Suzy's Case: A Novel (17 page)

Despite my inclination, I make eye contact with the receptionist instead. “Hi, I’m the doctor’s three o’clock.”

She hands me a clipboard. “Fill this out, please.”

I look straight down at my clipboard and begin entering my personal information. From the peripheral vision of my peripheral vision I can see Tamale checking me out as I pretend not to notice. A few minutes go by and I realize I have to engage her because once she’s called in for her appointment she’s gone forever. So I decide to make creative use of my medical form.

“Name,” I say out loud, then start scribbling on the clipboard. “Date of birth,” I say aloud, leaning down to write again. My sixth sense tells me she’s turned her head in my direction. Perfect. I pause, and straighten up. “Social security number,” I remark as I jot some more. She’s still looking at the guy talking to himself. “Sex,” I say aloud, tilting my head in her direction for the very first time. When our eyes lock, I resume my monologue in an especially husky tone. “Most definitely, but never on the first date.”

She laughs out loud, and I know she’s my kind of girl. When you’re hot, you’re hot. I know it’s unlikely I’d ever commit an act of marital treason against my wife, but if I did it could only be with someone who has a sophisticated fourth-grade sense of humor like mine. “Come here often?” I ask.

Tamale bites. “Sure do. Do you?”

“This is my first time. Is the doctor gentle?”

“That’s an interesting question, but yes, he’s very gentle. Why, what
are you here for? Oh, I’m sorry. I know better than to ask that question.”

“No, I don’t mind. I believe in open and honest communication. I’m here for my genital herpes. I’m having a massive flare-up. How about you? What are you here for? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“No, I don’t mind, either. My vagina schvitzes every time I ride the subway. I think it’s the vibrations. It’s very embarrassing when it seeps through to my clothing.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that before. Subway Schvitzing Vagina Disorder, or SSVD. I’m sorry to hear you have it, but it’s better than the other kinds of VD. I thought SSVD only affected Jewish girls.”

“I’m half Jewish; my mom. She’s a schvitzer, too. It’s a hereditary disorder.”

“Those hereditary disorders can be a disaster. I’m a lawyer and represent a little girl who appears to have had a severe complication from her hereditary disease, but I’m less convinced of that now than I was about an hour ago.”

“Well, SSVD doesn’t have any severe complications, I’m happy to report, and I’m sorry to hear about that little girl and also about your herpes.” Tamale pauses for a second. It’s the type of pause when the pauser is deciding whether to take the conversation to the next level or end it.

Tamale goes for it. She asks, “So, what are you really here for?”

“I’m a little embarrassed to tell you, but I’m consulting the doctor for a penile reduction.” A loud bang comes from behind the reception window like someone fell off a chair. We both look in the direction of the sound, but no one’s there. We smile. I shrug my shoulders. “How about you? What are you really here for?”

“Well, I’m a little embarrassed, too. I’m consulting for a vaginal rejuvenation.”

“At your age!” I exclaim. “Wow. They’re doing that younger and younger these days. My wife had her crumbling cookie rejuvenated on the day she gave birth to our third child.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. I mean, it was a modified rejuvenation. I slipped
her OB/GYN a fifty for an extra stitch as he was suturing up her episiotomy cut to tighten things up.”

“Is that all it cost?”

“Actually, it’s fifty per stitch, so it cost me two fifty cash.”

Suddenly, we both start laughing. Then Tamale goes for a more serious tone. “So now I have two questions for you. Are you really married with kids and what are you really here for?”

“Yes, I’m really married with kids and I’m here to get drugs. My previous doctor was nice enough to overprescribe drugs for me, but unfortunately, he lost his license for overprescribing drugs. It’s a good news–bad news story.”

“What kind of drugs?” Tamale wonders.

“Prescription medications, the good kind. Have those answers changed things between us?”

Before she gets a chance to answer, the door next to reception opens inward and my new doctor, Dr. Vargas, walks out. He’s a tiny guy, exactly as I preselected when making the calls. He looks at me. “Are you my new patient?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I see you’ve met my daughter,” he says, then turns to Tamale. “This gentleman is my last patient, Lisa. Did you tell your mother I was taking you shopping after school today?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Shopping after school? Mommy? Daddy? Jesus.

Dr. Vargas turns back to me. “Right this way.” I comply, continuing to be a little confused about Tamale and her life experiences. We enter an exam room. “What can I do for you?” Dr. Vargas asks.

“I need an annual exam. It’s been awhile. I should also be right up front with you, I’m looking for drugs.”

“If drugs are medically indicated, I don’t have a problem with that, but first we have to do a comprehensive exam and evaluation.”

“Consider me a compliant patient, Doctor.”

“Take everything off but your underwear.” I do. He draws blood, weighs me, listens to my heart, and performs several other routine
exams. “You’re at the age where it’s standard practice to begin checking the prostate for enlargement.”

“I know that, Doctor.”

“The prostate,” he explains, “is checked by a physician performing a digital rectal exam.”

“I know that, too.”

Dr. Vargas walks over to his supplies cabinet and speaks with his back toward me. “I’ll need you to turn on your side.” I hear the snapping sound of a latex-free rubber glove making its way onto his hand. I roll to my side and hear the telltale sound of K-Y Jelly being squeezed out of a near-empty container. Dr. Vargas moves behind me. “I hope this won’t be too uncomfortable for you.”

“I’m counting on it not being. I went through a sophisticated screening process and chose you based on your expected hand size.”

“Really?” He makes his move.

“Your daughter was right,” I say after the deed has been done. “You’re a gentle man.”

As Dr. Vargas snaps off the rubber glove, he begins to extol his daughter’s many virtues. “She’s a wonderful girl. Beautiful and in the top of her class. She’s going to go to NYU next year. She wants to stay around town.”

“Great,” I say, thinking to myself I hope no ass like me has a conversation with my daughter at that age like the one I just had with his. What kind of idiot am I? At least that explains her receptiveness, lack of life experience.

“Now, we have one last thing to do here. I’m going to perform an EKG. Have you ever had one done before?”

“Actually, no, I haven’t. I know I’m past due.”

“You certainly are, so we’re going to get a baseline on your heart pattern in case you ever have trouble in the future. I’m going to send in my tech to perform the study and we’ll talk in my office afterward about your pharmacological desires.”

“See you in a few,” I reply.

Into my exam room a few minutes later walks Marta, as her name tag informs me. “Good afternoon,” she says. “I’m here to perform an
EKG to make sure your ticker is tocking right. It shouldn’t take too long. Now lie flat on your back, and relax. I do all the work.”

I comply, allowing her to do her thing, but the relaxing part ends as soon as Marta displays a round white object. “This is an electrode patch,” she tells me. It instantly triggers a replay of what Dr. Harper said during Suzy’s IME.

Marta’s patch is the same size and shape as the scar on Suzy’s chest. She moves over me and places it on my chest in the same location as Suzy’s scar. Marta continues to put four more electrode patches on my upper body—one on each arm and two more on my chest as I make copious mental notes every step of the way. All five patches that she applies have little receptor holes elevated up off the bull’s-eye of the patch. Marta then inserts into these receptors the metal prong-like ends of plastic-coated lead wires. After that she plugs the other end of the lead wires into a piece of plastic housing and plugs that into a cord leading into the cardiac monitor.

“Marta,” I ask, “does this shock me? Will I feel anything?”

Marta laughs. “No. These patches merely obtain information from the electrical activity of your heart and send it through the lead wires to the machine for interpretation. That old machine isn’t sending anything to your heart. Now, let me finish this test.”

“Why are you calling that machine old?”

“Because it is. Nowadays we use simple snap-on caps to connect the lead wires to the patches, not these antiquated prong things, but Dr. Vargas doesn’t want to spend the cash for the upgrade yet.” So Suzy’s machine may have been outdated, too. After Marta’s done, she says, “Get dressed and then go into the doctor’s office, which is two doors down on your right.”

“Will do.”

I enter the doctor’s office. “Please, sit down,” Dr. Vargas says. “I went over your questionnaire and have some follow-up.”

“Shoot,” I respond.

“What kind of lawyer are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“Then I’m a malpractice lawyer. I sue physicians like yourself who practice medicine outside of the parameters of good and accepted medical standards, customs, and practices.”

“Good for you,” Dr. Vargas replies. “I see so much malpractice in my hospital affiliations and most of it just gets swept under the rug. Physicians are supposed to come forth with their errors but none ever do. It’s all about burying the mistakes at the expense of the patient.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, Doctor. Most physicians don’t share your point of view.”

“Those would be the ones to watch out for.” We share a pause, a smile, and a nod. “I also noted you’ve been on a variety of medications in the past to help you lose weight. Stay away from those. I would suggest as a start to order your meals in from one of those programs.”

“Duly noted. Now can we talk about my drugs?”

“What are you looking for? Oxycodone?”

“Doc,” I assure him, “I got a lot of dependencies, but semisynthetic opioid analgesics is not one of them. I just want a little Xanax now and then to take the edge off.”

“Will ten milligrams do?”

“Twenty-five would do better.”

“Fifteen.”

“Deal.”

On my way out Tamale is sitting just where I left her. “Have fun shopping with your dad,” I say.

“That’s it?”

“What else is left but a cordial good-bye?”

“I thought we had a connection. You’re different.”

“No doubt we connected, but I thought you were much older. Our moons are in different phases. Timing is everything, and I’m obviously losing track of it, given my cluelessness about your age.”

“Forget about it. It happens all the time,” she assures me. I offer a mature smile.

In the elevator down from Dr. Vargas’s office my mind is going in
multiple directions, linking and connecting the events of the last few days. I make a mental numeration that breaks down like this:

1. This morning I saw a round scar on Little Suzy’s chest Dr. Harper claimed was a defib patch scar, despite June’s insistence that paddles had been used. This afternoon an identically shaped electrode patch was applied to the exact same spot on my chest for purposes of cardiac monitoring, in the same way, basically, that my mother’s heart was being monitored in ICU, with a similar device.

2. I selected Dr. Vargas based on my estimation of his hand size because modern medicine still hasn’t managed to invent a scan for the prostate. And it turns out that he’s one of the rare doctors critical of the medical community for covering up such malpractice as he sees routinely in hospital settings.

3. I represent a little girl who was injured in a hospital setting and the only explanation I have for her condition is the always suspect
C
word,
complication
.

On my first step onto the sidewalk I take out my phone and hit a speed-dial key. One ring later, Lily picks up. “Law Office. Can I help you?”

“It’s me.”

“Hi, me, what do
you
want?” she says in a snippy voice.

“Babysitter issues?”

“As always. Now what do you want?”

“Please pull out the hospital chart for the admission of Suzy Williams when she sustained her injury and leave it on my chair before you go.”

“You mean you can’t pull some medicals out of a file for yourself?”

“No. I could, but I’m asking you to do it so I don’t have to search for anything when I get back. Am I asking too much?”

“It’s not that you’re asking too much, it’s just that you could do it yourself.”

“Just put the Williams file on my chair before you leave and I’ll pull the records out myself.”

“So you want me to move the Williams file from the corner of your desk and put it on your chair?”

“Never mind.”

“Bert Beecher called three times for you in the last few minutes and is anxious to talk. I told him you’d call him back. You want his cell?”

“I’ll call him when I get back. I’m on my way now.”

I have no idea why I stay married to my wife and keep Lily as my paralegal. These two women have the kind of strength most men wish they had and continually use it to push me around. I must possess some kind of genetic disorder that makes me attracted to tough women who don’t seem all that interested in making life easier for me. Maybe I have SOMBS—Step On My Balls Syndrome, a condition that causes the women I love to keep my nuts under foot pressure. The fact of the matter is that Lily’s right in this instance. At least I admit it.