Doctors

  Seth looked at the cardiac monitor: the printout looked like a straight line. The victim lay immobile on the table, a small red stream leaking slowly from a cut on the left side of his chest.

  ‘Take his blood pressure again,’ Seth ordered as he withdrew a tiny flashlight from his pocket to peer into the man’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve already checked them,’ Bluestone commented. ‘His pupils were dilated and didn’t react at all.’

  Almost as if he had not heard, Seth asked, ‘What’s the blood pressure?’

  ‘Zero,’ Bluestone answered. ‘I told you, he’s dead.’

  Again Seth seemed to ignore his colleague’s verdict. ‘Give me a needle and a syringe stat.’

  ‘With what, Doctor?’ the head nurse inquired.

  ‘Just a hypodermic,’ he snapped.

  The syringe was placed in his hand. To the astonishment of all present – especially young Dr Bluestone – Seth swiftly plunged the needle into the man’s chest, almost as close to the heart as the wound itself. Slowly he let the syringe fill with blood, relieving pressure from around the man’s heart.

  ‘I’m starting to get a heartbeat,’ said the incredulous nurse at the monitor.

  Seth nodded slightly to acknowledge her report and turned to the other nurse. ‘Give Doctor Bluestone ten mils of epinephrine.’ He then glanced at the younger doctor and said, ‘Put it straight into his heart, Tim.’

  Without another word, Seth reached into the instrument tray, withdrew a scalpel, slit open the man’s chest, and with a wide retractor snapped two of his ribs. Now there for all eyes to see was the heart – beating.

  Seth covered the knife wound with one hand and squeezed the heart with the other. The head nurse dashed out to see if the surgeons on call had arrived to complete the work Seth had already begun.

  Bluestone was speechless. All he could manage was, ‘Jesus, that was quick thinking.’ And then it occurred to him. ‘But it’s against hospital rules for anyone but a surgeon to open a patient’s chest.’

  ‘I know,’ Seth replied in quiet annoyance. ‘But try telling that to his widow.’

  Seth’s hands continued to pulsate the heart, his eyes fixed on the man’s face.

  After a few minutes the patient began to groan, ‘Ellen, where’s my Ellen?’

  ‘She’s all right,’ Seth whispered. ‘I’m Doctor Lazarus and your wife’s in the other room. You’re both going to be all right.’

  An hour later, when the two doctors had managed to wash the blood off their hands (though their jackets were still streaked with red), they had a chance to reflect on what had happened.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Seth. I feel so goddamn guilty. If you hadn’t come in—’

  ‘Forget it, Tim. We all screw up sometimes.’

  ‘Not you. I’ve been watching you for a whole year now and I’ve not seen you miss a single thing.’

  Seth smiled. ‘That’s a procedure they never teach you in Med School, Tim. It’s called C.Y.A.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Covering Your Ass.’

  32

  It was a year of rebellion. In 1966, America was scorched by no fewer than forty-three race riots.

  And the black community in New Haven was making plans to assert its own identity and demand its inalienable rights. Yet, sadly, Martin Luther King would have been an unwelcome guest at their planning sessions. For the struggle here, as in most northern cities, was going to be blazing and bloody.

  And Bennett Landsmann would inevitably be caught up in the whirlwind.

  As a junior surgery resident, he now had increased responsibilities and even an office (if one could flatter his cubbyhole by calling it that).

  He was busy writing up a patient he had just admitted for an inguinal hernia when there was a knock at his door. His visitor was a muscular black orderly he knew only as Jack.

  ‘Am I interrupting, Doc?’

  ‘No, not at all. Come in and sit down.’

  Jack entered but did not sit. Bennett returned to his desk, looked up at the younger man’s worried expression and asked, ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘You might put it that way, Doc.’

  ‘Please call me Ben. Now, what’s the problem?’

  ‘It’s about all of us,’ the orderly answered with diffidence. ‘I’ve been sort of deputized to sound out the brothers and sisters on the hospital staff. By that I mean the non-janitorial and non-menial.’

  ‘That’s quite a job.’

  ‘Not really, Ben. Do you wanna know how many black doctors and interns there are?’

  Bennett smiled. ‘I’ve a feeling I wouldn’t run out of fingers and toes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t run out of fingers, period. Listen, Ben, a lot of us are sick of sitting on our asses writing letters to Congressmen – or marching like Boy Scouts around New Haven Green. There’s a group getting together for some heavier action. We want what’s coming to us – and we want it now. Do you fathom?’

  ‘I fathom,’ Bennett replied.

  ‘We’re having a kinda rap session Thursday night. Can you make seven-thirty?’

  ‘I think so. What’s the address?’

  Jack stood up, withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket, and handed it to Bennett. ‘I reckon you’ll find it an eye-opening experience.’ He turned to leave.

  ‘By the way,’ Bennett called after him, ‘does this group have a name?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack replied. ‘we call ourselves the Black Panthers.’

  He raised his arm in a clenched-fist salute and left the room.

  ‘I’ve got it all figured out, Fritz,’ Barney explained to the analyst he hoped was awake and listening. ‘My father was away in the war, so naturally I fantasized about him and probably wondered now and then if it wasn’t maybe because of me he went away.’

  The doctor did not affirm or deny.

  ‘You know, Fritz, I keep telling you it would be a great help if you’d just let me know if I’m right or wrong.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, I shouldn’t take out my frustrations on you. I do understand that what I say is right because it’s what I’m really thinking. Isn’t that right?’

  The doctor still did not reply.

  ‘Naturally I went through my early childhood looking for a father figure. And Luis Castellano was right there, fifty feet away. Great big, bearlike, paternal. I guess there’s a part of me that became a doctor just to be like him – although he didn’t have much faith in psychiatry. He used to joke that it was just “confession without absolution.”’

  ‘That was G.K. Chesterton,’ Baumann offered, in a rare intervention.

  ‘Well, maybe,’ Barney replied, ‘but it’s also Castellano. I’m sure he didn’t read Chesterton – the guy was a conservative Catholic propagandist, everything Luis wasn’t.’

  Barney went on expostulating about his surrogate father for the better part of a month. It was only then that Dr Baumann felt it necessary to intervene.

  ‘But of course you did have a real father,’ the analyst observed.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Did you think I was trying to avoid talking about him? Oh, come on, Fritz, I’m not that hung-up.’ He reflected and then said softly, ‘I guess I am, huh?’

  He interpreted the doctor’s silence as assent.

  ‘I used to dream about him when he was away – except that after a while I kind of forgot what he looked like. I mean, I was seeing all these heroic soldiers in the war films and I kind of fantasized that my dad was some Audie Murphy type.’

  Barney paused for a moment, his mind going back to the day when they met Harold at the station – and once again relived his disappointment.

  ‘I had imagined he was big and tall but this guy that came limping toward us seemed so small and frail.’

  He stopped abruptly, for he felt on the brink of tears. He took several deep breaths before he continued.

  ‘But still he was my father and I was desperate to please him. I mean, could you believe I took Latin just to show him I
was interested in what he taught? I guess it wasn’t such a big deal—’

  Again Barney paused, and then reflected bitterly. ‘At least it wasn’t a big deal to him.’ He was growing angier.

  ‘I know I’ve told you this about a million times. I was a pretty good basketball player in high school and I could really get those Midwood fans excited by setting up a real fast break or something. I wanted my father to see me in action, you know, getting the crowd’s approval … But he never came.’ He paused, still trying to keep control of his emotions. And then he said. ‘Sometimes I hate him.’ And continued bitterly, ‘I hate him for dying before he could see me … see me grown up.’

  And Barney could speak no further. He was crying.

  Barney was seeing charity patients at the hospital on a regular basis – some weekly, some twice-weekly – and from them confirming Thoreau’s view that the majority of the men lead lives of quiet desperation.

  His textbooks had stated that as much as twenty percent of humanity suffered from depressive symptoms. But the despondency that Barney saw hour after hour made this estimate seem pathetically low. There was an epidemic of despair – in New York, at any rate.

  A precious few had bipolar syndromes. They at least oscillated between a high of inexplicable euphoria and a low of equally unmotivated desperation.

  On the other hand, his textbook had been right in saying that this malady occurred more frequently in women. They had more ‘vulnerability factors.’ For many, the home – even without children – was solitary confinement, unmitigated by the support of a ‘confiding relationship.’

  Sometimes after a long day’s journey into nightmares, Barney would come to the conclusion that there was no such thing as a happy marriage. But then, he rationalized, the happy ones wouldn’t be coming for therapy, would they?

  He found that much of Freud’s Melancholia and Mourning still offered the most insightful explanation of depression. For those who suffered from it were, in a sense, mourning the loss of their self-esteem, their commitment to life.

  And he explained to Dr Baumann that he was preoccupied by this problem because he was worried about Laura.

  ‘That girl’s got everything, she’s beautiful, bright, generous, she’s got a sense of humor. And yet she still lets her sonovabitch husband walk all over her because she thinks she’s worthless. Christ, I wish she’d see a doctor.’

  But in fact, Laura was seeing a doctor. Which is to say she was dating Robbie Wald, a psychologist she had met when he had come to Children’s on a special consult. He seemed to her to have some of Barney’s charm and optimism – with a few special gifts of his own. He was also a talented pianist who taught at the New England Conservatory.

  And whenever they went to a jazz club he would inevitably end up taking the pianist’s place and jamming with the rest of the combo.

  Robbie was warm and attentive, often showing up at ungodly hours during Laura’s night shifts with bagels from Ken’s, or a multiflavored gallon of Baskin-Robbins ice cream.

  There was always plenty of Rocky Road – Laura’s favorite – though she never told him that her predilection for this flavor was due to its name, which she considered a wry comment on her marriage.

  Yet the affair troubled her. She had suffered no qualms whatever about seeing other men during her long courtship with Palmer. Yet now that she was married, she felt guilty. She believed – or wanted to believe – in the sanctity of the vow she had taken.

  Still, Robbie’s engaging manner had finally won her over. Besides, she was lonely. Except for her telephone conversations with Barney, she really had no one to talk to. Even her mail consisted of little more than bills, occasional postcards from Palmer and infrequent epistles from Grete.

  As she felt increasingly at ease with Robbie, she began to mention Grete’s problem.

  ‘Correction,’ Robbie had answered, ‘her biggest problem is her own doctor. Andy Himmerman may be the world’s greatest expert on adolescents, and have a profile like Cary Grant, but he’s a pretty screwed-up guy himself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Laura asked.

  ‘My guess is he feels insecure about his masculinity. But why he had to abuse his position and seduce a patient sure beats me.’

  Laura was taken aback. ‘How come you know so much about him?’

  ‘I can’t violate professional ethics. Let’s just say I treated a patient he messed around with and messed up.’

  ‘But Grete swears he wants to marry her.’

  Robbie chuckled. ‘To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, “If all the women Andy’s promised to marry were laid end to end – I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”’

  ‘Robbie, this isn’t a laughing matter. Grete doesn’t know the first thing about men. That’s why she was seeing Himmerman.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Robbie muttered to himself, and then fell silent.

  Laura had to ask. ‘Did you straighten out that patient of his? I mean, is she okay now?’

  Robbie squirmed. ‘She was a very sick girl.’

  Laura picked up on the past tense. ‘Was?’

  Robbie nodded solemnly. ‘I almost told the coroner to list cause of death as: Andrew Himmerman, M.D.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Laura exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you report him?’

  ‘I tried,’ Robbie answered tonelessly. ‘But the only witness couldn’t testify.’

  Bennett was having trouble getting to sleep – even with the two milligrams of Valium he had taken. Yet he knew it was crucial that he be sufficiently rested or he might not be alert enough to cut. There are no Monday morning quarterbacks in Surgery.

  Finally, he overcame the reluctance – to pick up the phone.

  ‘Doctor Livingston’s not here,’ said a voice that sounded exactly like Barney Livingston.

  ‘Hey, man, it’s me, Bennett. Did I wake you?’

  ‘Ah, Doctor Landsmann,’ Barney said, now in a theatrically professional tone of voice, ‘could I get back to you? I’m in the midst of seeing a patient.’

  ‘At your house in the middle of the night? I tried the hospital and they said you were off duty.’

  ‘Doctor Landsmann, I’m afraid you’ll have to call me during my regular office hours tomorrow morning.’

  Bennett finally caught on.

  ‘You with a chick, Doctor?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ Barney replied pointedly. ‘The patient is in very serious need of my immediate attention.’

  ‘Sorry. Don’t let me interrupt the progress of medicine.’

  Barney put down the phone and returned to his room, muttering histrionically, ‘It’s endless. Doctors keep calling for consults night and day. I mean, just because it’s morning in Europe doesn’t mean that they have a right to disturb me now.’

  Then he asked his patient, ‘Now where was I?’

  ‘Right here,’ replied Sally Sheffield.

  Bennett could not believe his eyes.

  Crammed into the small, flamboyantly postered living room on the upper floor of a two-family house near Dixwell Avenue were more than two dozen blacks, half of them women with Afro hairdos. Most of the men dressed like leather fetishists or storm troopers (or both). For the official Panther uniform was black leather jacket, beret, shirt, and pants. And, of course, black boots.

  The room was decorated in wall-to-wall rage: pictures of Malcolm X, Ché Guevara, Stokely Carmichael, and Ron Karenga – the most militant black nationalist of all. The posters seemed to be shouting a chorus of revolution: ‘burn the peckers,’ ‘kill whitey.’

  Bennett entered uneasily and was grateful to see Jack. The orderly hailed him, then walked over and escorted him to the center of the room, where he was introduced to the gathering as ‘Brother Bennett.’

  In his Varsity sweater, open shirt, and jeans, Bennett felt like an alien.

  He tried desperately to tune into these people who, for all their violent intentions, were acting to redress a genuine injustice. Curiously, he was reminded of an essay Barney had on
ce given him to pass on to Herschel. It was by Bruno Bettelheim on human behavior ‘in extreme situations.’ In this case it had been the concentration camps, but the principles were the same. Extreme pressure brought out astonishing reactions among the suppressed.

  Jack got up to speak, but he was no longer referred to by his ‘slave name’ but rather as Brother Jamal.

  ‘We’ve got brothers who’ve been in the military and can teach our men guerrilla warfare. We’ve got instruction in karate for every kid not big enough to hold a rifle. We’re also organizing a course in house-to-house fighting. If the white man’s preparing for war, then war he’ll get!’

  There was applause, and enthusiastic murmurs of ‘Right on.’

  Brother Jamal asked for questions.

  Bennett hesitated, then raised his hand.

  ‘May I ask what evidence you have that, uh – “whitey” is preparing for war?’

  Jamal-Jack responded, ‘I’ve got written proof that the U.S. Army is training seven task forces – do you read me? – seven task forces to cope with the “uppity” behavior they’re expecting from us. Only we intend to crush them.’

  This drew another salvo of ‘Right on’s’ from the audience.

  ‘Matter of fact,’ the speaker continued, looking at Bennett, ‘we want you to teach a first aid class and, since you’re a surgeon, train a medical corps to treat bullet wounds. Now, are you with us, brother?’

  Bennett was taken aback.

  Jamal-Jack prodded him. ‘Come on, man, you know what Eldridge says – “If you ain’t part of the solution you’re part of the problem.” Now, just where do you stand, Brother Bennett?’

  There were murmurings among the crowd.

  Bennett stood up and responded as calmly as he could manage.

  ‘I’m probably the oldest guy here and so maybe I can put the struggle for equality – our struggle – into some kind of perspective. The little town in Georgia where I grew up had a beautiful high school for the whites and a hovel for the “Nigras.” Since then, the Southern schools and even the universities have been integrated. Now there’s a black Senator from Massachusetts—’

  ‘You hold it right there, Uncle Tom,’ an angry voice barked.