Lie Still (25 page)

His wife answered, fairly shouting: “No, dear, I’m afraid he is still in Europe. He will be for the next two weeks. Off on a lecturing tour. Some ‘visiting professor’ thing they like to do, don’t you know. He wanted me to go along, too, but I’ve just gotten so I don’t enjoy traveling anymore. Not the way I used to. Not the way you would need to to get around over there, you know. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Gee, that’s too bad. I mean that you couldn’t go along.”

“Yes, well, it really is okay. I have plenty to keep me busy here. Our garden, don’t you know.”

Maybe she could help. “Actually, since Dr. Adams is not available, you know it’s possible one of his associates could help me. I heard a reference to someone . . .”

“What?”

“I said I heard something about a certain one of your husband’s associates. Unfortunately, I don’t know his name.”

“Well, if you’d like to talk it over, I may be able to help, I don’t know. I don’t do well on the phone, though. It’s too hard to hear. Why don’t you drive over here and we’ll figure it out together,” she said.

Their house was an older ranch style in one of the unpreten-tious parts of town. I knocked. A statuesque woman answered. Her brilliant silver hair was pulled straight back and lacquered, forming a helmet. Mrs. Adams fairly lit up when I gave her an opportunity to talk about her husband.

“Did he get an award from the Boy Scouts?”

“Well, dear, he has been given several. You know he has 182

DAVID FARRIS

stayed very active with the Scouts, even after our boys moved on to college and all.”

“Did he get one in New Mexico?”

She pondered. “Well, yes, at Cimmarron Ranch. He got his Gold Oak Leaf. Quite a major honor, you know. Thirty years of service. Cimmarron, don’t you know, is that wonderful ranch they have in the mountains. Thousands of acres.”

“Yes. I was there myself, not too many years ago. I was a Scout, too. Do you know when he received it?”

“Well, I could find out. Let me see.” She went into the den and I heard a file cabinet slide open. She came back with a tattered manila folder. “Here it is. The little certificate that came with the pin.” She handed it to me. I memorized the date.

We chatted about the wonders of Scouting over coffee and a muffin, I thanked her profusely, then made an escape.

I screeched my Datsun to Maricopa and ran down to Medical Records—the chart keepers. I knew too well the night and weekend crew; it was only on their shifts I seemed to get my butt down there to sign off orders and dictate my incomplete notes, usually under threat of suspension for tardiness.

Barbara, an especially friendly taskmaster, was at the desk.

“Oh, Barbara,” I said, cocking an eyebrow.

She looked at me sideways.

“How good are you with mysteries?”

She eyed me back. “Will this be . . . something unusual?”

“Strictly unofficial. Neither of us is even
here
.”

“My favorite kind of job.”

“You’re a star, you know that?” I jotted down the date.

“Find me a cerebral aneurysm taken to surgery within two days of this date.”

She leaned back in her chair and scowled at me. “Hoo boy. Any other clues?”

“Miriam Lyle, MD, would have been primary surgeon.

And it was done on a Friday.”

LIE STILL

183

“You know charts this old are off site, on microfilm, or usually just plain lost. Even if I knew who I was looking for.”

“Don’t you have a surgical database?”

“Not on computer. Not that far back.” A pause. “But!” I could see the light go on. “We do have a database. The old-fashioned kind. On paper.”

Barbara paged me not an hour later to say one of her minions had located the OR logbook for that period. A courier would have it there from the off-site records storage at 8:00 A.M. the next morning.

I flogged my intern through morning prerounds, managed to keep our Attending on track during his rounds, then made an excuse to be a few minutes late for clinic. In Barbara’s basement dungeon the chart maven of the day shift pointed me to a large clothbound ledger book, smudged with black marker declaiming “Surgery” in big handwritten block letters on the cover.

I quickly thumbed through to the memorized date, then backtracked to the Friday, read down about thirty lines in the

“Case” column and found one listing “ACA aneurysm clipping.” In the column for “Surgeon” it showed simply

“Lyle/White.”

The yellow pages, under “Physician: Surgeon, Neurological” listed only one Dr. White: Steven White, MD. I phoned the number listed—his answering service—and asked that he call me on my pager. I gave my name only as “Dr. Ishmail.” Employing the title usually ensures a return call. Fifteen minutes later, as I was rechecking some X-rays on one of our patients, my pager chirped. A slow and resonant male voice with frequent overtones of gravel said, “Returning your call, Doctor,” and gave me a phone number.

I dialed it from a dictation booth. Dr. White listened gra-ciously as I quickly gave the high points of the trail of conversations that had led me to him. I then said, “Really, I’m calling about Mimi Lyle. Are you the Dr. White who helped her clip an aneurysm one Friday night, years ago, when Ed Adams was out of town?”

184

D AVID FARRIS

A pause, then, “Yes, that was me.”

“Then I expect you remember her.”

“Mm-mm. Yes, I do. Fabulous woman. Fabulous looking, especially for a brain surgeon. Not one to forget.”

“No, not easily forgotten,” I said. “But there’s been, um, kind of a flap around here. There’s some question about her surgical skills.” A silence. “I was wondering if I might be able to come talk to you.”

More silence, then he said, “Can you drive out here?”

“Yes, absolutely. Where’s ‘here’?”

“Paradise Valley. How soon can they get along there without you?”

“Late afternoon. It’s just a clinic day.”

“You come on out here. We’ll talk.”

Dr. White’s house had an air of roomy dignity and affluence.

The owner was easily six foot two, even with a marked stoop. I had expected his silver hair and patrician dress but his clothes hung loose on his wiry frame and his breathing seemed labored. Somehow I’d pictured bulk and ease.

He offered me a drink. “Scotch? Milk of the Mother-land!” he rasped.

I hesitated. “No, sir. I’m on call.”

“Well, I’m not, by God.” He fairly boomed the last two words. “I’m going to, if you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not.”

As he poured he said, “How did you get involved with Mimi Lyle?”

“I was a resident on her service.”

“Yes, you told me that. But a resident’s job doesn’t usually include making inquiries about his professor’s past.”

His voice filled the home without being intimidating.

“No. I suppose not.” I recounted the halfhearted investigation of Mimi’s operating skills. He nodded as if he were hearing an old joke.

I said she had confided in me when things were difficult.

“She woke up,” I said, “from a nightmare—she told me about it—apparently she has this recurring dream—where she LIE STILL

185

feels like she’s in a maze of ORs, lost. And everybody is laughing at her while they’re doing surgery. That was when she mentioned you. Then she told me. She said she gets lost inside the head.”

Again, he nodded. Knowingly. “Yes, I think she does,” he said, watching my face.

“Then, not even two weeks ago, we hit the same quicksand.” I told him about Susan McKenzie’s adenoma removal. I said, “I felt compelled to pass that on.” He still watched me. “To the powers-that-be in neurosurgery—Dr.

Bullock and Dr. Kellogg. When I told Dr. Bullock about her he said, ‘She will clear.’ ”

“That’s what all brain surgeons always say. It’s our motto.”

“So she’s grossly okay; it was still horrifying. I realized I just couldn’t do it again. To somebody else. And still be a doctor.”

He nodded. “What did they say? When you shared this?

What did Marshall Bullock have to say about it?”

“He talked about it in terms of an apraxia. He wanted some sort of a diagnosis. But then he said it would be impossible.”

“Oh shit, Malcolm. Do you think it’s impossible?”

“No. I mean, from what we learned about brain function: Some people can’t read. Some people can’t understand time.

Or get certain kinds of verbs, talk in certain settings . . .”

“Of course. It’s very possible. The brain is capable of remarkable
inabilities
as well as abilities. It’s the opposite of talent.”

I nodded. His ability to articulate my thoughts reminded me of Dad.

He said, “So what happened? With Marshall?”

“Well, nothing.”

“Precisely.”

“Pardon me?” I said.

“Exactly the only thing they can do. Nothing. They have no response. They don’t have the slightest idea what to do with intelligence such as that.”

186

DAVID FARRIS

I could only nod, slowly, hoping for more.

“Oh, they probably mean well. But the system has no structure for it. It cannot deal with the underlying problem.”

He whispered loudly, “She’s in the wrong specialty.”

“How’s that?”

“She’s smart. She means well, but she should be in pediatrics. Or radiology. Or even vascular surgery. Something two-dimensional or maybe even just plain linear.”

“Something strictly left-brain,” I said.

He half laughed. “Yes, yes.”

“Well, Dr. White, one thing they did with my ‘intelligence’—I mean they had to—they went and asked her about it. She told them, in a letter, that I had made a series of clumsy come-ons to her in clinic and offered her drugs. And groped her. I got rousted in clinic a few days ago for a urine sample and I have a meeting with the Committee on Graduate Medical Education and all their ass-kickers in a week.” I blinked a few times. “I’ve seen the letter. Which is why I came to you.”

He looked into his drink. I went on: “She said once you had a case—maybe more than one—that you helped her with.” There was a silence. “Some years ago, when Dr.

Adams was in New Mexico.”

He twitched his mouth in a circle. “You screwing her?”

I thought to try to look shocked, but knew right away, under Dr. White’s grin, what foolishness that would be. I mustered a rueful half-smile. I said, “Was. Not anymore.”

“Ha. It fits the story,” he said, taking a pull on his drink.

“And the clues. Good man. Well done.”

“I don’t know. It seemed harmless enough when it started but now it’s looking like one of the dumber things I’ve ever gotten into.”

He snorted, “Take it from an old man, Malcolm. Some of my biggest mistakes are among my fondest memories.”

I laughed slightly. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t ‘Yes, sir’ me. I’m too old. Never liked formalities.”

“Okay.

“So your ‘come-ons’ must not have been too clumsy.”

LIE STILL

187

“My part, Dr. White, was rather passive. Acquiescence.”

“Ha! Perfect. Now you get the blame.”

“Yes, sir. So it seems. Which, again, is why I called you.”

“All through the whole thing—this mock investigation—

was she completely confident she would be cleared?”

“Yes.”

“Totally exonerated? Never in doubt?”

“Yes.”

“Blamed some . . .” he waved his hand, “some, conspiracy against her?”

“Yes.”

“Always the same,” he said. I waited. “A gaping hole in a surgeon’s abilities—hell, anybody’s abilities—is like the blind spot in your vision—” again he bellowed a whisper, “—you have no clue it exists.”

“Yes, sir.”

He had a spell of racking cough, then went to his bar to pour another drink.

“Sir—Dr. White—when Mimi told me that night . . .” I hesitated. “You know, I didn’t really want to cop to my affair with Mimi when I met with Dr. Bullock. I think he suspected something was up. He all but asked me directly. I wanted to keep it to myself, though. It was as if I still wanted to protect that part.”

He looked directly at me. “It’s not that romantic.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not about protecting your private affair. It’s the issue.

Your affair with Mimi is not the issue. Patients are the issue and you know that.”

I smiled and sighed. “Yes, sir.”

“Because you’re a doctor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your affair with Mimi was not—I am going to guess—the great love of your life.”

“No, sir.”

“You said, ‘She woke up from a nightmare.’ That was the clue.”

I nodded.

188

DAVID FARRIS

“So you went to talk with Marshall Bullock. Marshall never once let any aura of warmth build around himself.”

“No, I suppose not.” A pause. “Anyway, Mimi woke up one night, all in a panic. That’s when she told me about getting lost in the brain. We’d been partying pretty hard that night. That’s one of the things that makes it hard to come out with this. I have to kind of dance around exactly how this came out between us.”

He nodded his understanding.

“But she also told me about you. Well, indirectly, anyway.

She never used your name. Called you ‘Dr. Dreamboat.’ Apparently she—”

He walked toward me, motioning me to stop. “I was going to get to this.” He leaned to open a large book on the coffee table and produced from it a note card, still in its envelope, still bearing a faint remainder of Mimi’s musky perfume.

“This was my other clue about your affair with our Dr. Lyle.

There’s tragic loneliness there. I’ve known about it for years.”

He handed me Mimi’s thank-you note, then sprawled back on his couch. He added, “She also has insight into her own problems. At least some of the time.”

The note was dated two weeks after their shared aneurysm operation, written with a fountain-pen script in Mimi’s flowing hand, though somewhat scrawled and crooked on the card. It read:

Darling Steve,

Just a quick note to thank you for coming in last Friday
night to help me with—what was her name?—Mrs.

Schaer’s aneurysm. I know you had thought to have a
quiet weekend on Ed’s call, but your good graces allowed
me—us—to save an otherwise awfully bad situation.