Doctors (56 page)

Alone?

The other Spelman girls dropped graceful hints that they would gladly mitigate his loneliness. But Anita remained aloof.

He decided to make a final try as he accompanied the girls
to their bus. He managed to maneuver himself to Anita’s side and hold her several steps behind.

“Hey,” he chided, “remember me? I saved your life this afternoon. Don’t I even get your phone number in gratitude?”

For the first time she was ill at ease. “Hey, Bennett, you’re a cool guy and I’m grateful. But I’ve got a fiancé.”

“Oh,” Bennett said, trying to conceal his disappointment. “What does the lucky man do?”

“He’s in the Marine Corps—just about to start Officers’ Candidate School. We’re getting married when he graduates.”

“Oh, well, maybe you’ll invite me to your wedding.”

“Sure,” Anita said, smiling. But both of them knew it was just idle chatter.

As soon as the girls’ bus pulled away from the curb, Bennett headed for Union Station and bought a ticket for the milk train to New Haven. During the long, slow journey he tried to catch up on some much-needed shut-eye, yet found himself unable to sleep.

Barney had been up all night. He was still haunted by the sight of that last inmate in the Blenheim Ward. Tomorrow at eleven there would be a meeting of the ward staff under the general director. Perhaps he would learn then who the guy was.

He stayed in bed as long as possible, but by 5:30
A.M.
he had to find out. He got up, pulled on his clothes and walked, yawning and bedraggled, to the “Land of the Incurables.”

The security man scrutinized him with curiosity. Barney then realized that he had not bothered to comb his hair or tuck in his shirt. How would he convince this guy that he was legit?

“Good morning, Doctor,” said the guard in friendly greeting.

Barney could not keep himself from asking, “How can you tell I’m a doctor? I mean, I look like such a slob.” As he spoke he was hastily putting his shirt in his pants.

“You forgot your fly, Doctor,” the guard replied amiably, “but the fact is
all
you doctors look the same after the night shift. It’s the patients who get medication to keep them snug as a bug in a rug.”

Barney entered the ward and walked as softly as possible across the vast hollow “Activities Room” toward the nurses’ station where a young, pretty Puerto Rican woman whose nameplate read
N. VALDEZ
was seated. Even though Barney knocked politely, she was startled.
No one
ever came in at that hour in the
gray zone between night and morning except for an emergency heralded by the ringing of alarms.

“Can I help you, Doctor?” she asked.

“Yes, I’d like to see the file on one of the patients.”

“Now?” she asked, looking at her watch. “I mean, doesn’t the committee—”

“I’m the new resident,” he replied. “I’m anxious to get an early start.”

“Certainly, sir,” she replied, still unsure of Barney’s precise motives. “Which one of the patients are you referring to?”

“Uh, I don’t exactly know. But if we can go to the dormitory I can point him out.”

Nurse Valdez complied. After seven years on the psycho wards, no behavior by patients
or
staff surprised her.

The patients were all still asleep when Barney and the nurse entered the huge dormitory, their snores, mumblings, and groans forming a kind of nightmarish symphony. She began to shine a flashlight on the faces on each pillow. Barney suddenly touched her arm.

“Him! That guy—what’s his name?”

She directed her beam to the foot of the bed where the patient’s chart was hanging. Barney bent over and read “CASSIDY, Kenneth. Date of birth: 17 July 1932.”

Barney was staggered. That wraith? Could it actually be
Ken
Cassidy, the boy-scoutish basketball coach at Columbia?

He knew that it had to be.

“Thank you,” he whispered, trying to keep his composure. “I’d like to see his records now, please.”

Barney sat in the nurses’ office drinking cups of brackish coffee laced with too much sugar, reading the report on Ken Cassidy.

The patient had been admitted two years earlier, after going violently berserk. Though he had exhibited no prior symptoms of psychological degeneration, he had suddenly begun to destroy his house with an axe, while his wife and daughters cowered in the kitchen. Had not the police—alerted by the neighbors—arrived in time, he would most certainly have massacred them. He was originally seen by a resident whose initials, VM, Barney did not recognize and was assigned to Blenheim by Professor Stanley Avery, the general director.

“Good morning, Doctor Livingston,
you
are up early!”

It was Nurse Herridge reporting for duty so that she and Valdez in tandem could rouse the patients two by two.

A few seconds later, their multifaceted orderly appeared.

“Good morning, Mr. Johnson,” said Barney.

A gloomy look crossed the big man’s face. “Mr. President,” he said, “I feel terrible at having let you down.”

“How so?”

“As Supreme Commander U.S. Army of the Pacific I should have held on to Okinawa. But believe me, sir, I shall return.”

“I am sure you will, General MacArthur,” Barney replied. “What say we all go rouse the troops?”

Johnson stood to attention and saluted his commander in chief. “Yessir, right away, sir!”

Barney observed the ritual awakening, helping out where he could (he really did not know quite what to do). As soon as Cassidy had been coaxed to wash his face and brush his teeth (no shave today; that was done for them by Mr. Johnson on a rotating basis), Barney took him by the arm and led him to a quiet corner.

“Mr. Cassidy, yesterday it seemed like you recognized me. You do remember me, don’t you? I was the dirty player—the guy who was the pain in your ass on the Columbia basketball team. You still like basketball, don’t you, Ken?”

Cassidy stood like a granite statue, eyes unfocused, his expression giving no indication as to whether he understood any of what his interrogator was saying. Barney grabbed the man by the shoulders as if trying to wake him.

“Basketball, Ken,” he repeated, “throwing the ball through the hoop,
slam dunk
!”

He was getting nowhere. He raised his voice as if the sheer intensity of decibels would penetrate this sick man’s skull. “Roar, Lion, Roar! Go Columbia!”

Barney’s intemperate shaking took effect. Cassidy suddenly lashed out, landing both hands against Barney’s chest and knocking him halfway across the corridor.

Ever on the alert, Mr. Johnson came bounding up to protect a staff member. He grabbed the flailing Cassidy in an overwhelming bear hug, cautioning him.

“You watch what you’re doin’, Mr. Cassidy. I may be retired from the ring, but ole Joe Louis still has plenty of fight in him. Don’t forget the number of bouts I went without a defeat!”

Cassidy continued to kick and punch even as “Joe Louis”
increased his grip. Johnson looked solicitiously at Barney, who was picking himself up off the floor.

“You okay, Doc?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Barney replied, “thanks. Thanks for saving me, Mr.… Louis.”

“That’s all right,” Johnson replied, “he’s no Max Schmeling. Should I get the nurse to give him a shot?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Barney answered, feeling responsible for the poor man’s paroxysm.

Twenty minutes later Ken Cassidy lay heavily sedated on his bed as Barney, Johnson, and Mrs. Herridge looked on.

“He missed breakfast,” Barney observed guiltily.

“Don’t worry, Doctor,” the nurse assured him, “I’ll see that he’s fed as soon as he wakes up.”

“When do you think he’ll be coming around?”

“I’d say he will be conscious but tranquil in less than an hour.”

“Good,” Barney commented. “I’ll go down to the cafeteria and come back.”

“You do remember there’s a staff meeting at eleven o’clock, Doctor,” Nurse Herridge reminded him.

“That’s why I want to be back before ten,” Barney answered.

He returned in an hour, shaven, kempt, and presentable for the conference with his colleagues. But meanwhile, he had some professional research to perform. With the head nurse at his side, he went to Cassidy’s bed.

As she had predicted, the patient was now marginally awake. Barney withdrew an ophthalmoscope from his jacket and began to look into Cassidy’s eyes. He checked his left eye routinely. But when he gazed into the right, he remained motionless for several minutes.

“May I ask what you think you are doing, Dr. Livingston?” Mrs. Herridge asked, a trifle impatiently. “This man has been given a thorough physical examination.”

“How long ago?” Barney asked.

She handed him a folder. “See for yourself.”

Barney scoured the pages, looking for the relevant information, and then found it. “Eighteen months ago. Christ, no wonder!”

“I beg your pardon, Doctor?”

He stood up. “Thank you, Mrs. Herridge, you’ve been great. I’ll see you at the staff meeting.”

*    *    *

There were seven of them: Barney; Joseph Leder, the second-year resident; Vera Mihalic, a straight-backed, intense young woman with thick granny glasses, who was chief resident; Professor Avery; and three nurses. Mr. Johnson was not deemed qualified to attend these sessions, even though for nearly a month the previous year he had been Sigmund Freud.

Avery introduced Barney to his colleagues and they proceeded to discuss the new admissions—a brace of paranoid schizophrenics—both of whom were desperately in need of hospitalization and for whom they just had to find two extra beds.

Nurse Herridge objected. “With due respect, Professor, we’re overcrowded already. If we keep squeezing in extra beds, we’ll end up like the Black Hole of Calcutta.”

“Point taken, Jane,” Avery replied. “Is there anybody we could possibly move?”

Barney’s hand shot up.

“Yes, Barney?”

“I think we could give Mr. Cassidy’s bed to someone else, sir.”

There was mild consternation in the room, since everyone had already been informed of that morning’s fracas.

“Are you serious?” Avery protested. “Wasn’t his behavior today ample testimony to the severity of his condition?”

“Yes, sir,” Barney replied. “But he’s not psychotic.”

“I beg your pardon?” Avery asked in the voice of a man whose professional toe had been stepped on. “And just what ward do you suggest is appropriate for that coiled spring of physical violence?”

“Neurology, sir,” Barney replied. “I think his antisocial behavior is the result of intracranial pressure.”

“Surely that would have been picked up at his physical, Dr. Livingston—or do you happen to possess x-ray eyes?”

“No, sir,” Barney answered, “but I checked him with an ophthalmoscope a little while ago.”

“Well,” said Avery, “so did Dr. Mihalic and I when he was admitted, and I believe she checked him again a little more than a year ago. What new data are you offering us?”

“Sir,” Barney continued confidently, “the meningioma in his right eye might not have been as apparent then.”

Vera Mihalic protested. “I’ve also done a neurological residency, and let me assure you. Dr. Livingston, had there been the slightest trace of intracranial growth compressing his cerebral
functions I would have picked it up. The man is a paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies.”

And you’re a tight-assed bitch who’s afraid to be called wrong, Barney thought to himself.

Avery interposed to avoid the growing disharmony among his staff.

“Wouldn’t an empirical recheck be the best way to deal with this?”

“Obviously,” Barney and Vera answered almost in unison.

At eleven-thirty, while Mr. Johnson held a sweating and disheveled Ken Cassidy’s hands tightly behind his back, first Professor Avery, then Dr. Mihalic, then Dr. Leder, and finally Barney peered at the patient’s brains through the white of his right eye. None of them could deny the presence of a tumor.

By noon Ken Cassidy had been transferred to Neurology and scheduled for surgery the following morning. Twenty-four hours later the growth was removed from his frontal lobe and within a few days the neuropathologists declared it benign.

Barney soon learned another vital lesson on the privileges of the medical hierarchy. It was Avery—in the company of the neurosurgeon—who “volunteered” to convey the good news to Ken Cassidy, as he lay in his new room holding his wife’s hand.

Barney had to sneak into Ken’s room at the end of visiting hours that evening. Before he even tried to introduce himself, Cassidy smiled weakly and muttered, “Livingston, you ornery bastard. What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s the latest thing in medicine, Ken. All the hospitals are recruiting basketball players for the Bedpan League. Interested in coaching us?”

“Sure,” he whispered, and grinned like a man who had just had a weight taken off his mind. Or in this case a cranial tumor.

Barney went off to begin his night duty, so full of adrenaline he was able to stay awake without a drop of coffee until noon the next day.

Before condemning him to eternal silence, Vera Mihalic called him every name in the book—and quite a few that were in no book or back alley he had ever encountered.

“Why are you so pissed off?” he asked. “I mean, you don’t have to give me a Nobel Prize, but I think I at least deserve a little pat on the head for saving a guy’s life. Just what the hell did I do wrong?”

She looked daggers at him. “You should have come to me first.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. I discovered it at ten and the meeting was at eleven. And besides, the diagnosis was right. Isn’t that the only thing that really matters?”

“How did they ever allow a naive schmuck like you into the program?” she sneered. “Little boy, you’d better learn that there’s a pecking order if you want to make it in this game.”

She turned on her heel and marched off before Barney could respond.

Little boy? Pecking order?
Game?

Thereafter at Thursday meetings, with a skill bordering on genius, she was able to avoid addressing anything to him. The best he could hope for was a third-person mention, such as, “Perhaps Dr. Livingston doesn’t realize …”