Silent Treatment (3 page)

“You are feeling better, yes?” a man’s voice said in a thick foreign accent that Ron could not identify.

Still in the fetal position that gave him the least discomfort, Ron blinked his eyes open, and looked up. The man, dressed in blue surgical scrubs like most of the ER staff, smiled down at him. The overhead light, eclipsed by his head, formed a bright halo around him and darkened his face.

“I am Dr. Kozlansky,” he said. “It appears you and the others have developed food poisoning.”

“Goddamn Jade Dragon. Is my wife all right?”

“Oh yes. Oh yes, I assure you, she is most fine.”

“Great. Listen, Doc, my stomach’s killing me. Can you give me something for this pain?”

“That is exactly why I am here,” he said.

“Wonderful.”

The physician produced a syringe half full of clear liquid and emptied it into the intravenous line.

“Thanks, Doc,” Farrell said.

“You may wish to wait and thank me when … when we see how this works.”

“Okay, have it your—”

Farrell was suddenly unable to speak. There was a horrible, consuming emptiness within his chest. And he knew in that moment that his heart had stopped beating.

The man continued smiling down at him benignly.

“You are feeling better, yes?” he asked.

Ron felt his arms and legs begin to shake uncontrollably. His back arched until only his heels and the back of his
head touched the bed. His teeth jackhammered together. Then his consciousness began to fade. His thoughts became more disjointed. His dreadful fear lessened and then finally vanished. His body dropped lifelessly back onto the bed.

For a full minute the man stood there watching. Then he slipped the syringe into his pocket.

“I’m afraid I must leave you now,” he whispered in a voice free of any accent. “Please try to get some rest.”

Harry Corbett was on his fifteenth lap around the indoor track when he first sensed the pain in his chest. The track, a balcony just under an eighth of a mile around, was on the top floor of the Grey Building of the Manhattan Medical Center. Ten feet below it was a modestly equipped gym with weights, the usual machines, heavy bags, and some mats. The fitness center, unique in the city, was exclusively for the hospital staff and employees. It had been created through the legacy of Dr. George Pollock, a cardiologist who had twice swum the English Channel. Pollock’s death, at age ninety, had resulted from his falling off a ladder while cleaning the gutters of his country home.

At the moment of his awareness of the pain, Harry was actually thinking about Pollock and about what it would be like to live until ninety. He slowed a bit and rotated his shoulders. The pain persisted. It wasn’t much—maybe two on the scale of one to ten that physicians used. But it was
there. Reluctant to stop running, Harry swallowed and massaged his upper abdomen. The discomfort was impossible to localize. One moment it seemed to be beneath his breastbone, the next in the middle of his back. He slowed a bit more, down from an eight-minutes-per-mile pace to about ten-and-a-half. The ache was in his left chest now … no, it was gone … no, not gone, somewhere between his right nipple and clavicle.

He slowed still more. Then, finally, he stopped. He bent forward, his hands on his thighs. It wasn’t angina, he told himself. Nothing about the character of the pain said cardiac. He understood his body, and he certainly understood pain. This pain was no big deal. And if it wasn’t his heart, he really didn’t give a damn where it was coming from.

Harry knew his logic was flawed—diagnostic deduction he would never, ever apply to a patient. But like most physicians with physical symptoms, his denial was more powerful than any logic.

Steve Josephson, jogging in the opposite direction, lumbered toward him.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked.

Still staring down at the banked cork track, Harry took a deep breath. The pain was gone, just like that. Gone. He waited a few seconds to be sure. Nothing. The smidgen of remaining doubt disappeared. Definitely not the ticker, he told himself again.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, Steve,” he said. “You go ahead and finish.”

“Hey, you’re the zealot who goaded me into this jogging nonsense in the first place,” Josephson said. “I’ll take any excuse I can get to stop.”

He was sweating more profusely than Harry, although he had probably run half as far. Like Harry, Steve Josephson was a general practitioner—“family medicine specialists,” the bureaucrats had decided to name them. They were in solo practice, but shared night and weekend coverage with four other GPs. It was just after six-thirty in the morning—
earlier than usual for their run. But this would be a busy and important day.

At eight, following morning rounds and an emergency meeting of the family medicine department, the entire MMC staff would be convening in the amphitheater. After months of interviews and investigation, the task force charged with determining whether or not to reduce the privileges of GPs in the hospital was ready to present its findings. From the rumors Harry had tapped into, the recommendations of the Sidonis committee would be harsh—the professional equivalent of castration.

With a portion of Harry’s income and a significant chunk of his professional respect on the line, the impending presentation was reason enough for the ulcers or muscle spasms, or whatever the hell had caused the strange ache. And even the committee report was not the foremost concern on his mind.

“We’ve been running together three or four times a week for almost a year,” Josephson said, “and I’ve never seen you stop before your five miles were up.”

“Well, Stephen, it just goes to show there’s a first time for everything.” Harry studied his friend’s worried face and softened. “Listen, pal, I’d tell you if it was anything. Believe me I would. I just don’t feel like running today. I’ve got too much on my mind.”

“I understand. Is Evie going in tomorrow?”

“The day after. Ben Dunleavy’s her neurosurgeon. He talks about clipping her cerebral aneurysm as if he was removing a wart or something. But I guess it’s what he does.”

They moved off the track as the only other runners in the gym approached.

“How’s she holding up?” Josephson asked.

Harry shrugged. “All things considered, she seems pretty calm about it. But she can be pretty closed in about her feelings.”

Closed in
. The understatement of the week, Harry mused ruefully. He couldn’t recall the last time Evie had shared feelings of any consequence with him.

“Well, tell her Cindy and I wish her well, and that I’ll stop by to see her as soon as that berry is clipped.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate hearing that.”

In fact, he doubted that she would. As warm, bright, and caring as Steve Josephson was, Evie could never get past his obesity.

“Did you ever listen to him breathe?” she had once asked as Harry was extolling his virtues as a physician. “I felt like I was trying to converse with a bull in heat. And those white, narrow-strapped tees he wears beneath his white dress shirts—pul-leese.…”

“So, then,” Josephson said as they entered the locker room, “before we shower, why don’t you tell me what
really
happened out there.”

“I already—”

“Harry, I was halfway around the track from you and I could see the color drain from your face.”

“It was nothing.”

“You know, I spent years learning how to ask nonleading questions. Don’t make me regress.”

For the purpose of insurance application forms or the occasional prescription, Harry and Josephson served as one another’s physician. And although each persistently urged the other to schedule a complete physical, neither of them had. The closest they had come was an agreement made just after Harry’s forty-ninth birthday. Harry, already obsessive about diet and exercise, had promised to get a checkup and a cardiac stress test. Steve, six years younger but fifty pounds heavier, had agreed to have a physical, start jogging, and join Weight Watchers. But except for Josephson’s grudging sessions on the track, neither had followed through.

“I had a little indigestion,” Harry conceded. “That’s all. It came. It bothered me for a minute. It left.”

“Indigestion, huh. By indigestion do you perhaps mean chest pain?”

“Steve, I’d tell you if I had chest pain. You know I would.”

“Slight correction. I know you
wouldn’t
. How many men did you lug back to that chopper?”

Although Harry rarely talked about it, over the years almost everyone at the hospital had heard some version of the events at Nha-trang, or had actually composed one themselves. In the stories, the number of wounded he had saved before being severely wounded himself had ranged from that his doctor had killed a three—which was in fact the number for which he had been decorated—to twenty. He once even overheard a patient boast hundred Vietcong while rescuing an equal number of GIs.

“Stephen, I am no hero. Far from it. If I thought the pain was anything, anything at all, I’d tell you.”

Josephson was unconvinced.

“You awe me a stress test. When do you turn fifty?”

“Two weeks.”

“And when’s the date of that family curse?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Harry, you’re the one who told me about it. Now, when is it?”

“September. September first.”

“You’ve got four weeks.”

“I … Okay, okay. As soon as Evie’s situation is straightened out I’ll set one up with the exercise lab. Promise.”

“I’m serious.”

“You know, in spite of what everyone says about you, I always thought that.”

Harry stripped and headed for the showers. He knew that Steve Josephson, in spite of himself, was staring at the patchwork of scars on his back. Thirty-one pieces of shrapnel, half a kidney, and a rib. The design left by their removal would have blended into the pages of a Rand McNally road atlas. Harry flashed on the incredible sensation of Evie’s breasts gliding slowly over the healed wounds in what she used to call her patriotic duty to a war hero.
When was the last time?
That, he acknowledged sadly, he couldn’t remember.

He cranked up the hot water until he was enveloped in
steam. Two weeks until fifty.
Fifty!
He had never experienced any sort of midlife crisis that he could think of. But maybe the deep funk he had been in lately was it. By now the pieces of his life should have fallen into place. Instead, the choices he had made seemed to be under almost constant attack. And crumbling.

He thought about the day halfway through his convalescence when he had made the decision to withdraw from his residency in surgery and devote his professional life to general practice. Something had happened to him over his year and a half in Nam. He no longer had any desire to be center stage. Not that he minded the drama and intensity of the operating room. In fact, even now he truly enjoyed his time there. But in the end, he had realized, he simply wanted to be a family doc.
Simply
. If there was one word that was most descriptive of the life Harry had chosen for himself,
simply
might well be it. Get up in the morning, do what seems right, try to help a few people along the way, develop an interest or two outside of work, and sooner or later, things would make sense. Sooner or later, the big questions would be answered.

Well, lately things weren’t making much sense at all. The big answers were just as elusive as ever. More so. His marriage was shaky. The kids he had always wanted just never happened. The financial security that he had expected would gradually develop over the years was tied to a brand of medicine he was not willing to practice. He never allowed his office to become a medical mill. He never sent a collection agency after anyone. He never refused anyone care because the patient couldn’t pay. He never moved to the suburbs. He never went back for the training that would have made him a subspecialist. The result was a car that was seven years old and a retirement fund that would last indefinitely—as long as he didn’t try to retire.

Now, his professional stature was being hauled up on the block, his wife was facing a neurosurgeon’s scalpel, and just four weeks from the first of September in his fifty-first year, he had experienced pain in his chest.

• • •

The hastily called family medicine departmental meeting accomplished little. Each physician who spoke during the emotional forty-five-minute session seemed to have different information about what the findings of the Sidonis committee were going to be. In the end, no motions were passed, no actions of protest approved. Aside from presenting a unified front at the amphitheater, there was nothing to do until the specifics of the task force’s recommendations were known.

“Harry, you didn’t say a word in there,” Steve Josephson said as they left.

“There was nothing to say.”

“Sidonis and his vigilantes are on a witch hunt, and you know it. Everyone’s scared. You could have calmed them down. You’re … you’re sort of the leader of the pack. The unofficial kahuna.”

“A kind way of saying I’m older than most of the others.”

“That’s hardly what I mean. I deliver babies. Sandy Porter strips veins and does other stuff in the OR. The Kornetsky brothers are better in the CCU than most of the cardiologists. Almost every one of us does some procedure or activity that might be taken away today. You’re about the only one who does all of them.”

“So? Steve, what are we going to do? Challenge the specialists to a medical Olympics?”

“Oh, this is crazy. Harry, I don’t know what’s come over you lately. I just hope it’s not permanent.”

Harry started to respond that he didn’t know what Josephson was talking about. Instead, he mumbled an apology. He had never been a fiery orator, but over the years his directness and commonsense approach to resolving conflicts had earned him respect in the hospital. And he certainly had never backed away from a fight. He could have—
should
have—said something. Members of the department, especially the younger ones, were genuinely worried about their futures.