Doctors (61 page)

“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 angrier.

“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 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.

“Dr. Livingston’s not here,” said a voice that sounded exactly like Barney Livingston.

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

“Ah, Dr. 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.”

“Dr. 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 once given him to pass on to Herschel. It was by Bruno Bettelheim on human behavior “in extreme situations.” In that 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.

It was Jomo Simba (Swahili for “lion”). “We know just where your head is, mister—right near the white man’s ass.”

There were mocking chuckles from the Panthers, and Simba continued.

“We’re here ’cause we’re sick and tired of all that honky ‘look how far you’ve come’ shit. You’d better straighten up and fly right, man. Or when the smoke clears you’re gonna be little pieces of black dust.”

There were louder “Right on’s.”

“Okay, wise guy,” Bennett retorted, “let’s see if you can come up with answers to some heavy questions. One—what good was it to burn Watts or any other inner city when we were setting fire to our own houses and our own businesses? And, closer to home, have any of you ever been treated in the Yale-New Haven Hospital? Where the hell would you go if you burned
it
down?”

“They’ve got about two and a half black doctors on the medical staff,” yelled a shrill female voice.

“Granted, granted,” Bennett retorted. “But they still
treat
all of black New Haven in the Emergency Room.”

“What the hell kind of progress is that?” the woman lashed back.

Bennett lowered his voice and replied with studied deliberation, “Just give me a second to tell you a little story. The guy who pioneered the techniques for blood transfusion was a black doctor named Charlie Drew—one of the most multi-talented men who ever lived. In 1950 he was hurt in a car crash in Alabama. But because he was black, he couldn’t get admitted to a goddamn hospital for the
only thing
that would have saved his life—a
blood transfusion.
Do you dig? Have any of you ever had that problem?”

They did not answer.

“What I’m trying to say is that I can understand wanting to burn bridges behind you. But why the hell would anyone want to burn the bridges in front of him?”

They were stunned into silence, which was broken by a Panther from across the room.

“We don’t need your goddamn opinion. We need your ass in the front lines.”

Bennett tried to leave the stage as calmly as possible.

“Hey, look, guys,” he said quietly, “you’ve laid a very heavy trip on me, and I need time to think. I’d be happy to teach first aid in the ghett—it could do a lot of good. I’m just not ready to put a bomb under Lyndon Johnson’s chair.”

Then, pleading hospital commitments, he excused himself and headed for the door. Jamal-Jack caught up with him in the corridor.

“Listen, Bennett,” he said in an uneasy whisper, “my job brings me sixty-eight-fifty after taxes and I’ve got a wife and kids to support. You won’t mention this—?”

“Of course not, Jack. Don’t sweat.”

Bennett turned and rushed down the stairs to the street, for he was ashamed of being seen in his nine-thousand-dollar Jag.