“Oh, eight or ten or twelve or so. It’s hard to count because some of them aren’t really people, you know.”
“Do me a favor, please,” Christine pleaded, “Go get some rope and your raccoon coat and see if you can sneak me past the door as your pet Irish wolfhound or something. I just want to go to bed.”
“Ah, bed,” Lisa said wistfully, steadying herself against the wall. “Soon all that Gallo Chablis and fine Colombian dope in there will have us all in bed. The only question remaining is who will be bedded down with whom. Speaking of which …”
“Lisa, is he in there?”
“Big as life. It’s his dope, doncha know.”
Christine grimaced. Jerry Crosswaite was hanging on like a bad cold. She shook her head. “It’s my fault,” she added with theatrical woe. “My cardinal rule, and I broke it.”
“What rule is that?” Lisa punctuated the question with a hiccup.
“Never date a man more than once who has vanity plates on his car with his name on them.” The two friends laughed and embraced.
Although seeing Jerry still had its pleasant moments, they were becoming fewer and farther between. Ever since his unilateral decision that they were “made for each other,” Jerry had mounted an all-out campaign to make Christine “The Wife of the Youngest Senior Loan Officer in Boston Bank and Trust History.” For weeks he had barraged her with roses, gifts, and phone calls. To Christine’s mounting chagrin, Lisa and Carole had become so swept up in the romantic adventure that they had undermined her efforts to discourage his ardor.
“Chrissy, will you stop complaining.” Lisa said now. “I mean you’re past thirty, and he’s a nice man with an Alfa. What more could a girl want?”
Christine wasn’t totally certain she was being teased. “Lisa, he has fewer sides than a sheet of paper …”
“Well, babe, I wouldn’t kick ’im out of bed,” Lisa said.
“Stick around, Heller, you may get the chance to find out if you mean that.” Christine brushed past her and into the living room.
Jerry Crosswaite set down his wine and began a piecemeal effort to rise from the couch and greet her. Christine forced a grin and waved for him to stay where he was. There were twelve others in the room, many of them looking even more gelatinous than Jerry.
“Brutal,” Christine muttered, at the same time smiling irrepressibly at Carole D’Elia, who was engrossed in a game of her own creation called ‘Scrabble For Dopers.’ In this version, to be played only with the aid of marijuana, any word, real or invented, would be counted as long as it could be satisfactorily defined for the other players.
Carole called her over. “Hey, Chrissy, you’re the only one with any sense around here. Come and arbitrate this. Is or is not Z-O-T-L the noun for a decorative arrangement of dead salamanders?”
“Absolutely,” Christine said, giving her a hug from behind. None of the women sharing the house smoked marijuana regularly, but from time to time parties simply materialized, and as often as not, pot was a part of them. Despite the relative inactivity around the room, there was a sense of vitality that Christine felt every time she was around her roommates. She decided that their company might be just the tonic for her trying day. Even if it meant dealing with Jerry Crosswaite.
“By the way,” Carole said. “You had a call a little while ago. Some woman. Said she’d call back. No other message.”
“Old woman? Young?” Christine asked anxiously.
“Yes.” Carole nodded definitively, polished off the rest of her wine, and wrote down her thirteen points.
Crosswaite had negotiated his way across the room and come up behind Christine, putting his hands on her shoulders. She whirled around as if struck with meat hooks.
“Hey, easy does it, Christine, it’s only me,” he said. He had discarded the jacket of his Brooks Brothers suit and had unbuttoned his vest—a move that for him was tantamount to total relaxation. Only the fine, red road maps in his eyes detracted from the Playboy image he liked to project.
“Hi, Jerry,” she said. “Sorry I missed the party.”
His gesture swept the room. “Missed it, hell. It’s been waiting for you. Lisa said you like the necklace. I’m glad.”
Christine glanced around for Lisa so that she could glare at her. “Jerry, I really wish you would stop sending me things. I … I just don’t feel right accepting them.”
“But Lisa told me …”
She cut him off, trying at the same time to keep her voice calm. “Jerry, I know what Lisa told you, and Carole, too. But neither of them is me. Look, you’re a really nice man. They think a lot of you, so do I, but I’m getting very uncomfortable with some of the gifts you’ve been sending and with a lot of the assumptions you’ve been making.”
“Such as what?” Crosswaite said, an edge of hostility appearing in his voice.
She bit at her lower lip and decided that she was simply not up to a confrontation. “Look, just forget it,” she said. “We can work the whole thing through another time when we have a little more privacy and a little less wine.”
“No, Chris, I want to discuss it now.” Crosswaite’s control disappeared completely. “I don’t know what your game is, but you’ve led me along to the point where this relationship is really important to me. Now, all of a sudden, you’ve gone frigid.” His tone was loud enough to break through to even the most somnolent in the room. Embarrassed looks began to flash from one to another as Carole and Lisa rose to intervene. The banker continued. “I mean you were never any tiger in bed to begin with, but at least you were there. Now, all of a sudden, you’re a fucking glacier around me. I want an explanation!” The room froze.
Christine took a step backward and brought her hands, fists clenched, tightly in against her sides.
The ring of the telephone shattered the silence.
Carole rushed to the kitchen. “Chrissy, it’s for you,” she called out after a few seconds. “It’s the woman who called before.”
Christine loosened her fists and lowered her arms before breaking her gaze away from Crosswaite.
There were three people in the kitchen. With a single look Christine sent them scurrying to the living room. Then she picked up the receiver.
“This is Christine Beall,” she said, sharpness still in her voice.
“Christine, this is Evelyn, from the Regional Screening Committee. Are you in a position where you can talk uninterrupted?”
“I am.” Christine settled onto a high rock maple stool she had found at a Gloucester flea market and later refinished.
“The Sisterhood of Life praises your deep concern and your professionalism,” the woman said solemnly. “Your proposal regarding Mrs. Charlotte Thomas has been approved.”
In the quiet kitchen, Christine began, ever so slightly, to tremble, as each word fell like a drop of water on hard, dry ground.
The woman continued. “The method selected will be intravenous morphine sulfate, administered at an appropriate time during your shift tomorrow evening. An ampule of morphine and the necessary syringe will be beneath the front seat of your car tomorrow morning. Please be certain the passenger side door is left open tonight. We shall lock it after the package has been delivered.
“We request that you administer the medication as a single rapid injection. There will be no need to wait in the room afterward. Please dispose of the vial and the syringe in a safe, secure manner. As is our policy, after your shift at the hospital is completed, you will please call the telephone recording machine and tape your case report. We all share the hope and the belief that the day will arrive when our work can become public knowledge. At that time reports such as yours—already nearly forty years’ worth from nurses throughout the country—can be properly honored and receive their due praise. In transmitting your report there will be no need to repeat the patient’s clinical history. Have you any questions?”
“No,” Christine said softly, her fingers blanched around the receiver. “No questions.”
&nbs
p; “Very well, then,” the woman said. “Miss Beall, you can feel most proud of the dedication you show to your principles and your profession. Good night.”
“Thank you. Good night,” Christine replied. She was speaking to a dial tone.
With a glance at the closed door to the living room Christine pulled on a green cardigan of Lisa’s that had been draped over a chair. Quietly she slipped out of the back door of the apartment.
The night sky was endless. Christine shivered against the autumn chill and pulled the sweater tightly about her. On the next street a car roared around a corner. As the engine noise faded, a silence as deep as the night settled in around her. She looked at the stars—countless suns, each one a mother of worlds. She was a speck, less than a moment, yet the decision she had made seemed so enormous. Pressure through her chest and throat made it difficult to swallow. Panic, uncertainty, and a profound sense of isolation tightened the vise as she moved slowly to her car and unlocked the passenger side door.
Christine walked around the deserted block once, and then again. Hidden, she sat on a low rock wall across the street from her apartment and watched until the last of the partygoers finally left and the lights in the windows winked off. With a prolonged, parting gaze at the jeweled sky, she sighed and headed home. All that remained in the living room were a few half-filled glasses and a single, dim light, left for her by her roommates.
Christine flipped off the lamp. She was undressed even before reaching her room. Standing by the bureau, she unpinned her long, sandy hair, shook it free, and began slow passes with her brush, softly counting each one.
“Whenever you must really know …” Charlotte’s words dominated her thoughts as she stepped across to her bed.
It was not until she turned the covers that she saw the envelope resting on her pillow.
She read the note inside, stiffened, then crumpled it into a tiny ball and threw it on the floor.
It said, “Christine, I’ve left. Maybe for good. Feel free to call, but only when you have something significant to say. Jerry.”
CHAPTER VIII
David began his first day as Wallace Huttner’s replacement by identifying a Berlioz piece as Mendelssohn, but bounced back moments later by correctly sensing that outside his window a day of change was developing.
There was a dry chill in the air that kept him from working up the heavy sweat he liked during his run by the river. To the east an anemic sun was gradually losing its battle for control of the morning to an advancing army of heavy, dark clouds, each with a glossy white border. The day mirrored his mood: the difficult evening rounds with Huttner had left him with a vague sense of discomfort and foreboding that neither a night of fitful sleep nor his morning workout had totally dispelled.
He had planned to make morning rounds along the same route he and Huttner had taken the previous night, but once in the hospital, he succumbed to a growing impatience to see how Anton Merchado was doing on his new treatment regimen.
The fisherman’s bronzed, weathered face broke into a wide grin as soon as David entered his room. With that Single smile David’s apprehension about the day evaporated.
“I had a turd, Doc!” Merchado’s gravelly voice held all the pride of a mother who had just given birth. “This morning. One beautiful, plop-in-the-water turd. Doc, I can’t thank you enough. I never thought I’d ever have one again.”
“Well, don’t get too excited yet, Mr. Merchado,” David said, barely able to control his own enthusiasm. “You certainly look better than you did last night, but I don’t think the diarrhea is gone for good. At least, not just yet.”
“My fever is down, too, and the cramps are almost gone,” Merchado added as David probed his abdomen for areas of tenderness and listened for a minute with his stethoscope.
“Sounds good,” David said, placing the instrument back in his jacket pocket, “but still no solid food. Just sips of liquids and several more days of the new antibiotic and intravenous fluids. You can tell your family that you’ll be in the hospital for another week if things keep going well. Maybe even a little longer than that.”
“Will you be my doctor when I get out?” he asked.
“No, only for a few days, then Dr. Huttner will be back. You’re fortunate to have him, Mr. Merchado. He’s one of the finest surgeons I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe … and then again, maybe not.” Merchado’s squint and wise smile said that he would push the matter no further. “But you leave your card with me just the same. I have a bunch of relatives that are gonna be beating down your door to get you to do some kind of operation on them. Even if they got nothing wrong.”
With a grin that understated his delight, David left the room, then looked at the list of patients he had to see that morning. The names filled both sides of the file card on which he had printed them. Joy sparkled through him. For so many years he had not allowed himself even to daydream of having such a case load. As he neared the end of the hallway, he gave a gleeful yip and danced through the stairway door. Behind him, two plump, dowager nurses watched his performance, then exchanged disapproving expressions and several “tsks” before heading pompously to their charges.
David’s rounds were more exhilarating than anything he had done in medicine in years. Even Charlotte Thomas seemed to have brightened up a small notch, although simply seeing her with the benefit of daylight may have had something to do with that impression. Her bed was cranked to a forty-five-degree angle and an aide was spoon-feeding her tiny chips of ice, one at a time. David tried several ways to determine how she was feeling, but her only response was a weak smile and a nod. He examined her abdomen, wincing inwardly at the total absence of bowel sounds. No cause for panic yet, but each day without sounds made the possibility of yet another operation more likely. For a moment David toyed with the notion of stopping even the ice chip feedings, then, with one last look at Charlotte, he decided to leave things as they were.
At the nurses’ station he wrote a lengthy progress note and some orders for maneuvers he hoped might improve her situation. By the time he finished it was nearly one o’clock. He had twenty minutes for coffee and a sandwich before he was due in his own office. Five and a half hours had passed in what seemed almost no time at all. He tried to remember the last time it had been like this and realized it had probably been eight years. Not, he reflected ruefully, since the accident.
Even his afternoon office hours, at times embarrassingly slow, were made pleasantly hectic today by frequent phone calls from the hospital nurses to clarify orders or discuss problems.
At precisely five o’clock, as the door closed behind the last patient, David’s office nurse, Mrs. Houlihan, yelled, “Dr. Shelton, there’s a call for you from Dr. Armstrong. Her secretary is putting her on. You can pick up on three.”
“Very funny,” David shouted back from his office. He had only one telephone: its number happened to end in three. It was good to see Houlihan enjoying the unaccustomed busy day as much as he was.
“I’m off to cook up some hash for my brood. Good night, Doctor,” she called out.
“Good night, Houlihan,” David answered.
Moments later, Dr. Margaret Armstrong came on the line. As the first female chief of cardiology at a major hospital, Armstrong had earned nearly as much of a reputation in her field as had Wallace Huttner in his. Of all those on the medical staff of Doctors Hospital, she had been the most cordial and helpful to David, especially during his first year. Although she referred her patients to cardiac surgeons almost exclusively, or, where appropriate, to Huttner, she had, on several occasions, sent a case to David, taking pains each time to send him a thank-you note for the excellent care he delivered.
“David? How are things going?” she asked now.
“Busy today, but enjoying every minute, Dr. Armstrong.” Perhaps it was the regal bearing, the aristocratic air that surrounded the woman, perhaps it was the twenty or so years difference in their ages—whatever the reason, David had never once
had the impulse to address Margaret Armstrong by her first name. Nor had he ever been encouraged to.
“Well, I’m calling to see if I can make it busier for you,” Armstrong said. “To be perfectly honest, I called Wally Huttner’s office first, but I was pleased to hear that you’re covering for him.”
“Thanks. Fire away.”
“It’s an elderly gentleman named Butterworth—Aldous Butterworth, if you will. He’s seventy-seven, but bright and spry as a puppy. He was doing fine for a week following a minor coronary until just a little while ago, when he suddenly started complaining about tingling and pain in his right leg. His pulses have disappeared from the groin on down.”
“Embolus?” David asked, more out of courtesy than any uncertainty about the diagnosis.
“I would think so, David. The leg is already developing some pallor. Are you in the mood to fish us out a clot?”
“Happy to.” David beamed. “Have you gone over the risks with him?”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to do it again. David, I’m a bit worried about general anesthesia in this man. Do you think it might be possible to …”
David was so excited about capping his day with a major case that he actually cut her short. “Do him under local? Absolutely. It’s the only way to fly.”
“I knew I could count on you,” Armstrong said. “I am most anxious to hear how things go. Aldous is a dear old friend as well as a patient. Listen, there’s an Executive Committee meeting in an hour, and as chief of staff in this madhouse I have to attend. Could I meet you somewhere later this evening?”
“Sure,” David said. “I have several patients to see before I head home. How about Four South? I’ve got a woman to see there with total body failure. Maybe you can even come up with some ideas.”
“Glad to try,” Armstrong said. “Eight o’clock?”
“Eight o’clock,” David echoed.
Hands scrubbed and clasped protectively in front of him, David backed into Operating Room 10, then slipped into a surgical gown and began making preparations to orchestrate and conduct his own symphony. Aldous Butterworth seemed small and vulnerable stretched out on the narrow operating table.
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