Doctors (49 page)

“I will use my best judgment to help the sick and do no harm …”

Bennett Landsmann could not keep from thinking: The Nazi doctors also took this oath. How then could they have done what they did to Hannah?

“I will not give fatal drugs to anyone—even if I am asked. Nor will I suggest any such thing …”

Seth Lazarus moved his lips, but did not say the words. For this was something he could not swear to.

“I will not give a woman any medication to cause abortion …”

Laura Castellano was startled to find herself thinking of that time—so long ago—when she and Barney actively sought out a doctor who would
not
honor this tenet of the Oath.

“I will be chaste and religious in my life and in my practice …”

Hank Dwyer, already sweltering, began to sweat still more profusely. Will this be like the priestly vows I couldn’t take? Am I, even here, being tested by the temptations of the flesh?

“I will not use the knife, not even to remove the stones within …”

Most of the future surgeons among them wondered at this injunction. Yet they were aware that for many centuries cutting human flesh was considered a menial procedure, often done by barbers. There was apparently little distinction between cutting hair and amputating legs.

But then again perhaps there was a reason for this interdiction. A religious one: the body was a sacred temple. Do not enter. Do not trespass.

“I will not abuse my authority to indulge in sexual contact …”

Sitting on the podium with his distinguished colleagues, the surgeon who had made the pass at Grete Andersen tried not to hear this stern commandment of the vows
he’d
taken long ago.

At last the Oath concluded:

“I will never divulge the secrets of my patients, regarding them as holy …”

“I will never divulge the secrets of my patients, regarding them as holy …”

And then Dean Holmes announced, “You are now physicians. Go out and do honor to your profession.”

There is no experience in the world to match it. One might argue that it rivaled the taking of a marriage vow—or Holy Orders—yet for the one there was the institution of divorce and for the other the possibility of renouncing the commitment.

But the Hippocratic Oath could
never
be abjured.

That afternoon they’d made an irreversible commitment to serve humanity and give healing comfort to the suffering.

Furthermore, unlike the vows made in matrimony and religion, theirs was made not to God, but to
Man.
If renouncing God would bring perdition, they would know it only in another world. But should they fail to serve Mankind, they’d know it in
this one.

And so they sallied forth to do battle with disease and death. And one another.

I
n 1962 advances in medicine and automotive mechanics seemed to be moving in parallel lines. A new electric shock device could revive an apparently lifeless patient—the way an emergency jump-start revitalizes a dead car battery.

And in cases where the patient’s own heart failed, physicians were now able to replace the faulty valves with artificial ones—made from such substances as plastic, Dacron, and the like.

The only difference was that spare parts for a car come with a warranty and medical repairs do not.

Were such physicians imitating and perhaps arrogating the work of God? If so would they, like Prometheus, be punished?

Another event was interpreted by some as the visitation of divine wrath against the medical profession when a “harmless” tranquilizer called Thalidomide that doctors had confidently given to pregnant women was found to cause grotesque birth defects.

And that was followed by the moral issue. If women, reassured by their physicians, had been innocently ingesting this hidden poison, were they not entitled to have their pregnancies terminated? Or did medical ethics force them to run the risk of giving birth to malformed children who would lead an impaired and painful life?

The new direction of medicine was affirmed by the bestowal of the Nobel Prize on James Watson and Francis Crick for their discovery of DNA, the stuff of life itself. Despite its daunting nomenclature, deoxyribonucleic acid had a surprisingly simple structure. Shaped like a double helix with, among other things, thiamine and sugar, DNA might ultimately enable scientists to bake “live” gingerbread men. In other words, to create human beings in the laboratory.

Was this not the ultimate outrage to the Chief of Services in Heaven?

And while this brave new world beckoned on the horizon,
humanity would more immediately be served by what would quickly become the most frequently prescribed drug of all time. The saver of souls and soother of psyches, the indispensable palliative for the Age of Anxiety, the miracle of medications: Valium.

The orchestra struck up “Here Comes the Bride.” Laura took Barney’s arm, and all the guests remarked upon her beauty and on the handsomeness of her escort.

It was three days after graduation and the sun was shining through a clear blue sky. But there were some shadows upon what should have been a wholly bright occasion. For the loving relatives and friends were all too painfully aware of who was absent, since, by default, the duty had fallen to Barney to give the bride away.

As they slowly walked down the makeshift aisle created by the rented chairs arranged in the garden of the Talbots’ home, Barney wondered what Laura was feeling. She seemed tranquil, dignified, and calm, the loveliest of brides.

But was she happy?

In scarcely half a dozen measures of “The Wedding March” they reached their destination: Reverend Lloyd, the Talbots’ local vicar, and, on his left, a triumphant Palmer and his Best Man, Tim—“the blond-bland polo nut”—as Barney thought of him. (How ill-at-ease he looked without his horse.)

When all were at their posts, the minister began.

“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation to join together this Man and this Woman in Holy Matrimony.”

After emphasizing the sanctity of the occasion, he asked if anyone present could show just cause why Laura and Palmer should not be joined together. Barney—who believed he could—nonetheless resolved forever to keep his peace. When the reverend asked who giveth this woman, Barney indicated that he gaveth.

At this point, he relinquished Laura to the custody of Palmer, who duly promised to take her as his wedded wife. And she promised to “love, honor, and obey” till death did them part.

The equestrian Best Man then handed over the ring, which Palmer placed on Laura’s finger, and after a few well-chosen platitudes from Reverend Lloyd, the couple kissed for the first time as man and wife.

Instantly, the strains of Mendelssohn’s immortal wedding
theme announced that the time had come for all present to feed their faces and get completely smashed.

Uncertain what his role now was, Barney stood and watched the newlyweds disappear into a flurry of well-wishers.

“Lovely couple, aren’t they?” asked Reverend Lloyd.

“Yeah,” Barney replied, feeling a curious melancholy. “My brother Warren’s in there taking pictures.”

“Are you married?” asked the vicar.

“Uh, no, sir.”

“Well then, Doctor,” Reverend Lloyd said heartily, “with any luck, you may be next!”

It was about this time that Bennett Landsmann began to suffer an identity crisis.

Though he was no stranger to racial prejudice from the total segregation back in Millersburg to the less overt (and therefore more insidious) social ostracism in Cleveland, he had always been able to roll with the blows. And now he had naively thought that his status as a Harvard M.D. would make people look up rather than down at him.

But he was mistaken. For he was quick to realize that his fellow citizens still saw only the black skin beneath the white jacket.

Living in New Haven for his surgical internship—and hopefully residency—in the prestigious Yale-New Haven Hospital, his eyes were opened and his mind perplexed.

The hospital was not just near the city’s ghetto, it was at its very epicenter. And although he himself lived—and parked the new Jaguar with M.D. plates, which Herschel had given him—in a modern air-conditioned apartment building across the parkway near the Old Campus, he spent almost every hour of his day encountering the anger of New Haven blacks.

The university and its nearly all-snow-white students were the rich and privileged; the blacks were the demeaned, neglected, consigned to poverty. The road built off Route 95 between the college and the ghetto was considered a Machiavellian ploy on the part of Yale—a sort of highway-moat to keep the riffraff out and leave the patricians in their tranquil citadel.

Not that the hospital was segregated. Both blacks and whites garbed in medical regalia were visible in equal number. The only difference was that the surgeons who performed the operations were white and the team that mopped the blood up later were descendants of the slaves that Lincoln freed.

Bennett tried to keep his equilibrium and his sense of humor. But he was lost—caught in no-man’s-land between two separate and distinct societies. And he did not feel at home in either. Worse,
neither
was claiming him as their own.

A day did not go by without some sort of disquieting reminder of his “otherness.”

Once, while working in the E.R., he admitted a black family who had just sustained minor injuries in a car accident. The wife, who had been hurt the least, was merely in a state of shock. A shot of Demerol seemed appropriate. To save time Ben decided to take his own prescription to the drug dispensary.

The pharmacist looked at the paper and then stared at him.

“Dr. Landsmann, eh?” he asked. “He must be new.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bennett said politely.

“Boy, you should know the rules. We’re not allowed to give this kind of stuff to orderlies—only to a doctor or his nurse. You tell that lazy Landsmann he’d better come himself.”

“
I’m
Doctor Landsmann,” Bennett answered, hoping that his voice sounded calm and dignified. For he was too embarrassed to be angry and too wounded to be hostile.

Their glances met.

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry, Doctor,” the pharmacist said deferentially. “I didn’t know—I mean, most of the staff—”

“I understand,” said Bennett softly. “Just make up the prescription. I’ve got a patient in distress.”

“Of course. Of course.” The druggist turned and brought the Demerol with uncanny speed.

The following Saturday evening a territorial war between Italian and black gangs produced nearly a dozen casualties, including one young black shot in the chest by a zip gun.

Bennett was assigned the gunshot victim. He and a nurse swiftly wheeled the young man into the first Trauma room on the corridor. As she scurried off to prepare a hypodermic, Bennett took a closer look at the bullet wound. But when he reached to cut open the patient’s shirt, he gasped with difficulty, “Hey, shit! Don’t touch me, man, I want a doctor.”

“I am a doctor,” Bennett said as soothingly as possible.

“Don’t jive me—there’s no nigger doctors in this place. Get me The Man himself.”

Bennett was on the verge of protesting that he did in fact qualify for the distinction when Herb Glass, a fellow intern, entered to ask advice about the multiple knife wounds he was treating.

As Bennett turned to have a sotto voce dialogue with Herb, his own patient screamed, “There, there—I want
that
guy. My fuckin’ chest is gonna kill me. Tell that doctor I need help.”

Bennett quietly explained the situation.

“Fuck him,” Herb whispered indignantly. “He should feel lucky he’s got a doctor with hands like yours.”

But Bennett’s self-respect had been so bruised that he persuaded Herb to switch patients.

Without another word, he walked across the hall to begin suturing the stab wounds of a patient he hoped would either be more tolerant or—better still—unconscious.

“For Heaven’s sake, can’t you try and see sense!”

Henry Dwyer, M.D. (as Hank now felt he should be called in view of his new status), was trying to reason with Cheryl as she was nursing their fourth child, Rose Marie. It was barely dawn and he had just come back from a grueling thirty-six-hour shift on the wards of Boston Memorial.

“Hank, will you please stop bellowing—you’ll wake the kids.”

“What do I care? They never let
me
sleep after I slave my guts out just to put bread in their mouths.”

“Hank, they’re only little children. How do you expect me to explain to them what an intern is?”

“That’s
your
problem, Cheryl. You’re the mother. In my house Dad was always treated like a king.”

“Oh, pardon me, Your Majesty. Do I take it you were born toilet-trained?”

“That’s beside the point. You’re dodging the important issue.”

“Honey, it is
not
an issue. The Catholic church explicitly forbids birth control. Or have you completely lost your faith?”

“Look, don’t try hitting me with that lapsed priest business. I don’t feel guilty anymore. Besides, if you want to throw the Good Book at me, how about Saint Paul,
I Corinthians:
‘It is better to marry than to burn’?”

“What on earth is your point, Hank?” So emphatic was her gesture of exasperation that her breast pulled out of Rose Marie’s young mouth.

Hank was nearing the end of his rope. How could a sexy—or at least a once-sexy—woman like Cheryl not understand that men in their prime needed regular intercourse, even if certain prudish, straitlaced Catholic girls thought it was slightly dirty?

He squatted down beside her, his quadriceps femoris aching from his climbs up and down the hospital stairs. “Honey, I burn. I give that damn hospital my heart and soul, but there’s one special part of me I save especially for you. Now am I being clear enough?”