Doctors (63 page)

“You know I’ve always loved you, Laura. It must have been delayed adolescence. I mean, I won’t pretend I was celibate in Washington. It’s a bit of a sexual carnival down there. I mean, I hope you didn’t see that ugly little rumor in the columns about myself and Jessica Forbes. I just happened to be sitting next to her at dinner. But I guess everything a Senator’s daughter does is grist for the gossip mills.”

Laura wondered if this “confession” was not also a poorly disguised attempt to boast. But she wanted so badly to believe his renewed expression of love.

“Look, Palmer,” she answered, “you don’t have to cite name, rank, and bra size. Let’s just say we both had a kind of vacation from monogamy.”

He then asked tentatively, “Has there been someone … special in your life?”

“Why don’t we change the subject?” she said gently, knowing that if she had been candid about Robbie it would have injured Palmer’s ego. She responded with a question.

“How long are you staying?”

“I’ve got a two-week pass,” he answered. And then he added softly, “If you can possibly wangle any time off, I’d like to spend as much as I can with you.”

“I could maybe manage a day or two—”

Just then the phone rang. Neither of them moved.

“It’s probably for you,” he whispered.

“Forget it. I don’t want to break the spell.”

The ringing persisted.

“Go on, Laura,” Palmer urged. “You’re a doctor and it may be important.”

As she walked slowly to the phone, Laura could feel his eyes following her.

“Hello, this is Dr. Castellano.”

“Hi, Laura, it’s your ever-lovin’ Robbie. Can I tempt you for a late drink and a few bars of music?”

“I’m sorry, I’m kind of snowed under. I’ll see you tomorrow after morning rounds.”

“Is anything wrong? Or am I maybe interrupting something?”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“Sure, sure,” he said disconsolately. “See you in the morning.”

She could hear the disappointment in his voice.

“Who was it?” Palmer inquired casually as she returned to the fire.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing that means anything.”

“May I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Are you taking the Pill?”

She grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about knocking me up. Anyway, set your mind at rest, I take it as faithfully as ever.”

A fleeting expression crossed his face that seemed to say, For whose benefit have you been practicing birth control for all these months?

“If you stopped, how long would it take you to get pregnant?”

Laura was speechless. She answered reflexively by the book.

“The body’s endocrine system is pretty unpredictable. Sometimes when women come off the medication it takes six or seven cycles—or even a year. But then there are also cases where stopping actually stimulates immediate fertility.”

“Let’s hope you’re in the second category,” he said.

She was still in a state of mild shock.

“Why this sudden urge to parenthood?”

“Well, we’re neither of us getting any younger. Women should be having their first babies by the time they’re in their early thirties. And since your residency ends this year and you won’t be on such a punishing schedule you could sort of work it in.”

“What’s your real reason, Palmer?” she persisted.

“Well, I’d like an heir to carry on the family name.”

“No,” Laura demanded, “I want your absolutely honest reason—the whole truth.”

He looked her straight in the eye and confessed with a touch of apprehension, “I’m being transferred—I’m not sure exactly when—but I’ll be going to Vietnam.”

“Laura, you’ve got to be joking!”

“I’m sorry, but I have to.”

“But he’s treated you like dirt—are you just gonna let him back into your life and screw up your head again?”

Robbie was beside himself. Laura had just told him over coffee that they could not see each other anymore—except as friends. Robbie could cope with that part of her announcement.
He was a mature adult. At various stages of his life he had won and lost—and had an ex-wife and two messed-up kids to prove it.

But the idea that a woman like Laura would even consider going back to Palmer after the shabby way he had treated her totally confounded him. All the more so because he knew firsthand that it was often feelings of unworthiness that kept a man and woman together, even when they were both well aware that it was mutually self-destructive.

Robbie believed that he was better for her than her husband. For Robbie could see the little girl inside the woman, and she brought out all his protective instincts.

Now this Palmer bastard waltzes in, snaps his fingers, and she goes straight back for more punishment. On reflection, maybe Laura really wants to be miserable. Okay, Robbie, he told himself, let her go—the grief you save may be your own.

All of this ran through his mind as they were standing at the nurses’ station stoking up on caffeine. He was glad he had resisted his first impulse to berate her. He felt calmer, more rational.

“Are you sure you’re making the right decision?” he asked.

“I haven’t made any decision at all, Rob.”

“You mean choosing between me and Palmer was no contest?”

“No, it was no
choice
, Rob. Palmer’s my husband. I thought long and hard before I married him.”

“You
do
have a choice—you know damn well I would marry you.”

Laura took his hand tenderly. “Robbie, listen—what we shared was lovely—and I’m very fond of you. But honestly, you’re better off without me. I’m not bad for an affair, but I’m not really what you’d call good wife material.”

Robbie was hurting—as much for her as for himself.

“Laura, listen carefully, this is my closing speech.” He paused, drew breath, and then said softly, “God’s played a dirty trick on you. He gave you everything. Only He was probably so snowed by the result, He just forgot to add that final touch of confidence. Okay, so I wasn’t the guy. It won’t be easy but I’ll deal with it. I only hope that someday someone pounds a little sense into that gorgeous head of yours and makes you
like
yourself.”

He turned around, ashamed to show his tears.

And walked away.

I
n the early autumn of 1968, the Black Power movement literally reached an Olympian peak.

At the Games held in the mile-high city of Mexico, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos won the gold and silver medals in the 200-meter dash. Standing on the podium as the band struck up the “Star Spangled Banner,” the two athletes raised black-gloved fists in a gesture of protest at the way white America was treating their brethren.

This new rage had begun to boil the previous year, when Rap Brown became Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His inaugural speech gave a hint of how little his group’s name now meant when he offered to assassinate Lady Bird Johnson, the President’s wife.

And he also introduced a new theme to the militants’ dogma—anti-Semitism. Suddenly American Jews were viewed as the primary cause of the black man’s suppression.

This was a strange tactic for organizations like SNCC and CORE, which had in large measure been supported by former residents of the original ghettos.

For Herschel Landsmann it was a dagger in the heart. He had up to now been a passionate and generous supporter of the black man’s cause; he and Hannah felt betrayed. But their greatest anxiety—so disturbing that they dared not broach it even to each other—was how would this affect their relationship with Bennett?

By now Barney had completed over two hundred pages of
Mind of a Champion
and could no longer withstand Bill Chaplin’s persistent pleas for a look at the manuscript. With much trepidation he delivered the material to the Berkeley House building.

From nine that evening, he phoned Bill Chaplin at least twice an hour, pleading for some sort of response.

“Is it good, Bill? Is it good? I mean, is it okay? Or is it terrible? Is it pretentious? Is it superficial?”

The bemused editor replied, “Look, I can’t read if you keep distracting me. Why don’t you take a pill and go to sleep.”

“I don’t want a pill, dammit, I want to know what you think.”

The pages he had given Bill contained analytic observations on such varied champions as sprinter Jesse Owens, boxer Joe Louis, and Roger Bannister, the first four-minute miler.

They also included an interview completed merely days before his death with Donald Campbell, the man who set speed records both on land (403.1 mph) and water (276.33 mph). This was an especially intriguing case since Campbell’s father had also been in the “speed game,” having been the first man to break the 300 mph barrier on land. Was it something in the genes? Was it something in the psyche? How did he feel about “defeating” his own father?

But Barney felt that the best chapter so far was on his boyhood hero Jackie Robinson—grandson of a slave and the first to break the color barrier in baseball.

At half past eleven Bill called him.

“This material’s terrific,” Bill exclaimed.

“You mean you like it?” Barney asked incredulously.

“No, I
love
it. How soon can you finish the rest?”

“Hey, listen,” Barney retorted, “you sometimes forget I’m a practicing doctor.”

“I know, I know,” Chaplin conceded, “but we’ve just gotta get this onto our spring list. If it’s money you’re worried about, I can get you another advance so you can take a sabbatical from your other commitments and just concentrate on the book.”

There was a sudden pause.

It seemed to Bill that they had been cut off.

“Barney, are you still there?”

Barney answered in tones that barely disguised his resentment.

“Bill, let me tell you for the millionth time that a psychiatrist is like the father of an extended family. Our patients aren’t like people who go in for an operation and then leave a week later. When they make a commitment to me, I make a commitment to them—to be there when they need me—even if it’s for
years
, Would you like your pilot to start his sabbatical while you’re midway across the Atlantic Ocean?”

Bill was duly chastened. “I’m sorry, Barn, I’m sorry. I got
carried away. I realize your priorities. May I withdraw my offer—with no hard feelings?”

“Sure, no sweat.”

“Okay then, Barn, I’ll sign off,” his editor said, anxious to retreat, but not before adding, “still, if you could finish by August—”

“Goodnight, Bill.”

“I’ve just killed someone—what the hell am I gonna do?”

It was 2
A.M.
Tim Bluestone, junior resident in Internal Medicine, was distraught. His superior, Seth Lazarus, tried to calm him down.

“Hey, take it easy, Tim. Try to get hold of yourself. Sit down and tell me what happened.”

The young doctor obeyed like an automaton. And then he buried his head in his hands. “Oh, Christ, I’m a murderer,” he groaned.

Tim raised his face and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

“It’s Mrs. McNaughton. She was—”

“I know,” Seth interrupted. “She was scheduled for an exploratory tomorrow. Keep talking.”

“The nurse was doing a routine check of vital signs and the old lady’s blood pressure was suddenly dropping like hell, so she got me from the on-call room. I ran up and could tell, even before putting the cuff on her, that there was severe hypotension. She was blue in the face.…”

He paused and then said, “I feel like such an asshole. I know I should have called you, Seth. You wouldn’t have let me screw up.”

He looked forlornly at the chief resident. Seth simply said, “Go on.”

“Well, I thought I knew what to do. I mean, I actually did know what to do, except I—”

He stopped himself in mid-sentence. For he was about to admit the fatal error.

“Her damn diastolic was down to thirty, so I told the nurse to bring me Aramine, stat. I knew it would increase the blood pressure right away.”

“That’s right,” Seth commented, “a vasopressor agent was indicated. So far I don’t see any irregularity.”

“Well, the nurse brought me half a dozen ampoules. She just dumped them there and ran off down the hall—somebody was hemorrhaging. I mean, I suppose part of this is her fault
because she should have brought me Aramine that was more diluted. No, shit,
I
should have looked more carefully. But I was so goddamn tired I really didn’t know what I was doing.

“Anyway, I pushed ten mils into Mrs. McNaughton’s I.V. and waited for a response. It didn’t come. Then her pressure suddenly shot up—and I panicked. I was scared she might have ventricular failure, infarction, or a cerebral hemorrhage.”

“So you lost your cool and gave her another ampoule,” Seth anticipated.

Tim nodded. “Then suddenly she just conked out.” He paused and then murmured, “She was dead. Finally, I did what I should have done in the first place. I picked up her chart. It was then that I saw she was a severe diabetic—”

“Bad move,” Seth commented matter-of-factly. “Aramine is contraindicated for diabetics because it constricts blood vessels that are already diseased and can cut off the blood supply.”

Tim began to pound the desk with his fists.

Seth stood up and said quietly, “Have you spoken to anyone else?”

The younger man shook his head.

Without another word, Seth began to walk toward Mrs. McNaughton’s bed, Tim following. On either side of her, patients were snoring. Mrs. McNaughton was still.

Seth carefully checked her vital signs and shone a light in her eyes. He looked up at Tim and said, “You’re right, I’d say she had a massive cerebral infarct.”

Tim stood motionless, paralyzed with guilt, as Seth continued.

“Go back to the office and wait for me. I’m going to tell the on-duty nurse to take care of things. Then you and I will write the death certificate.”

For a split second neither spoke. Then Tim repeated in a tiny frightened voice, “I killed her, Seth, didn’t I?”

To which Seth responded simply, “I’ll see you in the office.” And then walked off.