Doctors (95 page)

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t like it? I mean, your career’s gone up like a skyrocket.”

“Yeah,” Bennett answered wryly, “that’s probably the biggest reason I can’t stand it. I sometimes hate myself for what I have to do—like rough up medical expert witnesses. You know, break them down, bedazzle them with facts that aren’t always strictly relevant—even use my medical expertise to intimidate the poor, well-intentioned schmuck who’s been roped in to perform the unthinkable—to tell the truth.”

“You really miss the O.R., don’t you?”

“Not really,” Ben replied unconvincingly, and an instant later confessed, “Yeah, I do and it’s not just the surgery, it’s the satisfaction of—I don’t know—healing. I mean, the law’s just a profession to me—medicine was a calling.”

He took another swallow of champagne and changed the subject.

“By the way, how’s your book coming?”

“I’m pretty close to a first draft. What makes you suddenly think of that?”

“Just the fact that so goddamn few doctors were willing to testify on behalf of the so-called fraternity. So much for the Hippocratic Oath.”

“Don’t worry, Ben, it’ll all be there—the good, the bad—and even the ridiculous. But you have to understand—as I keep trying to—that doctors are just frail human beings. And no human being is immune from fear.”

“C’mon, Barn, doctors may be a lot of things, but you couldn’t call them human beings—they might sue for slander.”

Barney laughed.

“You know something, Landsmann? You sound like a
combination of a depressed lawyer
and
a disillusioned doctor. That’s one for the record books.”

Bennett watched the bubbles in his glass slowly evanesce.

In the silence that ensued, Barney realized for the first time how unhappy Bennett was.

Who are his friends—besides Laura and me? And sometimes I even think he holds
us
at arm’s length. Why has he dated a million women and never latched on to just one?

“Ben, can I ask you a serious question?”

“At this hour of the night?” He smiled.

Barney hesitated for a moment and then, overcoming his diffidence, finally asked, “Why are you such an incredible loner?”

Bennett was not fazed. “You’re the head doctor,” he replied, “you tell
me.
”

“I
can’t
, that’s why I’m asking. I can’t bear to see my best friend so miserable. For chrissake, talk to me—I won’t be judgmental. Where are the women in your life?”

Bennett once again stared into his glass.

“What woman could relate to me, Barn? To the Jews I’m a black, to the blacks I’m a Jew, to the whites I’m a black, to the soul brothers I’m a pecker. I live in a kind of no-man’s-land. Where do I fit in?”

Barney was hesitant, wondering if after all this time he dared make his best friend face the truth about himself.

“You know, Landsmann, they’re not
all
that way.”

“Who? What the hell are you talking about?”

“The subject was women, Doctor. And I was merely offering both a professional and a personal opinion that all women aren’t like your mother.”

“Hannah?”

“No, old buddy, I mean the woman who gave you life … and then walked out of it.”

Bennett suddenly lost his temper, and shot back, “That’s a lot of psychiatric bullshit, Livingston. I
don’t
—”

Barney interrupted him. “Hey, I’ve heard you say you didn’t give a damn about her a million times. But honest to God, Ben, you’re lying—especially to yourself.”

“Damn, you shrinks are all the same. What would you be without ‘mothers’?”

“Exactly what
you
were without
yours.
”

Barney paused for a moment to allow the mood to settle.
“Listen,” he said softly, “they’re not all like Lorraine. They don’t all disappear and leave you with a hole in your heart.…”

Both men looked at each other, neither knowing what to say next. Finally Bennett spoke.

“You know what hurts the most? That you could see it and
I
couldn’t.”

The wounded expression on his friend’s face instantly filled Barney with remorse.

“Hey, I’m sorry, man. I stepped out of line.”

Bennett shook his head. “No, Barn. That’s what real friends are for.” And then added, “Which is another thing you taught me.”

Their silence was broken by Mark Sylbert’s metallic voice. “Excuse me, Ben—”

Both men looked up, and from the ineffably sad expression on his black colleague’s face, Sylbert came to an incorrect conclusion.

“Oh—I guess Barney’s just told you. Ben, I’m sorry, I’m very, very sorry.”

Bennett looked up, baffled. “Mark, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You mean, you haven’t heard about your dad?”

Instinctively standing up, poised to respond to whatever was the emergency, he responded, “No—is anything wrong?”

“He’s dead,” Sylbert said, in the closest approximation of a whisper his machine could manage. “He died last night. An oncoming car jumped the rail and hit the driver’s side. Your mother’s not hurt badly—just in terrible shock. She was even able to speak to Herschel in the ambulance. And he made her promise—”

“Promise what?”

“That … she would keep whatever happened from you till the trial was over.”

Sylbert now stood there helpless, not knowing what to say or do.

Barney rose and put his arms around his wounded friend.

“Come on, Ben,” he said softly, “I’ll go home with you.”

I
t was a searingly hot afternoon. Tears and perspiration mingled on the faces of the mourners at Herschel Landsmann’s funeral.

There were nearly a hundred people, but most of the deceased’s acquaintances and employees kept a respectful distance from the grave to allow Hannah, convulsed with sobs, and Bennett, on whose shoulders she was leaning, to bid farewell in privacy.

Herschel’s brother, Steve, was also present but, characteristically, stood with his wife on the opposite side of the grave.

An unwitting referee, a clean-shaven rabbi in a skullcap, stood at the far end, almost breathless in the suffocating air.

“Herschel requested that there be no eulogy for him.…” He glanced uneasily at Steve, whose frown made it apparent that he had tried to countermand this final wish.

“However,” the rabbi continued, “I am sure that he would not object to my reading a brief passage from the
Sayings of the Fathers:
‘When a man dies, neither silver nor gold accompany him—only righteousness and good deeds. For it is said, when you walk it shall lead you; when you lie down it shall watch over you; and when you wake it shall speak with you.’

“Herschel Landsmann has finished his days on earth. May his memory still live on in the hearts of those who loved him.”

The rabbi looked to his right and to his left and declared softly, “It is time for the Mourner’s Kaddish.”

As Steve took a step closer to the grave, Bennett whispered, “Are you okay, Mom?”

Hannah nodded. “Yes, yes. Say Kaddish for him, Ben.”

Despite her reassurances, Bennett was hesitant to let go of his mother. Barney hurried forward and put his arm around her.

Ben approached the grave and looked toward the rabbi for a signal to begin.

Just then he heard Steve say, “Come on, Bennett, this is carrying things too far. Let me pray for him.”

Steve turned to the rabbi for support.

“I don’t understand,” the clergyman said.

Steve looked across the grave at Bennett. “You see, he doesn’t know why you’re there. You have no reason to—”

“Excuse me,” the rabbi interrupted, and then, indicating Ben with a nod, responded, “but is this not Herschel Landsmann’s son?”

Before Steve could begin to protest Bennett’s legitimacy, Hannah cried out, “Leave him, Stefan, he’s Herschel’s boy. Herschel loved him with his life.
You
go away!”

Steve was stunned into chastened silence. He remained mute as Bennett asked, “May I begin?”

The rabbi held out his prayer book to Bennett.

“No, thank you, sir. I know it by heart.”

Now, mustering all his self-control, he recited with full voice, “
Yisgadal ve yiskadash shmei raboh.
 …”

In a sense Bennett’s act of piety was a dual one. For nearly thirty years earlier, Herschel had stood at his natural father’s grave and said the prayer for
him
, as surrogate for Bennett.

And in this hour of terrible sorrow, that act of love was once again performed.

P
rofessor Laura Castellano felt uneasy.

There she was, nearly forty years old and sitting in an obstetrician’s waiting room alongside girls almost young enough to be her daughter. Barney had asked that she let him come along, but she refused. His excitement was already making her a nervous wreck at home.

Moreover, she was worried that Dr. Sidney Hastings (“the best, the absolute positive best,” Barney’s zealous research had concluded) would misconstrue the mad psychiatrist’s passionate involvement with the welfare of his unborn child as meddling.

And if the truth be known, Hastings was not all that flattered to have been chosen, even by so distinguished a couple as Laura and Barney. For he knew physicians are notoriously nervous and difficult parents. And to deal with
two
might be beyond the pale of reason.

He was not wrong. For Laura, thanks to her specialty, was a complete and up-to-date catalogue of potential disasters in the uterus.

“Could it be a Trisomy-13, Doctor? How early can you detect spina bifida or Down’s? How often will you want to scan?”

“Calm down, Laura. You’re getting hysterical over nothing.”

“It’s not hysteria. Dr. Hastings. It’s incontrovertible scientific fact that with every year over thirty-five, the chance of having a malformed baby grows dramatically. One in a thousand at forty, one in three hundred at forty-two, one in eighty at—”

“Laura, you don’t have to tell me all the possibilities and you shouldn’t worry about them, either—because it can’t do either of us any good. Week after next we’ll do an amniocentesis and we’ll know.”

“But is this guy Levine a good sonographer? Have you worked with him before? Are you sure he can direct your needle so there won’t be any damage? Where did he train? What kind of hardware does he use? Could I arrange a meeting with him just to, you know—”

Hastings leaned on his desk and put his head in his hands.

“For Heaven’s sake, Laura,” he groaned melodramatically, “maybe I should let you and Barney handle this yourselves. After all, each of you is sleeping with a Second Opinion.”

“Okay,” Laura sighed. “I’ll try to stop. But Barney made me swear to let him come here next time.”

“Good. Give me an hour’s warning so I can get out of town.”

Laura rose slowly. She was not amused. Hastings could not possibly comprehend how much this baby meant to her and Barney. But as she reached the door, he called out in a soft and calming voice, “Laura, please don’t sweat. I promise you that everything will be all right.”

She gave a wan smile and said, “Now, you know and I
know that no physician can make promises like that. So let’s make a deal. You spare me the plastic platitudes and I’ll spare you my husband.”

“It’s a deal,” said Hastings, and he smiled with satisfaction and relief.

It was bad enough that Barney called him on the phone whenever he discovered an obscure—but hypothetically possible—anomaly described in passing by some obstetrician in the nineteenth century.

“Breathe, Laura, breathe!”

Barney was a tyrannical coach when it came to preparing his “star athlete” for natural childbirth.

“Don’t forget … one-two,” he would encourage her as he was supervising her leg lifts on the floor, “you’ll want to get your figure back as soon as possible … three-four.”

“You mean
you’ll
want my figure back—”

“Yeah—that’s ’cause we share everything,” he’d smile. “Come on … three-four.”

Laura’s morning sickness was mild. This worried both of them, for nausea, though unpleasant, is a reassuring sign that all the hormones are coursing through the woman’s body at a healthy pace.

“But listen, Laura,” the poor, bedeviled Hastings protested, “there’s no norm about this thing. Your pregnancy is progressing fine—you should be grateful you’re not nauseated.”

“No,” she’d counter, “I’d be happier if I were throwing up my lunch.”

Hastings increasingly gave silent thanks to God that human pregnancies were only forty weeks. (After all, he told himself, gestation in an elephant is nearly
two years.
)

Then suddenly they were at week sixteen. And at Dr. Levine’s office for the amniocentesis, Barney dreaded the delicate procedure in which the doctor would insert an alarmingly long needle through the abdomen into the fetal sac to bring out a sample of the fluid surrounding the baby.

He knew that when analyzed by the laboratory the sample can reveal almost all possible deformities and abnormalities, but he also knew that the procedure is not without risk; it raises the chances of miscarriage by another percentage point. And adds yet another furrow to the brow of a forty-year-old pregnant woman—and her husband.

“How quickly will we know?” asked Barney—who had demanded to be present.

“I told you when you called yesterday,” said Hastings. “I’m sorry to report that science didn’t come up with any innovations overnight. Amnio results take two weeks. But since you’re both doctors, I’ve arranged a special deal—”

Barney’s eyes widened with hope. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Hastings with a grin. “For you it’ll be only fourteen days.”

“It’s bad news. There’s a malformation—Trisomy-21—Down’s syndrome.”

“What makes you so sure, Laura?”

“I don’t know, Barn, I just feel it. I mean, I don’t feel it. Surely I should have felt some kicking or something by now.”