain honesty in him that could arouse sympathy. But now I know better. Do you think that in light of this letter anybody is going to utter a peep when I pull his license?”
“You can’t touch his license! You can’t make this public! We need to ask David about the letter. Maybe there’s a more innocent explanation.”
“What difference does it make?” Burrow shrugged his shoulders. “The letter, along with the charges that I just indicated, will suffice for a strong case against him, regardless of his excuses.”
“But isn’t it important to know the truth before jumping to conclusions?”
Burrow laughed. “The truth is that he broke the law! You make me sick, Warren, with your philosophy, you noble causes, your high-class act. You’re like a wax model that looks good in a display box but melts in the heat. Now here’s your choice, and I don’t care what you pick, because I win either way.” Burrow’s voice was part thunder, part mockery. “You can exonerate your son, in which case this letter will leak out, causing a public scandal that will cost him his license. I haven’t announced you as my running mate, so it’s no problem for me. If you exonerate him, I will publicly express my disapproval of your decision and choose another candidate. When the letter hits the press, I’ll be proven right and you’ll be forced to resign.”
Warren gasped, his mouth agape in the undignified pose of someone fighting for his life.
“Or you can punish your son with the maximum suspension and fine, putting a lid on his new treatment. After he cools his heels for a year, he can practice again, this time in a humbler frame of mind. So what’s the problem with this? The public hails you as the honorable leader you claim to be. The doctors learn that they can’t walk all over us. Your son has another shot at continuing his work in the future. The patient sues and becomes filthy rich with a huge malpractice judgment paid by your son’s insurance company. Your son finds a new girlfriend. . . . And I announce you as my running mate.”