And she started dating again.
At first it was just beer and pizza with one or another of her colleagues in the lab. (Wyman excepted, of course. But he did not fraternize with nontenured people, anyway.)
She went to a Pops concert on the banks of the Charles River with Gary Arnold, a handsome first-year resident in Neurology. As did several thousand other couples, they sat on a blanket eating sandwiches, drinking wine from a Thermos, while they watched the legendary Arthur Fiedler conduct musical smorgasbords from the latest Broadway shows and a few snippets from the classics. And when they stood with all the others for the grand finale, Sousa’s rousing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ Gary put his arm around Laura, pulling her close. He was charming, tall, and had a sense of humor. Perhaps most importantly, he was there. And she was lonely. So they finished the evening in his apartment on the Fenway.
He visited the lab the evening after to make certain Laura understood that he had no intention of a ‘serious relationship.’ She reassured him she had never had the slightest notion that they would be anything but friends. For she was well aware that he’d be leaving for Wisconsin at the beginning of September.
‘Look, Gary,’ she explained with friendly candor, ‘I was horny, you were horny. When we woke up, neither one of us was horny. That was all there was and that was all there ever will be. Have a nice life.’
Inwardly fuming at Laura’s beating him to the brush-off, Gary stalked out of the lab muttering something about her being ‘a real ball breaker’.
Her other dates that summer were neither as pompous nor as passionate. Which suited her fine.
Sometimes if she was working late she’d get a call from Barney (at eleven, when the rates went down). He’d usually be phoning from a public booth in Canarsie or some other godforsaken place and always with an entertaining anecdote about his latest passengers. Like the call girl who had offered to pay him in kind.
‘It sounds more interesting than medicine. Maybe you ought to consider it as a career.’
‘Thank you, Laura. Staying up all night is what I always aspired to.’ Then he would act paternal. ‘Which reminds me, why the hell are you still working? Even chain gangs have it easier than you. Why not go home and get some sleep?’
‘Thank you, Doctor Livingston, I think I’m whacked enough to do just that. Goodnight.’
She hung up, went to scrub her hands, and just as she was leaving heard the annoyed voice of Peter Wyman. ‘Castellano, telephone for you – again. I’m not your private secretary, you know.’
Laura hesitated for a moment. If it was Palmer she was not in shape for any kind of conversation. But who else would be calling close to midnight? Maybe something’s wrong at home.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi, Laura, it’s me – Hank Dwyer.’
‘Hank,’ she said, with a happy sigh of relief, ‘how the hell are you?’
‘I tried to call your room at Vanderbilt. They said you might be here—’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, no, it’s just the opposite. I need someone to talk to badly.’ Then Hank announced, ‘I’m a father and Cheryl’s a mother.’
‘Hey, that’s great. Everybody healthy?’
‘Yes, Deo gratias. But, Laura, I’m in shock – there were two of them. I’m the father of twins. I mean, I don’t know what to do.’
Laura certainly didn’t know what he wanted her to do.
‘I’ll tell you what, Hank, when the whole gang’s back in town we’ll have a monster party for all four of you.’
‘That would be nice,’ he replied, in surprisingly solemn tones. ‘But there’s something more important, which is why I’m calling. I mean, you’re Catholic, Laura, aren’t you?’
‘Sort of by birth. But if you’ll forgive the irreverence, I’ve hailed more cabs than I’ve Hailed Marys.’
Hank single-mindedly persisted. ‘Laura, will you come with me to church?’
‘Tonight?’
‘Of course. God sent a miracle tonight and who am I to wait till morning to say thank you.’
‘Sure, Hank,’ she said softly, ‘I’d be glad to.’
‘Oh, that’s great. That’s really great. Look, Cheryl’s mom’s here and I can use her car. I’ll come around to get you in a second.’
They stood in the wide emptiness of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. That is, Laura stood while Hank knelt and prayed. As he was lost in prayer, she was lost in thought.
I wish I were religious, she lamented inwardly. I don’t mean church religious. I just wish I could believe in some Supreme Intelligence to help me steer the boat, to let me know what’s right or wrong. As it is, I’m drowning in a sea of doubts. Oh God, I wish I could believe like Dwyer.
When he was saying goodnight to her outside Vanderbilt, Hank was so brimming with joy that he embraced her.
And Laura was sure it was merely by accident that, as he let her go, one of his hands brushed by her breast.
19
Their second year began with water and ended with blood.
The first event (not listed in the Course Catalogue) was the christening of Hank and Cheryl Dwyer’s twin daughters, Marie and Michelle. Barney and Laura stood in the front pew as the priest sprinkled holy water on the little girls’ brows, each time intoning in Latin that he was baptizing them ‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’
It was late September and they had been medical students for more than a year without yet having seen a live patient. And there was still eight months of deadening basic science to wade through before they reached the real stuff in the spring – Introduction to the Clinic, and Physical Diagnosis. They took some consolation in the fact that this would be the last winter of their discontent. Spring would bring them into the presence of sick people. But for now they still had no idea what medicine was really about.
Though Laura received a daily letter from the ever-faithful Palmer, finally past basic training (‘and with more muscles than Tarzan’), the letters did not relieve her pangs of loneliness. What ‘social life’ she had consisted of fending off the parade of hot-pants interns, residents, now and then even a married attending physician looking for a little action. She wondered how the sensuous Miss Andersen could deal with the priapic pressure of it all.
Barney certainly was of no assistance. If anything he had joined the enemy camp. For unbelievably, there were a record six young females in the first-year class, one of them a radiant Chinese girl named Susan Hsiang.
Barney knew a good thing when he saw it. For Susan had an attitude toward men that harked back to the traditions of the East. What a change from all the ruthlessly ambitious Med School types. To say that he was smitten was an understatement. He was high on the scent of lotus and jasmine.
Laura – though with an ambivalence that she herself did not recognize – agreed that her friend had found the ‘perfect partner.’
As Barney himself was the first to tell her, ‘She’s different, Castellano. She really looks up to me—’
‘Of course. She’s barely five feet tall.’
‘Don’t joke. I’ve never known a girl so – I don’t know – so feminine. Do you know how to say “I love you” in Chinese?’
‘No, Barney, but I’m sure you do.’
‘Damn right. Wo ai ni! And Susan says it at least thirty times a day. She makes me feel like Adonis, Babe Ruth, and Einstein all rolled into one.’
‘That’s quite a group to carry around, even with your self-image, Barney. But then I suppose whenever your ego gets tired she massages it for you.’
But Laura felt a kind of envy not just of Miss Hsiang’s unquestionable grip on Barney’s psyche, but especially of Susan’s ability to find a man she could worship.
By contrast, Laura had grown up with ambition to transcend her gender, to improve her status, to be admired for herself.
That did nothing to alleviate her loneliness.
The lovely Miss Hsiang purchased a hot pl
ate, so that after she and Barney had finished their long days in the lab and classroom she could cook dinner for him.
And yet her conversation was seldom concerned with bamboo shoots and the nutritional value of soya beans. Susan could discourse for hours on the medicine of her tradition, which had begun more than two thousand years before Hippocrates with the Nei Ching, a classic work on internal medicine.
She also explained to Barney the principle of I-Ching. All nature, she said, was composed of two opposing cosmic forces: Yin – female, soft, receptive, dark, empty; and Yang – male, illuminating, firm, creative, constructive. Yin is the earth, Yang is the heavens. Yin is cold, darkness, disease, death; Yang is warmth, light, strength, health, and life. If these forces are in harmony in our bodies, then health prevails. Imbalance brings dysphoria, disease, and death.
And Susan told him about the most mysterious aspect of it all, the phenomenon called Qi – which differentiates life from death.
Barney took another sip of rice wine, looked lovingly across at her, and said, ‘You know so damned much medicine you could already be practicing.’
Susan smiled shyly. ‘In China, perhaps. But now I am here I must learn your ways – and they are very strange. Today I spoke to your Professor Lubar about acupuncture and he told me to “forget about that sort of nonsense, it had no anatomical basis.” How could he explain the millions of people that are cured every year?’
‘I don’t know,’ Barney allowed. ‘Maybe because they don’t teach Qi at Harvard.’
Her family had arrived in San Francisco from Shanghai via Hong Kong in 1950. But almost immediately her father found a flourishing practice among the Chinese community, which respected his wisdom and did not demand to see his diploma. Since his medicines were herbs and plants, he didn’t need a license to prescribe.
Susan, the eldest of three daughters, had inherited her father’s desire to heal but wanted to extend her horizons beyond Grant Avenue, the hub of the Chinese settlement in San Francisco. She had gone first to Berkeley whence she’d graduated summa in Biochem and then to Harvard and, more specifically, into the kingdom whose self-appointed emperor was Barney Livingston.
He had his sporting reflexes to thank for nailing her before potential rivals could react. He had been in the entrance hall of Vanderbilt listening to Bennett Landsmann rhapsodize about diving for lost treasure when he had glanced across to where the freshmen were signing up and caught a glimpse of the diminutive Miss Hsiang struggling with a large suitcase. Without so much as a word he pivoted and sped across the hall and offered his assistance as a porter.
Two hours later he had introduced Susan to the best in Boston Chinese cooking, namely, Joyce Chen’s just across the Charles near M.I.T.
And by the time they had returned to Vanderbilt he was determined to be the Yang to her Yin – or die trying.
This was to be the year that every member of the class contracted a fatal disease. Lance Mortimer was the first to succumb.
‘Barney, can I talk to you?’
‘I’m sort of in the midst of dinner, Lance.’ With a gesture he called his neighbor’s attention to his Oriental companion, serving dinner from a steaming wok placed on his desk.
‘Oh,’ said Lance, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, Suzie, but would you mind terribly if I had a word with Barney? It’s very important.’
She nodded as, with an exasperated sigh, Barney shuffled into the hall where Lance blurted out his terrifying problem.
‘I’ve got it, Barney. What am I going to do?’
‘Got what? Make sense, will you?’
‘How can I make sense when I’m about to die?’
‘You look pretty healthy to me,’ Barney replied in what he hoped would reassure – and dismiss – him.
‘But I’m not, I’m not,’ Lance protested. ‘I’ve got testicular teratoma.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘I don’t have to. I’ve got every symptom in the goddamn textbook. And what clinches it is that the condition peaks in twenty-four-year-old guys. My birthday was only last week and I felt the first twinge when I was cutting the cake. And I’ve checked it. Shit, I’ll probably have to have an orchidectomy and maybe a scrotectomy – even then it may be too late. Livingston, you’ve got to help me.’
‘Lance, if you’re asking me to slice off your gonads, I can’t – till you get a second opinion. Anyway, have you thought of going to the Health Service?’
‘Christ, no. It’s too embarrassing. Shit, if I had to have cancer couldn’t it have been something unsexual? I mean by tomorrow night everybody in Boston will know I’ll be singing castrato. That is, if I even live.’
Though legally still unlicensed to practice, Barney nonetheless felt competent to deal with this particular malady.
‘Okay, Lance. I want you to go back to your room, take two Bufferin, and keep a cold compress on your scrotum at all time.’
‘I haven’t got Bufferin. Will Excedrin do?’
‘No, no,’ Barney objected. ‘It’s got to be Bufferin. The Charles Street Pharmacy is open late. I suggest you buzz down there and get yourself a large jar. I’ll be in to see you about eleven. Okay?’
Lance was overcome with gratitude. ‘Livingston, if I die I’ll leave you all my worldly goods – and if I live I’ll give you one of my cars.’
As his classmate dashed down the corridor, Barney returned to his room and closed the door.
‘Sorry about that, Suzie,’ he apologized, ‘but Lance had a little medical problem that I had to deal with.’
‘And he comes to you?’ she said with a touch of awe. ‘You must be very wise. My father also—’
‘I appreciate the compliment,’ Barney interrupted. ‘But the truth is I read about Lance’s disease over the summer. It’s called “nosophobia”.’
‘I have never heard of such a thing,’ Susan said, her admiration for Barney’s sagacity intensifying.
‘It’s very common among medical students. Nosophobia literally means “fear of diseases”. It’s caused by having to memorize The Merck Manual, which has every kind of bizarre illness that ever existed. We’ll all of us have a touch of noso during the year. In fact, the way my chest’s been feeling lately, I think I’m showing the symptoms of silicotuberculosis.’
He shrugged. ‘I mean, there’s an epidemic in our whole class and the most amazing part is that no two people have the same complaint. For example, Laura believes she’s suffering from endometrioma, which shows she’s got more sense than Lance because it’s benign and can be cured by surgery. In fact this noso craze has made everybody in the goddamn class a hypochondriac.
‘Actually, the only guy with a remotely plausible pathology is Bennett. He thinks he’s got Albert’s disease, which is an inflammation of the connecting tissue between the Achilles tendon and the heel. Considering the fact that he’s still limping slightly from last year’s friendly game with the lawyers, he just might really have it. Anyway, if I don’t get rid of this damn cough by next week I’m going to have my lungs x-rayed.’
Susan merely smiled.
‘Laura, you’ve got to help me. You’re the only friend I have.’
She looked up from her desk to see an uncharacteristically disheveled Grete standing at the doorway, terror in her eyes.
‘What’s the matter, what’s happened?’
‘Laura,’ she repeated plaintively. ‘I’ve got to have a mastectomy.’
‘Oh, Grete, that’s terrible. When did they find the tumor?’
‘I discovered it just now when I was taking a shower. Oh God, Laura, it’s like a nightmare come true.’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Grete. I mean, we all find little lumps now and then and almost always they’re benign.’
But Grete sat on the bed and continued her lament. ‘Oh God, oh God. What man’s going to look at a girl with only one tit? I mean, face it, Laura, what am I if not a body?’
‘Look, Grete, why don’t you see the doctor first thing tomorrow
morning. If you like, I’ll come with you.’
‘I can’t,’ she answered. ‘I mean, I’ve got a really important lab.’
‘More important than a malignant tumor?’
‘Well, like you say, it might only be benign. Maybe I ought to wait awhile to see how it goes.’
Laura was furious. Didn’t that selfish big-boobed brat realize that she was talking to someone who herself had a serious ovarian condition? At least I don’t go bothering everybody on the corridor and the only person I’ve told is Barney, so he’ll know what to do if I don’t survive surgery.
Nor did the morbid fantasizing stop at the gate of Vanderbilt Hall.
On the contrary, it was perhaps at its most severe in the Dwyer household where Hank’s disease, along with normal parental anxiety, combined to create a condition of nocturnal frenzy.
Every time he heard one of the twins cry, cough, or sneeze, he leapt out of bed with his flashlight and pediatrics handbook, fearing the worst. And, on those rare occasions when there was no noise, things were even worse, for he was then certain that they had succumbed to crib death and would race to their room carrying a small oxygen tank. He would even call home between classes to make absolutely sure Cheryl had checked the twins’ vital signs.
When the mass hysteria had finally abated, the students drew a lesson from this experience. But unfortunately it was one that would actually harm them in later life. For they, whose primary training would be in the observation and detection of signs and symptoms in others, had blunted their own powers to perceive true illness in themselves.
Besides, a real physician almost never seeks another doctor’s help. For they all are painfully aware of just how little anybody understands about curing the sick.
Their first patient was a Florida orange (California produces less suitable substitutes for human tissue). But this was only for a day.
After their second session in the art of using a syringe they wished there was a specialty exclusively restricted to citrus products. How bold they had become in that first hour, plunging needles into the Sunkist patients without qualms or hesitation; drawing juice or zestfully inoculating the stoic fruits with Boston water.