Random Winds (42 page)

Research! A kind of angry shame crept over Martin. What had he to offer such a man? Very little, except, as the practice kept growing, what Eastman had offered him: a chance to do important surgery and make money. There was nothing wrong in that But it wasn’t what he had had in mind at the beginning, was it?

And suddenly he thought of Albeniz, who had wanted his own institute, who had deserved it and who would have done a greater service to the sick if he could have had it Then it occurred to him that he had been so hurried lately that he hadn’t thought of Albeniz in months. So he picked up the telephone and, reaching the number, was told that the doctor was dead. He had died of a heart ailment almost
a year ago. Martin must have missed the notice in the paper and so, apparently, had other people.
Sic transit gloria
. You are here, you make your little mark and you are forgotten.

Miss Jennings knocked at the door. “There’s a man outside,” she said, “without an appointment. He says you operated on his son-in-law this morning. The one who died.” She looked worried. “He seems all right, but do you want me to stay?”
People have been known to be distraught and threatening
, she meant.

“No,” he said, “it’s all right. Let him come in.”

Martin stood up and put out his hand. “I’m so sorry,” he began, “I can’t even begin to tell you, Mr.—”

“Ambrose. I was at the hospital this morning.” The man was slight, tired and apologetic “I just took my daughter home.”

“Oh,” Martin said again, “I’m so sorry! He was a fine young man.”

“We know you are, Doctor. But you did the best you could.”

“It wasn’t good enough.”

“It was too late. I knew that The poor boy didn’t; at least, I don’t think he did. Maybe he had thoughts and didn’t want to worry us. Who knows?”

The voice trailed away and Martin felt the heavy weight of sorrow in the room, the old familiar sorrow of his work, so acquainted with grief. “Acquainted with grief,” that poignant phrase from the
Messiah
, he thought, and then was aware that the man had said, “I knew.” He came quickly to himself.

“You knew? How could you have known?”

“No reason.” The man held his gray fedora on his knees and kept smoothing the crown with the palm of his hand, round and round. “It was just a feeling. So we talked about it, my daughter and I. We thought, if Michael dies, we want to know why.”

Because, Martin answered silently, the diagnosis was delayed. It wasn’t malpractice, it was just bad judgment, all too common. And there’s not enough cooperation between the fields.

“We want to help so that it won’t happen again. We’re not rich, but I have a few dollars put away, and I want to make a donation. I read in the papers about all this research in brain diseases, so I’ve written you a check, and we want you to use it wherever you think best. Put it where it will work so they can learn more about these things.”

The shining innocence, the goodness, the courage!

And gruffly, because those damned humiliating tears of his were rising, Martin said, “It’s five hundred dollars. I don’t want to take it. There are children, the twins—”

Mr. Ambrose stood up. “It’s all right, Dr. Farrell. We’ve decided. It’s the way she—we want it. And he would have wanted it, too.”

So they stood there looking at each other with the presence of the dead boy between them. Then Mr. Ambrose shook Martin’s hand. “Thanks, Doctor,” he said again, and Martin watched him go out.

Damn it to hell and back! Maybe that boy wouldn’t have died if—But maybe he would. Don’t play God, Martin. Yes, but maybe he wouldn’t.

He got up and walked around the room, picked up a book, put it back, went to the window, looked out and saw nothing but a dazzle on the street. Then he sat down at the desk again and vaguely saw the snapshots, old and new, under the glass: his children with Hazel; himself with Claire in front of an old wall on a proud visiting day at Smith; his father wearing a duster, standing on the running board of his first car.

“You will see things I haven’t even dreamed of,” Pa used to say, and Martin swore again.

Braidburn’s letter still lay on his desk. Oh, if he had a place to take in that young man, he knew exactly what it would be like! He’d planned it, outlined it on many a sleepless night.

Once he’d begun a study of pituitary tumors and abandoned it in the middle when he left old Llewellyn, years before. The whole problem of circulation in the brain—there was so much he wanted to find out! And it would have to be, need to be, combined with surgery. Then, of
course, the psychiatrists would be welcome too; they’d be needed in problem-solving—

He thrust a fist into his palm. There’d be room then for Braidburn’s protégé, and many more. Perry, of course, to head anaesthesiology; good, dependable Perry at one’s side. And Leonard Max. Now there was a fellow in whom intelligence and devotion were written tall!

Jenny Jennings opened the door. “Seven waiting outside already,” she said accusingly.

Martin sighed. “All right Send the first one in.”

He walked slowly home. On a Madison Avenue corner, a discreet display in a window caught his eye. Behind a very fine antique desk, French, eighteenth century, stood a lacquered Oriental screen; an old engraving hung above it; the whole was most quietly elegant, made vivid with a splash of violet fabric. He stopped a moment to admire. The sign read: “Jessie Meig, Interiors.” He stood there gazing at the sign and remembered that Claire had said Jessie was expanding into new quarters.

Baffling and extraordinary, this life! So strange the ways in which we act on one another! There was Albeniz, now dead, who had lit the spark in him. There was this woman, Jessie, who had fanned the spark and given him Claire besides, the pearl, the treasure of his life. Then Hazel, the warm and tender. And always, always that other, hidden, and beloved—What am I doing in return for these? Martin thought, and, standing momentarily outside himself, saw himself in all the complexity and contradictions of his nagging, Calvinist conscience, his zeal and his zest.

As soon as he got into the house he went to his study, picked up the telephone and quickly, before his nerve should fail, called Robert Moser.

“Hello, Bob? This is Martin, Martin Farrell.”

“Everything all right with you?”

The voice held surprise. Martin had never called Moser at his home or anywhere else. Such contact as the families had was made by the women, by Moser’s wife calling Hazel, to be exact.

“Yes, all right, but I want to see you about something.”

“No trouble, I hope.”

“Not really. Or rather yes, in a way. I need money,” Martin said bluntly, and correcting the clumsiness, explained, “Not for myself. You may remember years ago I mentioned my—well, sort of pipe dream, I used to call it, of a neurological institute here at the hospital?”

“I remember.”

And Martin detected impatience, masked by courtesy.

“Well, something happened this morning. No need to go into details. But I’ve been galvanized into action. I’ve been thinking, when you want to do something, do it.”

“Can’t quarrel with that.” Amusement now, and a trace of skeptical suspicion.

“And since you’re a trustee, the only one I know, it seemed logical to begin with you.”

“Money’s not plentiful, Martin. We’re operating at a deficit. You know that.”

“Hospitals always do, don’t they? And somehow they always find what they need.”

“Yes, but you’re talking millions. Prices have soared since the war.”

“I know all that. But there are always the foundations. Maybe even government funds. Matching funds, if only we could get started and have something to show.”

“Why do you want this, Martin? Have you any idea what you’re letting yourself in for?”

“The answer to the second question is yes, I think I know. As to why I want it, that goes way back. Let’s just say I’m convinced we need it. The profession needs it. The patients need it.”

“There’s no lack of neurological centers, as far as I can see.”

“True. Although they’re not exactly what I have in mind. But aside from that, don’t you think our hospital, one of the finest in the city, or the whole country for that matter, deserves this honor, this crown on its head?”

Moser smiled. Martin could hear the smile in his voice. “You put it well. You’d like to run the whole shebang, naturally.”

“I’d like, Bob, to teach and do the research I’ve been missing. That’s what I’d like.”

“You’d have to give up a lot of time from your practice, wouldn’t you?”

You’re doing very well, you can make a pile for yourself. Why don’t you let well enough alone?
That’s what Moser was saying in effect, exactly as Eastman used to say it.

“Bob, I want this,” Martin said. “You want the moon, too?”

“Call it impossible, call it what you will, I want it because it’s right.”

“I’d never get the trustees to go along. The world’s full of nay-sayers.”

“Once the building’s up, ten, twenty years from now, no matter how long, and the patients start coming and the work is being done, they’ll be the first to applaud, I promise you.”

“Maybe so.”

“Bob, I’m going to do it, even if you won’t help me.”

“Talk sense, Martin. You don’t know the first thing about finance. How in hell are you going to do it?”

“I don’t know. I’m
going
to begin. You built up Phoenix Tool and Die. You didn’t sit around, afraid to take a chance, did you? You began with nothing, didn’t you?”

“Well, you might say I did, yes.”

“Okay. Enthusiasm I’ve got. And I’ll get others behind me. I know I will. I’ll go to meetings, I’ll talk. We’ll get contributions from the public, too, you know.”

“I doubt that.”

“I already got my first check this afternoon. And I know we can get more.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred dollars.” There was a silence.

“Five hundred dollars from a grateful patient who had no reason to be grateful.”

“You’re not serious, Martin?”

“About what? The patient? Of course I am.”

“I meant the money. Just what the hell do you think you can do with five hundred dollars?”

“The Chinese have a saying, ‘Every journey begins with the first step.’ ”

“Well, all right, but—”

“We need a campaign. We need to organize. You have contacts in industry. I’ll tackle the foundations; maybe you can, too.”

“You’ve absolutely no idea how hard it will be. The foundations are inundated with appeals.”

“Bob, I know it can be done.” And suddenly inspired, Martin cried, “If there hadn’t been this kind of drive and confidence all through the history of medicine, if they hadn’t found the means to build hospitals and fund research and train people, your daughter wouldn’t be playing tennis now.”

Again there was a silence, much longer this time. Martin, holding the phone, heard traffic noises, noises from the kitchen and Moseys silence. At last there came a tired sigh.

“Okay, Martin, you’ve got me. We’ll need to do a lot of talking, though. You’ll need to get some tentative figures together, very rough, so at least I’ll have some idea of what we’re talking about.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Better get advice on those figures before you bring them to me. I have no confidence in you at all as a businessman, I must tell you that.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more. But I can get the facts you want. Give me three weeks. I’ll call you.”

“Fine, Martin. You do that” And Moser hung up.

A sense of unreality was left in the room. Martin’s head went light, as if he were going to be sick. He looked at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. What had he done? And he sat there thinking: Perhaps it will be too big for me after all.

Then, after a long while, reality flowed back. A bag full of apples or potatoes rolled over the kitchen floor and a child shouted. Trucks stopped on the street below, the
workmen cursing cheerfully at each other. Life was proceeding in all its noisy, brave confusion.

Can do, he resolved. Anyway, I need to be overworked. It’s the way I am. Otherwise I think too much. It’s always better to be doing and trying, even if I fail.

He got up from the chair. Every journey begins with the first step.

Arrivals and departures made a modest bustle in the lobby of the Connaught. Fern, waiting for Simon, could identify by clothing and accent the varied travelers: Americans, West Germans and British country people spending a few days in town. He hadn’t wanted her to go upstairs with him to meet the customer, who assuredly would have been flattered to meet her. The man was a haggler, he said, and he’d be able to get a better price for her work if she wasn’t present.

The money would be very welcome, she reflected with an unconscious sigh. Alex had told her often enough that there wasn’t sufficient inherited wealth to live on, and there certainly wasn’t.

Yet she would be sorry to part with the picture, a quiet, cloudy seascape which she had done while on a visit to Isabel and her husband in Scotland. It had been one of those rare, remembered days when everything had seemed to fit, and she had thought, observing the happiness of her newlywed daughter, that life would probably go well with Isabel, that unlike her mother, she would see it through into hearty middle-age with little conflict.

They had been very close that afternoon, and the memory was all there on canvas: the gauzy, cloud-striped sky, the enormous loneliness of the dun beach and the kindness of three who were friends.

Paintings, she thought, and not only her own, were like children being shunted between foster homes. To sell them was to demean them. One felt such tenderness for them, as one peered close to marvel, especially at a Turner or other masterwork, to study the way in which the brush had been applied, the way in which color could be used to hold the life of light! It pained you when all that love—yes, it was love that went into it—fell into the hands of people who
didn’t understand it, who perhaps didn’t even like it very much but knew it would be talked about because it was expensive. Or worse still, knew it would rise in value so that in a few years it could be got rid of, traded up!