Doctors (19 page)

“I get the idea,” Palmer said. “It’s certainly not a phrase one would easily forget.” And then changing the subject, he whispered softly, “I can’t bear being in the same city and only getting to see you on weekends—in fact, not even every Friday night.”

“We have classes on Saturday too.”

“That’s barbaric, Laura, absolutely inhumane.”

“That, my friend, is Med School in a nutshell.”

An hour later, he was laughing uncontrollably.

“What’s so funny, Talbot?” she inquired, playfully slapping his chest with a pillow.

“You’ve ruined me for life.” He guffawed. “I’ll never be able to make love again without thinking of the twelve cranial nerves.”

“Can you name them?” She grinned.

“No, but I sure as hell can remember that mnemonic!” As he leaned over to embrace her, she pulled away gently.

“No dice,” she scolded, “you know I have to go back to the dorm so I can get up early and run my oculomotors over
Grays Anatomy.
”

“What about
my
anatomy? Can’t you stay the night and study with me? I promise to drive you first thing in the morning.”

“Sorry. Your idea of first thing on a Sunday morning means after you’ve read the whole damn
New York Times.
”

“And
Boston Globe
,” he said, grinning affectionately. “And made love again.”

She kissed him on the forehead. “Rain check, huh?” And getting up to dress, she added, “Sometimes I get the distinct impression that you’d really like me to drop out.”

“I confess the thought has occurred to me at odd moments. But then my conscience reminds me that you’re passionately dedicated to your future calling—and that I’m being selfish.”

“Good. And does it also castigate you for thinking such thoughts?”

“Not really. Because then I remember that at least a third of your class is already married.”

“Not any of the women. We’re too busy.”

“Doing what—proving you’re as good as any man?”

“No, that wouldn’t be enough. We have to prove we’re better. Can you possibly understand that?”

Palmer was genuinely trying to be fair but he really could not fathom the degree of her commitment.

“Still, ultimately you want to marry and have a family, don’t you?”

“I’m about ten years from ultimately,” she replied softly. And then added, “I’m not just going to be a doctor, Palmer. I’m going to be a
very good doctor.
”

He looked at her and murmured affectionately, “I love you, Laura, and I’ll wait as long as I have to.”

He hugged her as if to seal the oath he had just made. As she leaned her face against his cheek, Laura suddenly felt an inexplicable sadness. Jesus, she thought to herself, this terrific guy loves me so much. And I really like him. Why can’t I … let go? What’s wrong with me?

As the Porsche pulled up outside a dusky Vanderbilt Hall, a young couple turned the corner, walking toward them arm in arm. Palmer was escorting Laura to the front door when one of the lovebirds called, “Hey Laura, wait up!”

Hank Dwyer bounded over, a short, plumpish girl in tow.

“Hi,” Laura greeted them cheerily, though inwardly surprised that the erstwhile priest was up so late—long past the hour of midnight Mass—and with a girl at that.

“Laura,” Hank gasped, “you’re the first to hear the great news—Cheryl and I are getting married! Oh, I guess you haven’t met each other. Laura Castellano, this is my fiancée, Cheryl De Sanctis—she’s from back home.”

His raven-haired companion nodded and smiled shyly. But even in darkness the glow in her eyes was perceptible.

Laura introduced Palmer, who politely inquired when the happy couple intended to tie the knot.

“Christmas,” Cheryl gushed. “We’re gonna get married over the Christmas vacation.”

“Yeah,” Hank added with a chuckle, “that way I can never forget our anniversary. Isn’t that great?”

“I think it’s marvelous,” Palmer commented, and with a scintilla of irony only Laura could detect, added, “Won’t that put a strain on your medical studies?”

“Heck, just the opposite,” replied the expansive Dwyer. “When we’re together I won’t lose all the time I waste now just thinking about Cheryl.”

Palmer turned to Laura with a wry grin. “Now that’s a refreshing outlook, isn’t it?”

“Different strokes for different folks,” she said pointedly, giving Palmer a peck on the cheek. Then she waved to the future bride and groom and hurried inside.

The moment she was alone in the hollow cavern of the lobby, her earlier melancholy returned. Something in the way Hank and Cheryl looked at each other had opened emotional floodgates. The two of them were so obviously in love. Was that the way Palmer felt about her? She was suddenly touched with sympathy for him. And—she could not understand why—sadness for herself.

She found herself wandering in the direction of Barney’s room. Just to shoot the breeze if he was still awake. As she approached she could hear his weary voice reciting biochemical formulae.

She stopped, unwilling—or unable—to disturb him with her immature confusion. About relationships. About love—and all that other adolescent stuff.

And so she went to her room, flopped on her bed, opened her Biochem notebook, and tried to immerse herself in the lethean oblivion of amino acids.

Barney had been grinding all evening until the unexpected visit of Bennett Landsmann. He was so elegantly clad in a J.
Press blazer with a striped blue tab-collar shirt and what looked like a club tie that Barney was amazed he had merely gone to see the latest Ingmar Bergman at the Exeter Street theater.

“Christ, Landsmann, is that your idea of diversion? I had nightmares for days after seeing
The Seventh Seal.
”

Bennett smiled broadly. “But the characters in his films are so morose, they make me feel euphoric by comparison. Anyway, the prospect of studying looks a little less grim. Want to trade questions?”

“Sure. How are you on amino acids?”

“Not bad. I logged five hours’ worth this afternoon.”

“Okay, then we turn our attention to the trifling matter of protein production in the G-I tract?”

“You’re putting me on. Are we supposed to know
that
stuff, too?”

“Well, Mr. Landsmann,” Barney replied, trying to imitate their professor’s condescending tones, “we only expect you to know the ‘important’ things. In other words, everything that comes out of my mouth.”

To which Bennett replied, “Shit.”

And they set to work.

After an hour, they called a time-out so Bennett could sprint to his room and get a couple of Budweisers. They sipped the suds and discussed such trivia as who would win the Ivy crown in football and could anyone
ever
beat Yale in swimming (“I hear they recruit fish,” Barney quipped). They even dilated on intercollegiate chess.

As the hour grew late, Barney sensed that his new friend felt more comfortable and he could hazard a few personal questions.

“Tell me, Landsmann,” Barney asked genially, “how does it feel to be the Jackie Robinson of Medicine?”

“You flatter me, Barn. I’m a rookie, but I’m certainly not the best player in
this
league.”

“Ah hell, you know what I mean, Ben.”

“Sure. But it’s no sweat for me here, Barney. I’ve always been the token black. To be frank, I’ve never known it any other way.”

“Where are you from?”

“I grew up in Cleveland.…” He offered no more details.

Barney wavered between diffidence and fascination. “What do your folks do?” An innocuous question, that.

“My dad makes shoes,” he replied casually.

“Oh,” Barney replied, amazed at the magnitude of what a guy from such a modest background had achieved. But he sensed that he had reached the pale of Bennett’s private thoughts and could go no further.

So, for another hour and a half, the two men labored. They were in the midst of trying to memorize the oxidative metabolism of pyruvic acid when Laura had approached the door—and turned away.

And it was fortunate she did not linger outside, since before they parted for the night they had another secular gabfest—this time about the females in the class.

“That Castellano,” Bennett murmured, shaking his head in bewilderment, “I knew her when she was at the ‘Cliffe. She certainly is an enigma. Beautiful, fiendishly bright—and a real enigma.”

Enigma? That was probably the only thing Barney would never have called her. But then he really knew Laura. They were part of the fabric of each other’s lives.

You
are the enigma, Bennett.

The night before their first Biochem exam, one question united the fearless and the frenzied: What the hell did this gibberish have to do with healing the sick?

“I mean, for God’s sake. With all these stupid diagrams it’s like training for auto engineering or TV repair,” Laura complained.

She was studying in Barney’s room, and they were tossing each other questions and intermittently trying to psych out what sort of stuff Pfeifer might be asking on the morrow.

“You gotta stay loose, Castellano. I admit this is like memorizing fifty kinds of macaroni, but they do have a vague connection with the workings of the human body.”

“I bet my father didn’t have to go through this nonsense.”

“I bet he did. Guys were studying metabolism in Greece and China two thousand years ago.”

“A
little
, yeah—but they didn’t know all the gory details. Besides, dammit, I came here to see sick people.”

“Well,” he replied with a gallows-humor grin, “look all around you. Pfeifer is a sicko, and all of us are crazy to be doing this in the first place. Want a Hershey bar?”

“No, but I’d love a Coke just to keep me awake. I’ll go down and—”

“Don’t sweat, Castellano, you stay here and study for the two of us. I need to get the blood moving back to my brain.”

He dashed downstairs to the row of vending machines: six of them side by side, each offering products of dubious nutritional value. At this hour of the night they seemed to be grinning at him. And they probably were, because every one of them was empty—even the cigarette machine.

He walked slowly up the stairs, trying to remember who on his floor had a hot plate and coffeepot. Ah, of course, Lance Mortimer undoubtedly had two.

He knocked on the door. There was no answer. Could the guy be asleep? When his second—and louder—knocking still produced no response, Barney tried the door. It was open. And there was Lance, lying in his Eames chair, head back, eyes closed—wearing earphones.
Earphones?
How the hell could the guy be so blasé as to be listening to music on a night like this? He walked over and gently knocked on Lance’s forehead.

“Anybody home?” he asked blithely. Lance opened his eyes and uncovered one ear.

“Oh, Dr. Livingston. Where have you been hiding yourself?”

“In my room like everybody else—studying those goddamn chemical structures. Why aren’t you doing the same—or don’t you intend to take tomorrow’s test?”

“Why are you all steamed up? There’s no need to panic.”

“Maybe, but don’t you think there’s a need to study?”

“But I am, old buddy, I am. Listen—”

Barney reluctantly placed the instruments on his head. To his astonishment he heard Lance’s voice reciting some of the metabolic arcana on which they would be tested the next morning.

“I just play my tapes over and over,” Lance explained, “so even if I fall asleep, my brain will be absorbing info subliminally.”

“Lance, you certainly are a character.”

“I am, aren’t I?” His neighbor smiled. “I’m sorry I haven’t got any tape to lend you, but I just picked up this apparatus yesterday at Acoustical Research in Cambridge. Can I help you in any other way?”

“Well, yeah. Have you got anything with caffeine in it?”

“Like coffee, tea, or Coke?”

“Coke—make that two Cokes if you can spare them.”

“Help yourself,” Lance replied, pointing to his fridge. “There’s also some camembert you might enjoy.” He leaned back in his chair and turned into his prerecorded self-pedagogy.

When Barney got back to his room, Laura was spread out on his bed. Fast asleep.

Barney looked at the dark rings around her eyes and decided
she needed the rest more than anything else. He sat down at his desk and studied for another half hour. By then he was too groggy to go on. He glanced again at Laura. She was down for the count; it would be cruel to wake her. He took off his shoes, grabbed a blanket, rolled his lumber jacket into a pillow, curled up on the floor, and fell asleep instantly.

Somewhere in the no-man’s-land between night and morning, Laura awoke with a start. It took her a few seconds to realize where she was. Then she saw Barney sleeping on the floor and smiled. He looked so peaceful. She gathered her notebooks and was about to go when she glanced at his desk. He had forgotten to set his alarm. She set it to wake him at seven, then, quietly closing the door, tiptoed into the hall.

There were still lights visible under some of the doors. In fact, one of them was wide open. Lance Mortimer—sans earphones—was drawing diagrams at his desk. He looked up as she passed.

“Hello, Laura,” he said, grinning, “how’s Barney?”

“Sleeping,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“Lucky guy,” Lance remarked with a leer.

She looked at him, too tired to be annoyed, and whispered, “Fuck you, Mortimer.”

As she reached the stairway, she heard her classmate’s response, “Any time, Laura, any time.”

They sat bleary-eyed, chewing their pencils or developing ulcers, waiting for Professor Pfeifer’s little quiz. Their churning stomachs and throbbing temples were anything but soothed by the weedy, off-key tenor of Peter Wyman humming “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.”

The good professor did not disappoint them. Though the first question dealt with the pioneering work on metabolism of recent Nobel Prize winner Sir Hans Krebs, it was nonetheless out of this world:

The second section was (as Pfeifer put it) “a little sweeter.” It dealt with glyconeogenesis. In other words, the transformation of sugar to supply the needs of body tissues: