The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  “Yes. Thank you so very much, Dr. Cole,” he said. He had a very courtly manner. R.J. couldn’t tell what he was really thinking.

  That evening, Tom came back to the house on Brattle Street early. She was seated at the kitchen table doing paperwork, and he came in and took a beer from the refrigerator. “Want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He sat down opposite her. She had an urge to reach out and touch him. He looked tired, and in the old days she’d have gone around and massaged his neck. At one time they were very touchy. He had massaged her often. Lately they had tended to demonize one another, but she couldn’t escape the fact that he had had many sweet traits.

  “Rourke called me,” Tom said, “and told me about what happened in Jamaica Plain.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He, uh … asked me about our marriage. And I was frank and truthful in my answer.”

  She looked at him and smiled. Then was then, she thought; this was now. “Always the best way.”

  “Yes. Rourke said if we’re going to be divorced, proceedings should be instituted at once, so that any controversy about your work at Family Planning won’t prejudice my defense.”

  R.J. nodded. “It makes sense to me. Our marriage has been over for a long time, Tom.”

  “Yes. Yes, it has, R.J.” He smiled at her. “Now would you like that beer?”

  “No, thanks,” she said, and went back to her paperwork.

  Tom took some of his things and moved out at once, so easily she was convinced he had somebody’s place to move right into.

  At first she could detect no change in the house on Brattle Street, because she was accustomed to being alone there. She returned each night to the same empty house, but now there was a sense of peace, an absence of the signs of him that used to annoy and aggravate. A pleasing expansion of her personal space.

  Eight nights after he left, however, she began to receive telephone calls.

  There were different voices, and they phoned all night at different hours, probably on shifts.

  “You kill babies, bitch,” a man’s voice whispered.

  “You cut up our children. You vacuum up human beings as if they were trash.”

  One woman informed R.J. pityingly that she was under demonic control. “You will burn in hellfire for eternity,” the caller said. She had a throaty whisper and a genteel voice.

  R.J. had her telephone number changed to an unlisted one. A couple of evenings later, when she came home from work she saw that large nails had been hammered into the expensively restored door of her heirloom Georgian house. They held a poster.

  WANTED

  WE NEED YOUR HELP TO STOP

  DR. ROBERTA J. COLE

  The picture showed her looking angrily into the camera, her mouth open unflatteringly. The text beneath the picture said:

  Cambridge resident Dr. Roberta J. Cole spends most of each week pretending to be a respectable doctor and teacher at the Lemuel Grace Hospital and at the Massachusetts College of Physicians and Surgeons.

  But she is an abortionist. Every Thursday she kills from 10 to 13 babies.

  Please join us by:

  1. Prayer and fasting—God is not willing that any should perish. Pray for Dr. Cole’s salvation.

  2. Write and call her and share the gospel and your willingness to help her leave her profession.

  3. Ask her to STOP DOING ABORTIONS! “Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them.” Ephesians 5:11

  The base cost of an abortion is $250.00. Most doctors in Dr. Cole’s position earn 50 percent of the cost of each abortion. That would make Dr. Cole’s income from killing almost 700 children last year to be approximately $87,500.

  The poster listed ways in which R.J. could be reached, giving her daily schedule and the addresses and telephone numbers of the hospital, the medical school, the PMS clinic and the Family Planning clinic. At the bottom of the poster was a line that read:

  REWARD: LIVES WILL BE SAVED IF SHE IS STOPPED!!!!!

  There was an ominous silence during the week that followed. One morning the Boston Globe carried a story quoting local political activists regarding the fact that District Attorney Edward W. Wilhoit was testing the wind for a run at the lieutenant governor’s office. That Sunday, a letter from the cardinal condemning abortion as mortal sin was read in all churches of the Boston archdiocese. Two days later, national media carried the story that yet another assisted suicide had been performed in Michigan by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. That evening, when R.J. turned on her television for the eleven P.M. news, there was a sound bite of Wilhoit addressing a convention of senior citizens. He pledged to “bring swift justice to the antichrist among us, who through feticide, suicide, and homicide seek to usurp the powers of the Holy Trinity.”

  “I would hope that we can be civilized, no rancor or quarreling, and just split everything, assets and debts. Right down the middle,” Tom said.

  She agreed. She was sure he would be kicking and screaming if there were real money to kick and scream about, but most of what they had earned had gone into the house and to pay his medical school debts.

  Tom became embarrassed when he told her he was living with Cindy Wolper, his office manager—blond, bubbly, in her late twenties.

  “We’re going to be married,” he said, and looked enormously relieved to have finally made the grade from marital cheat to one of the newly engaged.

  Poor baby, she thought angrily.

  Despite the declarations of civility, Tom brought a lawyer, Jerry Saltus, when they met to discuss the division of property.

  “Do you plan to keep the Brattle Street house?” he asked.

  R.J. stared at him in amazement. They had bought the house at his insistence and over her objections. Because of his obsession, they had sunk all their money into it. “Don’t you want the house?”

  “Cindy and I have decided to live in a condominium.”

  “Well, I don’t want your pretentious house either. I never wanted it.” She was aware that her voice was rising and that she sounded waspish, but she didn’t care.

  “What about the farmhouse?”

  “I suppose it should be sold too,” she said.

  “If you’ll handle the sale of the country place, I’ll arrange to sell the house here. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He said he especially wanted the cherry breakfront, the sofa, the two wingback chairs, and the large-screen television. She’d have wanted the breakfront, but he agreed she could have the piano and a Persian rug, a hundred-year-old Heriz that she treasured. The other furniture pieces they divided by taking turns in choosing items. The agreement was swiftly and bloodlessly made, and the lawyer fled before they changed their minds and became ugly.

  Sunday evening R.J. went to Alex’s Gymnasium with Gwen, who would be leaving for Idaho in a couple of weeks. Before their aerobics class, R.J. was telling her about Tom and his future bride when Alexander Manakos came in with a repairman and went to the other side of the gym, discussing a broken exercise machine.

  “He’s looking over here,” Gwen said.

  “Who?”

  “Manakos. At you. He’s looked at you several times.”

  “Gwen. Don’t be a fool.”

  But the club owner patted the repairman on the shoulder and began to walk in their direction.

  “I’ll be right back. I have to call my office,” Gwen said, and fled.

  His clothes were as well tailored as Tom’s, but not from Brooks Brothers. His suits were freer, au courant. He was an extremely beautiful man.

  “Dr. Cole.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Alex Manakos.” He shook her hand almost impersonally. “Is everything satisfactory for you here at my club?”

  “Yes. I enjoy the club very much.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Are there any complaints I can remedy?”

  “No. How do you know my name?”

  “I asked somebody. I po
inted you out to her. I thought I’d say hello. You look like a very nice person.”

  “Thank you.” She was no good at this sort of thing and was sorry he had decided to approach her. Up close, his hair reminded her of the young Redford. His nose was hooked, which made him look somewhat cruel.

  “Would you have dinner with me some evening? Or drinks, whatever you prefer. A chance to sit and talk, get to know one another.”

  “Mr. Manakos, I don’t—”

  “Alex. My name is Alex. Would you feel better if we were introduced by somebody you know?”

  She smiled. “That isn’t necessary.”

  “Look, I’ve startled you, coming at you this way, like a pickup. I know you’re here for an aerobics lesson. Think it over, and let me know before you leave.”

  Before she could open her mouth to protest, and tell him it wouldn’t matter, he went away.

  “You’re going out with him, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Why? He looks very nice.”

  “Gwen, he’s gorgeous, but I’m not attracted to him at all. Honestly. I can’t tell you why.”

  “So? He’s not proposing marriage or suggesting you spend the rest of your life with him. He simply asked you out.”

  Gwen didn’t let up. During the lesson, between every set, she returned to the same subject.

  “He seems to be very nice. When was the last time you had a date with a man?”

  As she danced, R.J. considered what she knew about him. A former All-American basketball player at Boston College, he came from an immigrant family. In the lobby was an early picture of him on Boston Common, an unsmiling kid with a shoe-shine box. By the time he entered college he had rented a cubbyhole shoeshine stand in a building on Kenmore Square and hired several people to work there. As his athletic legend grew, Alex’s became the “in” spot to get your shoes shined, and soon he had a larger shine parlor with a refreshment stand. He wasn’t good enough for professional basketball, but he graduated with a business degree and enough publicity to get whatever capital he needed from Boston banks, and he opened the health club, full of Nautilus equipment and trained instructors. For old times’ sake, the club had a shoe-shine parlor, but the refreshment stand had become a bar and café. Now Alex Manakos owned the health club, a Greek restaurant on the waterfront and another in Cambridge, and God only knew what else.

  She knew he was unmarried.

  “When was the last time you even had a conversation with a man who wasn’t a patient or a doctor? He seems very nice. Very nice.

  “Go out with him,” Gwen hissed.

  After R.J. had showered and changed, she went into the bar. When she told Alex Manakos she would be happy to get together with him some evening, he smiled.

  “That’s good. You’re a physician, am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I never went out with a woman doctor before.”

  What have I gotten myself into? she asked herself. “You go out only with men doctors?”

  “Ho ho ho,” he said, but he was looking at her with interest. So they worked it out and they had a date for dinner. Saturday.

  The next morning, both the Herald and the Globe published stories on abortion in Boston. Reporters had interviewed individuals on both sides of the controversy, and each paper ran several pictures of activists. In addition, the Herald reproduced two of the posters of “Wanted” abortionists. One was of Dr. James Dickenson, a gynecologist who performed abortions at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline. The other was the poster of Dr. Roberta J. Cole.

  On Wednesday it was announced that Allen Greenstein, M.D., had been appointed associate chairman of the department of medicine at the Lemuel Grace Hospital, to succeed Maxwell B. Roseman, M.D.

  For the next several days there were newspaper and television interviews with Dr. Greenstein about the fact that in a few years newborn infants would be genetically screened, making it possible for parents to know the health dangers their children would face in the course of their lives, and perhaps what they would die of.

  R.J. and Sidney Ringgold found themselves thrown together on Grand Rounds and at a departmental meeting, and passing each other several times in the corridors. Each time, Sidney looked into her eyes and greeted her warmly and pleasantly.

  R.J. would have liked him to stop and talk. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t ashamed of performing abortions, that she was doing a difficult and important job, one she had taken on because she was a good doctor.

  So why did she feel hangdog and furtive as she walked the corridors of her hospital?

  Damn them!

  On Saturday afternoon she made certain she came home early enough to shower at her leisure and dress slowly and carefully. At seven o’clock she entered Alex’s Gymnasium and walked into the lounge. Alexander Manakos was standing at one end of the bar, talking to two men. She sat on a stool at the other end of the bar, and presently he came over to her. He was even better looking than she remembered.

  “Good evening.”

  He nodded. He was carrying a newspaper. When he opened it, she saw it was Monday’s edition of the Globe. “Is it true, what this says? That you, you know, provide abortions?”

  This wasn’t to be an accolade, she knew. Her head went up; she drew herself erect so she could look him in the eye. “Yes. It’s a legal and ethical medical procedure that’s vital to the health and lives of my patients,” she said levelly, “and I do it well.”

  “You disgust me. I wouldn’t do you with somebody else’s dick.”

  Very nice.

  “Well, you certainly won’t with your own,” she told him calmly, and she got off the stool and walked out of Alex’s Gymnasium, passing a booth in which a motherly person with white hair was applauding, tears in her eyes. It would have been more comforting to R.J. if the woman hadn’t been drunk.

  * * *

  “I don’t need anyone. I can live my life by myself. By myself. I don’t need anybody, get it?

  “And I want you to get off my back, friend,” she told Gwen fiercely.

  “Okay, okay,” Gwen said, and sighed, and escaped.

  8

  A JURY OF PEERS

  The scheduled April meeting of the Medical Incidents Committee of the Middlesex Memorial Hospital was postponed because of a springtime blizzard that covered the grimy snow and old ice with a clean white layer that would have been cheering earlier in the season. As it was, R.J. grumbled about still more snow. Two days later the temperature rose to seventy-four degrees, and the new spring snow and the old winter snow disappeared together, the gutters flowing with the runoff.

  The Medical Incidents Committee met on the following week. It was not a lengthy session. In the face of clear evidence and testimony that Elizabeth Sullivan was dying and in terrible pain, they decided unanimously that Dr. Thomas A. Kendricks had not acted unprofessionally in heavily sedating Mrs. Sullivan.

  A few days after the meeting Phil Roswell, one of the committee members, told R.J. there had been no debate. “Damn it, let’s be honest. We all do that to hasten a merciful end when death is close and inevitable,” Roswell said. “Tom wasn’t trying to hide a crime, he wrote the order honestly, right there in her chart. If we punished him, we’d have to punish ourselves and most of the doctors we know.”

  Nat Rourke had a discreet chat with the district attorney and came away with the knowledge that Wilhoit did not intend to bring Elizabeth Sullivan’s death to the grand jury.

  Tom was exultant. He wanted to turn a page in his life, anxious to get on with the divorce and begin his new marriage.

  * * *

  R.J.’s mood was exacerbated by the beggars who were everywhere. She had been born and raised in Boston and she loved it, but now she couldn’t bear to look at the street people. She saw them throughout the city, sifting through the trash cans and Dumpsters, trundling their few possessions in shopping carts stolen from the supermarkets, sleeping in shipping crates on cold loading doc
ks, lined up for free meals at the soup kitchen on Tremont Street, taking over the benches in Boston Common and other public places.

  To her, homeless people were a medical problem. In the 1970s, psychiatrists had lobbied to phase out the massive stone public asylums where the insane had been stockpiled under shameful conditions. The idea was that patients would be returned to freedom to live in harmony alongside the sane, as was being done successfully in several European countries. But in America the community mental health centers set up to serve the freed patients were underfunded, and they failed. Patients scattered. It was impossible for psychiatric social workers to keep track of someone who slept in a cardboard carton one night and miles away over a steam grate the next night. All over the United States, alcoholics, drug addicts, schizophrenics, and every variety of the mentally ill made up an army of the homeless. Many of them turned to begging, some soliciting on subways and buses with loud speeches and pitiful stories, others sitting against a building with a cup or overturned cap next to crude signs making their pleas: “Will work for food. Four children at home.” R.J. had read a study estimating that 95 percent of America’s beggars were addicted to drugs or alcohol, and that some begged up to three hundred dollars a day, money they promptly spent on substance abuse. R.J. thought with great guilt of the 5 percent who weren’t addicted, merely homeless and jobless. Still, she steeled herself against giving and was furious when she saw someone dropping a dime or a quarter into a cup instead of pressuring politically to get homeless people off the streets and into adequate care.

  It wasn’t only the homeless; all the ingredients of her existence in the city got on her nerves—the ending of her marriage, the depersonalization of her profession, the daily paperwork grind, the traffic, the fact that she hated to go to work now in a place where Allen Greenstein had beaten her out of a job.

  Everything merged into a bitter cocktail. Realization slowly dawned that it was time for her to change her life drastically, to leave Boston.

  The two medical communities where there were programs into which someone with her hybrid interests might fit were Baltimore and Philadelphia. She sat down and wrote letters to Roger Carleton at Johns Hopkins and Irving Simpson at Penn, asking if they were interested in her services.