Silent Treatment (6 page)

“Thank you.”

“Well, you do. Bags under your eyes. That thumbnail chewed down again.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind, Phil.” He glanced at his watch. “Listen, I’ve only got a couple of minutes before I’ve got to see patients.”

“So what are you so worried about? Evie? When’s she going to have that operation?”

“In a few days.”

“She’ll do fine. She’s made out of … um … ah … steel.”

“Don’t start, Phil.”

“I didn’t say anything bad.”

“You were about to.”

“Why should I have anything bad to say about my sister-in-law? She calls and asks me to help her talk my brother into accepting this pharmaceutical-house job he’s been offered. I tell her that even though it’s a grand-sounding title, and maybe more money, I think my brother ought to decide for himself if he wants to give up his medical practice to push pills and design magazine ads. She calls me a selfish bastard who’s threatened by my brother’s moving up in the world. And she says maybe a dozen words to me since. Why should I have anything bad to say about her?”

“She was right, Phil. I should have taken the position.”

“Harry, you see people when they’re sick and you help them get well. Do you know how wonderful that is?”

“It’s not enough anymore.”

“Hey, you’re forty-nine. I’m forty-four. It’s my turn for a midlife crisis. You’re supposed to be through yours already.”

“Well, I’m not. I don’t know, Phil, it’s like … I
spent too much time just accepting things as they were in my life. I didn’t set enough goals or something. Now it seems like I don’t have anything to push against. I should have taken that job. At least there would have been some new challenges.”

“You’re doing fine, Harry. It’s that birthday coming up that has you rattled. The big five—”

“That’s okay, Phil. You don’t have to say it.”

Harry had discussed the Corbett curse with his brother, but only once. Phil’s dismissal of the theory was as emphatic as it was predictable. On a September first their paternal grandfather, just a few months past his seventieth birthday, had dropped dead of a coronary. Twenty-five years later—
exactly
twenty-five years later—their father had
his
first coronary. He was precisely sixty years and five weeks old on
that
September first. That he didn’t die on the spot was both tragic and, to Harry, immaterial. The two years he lived as a cardiac cripple were hell for everyone.

September first
. The date had been circled on Harry’s mental calendar since his father’s heart attack. But after one particular lecture at a cardiology review course, he had highlighted it in red.

“It may be due to societal factors or to genetics,”
the cardiologist had said.
“Possibly both. But we frequently see a pattern in families which I call the Law of Decades. Simply put, a son’s first cardiac event seems often to occur precisely ten years earlier than did his father’s. Obviously, there are exceptions to the Law. But check it out. If you have a fifty-four-year-old man with a coronary and a positive family history, there’s a good chance his father will have had his first event at age sixty-four. Not sixty-three or sixty-five. Ten years on the button.…”

“But physically you’re feeling all right, Harry,” Phil said. “Right?”

“Sure. Sure, Phil, I’m fine. It’s probably just that I haven’t had a two-week vacation in almost three years, my car is falling apart, and—”

“Hey, believe it or not, that’s actually one of the reasons I stopped by. I have a great deal for you on a new
C220. Dealer’s cost. Not the dealer’s cost we tell everyone we’re selling to them at. The
real
dealer’s cost. A new Mercedes. Just think how much Evie’ll love it. Who knows, she might even—”

“Phil!”

“Okay, okay. You said you needed a challenge, that’s all.”

Harry opened the door of the roadster and stepped out onto the pavement.

“Give my love to Gail and the kids,” he said.

“I’m worried about you, Harry. You’re usually very funny. And even more important, you usually think I’m funny.”

“You’re not funny today, Phil.”

“Give me another chance. How about lunch sometime next week?”

“Let’s see what happens with Evie.”

“Okay. And don’t worry, Harry. If you really need it, I’m sure something will come along for you to push against.”

*   *   *

After twenty-one admissions to Parkside Hospital, Joe Bevins could close his eyes and tell time by the sounds and smells coming from the hallway outside his room. He even knew some of the nurses and aides by their footsteps—especially on Pavilion 5. More often than not, he was able to get the admissions people to send him there. The staff on that floor was the kindest in the hospital and knew the most about caring for chronic renal failure patients who were on dialysis. He also liked the rooms on the south end of the floor best of any in the hospital—the rooms with views of the park and, in the distance, the Empire State Building.

It wasn’t a great life, having to get plugged in at the dialysis center three times a week, and having to be rushed to Parkside every time his circulation broke down, or an infection developed, or his blood sugar got too far out of whack, or his heart rhythm became irregular, or his prostate
gland swelled up so that he couldn’t pee. But at seventy-one, with diabetes and nonfunctioning kidneys, it was a case of beggars can’t be choosers.

Outside his door, two litters rattled by, returning patients from physical therapy. One of them, a lonely old gal with no family, had lost both her legs to gangrene. Now, they were just keeping her around until a nursing home bed became available.
It could be worse
, Joe reminded himself.
Much worse
. At least he had Joe Jr., and Alice, and the kids. At least he had visitors. He glanced over at the other bed in his room. The guy in that bed, twenty years younger than he was, was down having an operation on his intestines—a goddamn cancer operation.

Oh, yes
, Joe thought. No matter how bad it got for him, he should never forget that it could always be worse.

He sensed the presence at his door even before he heard the man clear his throat. When he turned, a white-coated lab tech was standing there, adjusting the stoppered tubes in his square, metal basket.

“You must be new here,” Joe said.

“I am. But don’t worry. I’ve been doing this sort of work for a long time.”

The man, somewhere in his forties, smiled at him. He had a nice enough face, Joe decided—not a face he took to all that much, but not one that looked burnt-out or callous either.

“What are you here to draw?” he asked.

Joe’s doctors almost always told him what tests they had ordered. They knew he liked to know. All three specialists had been by on rounds that morning, and none had said anything about blood work.

“This is an HTB-R29 antibody titer,” the man said matter-of-factly, setting his basket on the bedside table. “There’s an infection going around the hospital. Everyone with kidney or lung problems is being tested.”

“Oh.” The technician had an accent of some sort. It wasn’t very marked, and it wasn’t one Joe could place. But it was there. “Where’re you from?” he asked.

The man smiled at him as he prepared his tubes and
needle. The blue plastic name tag pinned on his coat read
G. Turner, Phlebotomist
. Trying not to be obvious, Joe looked down at his clip-on identification badge. It was twisted around so that it was impossible to read.

“You mean originally?” the man responded. “Australia originally. But I’ve been here in the U.S. since I was a child. You have a very astute ear, Mr. Bevins.”

“I taught English before I got sick.”

“Aha. I see,” Turner said, glancing swiftly at the door, which he had partially closed on his way in. “Well, then, shall we get on with this?”

“Just be careful of my shunt.”

Turner lifted Joe’s right forearm, and gently ran his fingers over the dialysis shunt—the firm, distended vessel created by joining an artery and vein. His fingers were long and finely manicured, and Joe had the passing thought that the man played piano, and played it well.

“We’ll use your other arm,” Turner said. He tightened a latex tourniquet three inches above Joe’s elbow, and took much less time than most technicians did to locate a suitable vein. “You seem to take all this in stride; I like that,” he said as he gloved, then swabbed the skin over the vein with alcohol.

“All those doctors don’t keep me alive,” Joe said. “My attitude does.”

“I believe you. I’m going to use a small butterfly IV needle. It’s much gentler on your vein.”

Before Joe could respond, the fine needle, attached to a thin, clear-plastic catheter, was in. Blood pushed into the catheter. Turner attached a syringe to the end of the catheter and injected a small amount of clear liquid.

“This is just to clear the line,” he said.

He waited for perhaps fifteen seconds. Then he drew a syringeful of blood, pulled the tiny needle out, and held the small puncture site firmly.

“Perfect. Just perfect,” he said. “Are you okay?”

I’m fine
.

Joe was certain he had said the words, but he heard nothing. The man standing beside his bed kept smiling
down at him benevolently, all the while keeping pressure on the spot where the butterfly needle had been.

I’m fine
, Joe tried again.

Turner released his arm, and placed the used needle and tube in the metal basket.

“Good day, Mr. Bevins,” he said. “You’ve been most cooperative.”

With the first icy fingers of panic beginning to take hold, Joe watched as the man turned and left the room. He felt strange, detached, floating. The air in the room was becoming thick and heavy. Something was happening to him. Something horrible. He called out for help, but again there was no sound. He tried to turn his head, to find the call button. From the corner of his eye, he could see the cord, hanging down toward the floor. He was paralyzed—unable to move or even to take in a breath. The call button was no more than three feet away. He strained to move his hand toward it, but his arm was lifeless. The air grew heavier still, and Joe felt his consciousness beginning to go. He was dying, drowning in air. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Nothing at all.

The pattern on the drop ceiling blurred, then darkened, then faded to black. And with the deepening darkness, Joe’s panic began to fade.

From beyond the nearly closed door to his room, he heard the sound of the cart from dietary being wheeled to the kitchen at the far end of the hallway. Next he caught the aroma of food.

And after twenty-one hospitalizations at Parkside, most of them on Pavilion 5, he knew that it was exactly eleven-fifteen.

*   *   *

Seven of the ten chairs in Harry’s waiting room were occupied, although three of them were taken by the grandchildren of Mabel Espinoza. Mabel, an octogenarian, graced him with the smile that no amount of pain or personal tragedy had ever erased for long. She had high blood pressure,
vascular disease, hypothyroidism, fluid retention, a love affair with rich foods, and chronic gastritis, For years, Harry had been holding her together with the medical equivalent of spit and baling wire. Somehow, the therapeutic legerdemain continued to work. And because of it, Mabel had been able to care for the grandchildren, and her daughter had been able to keep her job.

Harry reminded himself that there were no Mabel Espinozas connected with the position of Director of Physician Relations at Hollins/McCue Pharmaceuticals.

Mary Tobin, Harry’s office manager-cum-receptionist, oversaw the waiting room from her glass-enclosed cubicle. She was a stout black woman, a grandmother many times over, and had been with Harry since his third year of practice. She was notably outspoken regarding those subjects on which she had an opinion, and she had an opinion on most subjects.

“How did the meeting go?” she asked as he entered her small fiefdom to check the appointment book.

“Meeting?”

“That bad, huh.”

“Let’s just say that all these years you’ve been working for a baritone, and from now on you’ll be working for a tenor,” Harry said.

Mary Tobin grinned at the image.

“What do they know? You’ll make do, Dr. C.,” she said. “You’ve been through tough times beforehand you always find the right path.”

“Keep telling me that. Any calls I need to deal with?”

“Just your wife. She called a half an hour ago.”

“Is she okay?”

“I think so. She’d like you to call her at the office.”

Harry headed past his three examining rooms to his office. In addition to Mary Tobin, he had a young nurse practitioner named Sara Keene who had been with him for four years, and a medical aide who must have been the twentieth he had hired from the nearby vocational tech. One of that group he had fired for stealing. The rest had left
to have babies, or more often, for better pay. Sara looked up from her desk and waved as he passed.

“I heard about the meeting, Dr. C.,” she called out cheerily. “Don’t worry.”

“If one more person tells me not to worry, I’m going to start worrying,” he said.

His personal office was a large space at the very back or the once elegant apartment building. In addition to an old walnut desk and chairs, it contained a Trotter treadmill which he had used for cardiac stress tests until the Associated malpractice premiums made performing the tests prohibitively expensive. Now, he used the mill for exercise. The walls of the office, once paneled with what Evie called “Elks Club pine,” had been Sheetrocked over at her request and painted white. They held the usual array of laminated diplomas, certifications, and testimonials, plus something only a few other physicians could put on their walls—a silver star from Vietnam. There were also three original oils Evie had picked out, all contemporary, all abstract, and none that Harry would have chosen had he been left to his own tastes. But the majority of his patients seemed to like them.

There were three pictures in frames on the desk. One was of Harry and his parents at his medical school graduation; one was of Phil, Gail, and their kids; and one was of Evie. It was a black-and-white, head-and-shoulders publicity shot, taken by one of the city’s foremost photographers. There were several dozen snapshots of her in his desk that Harry would have preferred in the frame, but Evie had insisted on the portrait. Now, as he settled in his chair, Harry cradled the frame in his hands and studied her fine, high cheekbones, her sensual mouth, and the dark intensity in her eyes. The photo was taken just before their wedding nine years ago. Evie, twenty-nine at the time, was then, and remained, the most beautiful woman he had ever known.