Strong Medicine (4 page)

you told me I had bad manners and you were right. I was rude to you. I

apologize."

"Not necessary," she told him briskly. "I liked the way you were. You were

worried about your patient and you didn't care about anything else. Your

caring showed. But then you're always that way."

The remark surprised him. "How do you know?"

"Because people have told me." Again the swift, warm smile. She had her

glasses on again; removing and replacing them seemed a habit. Celia

continued, "I know a lot about you, Andrew Jordan. Partly because it's my

job to get to know doctors and partly . . . well, I'll get to that later."

This unusual girl, he thought, had many facets. He asked, "What do you

know?"

"Well, for one thing you were at the top of your medical school class at

Johns Hopkins. For another, you did your internship and residency at

Massachusetts General-I know only the best get in there. Then Dr. Townsend

chose you out of fifty applicants and took you into his practice because he

knew you were good. Do you want more?"

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He laughed aloud. "Is there any?"

"Only that you're a nice man, Andrew. Everybody says so. Of course, there

are some negatives about you I've discovered."

"I'm shocked," he told her. "Are you suggesting I'm not perfect after

all?"

"You have some blind spots," Celia said. "For instance, about drug

companies. You're very prejudiced against us. Oh, I'll agree that some

things-"

"Stop right there!" Andrew raised a hand. "I admit the prejudice. But

I'll also tell you, this morning I'm in a mood to change my mind."

"That's good, but don't change it altogether." Celia's businesslike tone

was back. "There are lots of good things about our industry; and you just

saw one of them at work. But there are also things that aren't so good,

some that I don't like and hope to alter."

"You hope to alter." He raised his eyebrows. "Personally?"

:'I know what you're thinking-that I'm a woman."

'Since you mention it, yes, I'd noticed."

Celia said seriously, "The time is coming, in fact it's already here,

when women will do many things they haven't done before."

"Right now I'm ready to believe that too, especially about YOU." Andrew

added, "You said there was something else to tell me, that you'd get to

later."

For the first time Celia de Grey hesitated.

"Yes, there is." Her strong gray-green eyes met Andrew's directly. "I was

going to wait until another time we met, but I may as well tell you now.

I've decided to marry you."

This extraordinary girl! So full of life and character, to say nothing

of surprises. He had never met anyone like her. Andrew started to laugh,

then abruptly changed his mind.

One month later, in the presence of a few close friends and relatives,

Dr. Andrew Jordan and Celia de Grey were married in a quiet civil

ceremony.

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On the second day of their honeymoon Celia told Andrew, "Ours will be a good

marriage. We're going to make it work."

"If you ask me . . ." Andrew rolled over on the beach towel they were

sharing, managing to kiss the nape of his wife's neck as he did. "If you

ask me, it's working already."

They were on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Above them was a warm

midmorning sun and a few small wispy clouds. A white-sand beach, of which

they were the only occupants, appeared to stretch into infinity. An

offshore breeze stirred palm fronds and, immediately ahead, cast ripples on

a calm, translucent sea.

"If you're talking about sex," Celia said, "we're not bad together, are

we?"

Andrew raised himself on an elbow. "Not bad? You're dynamite. Where did you

ever learn-T' He stopped. "No, don't tell me."

"I could ask you the same question," she teased. Her hand stroked his thigh

as her tongue lightly traced the outline of his mouth.

He reached for her and whispered, "Come on! Let's go back to the bungalow."

"Why not fight here? Or in those tall grasses over there?"

"And shock the natives?"

She laughed as he pulled her up and they ran across the beach. "You're a

prude! A real prude. Who would have guessed?"

Andrew led her into the picturesque thatched bungalow they had moved into

the day before and which was to be theirs for ten days more.

"I don't want to share you with the ants and land crabs, and if that makes

me a prude, okay." He slipped off his swim trunks as he spoke.

But Celia was ahead of him. She had shed her bikini and was already lying

naked on the bed, still laughing.

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An hour later, back on the beach, Celia said, "As I was saying about our

marriage . . ."

"It will be a good one," Andrew finished for her. "I agree."

"And to make it work, we must both be fulfilled people."

Andrew was lying back contentedly, hands intertwined behind his head.

"Still agree."

"So we must have children."

"If there's any way I can help with that, just let me-"

"Andrew! Please be serious."

"Can't. I'm too happy."

"Then I'll be serious for both of us."

"How many children?" he asked. "And when?"

"I've thought about it," Celia said, "and I believe we should have two-the

first child as soon as possible, the second two years later. That way, I'll

have childbearing done before I'm thirty."

"That's nice," he said. "Tidy, too. As a matter of interest, do you have

any plans for your old age-after thirty, I mean?"

"I'm going to have a career. Didn't I ever mention that?"

"Not that I remember. But if you'll recall, my love, the way we leaped into

this marriage caper didn't allow much time for discussion or philosophy."

"Well," Celia said, "I did mention my plan about children to Sam Hawthorne.

He thought it would work out fine."

"Bully for Sam!-whoever he is." Andrew wrinkled his brow. "Wait. Wasn't he

the one at our wedding, from Felding-Roth?"

"That's right. Sam Hawthorne's my boss, the regional sales manager. He was

with his wife, Lilian."

"Got it. Everything's coming back."

Andrew remembered Sam Hawthome now-a tall, friendly fellow, perhaps in his

mid-thirties but prematurely balding, and with craggy, strong features that

reminded Andrew of the carved faces on Mount Rushmore. Hawthorne's wife,

Lilian, was a striking brunette.

Reliving, mentally, the events of three days earlier, Andrew said, "You'll

have to make allowance for my having been a little dazed at the time."

One reason, he remembered, was the vision of Celia as she had appeared, in

white, with a short veil, in the reception room of a local hotel where they

had elected to be married. The ceremony was to be performed by a friendly

judge who was also a member of

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St. Bede's Hospital board. Dr. Townsend had escorted Celia in on his arm.

Noah Townsend was fully up to the occasion, the epitome of a seasoned

family physician. Dignified and graying, he looked a lot like the British

prime minister, Harold Macmillan, who was so often in the news these days

smoothing U.S.-British relations after the preceding year's discords over

the Suez Canal.

Celia's mother, a small, self-effacing widow who lived in Philadelphia,

was at the wedding. Celia's father had died in World War 11; hence

Townsend's role.

Under the Bahamas sun, Andrew closed his eyes, partly as relief against

the brightness, but mostly to re-create that moment when Townsend brought

Celia in . . .

In the month since Celia, on that memorable morning in the hospital

cafeteria, had announced her intention to marry him, Andrew had fallen

increasingly under what he thought of as no less than her magic spell.

He supposed love was the word, yet it seemed more and difFerent-the

abandonment of a singleness which Andrew had always pursued, and the

total intertwining of two lives and personalities in ways that at once

bewildered and delighted him. There was no one quite like Celia. No

moment with her was ever dull. She remained full of surprises, knowledge,

intellect, ideas, plans, all bubbling from that wellspring of her

forceful, colorful, independent nature. Almost from the beginning he had

a sense of extreme good fortune as if he, through some machinery of

chance, had won a jackpot, a prize coveted by others. And he sensed that

others coveted Celia as he introduced her to his colleagues.

Andrew had had other women in his life, but none for any length of time,

and there had been no one he seriously considered marrying. Which made

it all the more rcmarkable that from the moment when Celia-to put it

conventionally-proposed," he had never had the slightest doubt,

hesitation, or inclination to turn back.

And yet . . . it was not until that incredible moment when he saw Celia

in her white wedding dress-radiant, lovely, young, desirable, all that

any man could ask of a woman and more, far more -it was not until then

that, with a flash which seemed an exploding ball of fire within him,

Andrew truly fell in love and knew, with the positive certainty that

happens few times in any life, that he was incredibly fortunate, that

what was happening was for always, and

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that, despite the cynicism of the times, for himself and Celia there would

never be separation or divorce.

It was that word "divorce," Andrew told himself when thinking about it

afterward, that had kept him unattached at a time when many of his

contemporaries were marrying in their early twenties. Of course, his own

parents had provided that rationale, and his mother, who represented (as

Andrew saw it) the divorc~e non grata, was at the wedding. She had flown

in from Los Angeles like an aging butterfly, announcing to anyone who

would listen that she had interrupted the shedding of her fourth husband

to be present at her son's "first marriage." Andrew's father had been her

second husband, and when Andrew had inquired about him he was told, "Oh,

my dear boy, I hardly remember what he looked like. I haven't seen him

in twenty years, and the last I heard, he was an old rou6 living with a

seventeen-year-old whore in Paris."

Over the years Andrew had tried to understand his mother and rationalize

her behavior. Sadly, though, he always came to the same conclusion: she

was an empty-headed, shallow, selfish beauty who attracted a similar kind

of man.

He had invited his mother to the wedding-though he later wished he

hadn't--out of a sense of duty and a conviction that everyone should have

some feeling for a natural parent. He had also sent a letter about the

wedding to the last known address of his father, but there had been no

reply, and Andrew doubted if there ever would be. Every three years or

so he and his father managed to exchange Christmas cards, and that was

all.

Andrew had been the only child of his briefly married parents, and the

one other family member he would have liked Celia to meet had died two

years earlier. She was a maiden aunt with whom Andrew had lived through