Susan liked the woman. Ordinarily, she had little or no patience with nonstop talkers. But Mrs. Baker’s chatter was amusing, frequently self-deprecating, and oddly soothing.
“Hungry?” Mrs. Baker asked.
“Starved.” She had awakened with a ravenous appetite.
“You’ll start taking solid food today,” Mrs. Baker said. “A soft diet, of course.”
Even as the nurse spoke, a young, blond, male orderly arrived with breakfast: cherry-flavored Jell-O, unbuttered toast with a single spoonful of grape jelly, and a thin, chalky-looking tapioca. To Susan, no other meal had ever been so appealing. But she was disappointed by the size of the portions, and she said as much.
“It doesn’t look like a lot,” Mrs. Baker said, “but believe me, honey, you’ll be stuffed before you’ve eaten half of it. Remember, you haven’t taken solid food in three weeks. Your stomach’s all shrunk up. It’ll be a while before you’ll have a normal appetite.”
Mrs. Baker left to attend to other patients, and before long Susan realized that the nurse was right. Although there wasn’t a great deal of food on the tray, and although even this simple fare tasted like ambrosia, it was more than she could eat.
As she ate, she thought about Dr. Viteski. She still felt that he had been wrong to let her alone, unattended. In spite of Mrs. Baker’s sprightly manner, the hospital still seemed cold, unfriendly.
When she could eat no more, she wiped her mouth with the paper napkin, pushed the rolling bed table out of her way—and suddenly had the feeling she was being watched. She glanced up.
He was standing in the open door: a tall, elegant man of about thirty-eight. He was wearing dark shoes, dark trousers, a white lab coat, a white shirt, and a green tie, and he was holding a clipboard in his left hand. His face was arresting, sensitive; his superbly balanced features looked as if they had been carefully chiseled from stone by a gifted sculptor. His blue eyes were as bright as polished gems, and they provided an intriguing contrast to his lustrous black hair, which he wore full and combed straight back from his face and forehead.
“Miss Thorton,” he said, “I’m delighted to see you sitting up, awake and aware.” He came to the bed. His smile was even nicer than Thelma Baker’s. “I’m your physician. Doctor McGee. Jeffrey McGee.”
He extended his hand to her, and she took it. It was a dry, hard, strong hand, but his touch was light and gentle.
“I thought Dr. Viteski was my physician.”
“He’s chief of the hospital medical staff,” McGee said, “but I’m in charge of your case.” His voice had a reassuringly masculine timbre, yet it was pleasingly soft and soothing. “I was the admitting physician when you were brought into the emergency room.”
“But yesterday, Dr. Viteski—”
“Yesterday was my day off,” McGee said. “I take two days off from my private practice every week, but only one day off from my hospital rounds—only
one
day, mind you—so of course you chose that day. After you laid there like a stone for twenty-two days, after you worried me sick for twenty-two days, you had to come out of your coma when I wasn’t here.” He shook his head, pretending to be both astonished and hurt. “I didn’t even find out about it until this morning.” He frowned at her with mock disapproval. “Now, Miss Thorton,” he teased, “if there are going to be any medical miracles involving my patients, I insist on being present when they occur, so that I can take the credit and bask in the glory. Understood?”
Susan smiled up at him, surprised by his lighthearted manner. “Yes, Dr. McGee. I understand.”
“Good. Very good. I’m glad we got that straightened out.” He grinned. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Better,” she said.
“Ready for an evening of dancing and bar-hopping?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“It’s a date.” He glanced at her breakfast tray. “I see you’ve got an appetite.”
“I tried to eat everything, but I couldn’t.”
“That’s what Orson Welles said.”
Susan laughed.
“You did pretty well,” he said, indicating the tray. “You’ve got to start off with small, frequent meals. That’s to be expected. Don’t worry too much about regaining your strength. Before you know it, you’ll be making a pig of yourself, and you’ll be well along the road to recovery. Feeling headachy this morning? Drowsy?”
“No. Neither.”
“Let me take your pulse,” he said, reaching for her hand.
“Mrs. Baker took it just before breakfast.”
“I know. This is just an excuse to hold hands with you.”
Susan laughed again. “You’re different from most doctors.”
“Do you think a physician should be businesslike, distant, somber, humorless?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Do you think I should try to be more like Dr. Viteski?”
“Definitely not.”
“He iz an egg-cellent doktor,” McGee said, doing a perfect imitation of Viteski’s accented voice.
“I’m sure he is. But I suspect you’re even better.”
“Thank you. The compliment is duly noted and has earned you a small discount off my final bill.”
He was still holding her hand. He finally looked at his watch and took her pulse.
“Will I live?” she asked when he finished.
“No doubt about it. You’re bouncing back fast.” He continued to hold her hand as he said, “Seriously now, I think a little humor between doctor and patient is a good thing. I believe it helps the patient maintain a positive attitude, and a positive attitude speeds healing. But some people don’t
want
a cheerful doctor. They want someone who acts as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. It makes them feel more secure. So if my joking bothers you, I can tone it down or turn it off. The important thing is that you feel comfortable and confident about the care you’re getting.”
“You go right ahead and be as cheerful as you want,” Susan said. “My spirits need lifting.”
“There’s no reason to be glum. The worst is behind you now.”
He squeezed her hand gently before finally letting go of it.
To her surprise, Susan felt a tug of regret that he had released her hand so soon.
“Dr. Viteski tells me there are lapses in your memory,” he said.
She frowned. “Fewer than there were yesterday. I guess it’ll all come back to me sooner or later. But there are still a lot of holes.”
“I want to talk with you about that. But first I’ve got to make my rounds. I’ll come back in a couple of hours, and I’ll help you prod your memory—if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure,” she said.
“You rest.”
“What else is there to do?”
“No tennis until further notice.”
“Darn! I had a match scheduled with Mrs. Baker.”
“You’ll just have to cancel it.”
“Yes, Dr. McGee.”
Smiling, she watched him leave. He moved with self-assurance and with considerable natural grace.
He’d already had a positive influence on her. A simmering paranoia had been heating up slowly within her, but now she realized that her uneasiness had been entirely subjective in origin, a result of her weakness and disorientation; there was no rational justification for it. Dr. Viteski’s odd behavior no longer seemed important, and the hospital no longer seemed the least bit threatening.
Half an hour later, when Mrs. Baker looked in on her again, Susan asked for a mirror, then wished she hadn’t. Her reflection revealed a pale, gaunt face. Her gray-green eyes were bloodshot and circled by dark, puffy flesh. In order to facilitate the treatment and bandaging of her gashed forehead, an emergency room orderly had clipped her long blond hair; he had hacked at it with no regard for her appearance. The result was a shaggy mess. Furthermore, after twenty-two days of neglect, her hair was greasy and tangled.
“My God, I look terrible!” she said.
“Of course you don’t,” Mrs. Baker said. “Just a bit washed out. There’s no permanent damage. As soon as you gain back the weight you lost, your cheeks will fill in, and those bags under your eyes will go away.”
“I’ve got to wash my hair.”
“You wouldn’t be able to walk into the bathroom and stand at the sink. Your legs would feel like rubber. Besides, you can’t wash your hair until the bandages come off your head, and that won’t be until at least tomorrow.”
“No. Today. Now. My hair’s oily, and my head itches. It’s making me miserable, and that’s not conducive to recuperation.”
“This isn’t a debate, honey. You can’t win, so save your breath. All I can do is see that you get a dry wash.”
“Dry wash? What’s that?”
“Sprinkle some powder in your hair, let it soak up some of the oil, then brush it out,” Mrs. Baker said. “That’s what we did for you twice a week while you were in a coma.”
Susan put one hand to her lank hair. “Will it help?”
“A little.”
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
Mrs. Baker brought a can of powder and a brush.
“The luggage I had with me in the car,” Susan said. “Did any of it survive the crash?”
“Sure. It’s right over there, in the closet.”
“Would you bring me my makeup case?”
Mrs. Baker grinned. “He is a handsome devil, isn’t he? And so nice, too.” She winked as she said, “He isn’t married, either.”
Susan blushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Mrs. Baker laughed gently and patted Susan’s hand. “Don’t be embarrassed, kid. I’ve never seen one of Dr. McGee’s female patients who
didn’t
try to look her best. Teenage girls get all fluttery when he’s around. Young ladies like you get a certain unmistakable glint in their eyes. Even white-haired grannies, half crippled with arthritis, twenty years older than me
—forty
years older than the doctor—they all make themselves look nice for him, and looking nice makes them feel better, so it’s all sort of therapeutic.”
Shortly before noon, Dr. McGee returned, pushing a stainless-steel cafeteria cart that held two trays. “I thought we’d have lunch together while we talk about your memory problems.”
“A doctor having lunch with his patient?” she asked, amazed.
“We tend to be less formal here than in your city hospitals.”
“Who pays for lunch?”
“You do, of course. We aren’t
that
informal.”
She grinned. “What’s for lunch?”
“For me, a chicken-salad sandwich and apple pie. For you, unbuttered toast and tapioca and—”
“Already, this is getting monotonous.”
“Ah, but this time there’s something more exotic than cherry Jell-O,” he said. “
Lime
Jell-O.”
“I don’t think my heart can stand it.”
“And a small dish of canned peaches. Truly a gourmet spread.” He pulled up a chair, then lowered her bed as far as it would go, so they could talk comfortably while they ate.
As he put her tray on the bed table and lifted the plastic cover from it, he blinked at her and said, “You look nice and fresh.”
“I look like death warmed over,” she said.
“Not at all.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Your
tapioca
looks like death warmed over, but
you
look nice and fresh. Remember, I’m the doctor, and you’re the patient, and the patient must never, never, never disagree with the doctor. Don’t you know your medical etiquette? If I say you look nice and fresh, then, by God, you look nice and fresh!”