The Magic Bullet (10 page)

“
Not
funny,” she said, suppressing a smile.

He shrugged. “Just trying to help.”

“Thanks,” she said, turning on her heel. “And you should start smiling a lot less.”

In brief, Logan was starting to feel he was one of the chosen. Lukas had it right: somehow, remarkably, thus far he had managed to remain on good terms with everyone who mattered. Either directly or by inference, half a dozen of the senior men had indicated that, when the time came, he would be welcome as a member of their team.

Indeed, he’d already begun viewing the day when he’d have to actually make such a choice with apprehension. The consequences—possibly on the entire course of his career—were incalculable: the implacable enemies it would create, the doors it would forever slam shut.

Just now, even Larsen seemed to be nurturing newfound regard for him. Logan figured this out the day Larsen unexpectedly took a seat beside him in the hospital cafeteria and began making his own tortured version of small talk.

“So,” began Larsen, “you come to us from Claremont Hospital.…”

Given that they’d been over this territory months before at his initial interview—and Larsen had been singularly disinterested in the fact then—Logan was at a loss. “Yessir, that’s true.…”

Larsen nodded. “Very good, very good.…”

“Thank you.” Logan bit into his burger, to keep his mouth occupied.

“I understand they have a lot of wealthy Arab patients up there.”

Logan nodded; in fact, at one time or another, the place had played host to half the Saudi royal family. “Yessir, that’s true.”

Astonishingly—for it was the first time the younger man had ever heard such a thing—Larsen laughed: a dry, reedy sound, more like the clearing of the throat than anything suggesting joy. “I guess they know the score. When the chips are down, they run right to those Jewish doctors.”

He laughed again and, rising to his feet, clapped a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “Keep up the good work, young man. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to work together more closely one of these days.”

“I’d like that, sir.”

Not that he trusted Larsen for a minute. He knew how quickly the volatile chief of the Department of Medicine was liable to turn on him; and how, once incurred, his displeasure seemed to grow ever more dangerous.

He was reminded of this the very morning of his exchange with Barbara Lukas. Less than an hour afterward he and Lukas were among the five first-year associates escorted by Larsen on their weekly teaching rounds. The group had visited four or five patients, Larsen holding forth after each visit in the corridor outside the patient’s room, when they entered the room of Congressman Al Marino.

Marino was in for colon cancer. A ranking member of the House Science and Technology Committee, he was one of the handful of patients on the premises who enjoyed nonprotocol status.

“Al, my friend, how are we doing today?” boomed Larsen, with a sudden ingratiating smile. The junior associates exchanged furtive looks; with every one of the patients they’d seen earlier, he’d been coolly impersonal to the point of rudeness.

The congressman, sitting up in bed before a pile of documents, bifocals perched on the end of a bulbous nose, hardly moved. “I’m doing shitty. How are you doing?”

Larsen moved over beside him. “I know that last course of chemo was a little rough. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” he said disinterestedly.

“Carol’s okay? I had a nice phone conversation with her a couple of days ago.”

“She’s fine.”

His reserve of happy chat exhausted, the doctor pulled out his stethoscope and got to work. “You know the drill, Al,” he said, summoning up a last bit of good cheer, “—heart, lungs, and abdomen. Nothing to it.”

Running through the rote procedure in less than a minute, he called for the congressman’s progress chart. As he read it, his brow darkened. “Dr. Lukas,” he suddenly spoke up sharply, “are you responsible for this?”

She hesitated, a doe caught in headlights. “Yes, sir.” But, characteristically, she instantly drew herself up straight, determined not to appear intimidated.

“Would you mind telling me why these lab values are written in
pencil?
” The throbbing vein in his left temple was a familiar sign of building rage. “Were those lab values
temporary?
Was it your intention to go back and
change
them?”

“No, sir. It was my understanding that—”

“Excuse me, Doctor? WHAT was your understanding—that we encourage
incompetence
at this institution?”

“No, sir, if you’ll allow me to finish?”

“No! I will not allow you to waste Congressman Marino’s time or mine!”

Suddenly the chart was flying across the room in her direction. “This kind of sloppy work will NOT be tolerated, Dr. Lukas. I strongly suggest you learn proper procedure by studying one of Dr. Logan’s charts!”

He turned to the patient, who seemed disinterested in the whole thing. “I’m sorry, Congressman. I hope you won’t take it as the way things are done around here.”

“Forget it, she’s just a kid.” He gave a wave of his hand and added the words that this day would spare the young doctor further torment. “Why don’t you lay off? She’s kinda cute.”

Lukas stared straight ahead, unblinking, but Logan caught the stricken look in her eyes. He wanted to let her know how mortified he was to have been made part of her torment.

But too, at that moment, on some level, his thoughts were on his own future. Like it or not, Larsen was not a force to be slighted, let alone ignored. Shortly, in spite of everything, when faced with the decision of which of the top guys to go with, he would have to consider that fact very, very carefully.

F
ortunately for Logan, there was one other junior associate who was an even more tempting target of scorn than he was. Allen Atlas, the junior associate out of Vanderbilt, had shown himself to be so nakedly ambitious that the others joked of forming a “suck-up watch,” to monitor his obsequiousness toward superiors.

What was infuriating was how well it seemed to work. Indeed, lately he seemed to have made himself all but indispensible to Peter Kratsas, spending virtually every evening in the senior man’s lab, tabulating protocol data.

“I
really
can’t stand that guy Atlas,” Reston put it to Logan one evening in his Dupont Circle apartment. “You notice how he’s started to parrot Kratsas on every damn subject?”

Logan took a sip of red wine and smiled. “Why do I have the impression Kratsas encourages that?”

“I’m not kidding, yesterday he actually starts talking to me about how much he loves Alfred Hitchcock movies.”

“Look at it this way, he’s picking up as many enemies as friends.”

“You know that from experience, right?”

“Hey, I don’t need that from you. I get enough of it from Barbara Lukas!”

“The difference is I don’t mean it as an insult. I’d change places with you in a second.”

Logan laughed uncomfortably. Reston was right: talented as he was, no one who counted at the ACF seemed to have noticed, and the fact was becoming a matter of some awkwardness between them. Logan wished he could say something to ease his friend’s distress; or, even better,
help him to shine. Instead, he was reduced to offering the kind of reassurance that sounded hollow even to him. “You’re just biding your time, that’s all,” he said now. He smiled. “And at least you’ve got a terrific woman.”

In fact, under the circumstances Dan was almost grateful for his own dismal social life; at least it balanced things out a little. “Anyway,” he added, “don’t exaggerate. It’s not as if I run the place.”

“Not yet. Thank God.”

The exchange was typical of the friendship that had blossomed between Logan and Reston since their arrival at the ACF. Both, seemingly easy to read—one the dutiful subordinate, the other all cocky charm—were in fact intensely private. But with one another, using banter as camouflage, each was able to drop his guard.

“Nah,” replied Logan now, with mock solicitude, “I’d be perfectly happy just to be director of research. You can run the place.”

“That’s better.”

“See, I know all about your ego needs.”

“You’re right.” He laughed. “And I’d also be able to fire your ass if you started letting other people in on the secret.”

Reston’s girlfriend, Amy, emerged from the kitchen, holding a knife and a couple of tomatoes. “Hey, John, aren’t
you
supposed to be doing dinner?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As she wheeled and retreated back toward the kitchen, Reston and Logan rose to follow.

“Hey, Amy,” said Reston, “we gotta set Logan up with someone. He’s trying to use our relationship to get me to feel sorry for him.”

She stopped and smiled at Dan. “Are you kidding, there’re a thousand women on the Hill who’d love a guy like you.” Amy’s FCC office was in the heart of the government district. “What do you like? Congressional aides with great legs? Busty number-crunchers? Sharp lawyers ready to give it all up for Mr. Right?”

“Could I get a combination of all three?”

She tossed a tomato from hand to hand and laughed. “So we’re talking great sex
and
lifetime commitment.”

Reston picked up a tomato and began expertly slicing it. “Nah, I think with Danny boy we better focus on the sex. Commitment’s not a big part of his resume.”

Logan shot him a look. “That’s not true.”

“Don’t worry, Amy’s not gonna give you crap about it. She knows how it is.”

“You mean about guys being jerks?” She laughed. “Absolutely. I learn more every day at the feet of the master.”

“Anyway,” added Reston, “I think Danny here’s already got someone in mind.”

“C’mon, John, let’s drop it.”

“Who?” asked Amy.”

“Why don’t you let me do surgery on one of those?” Logan held out a hand, indicating Reston should toss him a tomato.

“Whoa,”
mocked his friend, “talk about a
smooooth
change of subject.” He paused. “Sabrina Como.”

“Ohh, the Italian bombshell.” She nodded at Logan. “You’ve got good taste.”

Logan smiled uneasily. “I really don’t know where he comes up with this crap.” Actually, he knew perfectly well: Reston had been around more than once when Sabrina’s very presence turned him into a bumbling, awkward parody of his normal self. He was only grateful his friend hadn’t been with them on rounds the morning Logan caught the Italian, in quiet conversation with an anxious patient, leaning forward to daub the woman’s face with a washcloth; the quick flash of full breast in flimsy, lacy bra had haunted him since. “Look,” he added lamely, “I don’t know a thing about the woman, except that she’s a terrific doctor.”

“Oh, right. Forgive me. You respect her as a peer, is all. My mistake.”

Amy snorted. “John wouldn’t
understand
that. He has
to respect a woman’s body before he’ll even notice she has a mind.”

Reston popped a bit of tomato in his mouth. “Yum, yum, yum. So, what d’you think she thinks of you?”

“I have no idea. For all I know she’s involved with someone.”

“No, she’s not. I assume you like lots of garlic on your pasta?”

“How do you know that?”

“I checked it out with Sylvia”—the hospital pharmacist, also the hospital’s foremost gossip-monger.

Logan shook his head. “I tell you, Amy, if this guy put half the energy into science he does into being a wiseass, he would be running the ACF.”

Two hours later, they were sitting in the living room sipping Amaretto, still savoring the splendid northern Italian dinner Reston had whipped up.

“See,” said Amy, snuggling up against him, “he’s good for something after all.”

The wine had left Logan even more acutely conscious of being odd man out. He managed a laugh. “Oh, I’d say he makes a pretty good doctor.”

“I’m a
terrific
doctor,” agreed Reston, slightly drunk. “The bastards just don’t know it.”

Logan smiled. “Maybe his problem is humility.”

“Right,” said Amy. “Let’s see him convince a shrink of that.”

“I’ll tell you what my problem is,” said Reston. “The crap they have us doing at that place! Why don’t they take advantage of what we have to offer?”

“It’s called paying dues.”

“I thought we paid ’em at Claremont. We’re back to doing rectals, for Chrissakes!”

There was a long pause. “You want some advice?” asked Logan seriously.

“It depends.”

“Cut out the griping. That’s the best way to insure you never get on their good side.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Pretend I enjoy this treatment?”

Logan’s heart went out to his friend. “Exactly,” he said soberly, “pretend to enjoy it so much you’ll never be able to thank them
enough
.”

“Great. Like you do.”

“Face it, that’s the game. The only chance guys like us have to get some real clout.” He hesitated. “Enough to maybe run a protocol of our own.”

Reston cast him a morose glance. “What are you talking about—we’re just first-year associates.”

“There’s no rule against it. I looked it up.”

“
Right
. Even you couldn’t make that happen.”

“You ever hear of Ray Coopersmith?”

Reston hesitated. “Vaguely.”

“Don’t BS me, why don’t you just say no?”

“Because that’d be giving you the upper hand,” smiled Amy.

“So …?” pressed Reston.

“He was a first-year associate at the ACF four years ago—and he got a protocol through.”

“Like hell. That’s impossible.”

“I’ve seen the paperwork. Both the proposal itself and the Institutional Review Board’s approval form signing off on it.”

The documents were in the antique wooden filing cabinet outside Larsen’s office with hundreds of others like them. A seldom-used Foundation resource, in theory they were available to all junior associates interested in the genesis of earlier protocols. Larsen’s secretary, Elaine, had grown so accustomed to the ever-curious young Logan studying these protocols that she’d scarcely noticed him, one recent lunch hour, systematically searching the files from three and four years back: going directly to the C’s.