Doctors (17 page)

Laura reached over, appropriated one of his coffees, and retorted, “Bullshit. I know damn well what really happened.”

Barney’s drooping eyelids opened to near-normal width.

“You do?”

She nodded, smiling. “You had an unexpected romantic encounter. Who was the lucky girl, Livingston—a nurse?”

“Come on, Laura, do I ask you about your sex life?”

“Yes. And I usually don’t hold out on you.”

“Well, this is different. I’ve sworn a kind of medical oath. Please don’t push.”

He was longing to share his feelings of pain and confusion with her. But he dared not break his word. Not for fear of Holmes, but out of respect for Hippocrates. He took a swill of coffee, commenting, “God, this stuff is awful.”

“In my considered judgment,” Laura concluded lightheartedly, “you and Grete finally got on the same wavelength.”

Barney forced a tired smile. “How did you figure it out?”

“Deductive logic, Barn. Grete didn’t come in till after two and you look like an unmade bed. I mean, you haven’t even shaved.”

“I haven’t?” He felt his cheek. “Thanks, Laura, I really didn’t notice. Now will you do me a favor before leaving me in peace?”

“Sure.”

“Get me another cup of coffee to replace the one you stole.”

As she amiably rose to fetch a further dose of caffeine, Barney’s headache was compounded by heartache.

Is this what confidentiality is all about? he wondered. I mean, not being able to talk to my best friend in the whole damn world?

“Bad news, Barney—we’ve lost Alison.”

At first he was taken aback. But the twinkle in Bennett Landsmann’s eye reassured him that it was not by a misadventure similar to Maury’s.

“Apparently some guy at Seth Lazarus’s table had to leave school suddenly. And the minute our partner heard, she sweet-talked Lubar into reassigning her—”

“Probably by promising
not
to make a pass at him.”

“That was rather ungallant. True, but nonetheless ungallant.” Bennett smiled. “Word has it that Seth wields a scalpel second only to Errol Flynn. So Alison wanted to hone her skills with a master.”

“Okay with me. Except that leaves us with a cadaver named Leonardo. Do you think we could change it?”

His partner nodded. “How about ‘Frank’?”

“Pretty common name,” Barney observed. “It could refer to anything from FDR to a hot dog.”

“Come on, Livingston, to a true sports fan the only real Frank is Gifford, the New York Giants’ immortal halfback—”

Barney’s tired face lit up. “Actually, after a real pileup Frank’s looked worse than this.”

They could delay no longer the inevitable return to the mutilation of human flesh. They propped
Gray’s
open and began slicing carefully down toward the epicardium.

After they had been working twenty minutes or so in silence, Bennett whispered, “You know, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“You too?”

“I kept thinking about this lab. About this guy whose guts we’re so blithely pulling apart. Somehow I can understand why it was illegal for so many centuries.”

Barney nodded. “I know. It’s like a sort of intrusion on his privacy.”

“Yeah,” Bennett agreed. “And this smell we can’t wash off—it’s like the mark of Cain.”

“Stay loose,” Barney replied, “just remember we’re not invading the guy’s
soul.
”

Bennett looked at his lab partner with gratitude. “That’s a nice way of looking at it, Livingston. It kind of eases my conscience.”

As they returned to the relentless infiltration of Frank’s vital organs, Barney thought guiltily, I’m sorry, Maury, I shouldn’t have quoted you.

“The strain is starting to get to me, Barn.”

“Already? For God’s sake, Castellano, it’s barely been a week—and Biochem has yet to rear its hydra-headed formulae.”

They were sitting by themselves, lunching on gelatinous lumps of unknown origin camouflaged by an unidentifiable brownish solution.

“Why does everybody have to lean on my shoulder?” Laura complained.

“Who’s leaning?”

“The whole Deanery—it seems like.”

“Well, now maybe you know how
I
feel when people choose me as a father-confessor.”

“But you like it,” she protested.

“Yeah, sure. Actually I get real satisfaction from helping my friends sort out their problems. Besides, it’s kind of a dress rehearsal for being a psychiatrist.”

“Okay,” she conceded, “friends are one thing. But I don’t have to advise every girl on the corridor. I mean, I hardly know Alison Redmond.”

“Ah, dear old Alison. She jumped ship from my Anatomy table—lured by the legendary silver scalpel of one Seth Lazarus.”

“That’s not the real reason, Barn. She was—how can I put it?—overstimulated by a certain person’s body.”

“Mine or the cadaver’s?” he quipped.

“Bennett’s,” she answered with a smile.

“Oh. Well, actually I can’t be jealous. He’s a really cool guy. But why should that drive Alison away?”

“You figure it out, Dr. Freud. She’s scared about getting involved.”

“That’s a rather unrealistic fantasy. I mean, why should Bennett even look at a rodent like her?”

Laura was not amused.

“He was two years ahead of me at Harvard and I can testify that, regardless of how the package was wrapped, he tended to go for brains.”

“How come he didn’t get to you?”

“None of your business,” Laura replied. But she was blushing slightly.

“Well,” Barney continued, “even if he was that undiscriminating—which I still doubt—what’s Alison’s objection?”

“The truth?” Laura asked. “The honest-to-God truth is she doesn’t want anything to distract her from her studies. She’s absolutely obsessed about being Number One. It’s only the beginning of the term and she’s already taking pills to stay awake and study.”

“She’s a loon. Anyway, spare me any more details.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of Hank Dwyer.

“Say, Barn, can you spare a few minutes?”

“Sure,” he replied congenially, “sit down and join us.”

Hank nodded uneasily to Laura and then answered uncomfortably, “It’s sort of private, Barney. Would it be okay if I drop by your room sometime tonight?”

“Tonight? Okay, yeah—fine, great. Is eleven-thirty okay?”

“Couldn’t it be a little earlier? I like to hit the sack about then.”

“Sorry, Hank, but I’ve got a shitload of work and I really couldn’t spare a second before eleven-thirty.”

Dwyer nodded with gratitude—and then respectfully decamped.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Barney quickly turned to a more burning issue.

“Now, Castellano, I want a simple yes-or-no answer: is Grete Andersen a total nymphomaniac or not?”

Laura shook her head. “I’m sorry, that’s not a yes-or-no question.”

She rose. The consultants’ consultation was over.

It is something of a paradox that Biochemistry, which, literally defined, is the study of the life process, is probably the most deadening course a medical student has to take. For living function is reduced to inanimate diagrams and complex formulae scrolled on the innumerable handouts.

“Life is impossible,” Professor Michael Pfeifer began dramatically, “without the organic compounds known as amino acids. They are the building blocks of which proteins are constructed, as well as the end product of protein digestion.”

Then Pfeifer went on to cast his net a little wider: “There are approximately eighty amino acids in nature. Only about twenty are needed for human metabolism or growth. The ones provided by food are called ‘essential.’ The others, which can be manufactured by the body, are known either as ‘nonessential’ or ‘glycines.’ I’ve listed both groups on the board. But don’t bother to write them down.”

At this dispensation from note-taking, the students breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“I’ll just read them,” said Pfeifer casually. And he did: “Histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, cysteine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, threonine, tryptophan, valine.”

Pfeifer then turned to the second blackboard and reeled off the names of the “nonessential” group, adding, “Naturally, we will be getting back to this in detail later.”

Hey, this guy is really easygoing, Barney thought. So much for the myth about Biochem being a horror show. And then it happened.

On either side of the room, assistants began distributing thick sheaves of paper on which—as the students soon discovered—were detailed drawings of structures of everything that Pfeifer had so briefly and amiably touched upon.

If there was such a thing as a collective freshman psyche, it had fallen into a complete collective depression. The room resonated with an echolalia of groans. And then came Pfeifer’s cheery coup de grâce.

“Just to keep us on our toes, I think we’ll have our first little quiz three weeks from today.”

There was a bizarre silence. For a few seconds every single student had stopped breathing. They knew there was a vital question to be asked and all watched to see which of them had the courage to voice it. At this moment Laura raised her hand.

“Yes, Miss … your name, please?”

“Laura Castellano, sir. I just wanted to ask if we’ll be expected to have this handout memorized?”

Over a hundred heads craned forward, the better to entrap the professor’s answer.

“Well, Miss Castellano, that’s jumping the gun a bit. We will be covering a lot more material between then and now and it will all be a matter of priorities. After all, can one say that twenty-odd amino acids outweigh the fifty-eight proteins we have in blood?”

“Thank you, Professor.” (You sadistic sonovabitch.)

“Any other questions?” Pfeifer asked magnanimously.

Barney, sitting in the back row with Bennett Landsmann, whispered to his lab partner, “Ask him where he parks his car so we can bomb it.”

As the class dispersed, Barney called out, “Good going, Castellano, that was guts ball. Now none of us will be able to get a night’s sleep.”

Barney was angry.

Angry at the way the dean had sworn him to silence about Maury. Angry about Pfeifer’s senseless demands upon his flagging memory. About the prospect of having to interrupt his studying to hold unofficial “office hours.” He felt almost angry enough to throw a punch at someone. But he settled for the next best thing.

He hastened to his room, whipped off his loafers and jeans, donned shorts and sneakers, and—to warm up—double-timed it downstairs to the gym in the basement.

A full-court basketball game was in progress. He did not know any of the players, except for Bennett Landsmann. Most of them looked like older guys, probably interns or residents. He watched from the sidelines for a few minutes, gaining some vicarious relief from the fact that the contest was being fiercely fought. Obviously, he was not the only guy around this place who needed physical catharsis.

After a little more than five minutes, a rangy red-haired player held up his hands in a gesture of apology.

“Hey, sorry, guys, I gotta hold the clamps for Glanville
while he does a pelviolithotomy.” He motioned to Barney. “You interested in a little roughhouse ball?”

Barney nodded eagerly.

“Okay, guys,” said the carrottop, “this poor schmuck wants to break his ribcage. Go easy on him.” He then turned to Barney and smiled. “Have fun, buddy boy. Just be careful or those dead-end kids will have you on a stretcher.”

Barney nodded again, but could not suppress a sudden memory of the night before.

A half hour later the opposing five had accumulated more bruises than most emergency rooms see on a Saturday night. As they all staggered off court, Barney was out of breath and soaked with sweat. It had been wonderful. Bennett tossed him a slightly used towel and commented admiringly, “God, Livingston, you play dirty. Remind me always to be on
your
team.”

“Bennett, coming from you that’s a real compliment. You tripped their center at least four times. Where did you learn your fundamentals—Sing Sing?”

“Would you believe Torino?”

“You mean Italy? What the hell were you doing?”

“While I was at Oxford, every weekend I flew over and played for Fiat-Torino. I got three hundred bucks a game and the chance to travel to a lot of places I would otherwise never have seen. But let me tell you, what the Europeans lack in basketball finesse, they make up with elbows and knees. I think the Russkies get a bonus for every pint of blood they spill.”

“You’ve been up against Russia?”

“Just Spartak, one of their so-called amateur clubs. I was more down than up.”

“Holy shit, Landsmann, I’m snowed, I really am. I’m snowed.”

“Don’t be, Livingston. Because, frankly, if you ever wanted to defect, there’d be a job waiting for you in Leningrad.”

By the time he showered and had dinner, Barney felt sufficiently defused to be able to focus on the books. He planned to spend four or five solid hours of memorization that was somehow misdiagnosed as intellectual activity.

As he ambled slowly down the corridor, he began to hear music. An acoustic tidal wave resembling Mantovani’s violinists on LSD was emanating from Maury Eastman’s room. He shivered inwardly—and tentatively approached the open door.

The inside of the room was blindingly bright. A bar of
theatrical spots ran the length of the ceiling, each brilliant beam focusing on some sort of artwork—a miniature gallery framed by two enormous stereo speakers.

“It’s not the Flying Dutchman, you can enter,” announced a resonant baritone voice from behind him. Barney whirled to discover a sharp-featured, smartly groomed young man in his early twenties.

“Can I offer you a drink?” he inquired cordially.

Barney cupped his ear. “I can’t hear you. Can you turn that racket down?”

“I’d rather not. Mahler really should be played fortissimo.”

“Then get yourself some earphones—there are guys here who can’t study fortissimo.”

The music lover smiled affably, walked over to an instrument panel closely resembling that of a Boeing 707, and turned the knobs that eventually made the room stop reverberating.

“Thanks.” Barney nodded and turned to leave.