Doctors (100 page)

“What a sweet little boy,” cooed a stewardess, “and so well-behaved. Is this his first flight?”

Laura nodded. “Yes.” And, she thought, maybe his last.

At the airport they rented a car and drove immediately to the University Inn near the Stanford campus in Palo Alto.

Barney and Laura were exhausted from the journey, the time change, and most of all the tension. They fought to stay awake till the appointed hour with the imperious Wyman. (It would be 1
A.M.
in their body time.) And they discussed strategy incessantly. Should Laura go alone? Should she go with Harry? Or should all three of them go? Would Peter react with revulsion at the sight of two Med School classmates he knew loathed him? Or would he show compassion for a grieving couple whose only child had days, perhaps hours to live?

Finally, Barney decided for them.

“We’re all going together, Laura. I want that bastard to look into my eyes. And into yours. And at Harry—and see if there’s a molecule of humanity in his granite soul.”

They drove along El Camino Real to a surprisingly modest rectangular brick building, whose small illuminated sign read
NEOBIOTICS, INC.

As soon as Barney pulled up at the gate, however, he realized where this corporation had spent its money. Two armed security men asked them both to step out and be frisked. They even made Laura unwind the blanket in which she was holding Harry.

After passing through a glass door, manned by another pair of sentries, they reached the reception desk, at which yet one more guard was seated.

They identified themselves and were told to wait.

They sat down, now cradling their sleeping child across both their laps. They checked the clock on the waiting room wall. It was seven minutes to ten. Barney and Laura exchanged weary glances of disbelief. Neither was really sure why they were here. It would probably turn out to be merely a West Coast blind alley.

And Harry chose this of all times to wake and, frightened by the strange surroundings, began to wail. Laura had just managed to calm him down when Peter Wyman appeared in his white lab coat.

“Well, hello, old friends,” he said, sarcastically. “You’re a long way from civilization. What brings the mountain to Mohammad?”

Laura said quietly, “This is Harry, our little boy, Peter.”

“Oh,” said their erstwhile classmate.

It was an awkward moment, and Barney asked uneasily, “Uh, can we go inside somewhere and talk?”

Peter glanced at his watch.

“I do hope this won’t take too long.”

Barney took hold of Harry, and lifted him as he stood up. “Don’t sweat, Peter. We won’t waste your precious time.”

They had a sense that he wanted them to see his office: his huge desk, his space-age telephone equipment, his numerous trophies on the wall. He wanted them to see that though in Harvard’s myopic eyes he was an outcast, to the real world he was a giant. Indeed, growing taller by the minute.

“Okay,” he said when he had seated himself in his massive leather chair. “What seems to be the problem?”

Barney had rehearsed his speech a million times during the flight. Now he blurted out the essential details. Their only hope for Harry would be an infusion of the purified enzyme.

“I agree,” said Peter, looking interested for the first time. “That might very well do the trick. But, as you both know, the Food and Drug Administration sets up strict guidelines for the approval of a new drug for use in humans. I mean, they wouldn’t want another Thalidomide episode, would they? And my synthetic ASB is only in the second ‘trial stage.’ So it would be totally illegal for me to give it to you.”

And then he added, “There’s also the possibility that it could kill him.”

At this point Laura broke down.

“Please, Peter, don’t let him die without at least having a chance.”

Barney stood up and demanded, “Listen, Wyman, you took the Hippocratic Oath with all of us. Forget the FDA.
Look at my dying son.
Are you just gonna let us walk out of here and take him to his grave?”

Slightly cowed by Barney’s bluntness, Peter looked nervously at his watch.

Nobody moved.

Then Barney spoke again. “Did you understand what I just said, Peter?”

“I haven’t practiced medicine for quite some time. And certainly not pediatrics. But your son looks very sick to me. Why don’t you take him to Children’s Hospital and get him into bed with an I.V.?”

“And then what?” Barney demanded.

“Then I’ll call you at ten o’clock tomorrow night.”

“No sooner?” Laura implored.

“I need some time to think about it,” said Wyman dryly. “This is a pretty serious thing. Make sure one of my secretaries knows how to reach you.”

They walked numbly out of his office, down the long corridors, through the glass door, past the guards, and out to their car. In silence.

Harry was asleep against his daddy’s shoulder. Barney could feel the warmth of his son’s cheek. He’s got fever, Barney thought to himself.

“What do you think, Castellano?” His voice was hoarse from emotion.

“I think he’s right in one sense, Barn. We ought to get Harry to the hospital. I think he would be safer there.”

The Livingstons found human beings at San Francisco Children’s Hospital. Caring people, who dispensed with all the red tape so they could get Harry into bed and on a drip as soon as possible.

Too worn out to move anywhere, Barney and Laura slept on mattresses in Harry’s room. They woke early. The time change was still messing up their body clocks. And after seeing that their son’s condition was stable, they started out to find the cafeteria so they could get some coffee. They had just reached the elevator when a nurse called to them from her station.

“Dr. Livingston—there’s a phone call for you.”

They both sprinted madly back.

“Who is it?” Barney asked the nurse.

“It’s Dr. Goldstein, our head of Pediatrics. She says she knows you both.”

“Goldstein?” Laura asked an equally puzzled Barney. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Barney shrugged and then picked up the phone.

“This is Dr. Livingston.”

“Welcome to San Francisco,” said a female voice with a special lilt he still remembered.

Suzie Hsiang.

“Suzie! Are
you
Dr. Goldstein?”

“By virtue of marriage to Dr. Mike Goldstein,” she replied. “I saw your name on the overnight admissions list and I wanted to know if I could help.”

“That’s very kind,” Barney replied, “but unless you discovered a cure for RSS last night, I don’t think you can. Still, if you’re free, we’d love you to have a cup of coffee with us in the cafeteria.”

“I’ll come down as soon as I’ve taken a look at your little boy.”

Barney and Laura were toying with their scrambled eggs when Suzie came into the near-deserted cafeteria.

“He’s a lovely child,” she said warmly. And then more somberly, “But he is awfully sick. What brings you all the way out here?”

“It’s a long story,” Barney sighed.

Yet by now he was used to presenting the case with a minimum of words.

“But Wyman’s got to help you,” Suzie stated emphatically. “I mean, he must have some human feelings.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Laura remarked. “He gives a pretty good imitation of a stone.”

“So when is he letting you know?”

“At ten tonight.”

“Why does he need so much time?”

“I don’t know,” Barney replied, “the workings of Peter’s mind are beyond my capacity to understand.”

“Why don’t you come out to my parents’ house before you go back to see him? You could have a real Cantonese dinner—and besides, I’d like you to meet my father.”

They did not know what to say. On the one hand, they wanted to be alone with Harry. On the other, they knew that any distraction from their chilling, persistent fear would be welcome.

“Let me give you the address. It’s easy to find from here. I’m only sorry Mike is at a Nephrology congress in Texas. Anyway, if you want to, we’re all at home by six o’clock.”

They exchanged thanks, and Suzie excused herself to hurry back to her rounds.

They spent the day at Harry’s bedside. Their only dialogue, “What time is it?” The answer always, “Just two minutes later than the last time you asked.”

Late that afternoon they bundled up their little son—who had slept most of the day—and asked that he be discharged. For they had decided that if Wyman said no, they wanted to be alone with Harry—out of the hospital—when he died.

A little before six, they walked up the hill from Union Square and through the ornate green and white pagodalike gateway whose dragons seemed to be saying, Lay down your new-fangled Western ideas, and come in to an older, wiser, Eastern world.

The main thoroughfare was lined with touristy trinket shops, offering China-in-a-packet to take home to the folks in South Dakota. But branching to the right and left were smaller streets such as Kearney and Washington, which were decorated to make the Chinese residents feel at home: lanternlike street lamps illuminated the sidewalks, which at intersections bore the names of the streets in both English and Chinese.

“Look, Harry,” Barney said with manic, desperate enthusiasm, “isn’t this great? Can you imagine how Marco Polo felt when he first saw stuff like this?”

Laura said nothing. And merely indulged Barney, whose rational mind knew that Harry was far too febrile to comprehend what he was saying. Still, Barney was desperately trying to cram as many years of life into him as he could.

Suzie’s parents lived in a ground floor apartment on Jackson. A Chinese placard in the window announced, they presumed, that this was the office of a practitioner of Oriental medicine, whose origins antedated Hippocrates by at least two thousand years. Dr. Hsiang, his wife, Suzie, and Suzie’s unmarried younger sister were seated, dressed in silken robes, drinking tea. The elderly man rose when the visitors entered and said something in Cantonese.

Suzie translated: “Father welcomes you to our home and says he shares your sorrow about your son. He wonders perhaps if you would allow him to examine Harry?”

Barney and Laura looked at each other.

What the hell harm could it do? Laura thought to herself. He’s a real doctor, after all. Just not
our
kind of doctor.

Barney nodded to the elderly man and said, “Thank you very much.”

Dr. Hsiang beckoned them into another room, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of herbs, each identified by Chinese
characters. They put their feverish child on his examination table and each held a hand while the doctor slowly and painstakingly placed his fingers on various parts of Harry’s arm.

Just the arm?

“He’s taking twelve different pulses,” Suzie explained. “That’s our traditional way of diagnosis.”

Dr. Hsiang then opened Harry’s mouth and with a magnifying glass scrutinized his tongue. He said something in rapid Chinese to Suzie.

“Father says he can prepare a medicine for your son and would like your permission to perform some acupuncture.”

“Will it hurt?” Barney asked.

“No,” Suzie explained, “not when my father does it.”

Once again, Barney and Laura communicated merely by a glance—and agreed. Their eyes were saying to each other, We’ll take any chance.

The procedure took nearly half an hour, with Doctor Hsiang concentrating his needles mostly on and around the little boy’s ear. He then excused himself to go and prepare an herbal medicine.

“Is Harry able to drink?” Suzie asked.

“Yes,” Laura answered, “thank God.”

Harry was awake when they finally sat down to dinner. He looked saucer-eyed at the rich colors of what he no doubt imagined were the Hsiangs’ party costumes. Pointing to the brocaded design on Mrs. Hsiang’s
cheongsam
, he murmured, “Mommy, look at the birdies.”

Mrs. Hsiang, perhaps understanding him, perhaps merely intuiting, smiled at the boy. Then Harry turned to Laura and inquired, “Why is everybody in pajamas?”

To which Barney replied, “That’s probably because they’re going to bed early. Not like you, champ, you get to stay up really late tonight.”

To Laura’s relief, he was taking liquids better. Not just the medicine that Dr. Hsiang had carefully mixed, for she could tell from his expression that it tasted awful. But he even sipped some of the soup.

When it was time to leave, the doctor gave them a small bottle of Harry’s herbal medicine, to be given twice more that evening and again the next day. Laura thanked him politely.

It was only nine-thirty when they arrived at the motel, but there was a message awaiting them. “Please meet Dr. Wyman at ten tonight.”

*    *    *

Naturally, they were there early, for they had construed this invitation as his acceptance of their plea.

And they were right. Although, even in generosity, Wyman remained incorrigible.

“Now I don’t want any blubbering or thank-you’s—especially since we don’t know for sure what effect it will have. If you must know, I decided to do this because I believe you two will shut up about it.”

He handed them a manila envelope. Barney could feel it contained several glass ampoules.

“Try giving him a one-mil shot—and if he tolerates it, double the dosage two hours later. Then t.i.d. for another forty-eight hours. I’ve given you a supply of disposable syringes—on the house.”

Laura nodded.

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t inject the kid on company property. And let me know whatever happens—it could be vital in my research.”

How does one say
thank you
to this glacial bastard? Wyman solved that problem for them by looking at his watch and announcing, “I’d better go.”

And yet he did not move. They could both sense that he was struggling to say something more.

At last Peter muttered, “I—uh—know how I’d feel if it was one of my own kids. I mean …”

Unable to complete his thought, Peter simply walked over and stroked Harry’s cheek. Then, before his visitors could say another word, he swept out.

They drove back to the motel at breakneck speed, rushed to their room, placed Harry gently on the bed, and immediately closed the curtains.