Acceptable Losses (31 page)

At least, Damon thought, he didn’t say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” Zinfandel said soothingly. “The surgeon would only be held in reserve, as it were.”

If he says as it were once more, Damon thought, I’m getting up and leaving this office.

“Do you have a surgeon who is a specialist in internal medicine whom you’ have faith in?” Zinfandel asked, his pencil poised to put down a name.

“No.” Damon felt a little ashamed to have to admit that upwardly mobile as he had proved to be in his career he had neglected an important cultural accessory like a personal surgeon.

“I would suggest Dr. Rogarth then,” Dr. Zinfandel said. “He is preeminent in his field and he operates here. Do you object if I call him in on your case?”

“I am in your hands, Doctor,” Damon said humbly, thinking, This place is overrun with preeminence.

“Good. Can you be prepared to come into the hospital tomorrow at noon?”

“Whenever you say.”

“Do you want a private room?”

“Yes.” Good old
Threnody
, Damon thought. Before its publication he would have asked for the cheapest bed in the hospital. Wealth had its advantages. You could suffer without witnesses and whatever groans you heard would be your own.

“Be prepared to stay a minimum of three days.” Dr. Zinfandel stood up. The interview was over. He extended his hand as Damon stood, too. When they shook hands, Damon was surprised by the tension in the doctor’s grasp, as though his hand were attached to his arm by live electric wires. When he got to know Dr. Zinfandel better, Damon thought as he left the office, he would have a long list of questions of his own to ask the doctor about
his
health.

Five days later he was in the pleasant private room being prepared for an operation at seven o’clock the next morning on what the surgeon and Dr. Zinfandel had agreed might very likely be a severe intestinal ulcer. The tests had been dismaying. Dr. Zinfandel’s hunch had been correct and his and the surgeon’s warnings about the consequences of postponing the operation had been dire.

Oliver had called his brother again and his brother had said that the surgeon, Dr. Rogarth, had an excellent reputation. When Oliver had told him this, Damon had smiled wryly and asked Oliver if he remembered his speech about never having had a sick day in his life. “It taught me a lesson,” Damon said. “The gods don’t like boasting.” He tried to seem calm and take everything lightly, but he was panicky and he didn’t like the feeling. Everything has been leading up to this, he thought, everything since the goddamn telephone call.

Dr. Rogarth was not panicky. Corpulent, rosy-cheeked, dressed in pearly gray, he flowed into the room, a broad, slow-moving Mississippi of a man, his gestures deliberate and papal, his speech unhurried and measured. He had soft, pudgy hands, not what one would expect in a preeminent surgeon. He sat himself down on a straight chair beside the bed. “I have explained the procedure to Mrs. Damon,” he said. “I believe that she shares my confidence that all will go well. The anesthetist who examined you foresees no great difficulties. I expect you will be back in this room when you emerge from the recovery room after the operation, four or five hours after you have left it for the operating theatre.” He recited all this as though he had learned it in a manual and could repeat it a thousand times, on his own deathbed if necessary. “If you have any questions, I would be pleased to answer them to the best of my ability.”

“Yes,” Damon said, “I have a question. When will I be able to go home?”

A sad little smile fleetingly appeared on the full, girlishly curved lips, like a ripple sweeping placidly across the broad surface of the waters. People for whom the doctor wished well and to whose welfare he dedicated most of his life were always anxious to leave him at the first opportunity for flight, the smile said. “It is impossible to be exact in these matters. I would guess twelve, fifteen days, depending on your powers of recovery. Do you have any other questions?”

“No.”

Dr. Rogarth stood up, straightened the pearl-gray vest over his comfortable stomach. “I suggest you eat nothing after five
P.M.
today. An orderly will be in to shave your chest and give you an enema this evening and you will be sedated for the night. In the morning the nurse will give you a shot before you leave this room and you’ll probably be asleep before you’re wheeled to the elevator. I trust you have a good night, Sir.”

As he left the room, Sheila was coming in. She had gone down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. Damon had kept count. It was the sixth cup of coffee of the afternoon for her. Ordinarily she had one cup of coffee at breakfast and that was it for the day. It was the one sign of strain that she permitted herself. Her face was calm and composed and her hair was carefully brushed. She smiled at Dr. Rogarth, who made the slightest of corpulent bows.

“I just dropped in,” the doctor said, “to assure myself of the state of your husband’s morale, Madam. I’m happy to say I find it excellent.”

“He jests at scars who never felt a wound,” Damon said lightly. Empty bravado, he thought, for the gallery. Grandstanding, as Manfred Weinstein would have said in his baseball days. “This is a first time for me.”

“You’re a lucky man, Sir,” Dr. Rogarth said. “Myself, I’ve had three major operations in the last fifteen years.”

“Then you’re a walking advertisement for them,” Damon said, a small blandishment for the knife wielder.

Dr. Rogarth smiled bleakly. “I’m too fat,” he said. “I don’t drink and I hardly eat and I’m too fat.” He left the room, majestically.

“That’s the first thing he’s said up to now,” Damon said, “that sounded human. About being fat.”

“You all right?” Sheila stood over him, staring hard at him.

“Fine. I just feel foolish lying here in a bed in the middle of the afternoon.”

“This hospital’s been here for over fifty years,” Sheila said. “You’re not going to change their routine in just five days. I called Manfred. He’s chipper as a blue jay. He’s hopping all over the hospital and he’s already discovered a marijuana ring. He’s also discovered a twenty-two-year-old nurse he’s seriously thinking of marrying. He said he’d like to make a bet with you that he’d get out of the hospital before you did. He said he’d give you eight-to-five odds.”

Damon grinned. “Maybe we’ll have a coming out party together.”

“I told him that no matter who gets out first he has to come and stay with us at least until he can throw away his crutches.”

“You’re going to have two cranky old men on your hands. Why don’t you arrange to hire a practical nurse to help out?”

“You two can be as cranky as you want,” Sheila said decisively. “I don’t need any help. You know me. I can match crank for crank with anybody.”

“That’s no lie.” Damon reached out and took her hand. “When I hold your hand like this,” he said softly, “I feel that no harm can come to me.”

He felt a sudden spasm of pain in his stomach and involuntarily he gripped Sheila’s hand.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“Nothing.” He tried to smile. “The last flicker of Doris’s potato salad.” He wished the hours would pass quickly and that the sedation he had been promised had already taken effect. For the first time in his life he longed for unconsciousness.

It was past noon and Sheila and Oliver were still sitting in the private hospital room. They had both been there when Damon had been wheeled out, with a last little sedated wave of the hand at seven that morning. By now they had exhausted all conversation and they tensed again and again when they heard footsteps approaching along the corridor. Sheila, who had given up smoking when she married Damon, had gone through a whole package of Marlboros and the room, even with the door open, was thick with smoke. Both Rogarth and Zinfandel had promised Sheila they would come down and talk to her as soon as the operation was over.

It was over five hours now and neither of them had appeared.

Then Dr. Rogarth came into the room, still in his green operating smock and cap, with the gauze mask pushed up on his forehead. He looked tired and grave.

“Where is he?” Sheila demanded. “How is he? What took so long?” Her voice was harsh, no trace of her usual melodic civility in it. “You said he’d be here by now.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Damon,” the doctor said. “He’s in the Intensive Care Unit. Your husband is a very sick man, very, very sick.”

“What does that mean?”

“The operation was much more extensive than we had hoped it would be,” Rogarth said wearily. “Please try to be calm, Madam. There were complications. The ulcer turned out to be perforated. There was an extensive infection of the tissues around the perforation that had to be excised. By all rights your husband should have been screaming in pain for days …”

“It’s not his habit to scream.”

“By medical criteria,” Dr. Rogarth said, “stoicism is by no means an advantage. These were complications that an earlier operation could have avoided. There was so much bleeding … so much.” His gaze wandered, his voice flattened. “It was impossible to see exactly. We’re doing everything we can. He’s on all life support systems, respirator, transfusions … I have to go back now. I have to consult with Dr. Zinfandel, the other doctors who were in attendance. It appears that some bleeding has started again. We have to hope that it will stop by itself.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Sheila said, biting out the words.

“That is why we have to consult. We’re not certain he could endure another session in the operating room. We have to discuss our options, hope the transfusions will be sufficient … They’re continuing.”

“How many transfusions has he had so far?” Oliver asked.

“Twelve.”

“Good God,” Oliver said. “And you’re giving him more?”

“It’s necessary. The blood pressure is down so drastically … You must understand—heroic measures.”

“I don’t know much about medicine,” Oliver said, his voice as hostile as Sheila’s, “but my brother’s a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and he once told me that multiple transfusions are terribly risky.”

Rogarth smiled wanly, all papal certainty gone. “I agree with your brother,” he said. “But if he were here today, I’m sure he would be forced into the same measures we’re taking. I have to go now. They’re waiting for me …” He started out the door.

“I want to see him.” Sheila put out her hand and gripped the doctor’s arm.

“It’s impossible just now, Mrs. Damon,” Rogarth said gently. “He’s being worked on. Perhaps some time in the afternoon, if you come up to the Intensive Care Unit. I can’t promise anything. I’m terribly sorry … It happens so many times …” He sounded vague. “So many times. You go in looking for one thing … you find another. So much bleeding … Dr. Zinfandel will try to come down and keep you abreast of developments.”

“Is he conscious?”

Rogarth shrugged. “It’s hard to be sure,” he said, and went out.

Oliver put his arms around Sheila. “He’ll pull through. I just know it. He’s strong …”

“Your husband’s a very sick man, very, very sick,” Sheila said in a monotone, like Rogarth’s. “Doctor’s gobbledegook. Translation—prepare yourself for the minute that he’s going to die. And soon.”

“Sssh, sssh.” Oliver pulled her closer, kissed her forehead. “I’ll call my brother. If anybody can tell us what has to be done, he can.”

“Three thousand miles away,” Sheila said, “I feel as though
everything’s
three thousand miles away.”

He awoke, or thought he awoke. He felt no pain. It’s finished, he thought. I’ve pulled through. But he was not in bed. He was in what seemed like a small theatre. There was a white screen at the back of a raised stage. He was alone. At least, his was the only presence he felt in the room. He couldn’t tell whether he was sitting or standing or lying down. The screen was lit by a white light, then an image appeared on it. A photograph of Dr. Rogarth, in pearl gray, smiling. Under it the caption—“Dr. Alexander Rogarth Presents—The Death of Roger Damon.”

Damon was furious. “That’s a lousy idea of a joke,” he said or thought or might have said.

Then he was conscious that he was lying, slightly diagonally, on the floor of the apron of the small stage, as the light went off on the screen. Next to him Maurice Fitzgerald was lying, at the same angle. They were not their normal sizes, but elongated; they were both young men and they both were dressed in evening clothes.

“They’re serious,” Damon whispered in the curious manner of talking and not talking at the same time that he seemed to have acquired. “There’re no drinks.”

Then he was conscious that the legs of a corpse jutted out from the wings of the stage on his left. The toes of the corpse were black and swollen, as though they had been bound tightly with wire at their base for a long time to cut off all circulation of the blood. One of the feet was pierced by a gaping dark hole at the instep. Damon knew it was Christ who was lying there, with the wound of the spike that had nailed his foot to the cross. He was Christ and Christ was him and being prepared for burial. He was swept by unutterable sorrow, but could not move.

Dr. Rogarth, still in his pearl-gray suit, came out from the wings and touched the blackened foot, the congested toes. “As I thought,” Rogarth said. “The toes were frozen by pre-Flood water, which never freezes itself but turns everything it touches into ice.”

“I think he recognized me,” Sheila said to Oliver. They were in the little waiting room in the Intensive Care Unit. A small gray-haired woman in a pretty flannel suit was crying softly across from them. Sheila had been allowed in to see Damon for a few minutes toward eight o’clock in the evening. “His eyes were open and I think he tried to wink at me. With all those tubes, especially the two going down his throat, he couldn’t talk if he wanted to. They’re still giving him blood. It’s accumulating in his chest and abdominal cavity, and he’s swelled there to twice its normal size and growing bigger by the minute. It’s compressing the lungs, and he’s having trouble breathing and they have him on oxygen.” She spoke flatly, as though giving a dry annual report to a PTA meeting. “The circulation’s stopped to his feet and they’re as cold as marble. I got the nurse to wrap his feet in a warm blanket. You’d think they’d have thought of that themselves. There’s no word of encouragement from anybody. Zinfandel just keeps repeating, ‘Your husband’s a very sick man.’ He admitted that they now believe an artery has been cut. Until he told me that, all they kept saying was that there was excessive bleeding. Preeminent in their field,” she said bitterly.