Doctors (75 page)

Wiseman nodded. “I was up till three last night—I just couldn’t put it down.”

“That means you could lend it to me so I can be insomniac this evening,” Barney suggested.

“Sure, I’ll bring it to the office tonight.”

“Thanks, Brice,” Barney replied. “It’s amazing just to think that a medical book might be that exciting. But then, even the title is provocative.”

“
Freud’s Legitimate Daughter
—it almost sounds like a novel.”

The two men parted, each to make rounds at his particular hospital.

It was a clear winter day and Barney decided to walk to Bellevue. In truth he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. To ponder the astonishing metamorphosis of Maury Eastman, whom he had last seen fifteen years ago as a tortured would-be suicide, his soul all but incinerated by electroshock, into Maurice Esterhazy, distinguished graduate of what was arguably the best psychiatric hospital in the world.

He tried to disentangle his web of feelings. Joy for Maury, of course. But even stronger, gratification bordering on
Schadenfreude
that a downtrodden son could achieve such remarkably appropriate revenge on the father who had persecuted him. For, despite his rank in the American Psychiatric Association, the elder Eastman had published many articles but never an entire book. And certainly nothing with the spectacular success Maury’s was enjoying.

He was so anxious to read Maury’s masterpiece that he canceled his dinner date with the nubile first-year resident in Cardiology who had recently arrived from Holland.

He made himself a nutritionally dubious baloney and cheese sandwich, sat back in his favorite chair, and began to read.

The cover said it all.
Freud’s Legitimate Daughter
was subtitled “The Psychology of Melanie Klein.”

The controversial British psychoanalyst who had died a few years earlier had begun her career as a strict Freudian before going on to make pioneering insights into the psychology of children far younger than Freud believed could possibly be analyzed.

Much to Klein’s chagrin, the patriarch of analysis rejected her theories, somehow unable to recognize they were merely carrying his own work an important step further.

Maury’s dramatic title encapsulated his subject’s dilemma. For there had been a constant hostility between Klein and Freud’s own daughter, Anna, who understandably considered herself to be the true perpetuator of her father’s theories. Maury not only demonstrated mat Klein was the better “Freudian,” he also presented powerful justification of Kleinian theory buttressed with insights of his own.

It was one-forty-five when Barney read the last page. He had been so spellbound by Maury’s book he had failed to notice that the needle on his hi-fi had been grating on the label of the last of his stack of records.

The next afternoon brought another surprise: a phone call from Fritz Baumann, whose tone was collegial.

“Barney, I suppose you know that Esterhazy is lecturing at the Institute next Thursday. Elsa and I are giving a little dinner for him afterwards, and he specifically requested that we invite you. Can you make it?”

“Absolutely,” Barney replied, “I look forward to it.”

He hung up and thought, Christ, my own analyst has asked me to dinner!

Barney had never seen the auditorium at the Institute so packed. Many had come up from as far as Baltimore and down from as far as Yale. It was Standing Room Only, with perhaps twenty candidates standing in the back, notebooks open. Fritz Baumann introduced Maury as “probably the most innovative analytical thinker of his generation.”

Barney was taken aback by Maury’s change in appearance—and accent. The former Maury Eastman looked like an English don—long hair, wire glasses, and a corduroy suit that looked very much lived-in. And he radiated confidence. One could feel that he was completely at ease with his audience. And with himself.

Maury began with a few lighthearted quips about the difference in orientation between British and American psychiatrists—and said that his own position could be described as “somewhere over Greenland.” The audience was charmed.

Then he began to discuss “The Paranoid-Schizoid Position in Early Infancy.” Speaking mainly without notes, he occasionally referred to the single index card he had brought with him.
And to his watch to make certain he did not exceed the time limit.

It was a performance all the more spectacular for its total lack of flamboyance. In calm, leisurely tones, he presented his own theories of child analysis, which impressed even the most reactionary of Freudians.

The question period was long and spirited and demonstrated the breadth of Maury’s medical knowledge.

The dinner at Fritz Baumann’s home was restricted to the gray eminences of the Institute, with three exceptions. Maury and Barney were under forty, and Maury’s wife, Antonia, was under thirty. She was also strikingly handsome. And herself a neurobiologist.

At the cocktail session before dinner, Maury was encircled by analysts deferentially asking him questions. He remained the sedate Englishman until he saw Barney. At which point he broke through his ring of admirers and rushed to embrace him, calling out, “Livingston, it’s great to see you.”

As they still had their arms about one another, Barney whispered, “Maury, could you tell me your secret? Is it something simple like eating Wheaties every morning?”

“No, try seven years of analysis. And a good woman,” he replied affectionately. He then turned to his host. “Dr. Baumann, I hope you’re proud to have this wonderful chap in your Institute.”

Barney looked at Baumann, who was pleased.

And Maury continued to address his old friend as if no one else in the room mattered.

“You
must
have dinner with us tomorrow night, or I’ll take irreparable umbrage.”

“Of course, Maur,” Barney replied, “and I’ll even give you a copy of my own book. In fact, I’ll give you ten—since nobody seems to have bought it.”

“I read it, and thought it was an insightful piece of work. So did Antonia. But we’d be grateful for a signed copy. Oh, and please bring a guest. Are you married?”

“Only to my work,” Barney answered, feeling slightly self-conscious.

“Actually I was sure you would end up marrying Laura the Magnificent. Whatever became of her?”

“That’s a long story, Maur—”

Just then the
other
Dr. Esterhazy, Antonia, came up behind Maury and whispered, “Darling, your presence is being clamored
for. Why don’t you go and scintillate while I talk to Barney?”

Maury kissed her on the cheek and went off to rejoin the senior psychiatrists.

“Maurice has spoken so affectionately of you,” Antonia said as soon as they were alone. “Apparently you were the only one who gave a damn about him when he was in trouble.”

“I was only being human,” Barney answered shyly. Then suddenly Antonia changed the subject.

“Could we possibly have a quick word in private?” she asked.

“Sure,” Barney replied. They stepped into the still-unoccupied dining room.

“Have you ever met his father?” she whispered.

“Not exactly, but you could say we’ve encountered one another. Why do you ask?”

“Maurice is speaking in San Francisco next week. Frankly, I’m worried what might happen if the wretched man actually appears at the lecture.”

“I don’t blame you,” Barney agreed. “Why the hell did Maury agree to it?”

“I suppose he needs to prove something to himself,” she replied. “But I think it’s playing with fire. Don’t you?”

“No,” Barney replied. “I’d say it was more like playing Russian roulette—with five bullets in the gun.”

I’m not a human being.

This was the conclusion Barney reached as he lay on his bed later that evening after having watched Maurice Esterhazy, brilliant psychiatrist, loving husband, and father—in other words, a total mensch.

It was scarcely believable that the individual he saw tonight had once been so manic-depressive that he had needed electroshock treatment.

It made Barney realize yet again that what
he
had achieved—or not achieved—was so unsubstantial, superficial by comparison.

Yeah, he told himself, in Robert Frost’s words, I’ve got “miles to go before I sleep.”

Bennett had been working like a demon, as if to make up whatever ground he had lost while “benched,” as he put it, because of injuries. To the residents with on-call duties on the weekends, he was a veritable Santa Claus—offering them a
sleighful of free time. The extra assignments actually made him feel less tired, since he was repairing the damage to his confidence that had kept him awake all those nights he was recuperating.

On several of the more violent New Haven Saturdays, he even managed to perform emergency cardiac procedures—psyching himself up for next year’s big challenge.

“Can’t you slow down, Ben?” Terri complained.

“Want me to get another assistant?” he had replied amicably.

“No way—I’m learning too much. I just wish you’d ease up for your own sake.”

By April, four months after the operation, Bennett was back leading the “normal” life of a chief surgical resident—merely his share of the 36-hour shifts.

He was just tearing off his blues after a grueling stint when Terri popped her head through the door of the men’s dressing room (there wasn’t an equivalent for the women surgeons—they had to dress with the nurses).

“Ben, Professor Baye just called down from Hematology. He needs a splenectomy on a leukemia patient. He specifically asked if you’d do it. But we’re booked solid from eight-thirty on. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him we’ll do it at
six
-thirty—if he can get up that early.”

“Dr. Landsmann,” she cautioned good-humoredly, “keep this up and you’ll die young.”

“Too late for that, Ter. Anyway, tell Baye to send down the guy’s charts and I’ll study them tonight. And make a copy for yourself—just in case I get senile halfway through the procedure.”

A spleen removal in patients suffering from lymphocytic leukemia is carried out either because the organ has become so enlarged that it is painful, or because it is causing a symptomatic reduction of platelets—small blood cells that help control bleeding.

Bennett arrived at the hospital a little before 6
A.M.
and fortified himself with chocolate chip cookies and several cups of coffee. Although he had all but memorized it the night before, he took yet another look at the medical history of his patient, Harry Scanlon, thirty-nine-year-old male Caucasian.

At 6:30
A.M.
sharp he was stationed at the head of the operating table.

He acknowledged the two professors with a polite greeting and then, like an orchestra conductor, glanced at his concertmaster,
in this case the anesthesiologist. The latter nodded and in a matter of seconds murmured, “The patient is under, Doctor.”

Bennett received the information with a wordless nod and immediately set to work, deftly making a long midline incision. With an intern and nurse holding retractors to give him more visibility, he began the standard exploration of the viscera his incision had disclosed.

He then checked the liver for cirrhosis and infiltration by neoplastic cells, palpated the gallbladder for possible stones, and explored everything up to the upper border of the pancreas. No anomalies. He could proceed.

He slid his right hand gently across the light pink convex surface of the spleen, placed the organ into his left hand, and pulled it up toward the abdominal incision.

He craned his neck to get a better look at what he was about to excise—and at this moment he felt an inexplicable tingling in the little fingers of both his hands. He ignored it, thinking that perhaps Terri was right—he had been pushing himself too hard. But this was no time for such thoughts.

He quickly dissected the spleen artery and vein from the surrounding tissue, motioning to Terri to affix clamps. He held out his hand and requested, “Scissors.” When they were slapped into his hand, he cleanly cut free the spleen.

The next stage would be messy but routine. He had now to tie off the two little tubes that were artery and vein. Bennett took the silk to ligate them and tied what felt like firm knots.

“All right,” he spoke to himself out loud. “We can take the clamps off.” He reached over to remove the metal instrument from the vein.

And suddenly there was blood. Blood everywhere.

There was a barely audible gasp from the onlookers. Bennett was shaken. He had never seen anybody make this kind of gaffe. But there was no time to berate himself. He had to repair the damage as quickly as possible.

He called for suction to retrieve the vein, and this time resutured it successfully. He then casually ordered Terri to close up shop, and walked back to the dressing room, trying to affect a confidence he did not feel.

He sat down and tried to comprehend what had occurred. It could simply be tension, he tried to convince himself. Or human frailty … but what the hell was that tingling he had felt in his fingers?

As he was sitting pensively in the surgeons’ dressing room,
there was a gentle knocking at the door, after which Terri Rodriguez called out, “You alone in there, Bennett?”

“Yeah,” he replied, “come on into the sanctum.”

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

“I don’t know, I just thought you might be upset by that little accident. It was really nothing.”

“Come on, Ter, you’re too good a doctor not to know better. That was a horror show. Stop lying to me and I’ll stop lying to you.”

For a moment she was silent and then said, “You’ve got a radical mastectomy in half an hour. Do you feel up to it?”

“Why the hell shouldn’t I feel up to it?” he barked angrily.

It was the first time in the year she had worked with him that Terri had seen him lose his temper.

“Okay, Ben, okay. I’m going to grab a roll and coffee. Can I get you anything?”

“No. Thanks, Ter. I’m sorry I flew off the handle.”

“No problem,” she replied and retreated from the domain on which she had been trespassing.