Doctors (16 page)

“No, she must have a thousand. I’ll just go downstairs, grab a bite, and go to bed. Want to have a cup of coffee or something?”

“Too late, Barn. I’ve just washed my hair. But I’m touched that you still think of me at all.” And then changing the subject, she inquired, “How’s the studying coming?”

“So far it’s strictly Mickey Mouse—memorize, memorize, memorize. Am I really going to be a better doctor if I can remember the names of every micron of the body? Any
fool
could learn this crap by heart.”

“That’s why there are a lot of foolish doctors, Barn—they
know the names of everything and the meaning of nothing. The way I hear it, we won’t see an actual sick person for two years.”

“Correction, Castellano. Meet me for breakfast tomorrow and you’ll encounter a genuine basket case.”

Barney wished her goodnight and walked downstairs to the candy machine, squandering eighty cents on Hershey bars, Milky Ways, Baby Ruths, and Peter Paul’s Coconut Mounds.

Ambling back down the corridor toward his cell, he heard the clickety-clack of typing. It could only be one person—the esthetic Maury, whose door was open to allow passersby a glimpse of the artist at work. Barney affected deep inner preoccupation as he passed Maury’s room.

But he did not escape.

“Livingston!”

“Oh, hi there, Maur. I was heading for the sack. I’m really crumped out from today—”

“Emotionally drained?”

“Absolutely.”

“Traumatized?”

“I guess so.”

“And yet deeply moved by your first encounter with a dead body.”

“Well, frankly, I prefer encounters with live bodies.”

“Hey, that’s good. That’s really good.” As Maury began a frantic burst of typing, Barney tried to edge away.

“Livingston—you can’t leave yet!”

“Why not, Maur?”

“You’ve gotta see what the first day at Med School’s really like.”

“Are you serious? Where the hell do you think I’ve been?”

“Come on, you have to see how vividly I’ve captured all the
Sturm und Drang.
” He held out a sheaf of yellow pages, urging his visitor to take them.

Barney was in no mood for anything but sleep. And yet he detected a hint of panic in Maury’s voice.

“Okay,” he capitulated, flopping down onto Maury’s disheveled bed. “Let me see how life is transformed by art.” He put down his collection of calorific delicacies.

“Hey, fantastic,” Maury remarked with glee as he reached for a Hershey bar and began to unwrap it. And then, turning to Barney, he asked, with his mouth full, “You don’t mind, do you, Livingston? I was so involved I didn’t go down for dinner.”

Barney began to read. Maury had gotten the feelings, all
right, the fear and trembling, the thrill of watching a human body being opened to disclose its mysteries. He even had the humorous touch—a student fainting and the compassionate narrator hastening to revive him. But in a not-very-subtle transposition of character,
Maury
was the one observing Lubar, with intense excitement, while the fainthearted student was none other than Barney!

Maury leaned over him, a strange grin on his face. “Good stuff, huh?”

Barney felt ill at ease. Why had this guy distorted the truth?

“Your pages, Maury. They’re not very explicit about the thoracic cavity.…”

“This is a literary book, for God’s sake. For the general reader.”

“I know. But somehow the general reader doesn’t get the impression that you even looked—”

“I looked,” he protested almost frantically.

“Then how come you didn’t even describe the goddamn heart? Even the
literati
would groove on that.”

“Livingston, you’re rapidly becoming a pain in the ass.”

Barney let this remark sail over his head, like a boxer ducking a punch.

“Listen, Eastman, I want you to give me a straight answer. Did you go back to your table after you … were sick?”

“What are you driving at?” Maury answered uneasily.

“I mean, were you there for the rest of the Anatomy lab?”

Maury’s eyes had the look of a frightened owl. “You don’t understand, Livingston. They were all laughing. You were even laughing with the others.”

“What others?”

“You heard them. Everybody in the class was mocking me.”

Barney was growing increasingly anxious. He edged closer to Maury and asked gently, “Would you like to talk about what’s worrying you?”

“Fuck you, Livingston, you’re not my shrink!”

“Do you have a shrink, Maury?”

“None of your business—just get the hell out of here and leave me alone.” He buried his head in his hands and began to sob.

Barney understood all too well that this was a plea for him
not
to leave. Yet he also knew that Maury had to get real help pronto.

“I’ll leave if that’s what you want,” he said softly. “But then I think you should call the Health Service.”

“I can’t,” Maury answered with a manic chuckle. “My father doesn’t believe in shrinks.”

“How come?”

“He is one.” And then, almost as a non sequitur, he blurted, “My father hates my guts.”

“Why?” Barney asked with outward calm, while feeling desperately out of his therapeutic depth.

“Because I killed my mother,” Maury answered matter-of-factly.

“Oh” was all Barney could manage.

“I didn’t really,” Maury explained. “I mean, I was only two years old when she took all those pills and died. But my father thinks it’s all my fault.”

Barney knew there was no more time to waste.

“Look, I’ve got to go to the John for a second. Then I’ll be right back.”

As Barney turned to leave, Maury’s tone suddenly became threatening, “But you better come right the hell back.”

There was a phone at the end of the corridor near the stairwell. Barney was out of breath from running when he asked to be connected with Student Health.

A Dr. Rubin was on duty. His voice sounded calm and reassuring, so Barney gasped out the essential details of his friend’s plight.

“So what should I do?” he asked urgently.

“I’d suggest you come downstairs so we can continue talking,” the doctor replied.

“But can’t I leave him with you now? I mean, I’ve still got a load of studying—”

“Please, Livingston,” Rubin replied compassionately, “you don’t have to keep up this charade about a ‘friend of yours.’ There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve already seen several of your classmates tonight with your same … difficulties.”

“No, no, Doctor. You don’t understand!”

“But I do, I do,” the physician insisted. “Would you feel better if I came upstairs to see you?”

“All right,” he capitulated. “Could you meet me at the third-floor stairwell—as soon as possible?”

Rubin agreed. Barney hung up and, now feeling the
strain of the past hour, shuffled slowly back to Maury’s room.

He was not there.

And the window was open.

B
arney was struck by the swiftness of what followed. And by the uncanny lack of noise. No panic, no sirens, no shouts. Nothing that would attract attention.

Dashing out of Maury’s room, he had practically collided with Dr. Rubin in the corridor. After a split second’s explanation, the doctor ordered Barney to call the university police, then grab some blankets and meet him outside. Barney had reacted in motions so frantic that he felt part of a speeded-up movie: he had telephoned, stripped Maury’s bed, raced down the stairs trailing sheets and blankets, and sprinted out to the side of the building under Maury’s window.

He could hear the groans. Maury was alive. But
how
alive? As he drew nearer, he saw his classmate lying almost inert on the ground.

“Quick, help me,” the doctor barked. “Hold his head—keep it in a midline position. We don’t want to give him a cervical fracture if he doesn’t already have one.”

“How is he?” Barney asked, as he knelt down and carefully took hold of Maury’s head, hoping that his rapidly beating heart would not unsteady his hands.

“Classic jump case,” Rubin commented matter-of-factly. “Heel and lumbar-area fractures for sure.” He shone a flashlight into Maury’s eyes and then added, “Doesn’t look like he’s herniating.”

“What does that mean?”

“His brain stem seems to be okay. No apparent neurological damage. He’s a damn lucky fella.”

That’s one way of looking at it, Barney thought.

Maury suddenly began to shiver violently. Barney quickly wrapped the blankets around him.

“Livingston, is that you?” he asked in a tone that sounded as if each syllable was painful.

“Yeah, yeah, just take it easy, Maury. You’re gonna be all right.”

“Oh, shit,” his injured classmate gasped. “My father will give me hell for this. Probably say I can’t do
anything
right.” He made a sound that seemed to come from the no-man’s-land between laughter and tears. Then he groaned again.

“He’s in a lot of pain,” Barney said pleadingly to the doctor. “Can’t you give him a shot of something?”

“No, it would dull the sensorium. He’s got to be as lucid as possible till we determine the extent of the damage.”

Lights flashed. Both the university police and an ambulance had materialized almost simultaneously. Barney had not even heard the sound of the motors. There were soon half a dozen people surrounding Maury, speaking in preternaturally calm whispers.

Barney sensed that they had played this scene so many times before and knew their roles so well, there was no need for dialogue.

The attendants placed a splint on Maury’s neck to protect his spine, and were readying him for a stretcher when Dean Holmes arrived. It was an eerie epiphany, his face vanishing and reappearing in the on-and-off flashing beams of the ambulance.

Holmes bent down to look at Maury, and with a borrowed penlight satisfied himself that there was no cranial injury. He gave a slight nod, permission for the patient to be transported to the hospital.

As they were lifting him inside the ambulance, Maury cried out feebly, “Livingston, are you there?”

“Right here, Maury.”

“My pages. Please take care of my pages.”

“Sure, sure. Don’t worry.”

The ambulance doors closed noiselessly and moments later it dissolved into the night.

Now there were only three of them out there on the lawn. All the windows of Vanderbilt Hall were dark. Barney glanced at the luminescent hands of his watch. It was 3:45
A.M.

He did not know what to do. He somehow felt he needed their dispensation to return to his room. So he kept standing, a
weary but obedient foot soldier, while his superior officers conferred. Now and then he could distinguish a few words.

“Eastman … know his father … brilliant chap … making arrangements.”

At last Rubin nodded, turned on his heels, and headed back for his last few hours of duty at the Health Service. Quite possibly, there were other messages of distress awaiting him.

Holmes walked up to Barney.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Livingston, sir, First Year. I live down the hall from Maury. That is … where Maury used to live.”

The dean nodded. “Livingston, I want you to understand that even as a doctor-to-be, you are bound by the ethics of confidentiality not to mention this to anyone.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“I mean not even in conversation with your closest friends.

It’s one of the more difficult aspects of our profession. Besides, this could have unsettling repercussions on your classmates. I’m sure you see my point.”

Barney nodded, as much in fatigue as in assent.

“But sir, sooner or later people are bound to notice that Maury isn’t around anymore.”

“Let me handle that. I’ll just circulate a little memo—something to the effect that there’s been an illness in his family.”

“Yes, sir. May I have your permission to go now? It’s very late and I—”

“Of course—Livingston, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“From what Dr. Rubin tells me, you’ve been a brick tonight. I appreciate that and I am sure Eastman will appreciate it as well.”

“Well, Maury really is a sweet guy. Maybe a bit oversensitive—”

“I mean Dr. Eastman—his father.”

“Oh. Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir.”

Barney had gone a mere five paces when the dean stopped him. “Oh, Livingston.”

Barney stopped and turned. “Yes, sir?”

“What were those pages young Eastman was referring to?”

Barney hesitated, then angrily decided that
something
of Maury Eastman should remain inviolate.

“I don’t know, sir. I guess he was delirious or something.”

Dean Holmes nodded, which Barney took to be his license to retire. He began his weary way back into the dorm.

As he passed Maury’s room, Barney noticed the door was still ajar. He turned on the light and entered. There was a half-filled page in the portable typewriter. Barney leaned over to read it. Thoughts of the narrator after his initial day of medical study:

Barney gathered up the dozen or so pages of his classmate’s “book,” turned off the light, and walked sadly toward his room. He felt a desperate need to shut off his thoughts.

“Christ, Livingston, are you sick? You look like you’ve been up all night.”

“I
was
up all night,” Barney answered hoarsely, trying to coordinate a junction between the muffin in his left hand and the jelly on the knife in his right. There were three cups of black coffee on his tray.

“May I sit down, or is this table for grinds only?”

“Sit, Castellano, sit.”

Laura sat across from him, drumming her fingers. “Well, are you gonna tell me what happened or what?”

“I was studying epithelial tissue and it was so exciting that I got carried away. The next thing I knew it was dawn.”