Bennett told him the news in words deep from the abyss.
‘Look, it’s not the end of the world,’ Herschel argued. ‘My son, you’re still a doctor. There are other specialities –’
‘Like mine, for instance,’ Barney offered. ‘You could be paralyzed from the neck down and still do lots of good as a psychiatrist.’
‘No, thanks,’ Bennett joked bitterly, ‘I’d only do your job if I was paralyzed above the neck.’
Barney went out to the Greek pizzeria on Howe Street and brought back dinner for the three of them. By the time he returned, it was clear that Herschel had proposed to Bennett every imaginable medical specialty in which his injured arm would not be a drawback. Yet his son was adamant.
‘Dad, I told you I don’t want to be a shrink or a flea. And I couldn’t bear the thought of doing anesthesia while somebody else was cutting. Dammit, those are different ballgames. And I don’t feel that temperamentally I could hack it in a single one of them.’
He looked at Barney. ‘Livingston, do you think you would be happy doing kidney transplants?’
‘No way,’ Barney answered with painful candor. He turned to Mr Landsmann. ‘Sir, I’m afraid that Bennett’s really right. In the old days surgeons were actually a group completely separate from doctors. Bennett was a natural surgeon. He had the reflexes, the right mentality, the courage to move quickly – and the dedication—’
‘Cut the eulogy,’ said Bennett wryly. ‘Save it for when I’m relaxing in my coffin.’
He put his hands on his temples and complained, ‘God, what a headache. It must be from that damn anesthetic – or the mickey I got slipped by you two characters. I gotta get some air.’
He walked to the door of his terrace and pulled at the handle. It was stuck. He pulled again.
And then he realized Barney had locked it. He turned to his friend and said, ‘Very cute, Livingston. But don’t you think if I wanted to kill myself I could find better ways? I mean, I still can wield a scalpel. I could slice myself like a salami.’
Then he muttered, barely audibly, ‘Besides, I’m already dead.’
Barney rose and grabbed his best friend by the shoulders.
‘No, you’re not, goddammit, Bennett – You’re alive! Just stop feeling sorry for yourself and sit down and talk. Let’s all see if we can think of what move to make next.’
‘For one I’ll sue the whole state of Connecticut,’ Bennett said with anger.
‘And after that?’
Bennett sat down and shook his head from side to side.
‘I don’t know, Barn,’ he replied, giving in to the assaults of helplessness. ‘I really don’t know what to do. Help me.’
He looked up at his friend. ‘Please.’
Barney sat down across from Bennett. ‘Listen, kiddo, doctors shouldn’t treat their own families.’ And then he added, ‘And I consider you a brother. So let’s call this unofficial.’
‘Okay, Barney,’ Bennett answered dryly, ‘let’s hear your fraternal words.’
‘Well, first of all you really know your medicine. You’re capable of being great at almost any specialty. That’s intellectually – but not emotionally. You’re too angry, Ben. And our profession has just one outlet for a rage like yours.’
‘Yeah, what?’
‘Forensic medicine.’
Bennett’s face showed that Barney had struck a chord. Herschel looked confused.
‘Excuse me, Barney,’ Herschel interposed politely. ‘I am not familiar with this specialty you’re suggesting.’
‘Forensic, Mr Landsmann, comes from the Latin forum, meaning “place of debate,” and ensis, meaning “sword”. In other words, the practice of medicine in a court of law. It’s probably the most challenging discipline in either profession.’
He looked at his friend and continued. ‘But I know my pal Bennett likes a challenge. And he’s got all the equipment – knowledge, speed – and most of all, the courage to deal with the unexpected.’ He turned once again to Bennett. ‘Will you think about it? A sword is even sharper than a scalpel.’
In the brief time Barney took to explain his suggestion to Herschel, Bennett had been debating with himself.
‘Hey, guys, we’re talking three more years of school—’
‘Maybe four,’ his classmate admitted. ‘But in the end you are both a doctor’s doctor and a lawyer’s lawyer. And you’ll have the thing your psyche needs the most – a place to fight.’
Bennett lowered his head as Barney and Herschel waited patiently for his reaction.
‘Dad, what do you think?’ he asked.
‘I can’t presume, Ben. I can only offer my opinion and let you decide. But what I feel is … Barney has a good idea. It all depends on whether you could take going back to a classroom and starting over.’
‘It’s not quite starting over, Dad. I might be able to look at it as another kind of residency.’
‘Then you’ll consider it?’ asked Herschel anxiously.
‘Yeah, I guess so. I mean, if I can somehow convince myself I have the guts.’
‘Sleep on it, Ben,’ Barney suggested. ‘Nothing’s gonna change overnight – except hopefully your mind. Fair enough?’
‘Fair enough.’
Herschel put on his coat and said goodnight to them both.
‘I’ve booked into the Park Plaza. I think I’ll go try and get some sleep. I’ll bring fresh rolls for breakfast. I noticed a bakery along the way.’
He turned to Barney and said, ‘You’re a good boy,’ and then to Bennett, ‘and you’re not so bad, either.’
He smiled and took a pinch of his son’s cheek.
They waited at the elevator with him. He waved a mute goodbye with the semblance of a smile.
Bennett turned to Barney and remarked, ‘Okay, you’re dismissed, soldier.’
‘The hell I am,’ Barney retorted, and then joked, ‘I bought you dinner. The least you could do is let me stay overnight.’
‘You crazy shrink. Do you still believe that I’d try and “off” myself?’
‘No,’ Barney protested, ‘I just don’t want to …’
He stopped himself. He owed his friend the truth. ‘Yes, Landsmann. Because you haven’t gotten through the worst part yet.’
‘Namely?’
‘You’re gonna sleep peacefully. That’s the good part.’
‘And? …’ Bennett asked.
‘Sometime tomorrow morning you’ll wake up and have to face the world – and that’s the hardest part of all.’
‘Okay, old buddy, you may be right.’
Bennett put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and they walked back into the apartment.
Barney slept fitfully and finally surrendered to insomnia just after six, when he got out of bed and padded from the guest room to the kitchen for some coffee that would clear his mind.
His glance wandered to the terrace door – and suddenly he noticed. Ben was standing there motionless, simply staring at the city.
‘Hey, Landsmann, want coffee?’ Barney asked.
But Bennett did not answer. He was in some kind of trance.
‘It’s funny … from this high up I can see the whole hospital. I’ve been looking at it since it started to get light. From here it suddenly looks like a giant tombstone. And it is – that’s where I buried the ten best years of my life.’
‘A cat has nine lives, Ben,’ Barney retorted. ‘You’re a very cool cat, so that leaves you with eight more.’
Bennett remained motionless, looking out at the slums behind the hospital.
‘You were right,’ he said softly.
‘About what?’ Barney asked, handing him a cup of coffee.
‘I think I would’ve jumped yesterday, Barn. You must be a real psychiatrist … you really read my mind.’
‘That’s not professional technique, Ben. That comes from being someone’s friend,’ replied Barney softly.
‘You know something else?’ Bennett continued, his eyes fixed on the sti
ll-sleeping city. ‘There were only three things keeping me from the high dive – Mom and Dad. And you.’
Then they sat down to have coffee and discuss the latest crises in the field of sport.
Herschel returned a little after seven-thirty, bearing a cornucopia of still-warm rolls and pastries.
‘Hey, Dad,’ joked Bennett, ‘We’re not feeding the whole university. It’s just the three of us.’
‘Don’t second-guess me,’ he replied. ‘Probably the one thing you’re not is a parent. So come on, boys, dig in.’
And Herschel was correct. A half-hour later there was scarcely a crumb remaining.
And the matter of Bennett’s decision had been studiously avoided.
At last the former chief resident in Surgery at Yale announced, ‘It’s gonna be a bitch and I don’t know if someone kicking forty still has the patience to slog through those lousy courses.’
Herschel and Barney exchanged expressions of relief.
‘Okay, guys,’ said Bennett. ‘Let’s say I try it.’
‘Good man,’ Barney exclaimed. ‘What school are you going to honor with your presence?’
‘Ah,’ Bennett replied, ‘therein lies the rub.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Herschel.
For the first time since he’d received the bad news, Bennett smiled. ‘Do you think the world is ready for a Jewish spade with three degrees from Harvard?’
Barney reinforced his friend’s good mood. ‘Christ, Landsmann, do I envy you. Not only will you go back to the womb, you’ll also be in walking distance from the ’Cliffe.’
‘No, Livingston. You’re way off base,’ Bennett remarked mischievously. ‘I’ll make history as the only guy who played for both sides in the Malpractice Cup!’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Barney, raising his cup to clink with Bennett’s.
‘I’ll drink to that as well,’ said Herschel.
To which his adopted son added, ‘L’Chayim.’
While Bennett was planning his return to Cambridge with the deans of Harvard Law School, half a world away his former classmate was busy mapping an itinerary of his own. Hank Dwyer and the two officers who had been his neighbors in their Saigon pleasure dome had to make hard decisions.
Nixon was pulling the GIs out of Vietnam as fast as they had once poured in. And the three men would imminently be getting tickets stateside.
And so the trio sat down to discuss what steps to take about their Vietnamese ‘families’. One of them did not have a wife back home, so his course was simpler. He took the attractive Oriental girl-woman who’d borne his son and daughter to the U.S. Embassy, where a great part of the staff were working night and day to process new Americans, register their births and marriages, and plan their journeys home.
The second officer had decided to go back alone to start divorce proceedings to get rid of his pushy and aggressive American wife, and then import his docile, worshipful companion and their child from this beleaguered country. For though the U.S. had lost the war, he at least had found what true domestic bliss could be.
For Hank, things were not so clear-cut. Though he appreciated Mai-ling and enjoyed the company of Gregory, his two-year-old (especially since he could see him only when he wanted to), there was the matter of his already considerable contribution to the U.S. population back in Boston.
Dealing with Cheryl had been easy from his current vantage point, which was, however, also a point of no return.
For Hank himself had changed. He had seen life beyond the city limits, so to speak. His world was larger than before and his horizons wider. Cheryl simply wasn’t his idea of the kind of woman he needed now. Yet getting a divorce from a religious Catholic would be difficult enough. With Mai-ling and young Gregory around, it might even be impossible.
‘I’ve got no choice, guys,’ he concluded to his fellow officers. ‘If it’s all right with you two, I’d like to leave Mai-ling in the house and – you know – make arrangements on the other side.’
‘Well, you’ll register them at the Embassy, won’t you?’ one of the officers asked.
‘Uh, sure,’ said Hank. ‘That won’t obligate me to – import them, will it?’
‘No, but your kid will be a U.S. citizen. And a U.S. passport could come in very handy if we should lose – I mean, if they should lose Saigon.’
For Hank it was simply a case of peer pressure.
He found himself in the midst of pandemonium. The lines of soldiers and their families stretched far beyond the compound’s high white stuccoed walls. There were children of all ages and widely varied pigmentation. Some of these ‘Amerasians’ were as white as snow and yet had inherited their mothers’ high cheekbones and almond eyes. Those who had been fathered by black soldiers had the golden color of Polynesians.
The sheer number of them was staggering, even more so since the Embassy officials estimated that barely a quarter of the GI-fathered children had been put on record.
Hank and his colleagues had to wait for several hours in the baking sun to place their unofficial families underneath the protective canopy of the Stars and Stripes.
Naturally, Hank lied. By now it had become a well-honed skill. He did nothing to dispel Mai-ling’s impression that her fate would be like that of her sisters in the villa. She would have to be patient, of course – that was one of the attractive features of these Asian women. But the time would come and Hank would send for her, and they would be together once again.
Not long afterwards, Hank received official word that he was being transferred home. Since he had served not one but two entire tours of duty, he could of course be honorably discharged.
But he was much too patriotic – and perplexed – to make so bold a move. And so, to the surprise of his superiors, he asked to be transferred somewhere – anywhere – as long as it was on the West Coast. This would disengage him from the Vietnamese connection and still enable him to deal long distance with the ‘situation’ back in Boston.
The night before he left Saigon, Hank made a sentimental journey back to Joy Street. He brought a camera with fast film so he could remind himself in later years it had not been a dream.
Some of the neon lights were flashing still. But even those that were aglow seemed to be fading rapidly. The place and its activities were running down.
For old times’ sake he went to Mikko’s, where he had met Mai-ling.
‘Hello, Captain,’ said the proprietor, grinning. The only thing apparently intact in his establishment was his good humor. ‘Good to see you. Everybody seems to go now.’
‘Yeah,’ Hank agreed and looked around at the empty chairs and tables, some piled up for storage. The spotlights that once made the crowded dance floor brighter than day were shut off. Even the jukebox seemed to glow more dimly.
‘You want your usual?’ asked the proprietor (who was now his own doorman, bartender, waiter, and chef).
‘Yeah,’ Hank replied distractedly, regretting that he had made this visit, which would cloud his memories of the euphoria he had known when Joy Street was in flower.
He leaned on the bar and looked around.
There still were women. They were not in short supply in a country that had seen a generation of their brothers decimated.
‘We have a brand new girl,’ said Mikko, handing Hank his drink. ‘Fresh from the country. Like a flower. And she virgin. You would like I introduce you?’
Before he could answer, the enthusiastic Mikko was presenting one of his harem to him.
‘Captain Dwyer, this is … Dio-xi, but we call her “Dixie” for short.’
‘Hello,’ said Hank, seeing how exquisite the very young girl was – like some painted cherub or angel on a chapel wall.
‘Can I buy you a drink, Dixie?’ he asked.
She glanced at Mikko for instructions.
‘It’s okay, Dixie, Captain Dwyer’s a friend,’ he said kindly. ‘I’ll make you a ginger ale.’
With Hank’s rudimentary Vietnamese, and
Dixie’s broken English, they sat at a table trying to have a conversation. And of course he asked the inevitable question. The old what’s-a-nice-girl-like-you-doing-in-a-place-like-this gambit. Apparently her village had been overrun – not once but three times. First the Vietcong, then the GIs, and then as soon as the U.S. soldiers left, the Communists took over again. And wrought bloody revenge on those who had collaborated with the Americans.
Her father had been shot. Her mother had been raped and shot. She had hidden in a tree and escaped everything except the worst experience of all: having to watch and feel powerless. And her flight inevitably ended here on Joy Street.
Hank listened, and from somewhere in his well-insulated conscience took pity on the girl.
‘How old are you?’ he asked.
‘Sixteen,’ she replied.
‘How old are you really?’ he persisted.
She lowered her head and confessed. ‘Twelve.’
There was an awkward moment, after which Hank murmured with embarrassment, ‘I’d like to give you money, Dixie.’
‘You must first speak to Mikko about that,’ she answered bashfully.
‘No, no, no,’ he quickly interrupted. ‘I want to give you money to get out of here. Like maybe find a real job. I know there are even some convent schools where you wouldn’t have to …’ He couldn’t even bring himself to say the words.
‘You really kind,’ she answered softly. ‘But I cannot.’
‘No, no, I insist,’ said Hank, and pressed two fifty-dollar bills into her tiny hand. He stood up.
‘I’ve gotta go now, Dixie. Take care of yourself, okay?’
She nodded, lacking the emotional vocabulary for the acknowledgement of kindness.
Hank waved to Mikko and walked out into the street.
He had taken barely twenty steps when he discovered that he’d left his camera on the nightclub table. He quickly hurried back. Now there was no one in the bar but – minor miracle – his camera was still there.
There he heard voices from the corner and glanced over. It was Dixie, handing over everything he’d given her to Mikko.
The jewel in the crown of the U.S. Medical Establishment, the National Institutes of Health, is a twenty-minute drive from the White House in Bethesda, Maryland. There are sixty-three different buildings, most of which are of red brick. Their tranquil setting resembles a college campus.