Doctors

  Had they run out of conversation? No, Barney thought. The best thing about the two of us is that we’ve never been at a loss for things to say to each other.

  After another moment, Laura said, ‘You know, Barn, I don’t think a therapist could help me, anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because probably what’s wrong with me is like a tumor that’s inoperable. It’s too metastasized through my self-esteem.’

  Then she confessed what she had long been pondering. ‘Maybe, deep down, somewhere, I really don’t like men.’

  ‘You know that’s not true,’ he responded.

  ‘I mean in the sense of trust, Barn,’ she explained. ‘I’ve never really trusted any man.’

  ‘But you trust me.’

  ‘That’s different,’ she responded quickly.

  They were again silent for a moment.

  And then Barney whispered, ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why am I different from the other men?’

  She could not reply. She had never really thought about it.

  No, of course she had.

  Finally she said, ‘I don’t know, Barn. I mean, for as far back as I can remember, you’ve always been the most important person in my life.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question, Laura. Why am I different from other men?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess because we’ve always been … such good friends.’

  He looked at her and then asked softly, ‘And that precludes everything else, huh?’

  She was silent again, so he continued his catechism.

  ‘Can you honestly say that you’ve never thought of us as … a real couple? I confess that I have. I mean, I’ve always chased those fantasies away because I didn’t want to run the risk of losing the special thing we have …’

  Laura smiled self-consciously, then found the courage to admit, ‘Of course I’ve had those thoughts. I mean, I’ve spent my life explaining to the world why we were just friends and not, you know … lovers.’

  ‘That makes two of us. But Laura, I can’t do that any more.’

  ‘What?’

  He answered her with another question.

  ‘Which of us do you think is the most afraid, Laura?’

  The question came from left field, but the answer had always been central to her inner thoughts.

  ‘Me,’ she answered. ‘I always thought you knew me too well – I mean all my secret faults – to like me that way.’

  ‘But I do like you in that way,’ he said. ‘I love you in every way, Laura.’

  Her head was lowered, and even without being able to see her face he knew she was crying.

  ‘Hey, Castellano. Tell the truth. Have I just lost my best pal?’

  She looked up at him, the tears on her cheeks contradicting the smile on her face.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said softly. ‘Because I’ve always wished that you could … you know … love me as a woman.’ She paused, and then added, ‘The way I love you.’

  Barney stood up.

  ‘I’m sober, Castellano. How do you feel?’

  ‘I’m sober. I know what I’m saying.’

  There was no further conversation. Barney walked over and took Laura’s hand. They started slowly to the other room.

  And that night ended their platonic friendship.

  48

  The next morning Barney and Laura found themselves experiencing a phenomenon that they had never known existed: an indescribable feeling of wholeness.

  For here, if anywhere on earth, were a man and woman who did not need priest or clerk to sanctify their union.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Barney asked.

  ‘Happy, really happy.’

  That was the real miracle.

  At first they kept their joy a secret, like a treasure that was still for being shared by only two. But by July Laura’s Fellowship was over and to celebrate her moving to New York, they took fifteen minutes of a judge’s time to make themselves ‘respectable.’

  As the couple walked arm in arm down the courthouse steps, Laura Castellano, M.D., newly appointed Professor of Neonatology at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, confessed to Barney Livingston, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at NYU Medical School, ‘Things have happened so fast that I never really had the time to tell you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I saw Luis last year in Mexico, he said something that really shook me up. I mean, it seemed so crazy.’

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘It was just two words,’ she answered. ‘He leaned over and whispered, “Marry Barney.”’

  49

  Seth Lazarus feared that he was going mad.

  Too frightened of the dreams now haunting him, he spent whole nights awake. His actions, like Macbeth’s, had ‘murdered sleep.’

  It had been more than ten years since he had helped Mel Gatkowicz to die. And in the interim there had been three – no, four. At times he wasn’t sure how many ghosts were lurking.

  There was Mrs Carson, then that teenage girl so cruelly injured in a car crash she could only blink her eyelids – and whose brain could only function well enough to let her feel the pain.

  Then there was … who? Why did his memory betray him? Perhaps it was instinct in his psyche fighting to preserve his sanity. If it could just obliterate them all – a merciful amnesia to assuage his conscience.

  Except for Howie, he had never acted merely on his own initiative. Had he intervened in every instance where he’d seen a life reduced to nothing but a mass of suffering, he would have helped – how many others, Seth?

  For in every other case, he had been implored – by words and circumstances, external forces that would finally erode his will to let remorseless Nature take its course (and let him sleep).

  There had always been distraught petitioners, anguished families in pain almost as great as that which racked their loved ones.

  And even then, he always had made certain that the patient was aware and had consented to the termination of his life.

  Though his faith was strong, Seth was aware that he was moving into that shadowy area claimed by both God and Satan as their eminent domain.

  The Lord declared, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ There was no Holy Book to justify Seth’s belief that Man deserved the same respect as he himself gave to sorely wounded animals – a swift and painless death.

  Judy saw how he was haunted, but what could she do? Was there a doctor in the world who could repair such an injured soul?

  She saw catastrophe ahead. Either Seth would be caught – because, despite his promises to her, she knew that he would be unable to refuse the pleas of yet another tortured family – or he would simply break under the weight of his enormous burden.

  He brooded in his study late at night.

  One evening she went down to talk to him.

  ‘What are you doing, Seth?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. Just reading the journals. I barely understand the stuff these days – genetic engineers are taking over from physicians. Pretty soon we’ll all be put away just like an old Corvair.’

  ‘Corvairs were faulty, Seth, “unsafe at any speed”. Are you implying that there’s something wrong with you?’

  He looked at her. ‘Judy – you and I both know it. I fall in the category of what the psychiatrists call an “impaired physician.”’

  He tossed her the publication he’d been looking at.

  ‘Here, read for yourself.’

  The article was called ‘The Wounded Healer: Crises in the Lives of Practicing Physicians.’ It was by Barney Livingston, M.D.

  ‘Didn’t you go to school with him?’

  Seth nodded.

  ‘Yes. He was a good man. From that paper I gather that he’s lately come to specialize in “psycho” doctors. If you believe his statistics, it’s almost an axiom: To care is to crack.’

  ‘And you have other pressures, too,’ she added.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I—
’

  He paused in midsentence as if reconsidering what he was about to say. Or not say.

  Judy walked over and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  A voice suddenly emerged from the innermost recesses of his being. ‘Where does it end?’

  She sat on the desk and faced him.

  ‘Here. Right her and now. You’ll take a leave of absence and we’ll go someplace far away so you can heal.’

  ‘What about the kids?’

  ‘We could go for a month and maybe ask your mother to take care of them.’

  ‘My mother, Judy? Maybe you’re the one who’s cracking up. May I remind you you’re talking about a woman who on every January twelfth gets up, bakes a cake, and invites imaginary friends to come in and sing “Happy Birthday, dear Howie.”’

  The thought cast a heavy pall on both of them. For they knew that was where it all had started. When he’d ‘saved’ his brother to release his parents – and himself – from living with his helpless, endless agony.

  He should have learned his lesson then. It had not worked. To his mom, still crazed with grief, he was a living ghost. And her distraction surely was one reason for his father’s early death.

  ‘All right, Seth,’ Judy said sternly, ‘I’ll make a deal with you. The kids get out of school on June eleventh. On the twelfth you’ll take off your white coat, put your stethoscope away, and we’ll travel till Labor Day.’

  ‘And the syringe,’ he added blankly. ‘We won’t pack the syringe.’

  She held his face with both her hands and said, ‘That’s over now, Seth. That’s over as of this instant. Let someone else show mercy on them, Seth. You’ve done enough.’

  But Seth had already gone too far. The previous Saturday night, Nurse Millicent Cavanagh had seen him attend a patient in the Lakeshore V.A. Hospital (where he was now working one afternoon a week). The patient, Sergeant Clarence T. Englund, a paraplegic veteran of World War II, was after nearly thirty years of hospitalization for his wounds, all too slowly dying of bone cancer.

  It was Millie who, in her next routine check of vital signs, had found the patient dead. The next morning the official certificate listed cause of death as the sequelae of the patient’s many maladies, which resulted in heart failure.

  But in her mind it should have read ‘premeditated murder.’

  In the eighteen or so years that she had worked at the V.A. she’d grown fond of ‘Old Clarence T.,’ as everybody called him. What she perhaps admired most was his amazing courage to endure – and now and then even to smile through pain.

  Indeed, the night before, though comatose from analgesics that dulled his mind but could not wholly ease the agony, he had said something so beautiful to her that she recalled it word for word. ‘When I get to paradise, Millie, and all this pain is over, I’ll sit and wait for you and the two of us will live together for eternity.’

  And she also remembered him saying, ‘I’ll be seeing Saint Peter very soon and I’ll ask him to start looking for a special cloud for us.’

  Clarence died two days later. Loving him as she did, Millie was glad that his earthly suffering was over.

  On the other hand, she had often heard him plead with doctors – in fact, with every new physician who would come to him – to put an end to his life.

  And even as she mourned him, Millie could not keep from thinking that he had finally found a doctor who had helped fulfill his un-Christian wish for a sort of suicide.

  Perhaps the impact of the death of Clarence Englund would not have been as great as it was had it not occurred just before an election year.

  At Thanksgiving, which Millie always spent with her parents and two brothers, she was brooding. Her younger brother, Jack, took her aside to ask if anything was wrong.

  She welcomed the opportunity to share the burden she’d been carrying – especially with Jack, who was a lawyer.

  He was astounded by her story and – she could not fathom why – strangely excited.

  ‘Millie, will you come and talk about this to the senior partner in my firm?’

  She suddenly was hesitant. Her retirement was just a few years off and she did not want to rock the boat.

  ‘Please, I don’t want to get involved,’ she responded nervously.

  ‘Hey, look, Sis, I guarantee your name will never come up – ever. Just tell Mr Walters what you’ve just told me and that’s the end of it. We’ll take the ball and run from there.’

  ‘What do you mean, “ball”?’ she asked uneasily.

  ‘It’s nothing you have to worry about, Sis. And you’d be doing me a real big favor.’

  Edmund Walters, the senior partner in his firm, was Attorney General for the state of Illinois and made no secret of the fact that he harbored loftier political ambitions. One of the senatorial seats was coming up for grabs and Ed was seriously thinking of going for it – even though he knew the governor himself had eyes on it. Edmund had more money, but the governor had the significant advantage of his high visibility.

  What Walters needed was a cause célèbre – a controversial case that would attract attention. Anything that could position him on center stage in limelight strong enough to get him on TV and make his name a household word.

  And so the next Monday when young Cavanagh came down to see him at his office, Edmund Walters knew he had found the chariot to carry him to Washington.

  ‘Thanks, Jack, I won’t forget this. In fact, I’d like you to stay here and help me break the case.’

  ‘But, Mr Walters, we don’t have a case yet.’

  The attorney general then pointed straight at Jack and said, ‘Then you help me make it one.’

  They met again that afternoon at four o’clock. Jack already had some news that would enhance the attorney general’s prospects.

  A Veterans Administration Hospital is legally a federal government facility, and, according to Section 18 of the U.S. Code, that means that the FBI could be called in – to do the legwork in pursuing this allegedly homicidal doctor.

  ‘That’s good news, Jack,’ Walters said, grinning. ‘Let’s get in touch with the Bureau.’

  ‘I already have,’ said Cavanagh with satisfaction. ‘He’ll be glad to see you tomorrow morning – if eight o’clock isn’t too early.’

  ‘No, that’s absolutely fine. I don’t have to tell you what the early bird always catches.’

  They met for breakfast at a run-down diner near the State House. Walters thought it best that the matter not attract the attention of the governor. Besides, he was attorney general, and this was by rights his case.

  Even among the nondescript patrons of the diner, the FBI man looked exactly like an FBI man. That is to say, he looked like someone trying to look unobtrusive and nondescript. His name was J. P. Sullivan, officially assistant special agent-in-charge (ASAC). He was, as he himself put it, ‘a fighting Irishman.’

  Sullivan was morally outraged by what he heard. Not only was it a felony, it violated all the tenets of his personal convictions. No one should be able to make such judgments; they are in God’s jurisdiction.

  ‘You can count on the Bureau, Mr Walters. As our late chief used to say, “We always get our man.”’

  Both of them realized they had no hard evidence against Dr Lazarus for what he’d done to Clarence T. But this guy had doubtless struck before. The likelihood was that he’d strike again.

  From that moment Sullivan would have Seth under around-the-clock surveillance. And would get some of the Bureau’s new ‘egghead’ computer agents to search the records of all hospitals in Cook County.

  ‘That could take years,’ Walters complained. He needed some hard evidence right now if he had any hopes of making hay out of the trial.

  ‘That’s the point, sir,’ the agent answered. ‘The info that used to cost us so much time and shoe leather takes these characters just a few minutes. I think we can count on them to come up with some evidence.’

  ‘I can’t impress upon you enough that time is
of the essence,’ Walters urged. ‘I’ll never get a wink of sleep until this “Doctor Death” is put away.’

  ‘Hey,’ Sullivan said. ‘That has a catchy ring to it. “Doctor Death” – I think that’s what we’ll call the case.’ He stood up. ‘Okay, sir, I’ll get cracking.’

  The attorney general shook the hand of the agent-in-charge.

  ‘I think for all our best interests, we should have our meetings here. Just leave a message at my office that you’d like to have a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Sullivan replied, and slipped away.

  Walters stood there for a moment, stoking the fires of his ambition.

  He wanted ‘Doctor Death’ to take the stand.

  The information the FBI fed into the computers did not lead to anything conclusive. But it did confirm that when three fatalities from certain terminal diseases had occurred in University Hospital, Seth was known to have been somewhere on the premises.

  Furthermore, when Seth was on vacation in the summer, none of these natural but coincidentally ‘merciful’ sudden deaths occurred.

  ‘He’s our man,’ said Sullivan, tapping the manila envelope that lay upon the diner’s laminated table.

  ‘Can we call him in for questioning?’ asked Walters eagerly.

  ‘I wouldn’t, sir. This evidence says something to you and me. But I don’t think it’s solid enough to pin the rap on him. I mean, it doesn’t show him with a needle – or whatever his MO is. If we want an airtight case, we’ve gotta catch him in the act.’

  ‘Have your men been watching him?’

  ‘Day and night,’ said Sullivan. ‘We’ve known every move he’s made. We’re tracing his previous history. We’ve even had a specialist from Washington get access to the files in Pathology, to see if something turns up. So far, the autopsies all show natural deaths. So we’ve got nothing in our hands unless we catch him at it.’

  ‘What the hell’s he waiting for? Isn’t there anything you Bureau guys can do?’

  ‘Well, yes and no. It might be very risky …’

  ‘What, man, what?’ he demanded.

  ‘We could set him up. You know, get someone who’s got a relative in pain and who wants to die. That’s the way it usually works.’