Noble Vision

by LaGreca, Gen

  “A future of groveling to those in power?”

  “You always want me to stand alone, to stick my neck out! I got smashed in court once, so I learned to be careful. There are so many patients, so many decisions, so many ways to fail. The practice guidelines, the administrators, the committees—they help me choose, and they’re my defense if I’m ever called on a case.”

  “Sure, Marie, no one can question your judgment when you don’t make any judgments, when your recipe books and administrators call the shots. How can you let others decide for you?”

  “How can you decide for yourself?”

  In a final burst of clarity, David realized that this was the core of the difference between them. He had thought that Marie was a victim, forced to act against her better judgment in the Eileen Miller case and in many others like it. But the truth was that Marie had no better judgment, a voice of certainty inside him cried out.

  “I’m not like you, David. You’re always trying to make me change, to be like you, but I’m different. Don’t you understand?”

  “Maybe I finally do,” he whispered, more to himself than to her. “If Nicole and I succeed, it will mean that your whole life is . . . somehow . . . wrong—”

  “I’ve heard enough! You’re committing a crime, and I’m going to shut you down. You should be begging me not to.”

  “I don’t beg others to let me do my work.”

  “Of course not! You’re above it all! But for once, you’re at my mercy.” She smiled vindictively. “Tell me why I shouldn’t turn you in. And don’t spew nonsense about saving our marriage.”

  “I won’t. It’s over between us. It was over a long time ago.”

  “It was over when you took Nicole Hudson’s case.”

  “It was over long before then.”

  “You’re attracted to her.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re smitten by her.”

  “I’m in love with her.”

  “You bastard! How dare you tell me that? And you expect me to help you now?”

  “Nicole doesn’t know how I feel. She’s innocent. If you want to punish me, then do it after her surgery. I must perform an experiment in this lab before I can operate safely on her. And you will not stop it, Marie.”

  “I won’t? You miserable disappointment for a husband, why would I want to help you and your girlfriend?”

  “For one reason only. Because it’s right. If you forgot about your mindless guidelines and committees and thought for yourself, as a doctor and a human being, you wouldn’t interfere with this work.”

  “Just what do you mean? I have to report you to the authorities.”

  “Why?”

  “Because those are the rules.”

  “And because you like enforcing them.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “If you take this animal away, I can’t find out something I must know to operate on Nicole. You’d be sacrificing a human life to save a cat. Does that make sense to you, as a doctor and a human being?”

  “It’s the law, David. You have no right to break it!”

  “You know perfectly well that a hundred stray cats are put to sleep in pounds for every one used in research. If you take this cat, it’ll only be euthanized anyway. Does it make sense to stop a laboratory experiment that could save a human life?”

  “It’s the law. I respect the law.”

  “Forget me. Forget Nicole. Don’t do it for us. Do it for your own self-respect. I want you to look the other way and not report what you see here—because it’s right, because you can think for yourself and see that it’s right.”

  “I don’t see that it’s right to let you off the hook again.”

  “You wouldn’t be rescuing this cat out of any concern for its welfare. Don’t delude yourself. You’d seize it out of a bitter resentment for Nicole and me. You’d use an unjust law to cover up your real motive, cruelty. You can’t let yourself commit such an unspeakably vicious act, Marie.”

  She smiled maliciously. “I can commit such an act. And I will.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  He grabbed her roughly, spun her around, and pinned her hands behind her back. He eyed an array of drugs on a cart, mentally selecting one to tranquilize her for a while. Oddly, she offered no resistance, no cries, nothing but a sly grin.

  Then he remembered the closed notebooks and the cage askew. “You were in here before I arrived, weren’t you?” he said, tightening his grip.

  “David, you’re hurting me! You’ll break my arms!”

  “You made your decision already, didn’t you? You’re just playing with me now, wanting to see me beg. Damn you! I’d like to smash your face and wring your throat!”

  The door opened again. David’s glance landed on the bow tie of Daryl Denkins, the inspector who had seized his rats on the coldest day of winter. Police officers and other inspectors entered with him. The triumphant voice of Daryl Denkins directed an assistant to take photographs. Denkins was no longer a beleaguered civil servant wrestling with a defective radiator that was a personal affront to him. His face came alive. He strutted around the lab as if it were his personal kingdom. He gave orders to his inspectors. Daryl Denkins of the shabby office had finally achieved the status that he deserved.

  David remembered little of the brief, violent scene that was the most desperate moment of his life. Two officers pulled him away from his gloating wife, pinned his arms behind his back, and cuffed the hands that were about to perform brain surgery.

  Another officer placed the anesthetized cat, now awakening, back in its cage.

  “Don’t touch that animal!” David screamed, twisting furiously against arms and cuffs that gripped him.

  “Let’s bring this cat and its cousins over to the holding area downtown,” said one of the officers, removing the cage with cat 5.

  “Don’t take that animal! I must have that cat! You can’t do this! Stop!” David cried desperately. He tried to lunge for the cat, but hands with the grip of a vise dragged him out of the lab and into a police car.

  “David Lang, you’re under arrest on charges of cruelty to animals. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you.”

  Chapter 30

  No Deal

  The music of Nicole’s first ballet floated through the earphones of her compact disc player. She lounged on her hospital bed in a white satin robe, her serene beauty more suited to a princess than a patient. She closed her eyes as a triumphant theme swept her back to her first hearing of that fateful tune, at age six. That day, watching her first ballet, her life had been sparked by a desire that had become a life’s quest to perform the role of the princess. Years later, on a day that hung like a medal in her memory, she had realized her childhood dream.

  Her head rested against the pillow while her body yearned to leap out of bed, to give motion to the sweeping melody, to become the instrument of a joy impossible to express in any other way save dancing. She longed to feel the exhilaration of her own movements. Would she ever be able to dance the princess’s role again? she wondered.

  Mixed with the grandeur of the music was a voice she had grown fond of. She heard Mrs. Trimbell in the hallway, chatting with a nurse. Another voice lingered in her mind. David had called her earlier with good news. He believed that he had found the cause of death in his laboratory cats. He would perform surgery on the final animal to confirm his findings. She waited eagerly for him to call again, reporting that he had solved the problem and would be operating on her the next morning. The optimism of the music gave Nicole hope. She heard steps approaching her room. Would it be David, with good news already?

  The footsteps halted at her door. Her eager rush of excitement froze at the sound of a voice greeting Mrs. Trimbell. David had warned her teacher to screen Nicole’s visitors and to permit no one to upset her, but the person at the door was someone whom Mrs. Trimbell trusted and allowed entry. No! Nicole wanted to scream. Don’t let this pe
rson near me!

  “Hello, Nicole, dear. How are you feeling?”

  “Go away.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “You know I always tell you the truth, dear.”

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why have you made it your job to tell me . . . upsetting things?”

  “Someone has to be honest. Your doctor seems to lack the courage to tell you the plain truth, but you’re entitled to know it.”

  The words pounded Nicole’s heart. She knew that she must listen, just as she had listened when the same visitor had informed her of David’s suspension and of his father’s death, events that had made her . . .

  “Your doctor is . . . unavailable, so he won’t be telling you much of anything.”

  Nicole waited.

  “What happened was inevitable, you know, dear.”

  An ashen face belied Nicole’s forced calm.

  “You can’t break the rules and do as you please. Life isn’t like that,” continued the visitor. “That policy was bound to catch up with him . . . and you.”

  The voice seemed to want to be prodded, but Nicole waited quietly.

  “Why should you two be better than the rest of us?”

  Nicole noticed that the voice she dreaded was different this time. It lacked any pretense of wanting to help her and was more obvious in its malice.

  “Why should you always get your way, while the rest of us have to put down our dreams and take what we’re given?”

  “Why do you want to put down his dreams?” asked Nicole.

  “Your doctor’s arrogant disregard for the law is what put him down in the end. Do you know the old Greek myth about the boy who stole the chariot of the sun god? Remember what happened to him, dear?”

  Nicole stared into the dark void of her existence. The light she had been able to perceive was fading into duller shades of gray.

  “He came crashing down from the heavens in the end,” said the visitor.

  Nicole detected a note of triumph. She could listen no more. “Why is David . . . unavailable?” she whispered, trembling.

  “He was performing illegal animal experiments this afternoon. His lab was inspected and he got caught. I understand that he was waiting for approval to do your surgery. I’m afraid that approval will never come now. You see, dear, David was arrested,” said Marie Lang.

  * * * * *

  In a gunmetal police station, David Lang was booked, fingerprinted, given a number, and set before a camera for mug shots. The bitter eyes captured in his photos matched those of any hardened criminal. In a jail behind the station, a cell door slid shut behind him. Like a restless animal, David paced the width of his cage incessantly.

  He had to operate on Nicole before another day passed. But how? After his arrest, CareFree would never grant approval for Nicole’s surgery. Could he perform it illegally? Where? Riverview Hospital surely had heard about his arrest and was off-limits to him. Could he operate outside of a hospital? Before performing Nicole’s surgery, he needed the last cat to confirm the cause of the problem that he had encountered. But the animal had been seized. How could he retrieve it? Nicole was rapidly losing her perception of light, and he needed to act fast. But he was behind bars!

  This storm of disturbing thoughts funneled in his mind while his lawyer arranged for a bond hearing to release him. His trim form moved fitfully from side to side in the small cell. He knew that if he were stopped from performing Nicole’s surgery, he would loathe everything and everyone from that day forward in a blind, searing hatred gripping his soul for the rest of his life.

  Still reeling from his father’s tragic demise and Marie’s betrayal, David yearned for yet another . . . enemy, a man who would surely smash any remaining hope of performing Nicole’s surgery. Nevertheless, David kept a thousand childhood pictures of this man framed in golden memories. Randy, he cried to himself in desperation. Where’s Randy?

  An officer arrived to announce that he had a visitor and to take him to another gloomy place. The gray walls and wire-mesh window of the new room resembled a cloudy sky. A dividing wall with a glass partition sliced the room, separating David from the outside world. When the door on the other side of the barrier opened, David gasped. “Randy!”

  The brothers had apparently forgotten their differences, because they both pressed their arms against the partition, each like a mirror image of the other. The men lowered their arms slowly, reluctantly, and sat down facing each other across the glass.

  “I’m the reason you’re in jail.” Randy’s voice drifted to David through slats in the divider.

  “What?”

  “After I made a deal to campaign for the governor in exchange for your getting permission to do Nicole’s surgery—”

  “You what? You mean you didn’t . . . really . . . join Burrow?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “I thought you—” a stab of pain cut David’s voice.

  “I never sold out, David, not consciously. Although what I did amounts to that. I made a deal with Burrow. I had to make you think I turned against you; otherwise, you’d never accept CareFree’s offer. But did I win any right for you to work without CareFree’s blessing? No. Did I win any right for the hospital to be free of Burrow and his inspectors? No. My deal did nothing but get you a favor, which can be taken away just as capriciously as it’s given. That’s what everybody in medicine does today. We bargain for a crumb, but we never contest our feeder’s power to decide who eats and who starves. I did the same thing as Dad did, really. I tried to combine you with CareFree.

  “And my deal backfired royally. In order to approve your experiments, the bureaucrats had to inspect your research lab. That’s how you got caught. I was screaming for Burrow to have that lab inspected. Now look at the bind you’re in!”

  “You tried to help me? You were on my side?”

  “Of course, pal. I’m sorry I had to pretend—”

  “Forget it,” said David, smiling broadly in his eagerness to erase his agony over Randy’s betrayal. “I did the same thing you did, brother. Instead of blowing the whistle on Burrow to the media, I went along with the farce. I put Nicole’s life in his hands by leaving the decision about her surgery to him and his gang. Now I’ve got to take control. I must operate within twenty-four hours, or she’ll never see again. I need a cat I was experimenting on, which was seized during my arrest. I ran into a problem, and that cat holds the answer. I can’t operate on Nicole without getting it back.”

  “The police probably brought the cat to the animal facility downtown, the one that was broken into last winter.”

  “They said they were bringing it there.”

  “Hell, I can get the cat back.” Randy whispered, so the guard in the room would not overhear. “I’ll break in the same way the vandal did last winter. The papers described the whole affair. I never mentioned this, but I’ve always had my suspicions about who that vandal was. Weren’t they holding some of your rats at the time?”

  David grinned.

  “I don’t think I’ll need to do quite the same job as the vandal did of smashing all the windows and trashing the place.”

  David’s grin widened.

  “But I’ll get the cat. Your lawyer is here. He’ll get you out on bail or on your own recognizance, depending on how dangerous a character the judge thinks you are.”

  “He should only know.”

  “Then I’ll meet you at Riverview and get you an operating suite.”

  “But you’ll lose your job. I can’t have that. I’ve got to find another way.”

  “Your arrest was announced in the middle of our board of directors’ meeting this afternoon. The board, of course, revoked your staff privileges. But I didn’t go along with it. I did something that made me happier than I’ve been in years. It’s amazing how all the tension I was living with suddenly disappeared.”

  “What the hell did you do?”

&nb
sp; “I told them that if you go, I go. So I quit.”

  “No!”

  “Oh, yes,” Randy said, laughing gaily. “I’ll be officially replaced tomorrow, so you must operate on Nicole tonight, before my resignation is announced. Tonight I’m in charge. In my final act as president, I’ll get you an operating room, brother.”

  “I can’t let you do that! You’d be open to who knows what charges—”

  “You must let me help you, David. Not for your sake but for mine. When I quit, I felt tremendously relieved and . . . free. I told the board to go to hell. I told them that you’d be the first one they’d look for if they needed brain surgery. I told them they were cowards and hypocrites, but I wasn’t going to be like them anymore. You know, no one argued with me. They knew I was right. But they wouldn’t budge.

  “Even the bonus and raise I got for being Burrow’s fair-haired boy gave me nothing but grief. To get that money, I had to promote a cause and a man I despised. Now I’ve got a chance to do something really important. You can’t take that away from me, David. What’s the old saying, that a life lived in fear is a life not lived at all?”

  David closed his eyes in relief and deliverance. “I love you, brother.”

  “I love you, pal.”

  They pressed their hands together against the glass.

  “Nothing can stop you now, David. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  David’s eyes held hope. Everything was going to be okay. Could he believe it?

  Chapter 31

  Everything’s Going to Be Okay

  The third-floor surgical suites of Riverview Hospital were quiet at 6:00 that Tuesday evening. An attendant washed the floor of a vacant corridor, an orderly wheeled a bin of laundry through a darkened hallway, a nurse carried a tray of equipment into an empty room. The day’s scheduled cases had been completed and the night’s emergencies not yet begun. No one noticed two masked men in scrubs inside the only lighted operating suite. David and Randy were looking at a small creature on a table, cat 5, which Randy had mysteriously retrieved.