Doctors (35 page)

From this Palmer unhappily inferred that she intended to lead an active social life in his absence.

“Just remember, Laura, you’ll never find anyone as devoted to you as I am.”

As she drove off toward the Med School (the ever-generous Palmer had left the Porsche in her custody), she thought, He’s probably right. Nobody will ever love me as uncritically as old Palmer.

Wyman was already in the lab, pecking on an ancient Underwood portable. He had dark rings beneath his eyes.

“Good morning, Laura. How are you?”

“My, my, what makes you almost mellow this morning, Dr. Frankenstein?”

“Well,” said Peter the Great, leaning across the typewriter,
“funny you should ask. This happens to be a significant occasion in the history of medicine.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Laura, “you’re gonna leave the profession.”

He ignored her barb. “Miss Castellano, today marks the acceptance of my official research findings. I sat up all night to complete the paper.”

“You’re that sure it’s going to be published?”

Wyman grinned again. “My dear, Professor Pfeifer is the editor.”

But she was to discover in the next few weeks that Peter was not completely accurate in boasting of his authorship. For it was standard practice that every piece of research emanating from a lab bore the name of the senior scientist. Peter’s article would appear as the work first of Michael Pfeifer, then of Keith Macdonald, last year’s chief assistant, with the genius Wyman bringing up the rear. And at that he was in luck because such articles sometimes have more than half a dozen authors.

Since the U.S. government had been extraordinarily generous in funding Pfeifer’s work, he had nine full-time assistants and, as a result, that summer “his” output was amazing. Even Laura’s name appeared on one. Although she had dismissed Wyman’s ecstasy at bursting into print, when her turn came she felt the same euphoria and longed to share it with someone. She even had an atavistic urge to call her parents, but instantly suppressed it. Who the hell cares what a drunken father thinks? But she knew Barney would rejoice with her.

She was right.

“I know it’s the first of a thousand,” he cheered on the phone. “And I hope that asshole Wyman gets an ulcer when he hears about it.”

Oh God, how well he knows me, she thought to herself as she hung up. Nothing in the world would please me more than beating Peter Wyman—and I
will.

Seth Lazarus stepped off the broiling bus into the baking sun. Even at seven-thirty in the morning, Chicago was unbearable in the summer.

Fortunately, he had only a few hundred yards to walk to the doors of the hospital where the Pathology lab was kept at an extremely cool temperature to prevent decay in the “patients”—as his supervisor, Professor Thomas Matthews, insisted on calling them.

(“When we’re finished and send ’em to the undertakers, then you can call ’em corpses.”)

This was Seth’s third summer in the “death house,” as some of the residents called it. It was here he had first learned to be dexterous with a scalpel, to resect tissue for examination, and to have a general reverence for the human body—alive or dead.

By the second summer Dr. Matthews had already entrusted him with the making of incisions, the first general appraisal of the patient’s organs, and even suggesting probable cause of death. The doctor, of course, would make the ultimate decision but, more often than not, Seth was right.

The atmosphere in Path was totally different from that of his Anatomy class. Here there was near-silence—a respectful hush for the dead, perhaps. By contrast, the school lab seemed like pandemonium, the students making raunchy jokes to conquer their uneasiness, their newness, and their fear.

Seth was comfortable up here, although at coffee breaks he would stare out the window at the women in the busy streets below and wonder if the fact that he chose to be with these lifeless bodies on the table did not qualify him as “weird.”

At college he had an excuse. After all, he was telescoping four full years of studying into three, so impatient was he to become a doctor. It was perhaps understandable that he had no social life.

But then he’d never really made friends of either sex. The only time his fellow students sought him out was during exams, when they’d crowd into his dorm room and plead for his assistance to explain the complex material.

For the past two summers he had merely stared, his nose pressed to the air-conditioned window, observing below him everything he wished to join but did not feel entitled to be part of.

Is that why he had chosen Pathology? As a sure way of not having to tell the next of kin that their loved one was in pain that could not be relieved?

One morning in July his chief asked Seth if he was going to the cafeteria for lunch.

“If you are, I’d like you to pick up an extra copy of the
Tribune
at the newsstand. There’s a story about my twelve-year-old on the sports page. He’s a hotshot in the Little League—pitched his third no-hitter yesterday.”

“Wow, congratulations,” Seth replied. And quickly added, “Will one copy be enough, sir?”

The elder man smiled benignly. “Come on, Seth, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Tom—you’re not the office boy around here. And, yes, one copy will be fine. My wife has probably bought a dozen.”

“Okay. Thank you—Tom.”

The midday elevator was crowded with nurses hungry for lunch and doctors hungry for them.

When Seth reached the ground floor he walked over to the newsstand, bought the paper, and was starting to leaf through a copy of
The New Yorker
when he noticed a group of pretty nurses passing by.

One of the trio turned in his direction and cried, “Oh, my God!” Then she was smiling and—more than that—was actually calling his name.

“Seth—Seth Lazarus—I can’t believe it. Is it really you?”

“Hey,” she addressed her friends, “would you believe, this is the guy I was just talking about? He finished our high school in three years and now look—he’s a doctor already!”

Only at this point did Seth remember that he was still wearing his white lab coat with a small rectangular plastic tag on his lapel misleadingly identifying him as “Dr. Lazarus.”

“Gosh, I can’t believe it’s really you, Seth,” the girl continued to bubble. “And I bet you don’t remember me. But then why should you? I was taking Elementary Chem for the second time so I could go to nursing school and you were helping everybody—me especially—with all those lab experiments. And look—I actually became a nurse.”

Seth was unaccustomed to this sort of attention.

He was struck dumb—but not blind. He focused easily upon her name tag. And then summoned the savoir faire to make his debut as a ladies’ man. “How could I forget Judy Gordon—of the deliquescent eyes?”

The three nurses giggled. “What does that mean?” one of Judy’s friends inquired.

“Oh,” Seth answered, somewhat embarrassed by his unwittingly florid rhetoric, “it’s actually a term we use in chemistry—it means to melt away.”

Judy smiled. “I’m really flattered you remembered me, Seth. And by the way, these are my friends Lillian and Maggie.”

“Nice to meet you all,” he said. “What department do you work in?”

“The big ‘C,’ ” Judy answered somberly.

“Cancer must be rough.” Seth nodded. “I don’t suppose you see many of your patients walk out the same door they came in.”

“You’re right,” she replied, “sometimes it can really get to you. There’s a pretty big turnover of nurses on our floor. How about you, Seth?”

“I’m in the Path lab. And, by the way, I’m not a doctor yet. I’m just here for the summer.”

All during this dialogue, Seth was frantically running his cerebral motors. This was his chance and he was not about to lose it.

“Are you on the way to lunch?” he inquired.

“Oh,” said Judy disappointedly, “we’ve just finished. We’re due back in a minute. Maybe we could meet some other time.”

“Tomorrow lunch?” asked Seth.

“Terrific.” Judy Gordon smiled.

As all three nurses departed toward the elevator, she called out, “Meet you by the newsstand sort of twelve-fifteenish. Okay, Seth?”

He acknowledged her comment with a wave. Then the elevator enveloped them.

For a moment he stood there speechless. He not only remembered Judy, he even recalled trying to ask her out. Only he never got as far as opening his mouth.

As usual, Seth waited to go home till the rush hour had abated. At seven-thirty he boarded a bus that was relatively cool and had room for him to sit and read.

When at last he disembarked the sun was ebbing and the gentle rays of early evening bathed the lawns and flowerbeds of the houses in this unpretentious suburb. Seth knew all the inhabitants by name from the high school days when he had been a paperboy. Even now he remembered which homes had been generous and which housed the Ebenezer Scrooges of the neighborhood.

He reached the village shopping, circle, where the Lazarus Meat & Grocery Market had been doing business since the nineteen-thirties. As he passed the front window he saw his father cutting Gouda cheese for Mrs. Schreiber and he waved to both of them. He then went to the back of the store and opened the door that led to their apartment on the floor above. His mother greeted him affectionately.

“Hello, darling. What’s new today?”

“Ma,” he complained forcefully, for they had run this gamut every day, “nothing’s ever new where I work. In Pathology the patients are all dead.”

“I know, I know, but maybe you discovered some new cure for death. It’s possible.”

He smiled. “You’ll be the first to know. Have I got time to take a shower before dinner?”

Rosie nodded and went back to the kitchen.

Despite the frequent water shortages of summer, long hot showers were professional necessities for Seth. The smell of death clung to his clothing and his skin and each evening when he came back from the hospital he would scrub himself intensely.

At nine o’clock Nat Lazarus closed the store, and five minutes later the family was at the table.

“So, my boy,” he asked, “what’s new today?”

“I found a cure for cancer,” Seth answered with a poker face.

“That’s nice,” his father mumbled, his primary attention on the box score of last evening’s baseball game. “I tellya,” he suddenly announced, “if the Cubs could just get another starting pitcher we’d take the pennant—and that’s the truth.”

Buoyed up by his experience at noontime, Seth good-humoredly added, “I also found a cure for heart disease, and tomorrow I’ll develop something that will wipe out the common cold.”

Nat suddenly put the paper down. “Did I hear you say the cold? You’re onto something that could cure the common cold?”

“How come that gets a rise out of you and my cure for cancer didn’t even make you blink?”

“My boy,” his father wisely explained, “you’re not a businessman, you don’t live in this world. Do you have any notion of how many of those useless snake oils I sell all winter? If you were really onto something that could do the job, we’d patent it and make a mint.”

“Sorry, only kidding, Dad. The common cold’s the last frontier. It’s like the moon for astrophysicists. We’ll never reach it in our lifetime.”

Nat looked at him and smiled. “Seth, tell your father one thing, huh? Who was fooling who just then?”

“The two of you are crazy with that vaudeville routine of yours,” Mrs. Lazarus announced. “Who wants seconds?”

They were digging into Rosie’s angel cake and ice cream
(homemade, not from the store downstairs), when Seth casually remarked, “Actually, something did happen today. I ran into a girl I went to high school with.”

Rosie Lazarus’s ears perked up. “Oh yes? Anyone we know?”

“Judy Gordon. She’s a nurse in the Cancer Ward.”

Nat glanced mischievously at his son. “Sethie, you just be careful not to get her pregnant.”

“Please!” said Rosie, “I’ll thank you not to talk that way in front of me.”

“Excuse me, Madam Queen Elizabeth,” her husband replied, “but may I just remind you that if I hadn’t gotten you pregnant, Seth wouldn’t be here.” He turned to his son for verification. “Am I not right, Doctor?”

“Yes, sir,” Seth replied professionally. “Mom is what physicians call multiparous.”

“And what is that in plain English, may I ask?”

“It means you’ve had more than one child, Mom.”

And suddenly all grew silent. Cold and silent. For Seth had reminded them—and himself, most painfully of all—of Howie.

Howie, who had started life as Seth’s big brother but, though still alive, had not become a grown-up human being. For, many years ago while he was sitting in the front seat in his mother’s lap, there’d been an accident. Nat was driving and had braked fast in order not to hit a kid who’d run out from between two cars. And Howie had been thrown against the metal dashboard with his mother’s weight behind him.

Howie, who’d sustained such massive cranial damage that although he grew, barely learned to swallow food or sit up by himself. Who sometimes recognized his parents and sometimes did not. (But who could tell? For Howie kept on smiling all day long.)

Howie finally had to be sequestered in a hospital. Howie, whom they had to force themselves to visit two or three times every month lest they forget him and believe that their lives could ever be without the shadow of his pain. (Or did he even feel pain?—there was no way to ask him.)

Howie, a never-ending source of guilt, hopelessly crippled but obscenely robust in his lonely nonexistence. For he would not die, although he could not really live.

They finished supper and as Seth helped Rosie clear the table, Nat turned on the television. Fortunately there was baseball
on the tube, an anodyne for the ever-gnawing pain of Howie’s plight.

As they were in the kitchen, Rosie washing and Seth drying, he inquired, “How is Howie, by the way?”

“How is he?—what a question. How could he be? Maybe when you get to be a real doctor you’ll discover something to repair a broken brain.”

She was not joking that time. And Seth knew she lived in constant hope that doctors somewhere, sometime, would invent a miracle to bring her lost-but-living son back to his family. Meanwhile, try as she did, she could not lavish her love on Seth. Because he was not Howie.