Noble Vision (28 page)

“Choose, David. Either obey society’s laws or become an outcast and an outlaw. I hope that as a healer and as my son, you will make the only choice that a man of character can make.”

“I choose to have none of your kind of character and to be faithful to myself and my work. If that disgraces me, then so be it.”

“Then you will get your punishment.”

David sighed, raising his hands in surrender. “Father, I never pleaded a case to you. I never begged for a favor. But I’m begging now. I’ll do whatever you want, only I must perform the second surgery on Nicole. After that, I’ll plead guilty to all of your charges, I’ll leave medicine, I’ll go to jail, I’ll accept any punishment you choose. If it meant anything to you that as a child I wanted to be with only you, that I cried when you left the house, that I learned to love medicine from you, that I idolized you, that I loved you not only as a father but also as the hero of my childhood, then grant me this one and only favor—in the name of something that was once precious to both of us. Please, Father. Tie this matter up in a committee, look the other way, stall it—only don’t stop me until my work is done. Lift my suspension and make Riverview Hospital reinstate my staff privileges—just until I can do the second procedure. And don’t punish Randy and the hospital, only me!” David closed his eyes painfully. “Please, Father.”

The crusty features of Warren’s face were softened in a sudden remolding, as if an astute sculptor had captured a hidden layer of his subject’s soul. “David, I never imagined that I would be able to share my work with you. I really do love medicine. Watching that same spark ignite in you, too, has been the joy of my life. But I can’t do what you’re asking. I want to, but Mack Burrow is demanding your blood.”

David’s eyes widened with hope. “Do you really want to save me, Father? Do you really want to be the person I thought you were?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it!” David leaned forward, his arms spread over the desk, a sudden spark of interest lighting his face. “Quit this despicable institution and come back to medicine. Exonerate me as your last official deed and be done with this dirty work! Would you, Dad, would you?”

“Son, I want to defend you, but not as an act
against
this institution. Not at all. I want to defend you because your work is of immense importance, not just to you or your patient but also to society. It’s in the public interest.”

David’s hopes sunk in a pit of disappointment. “That’s
not
the way to defend me! You can’t take a majority vote on Nicole’s life or on my work. May the public and its so-called interest be damned!”

“Okay, David. I won’t appeal to your social conscience. Let’s look at this matter in a purely personal way. After all, a man never does forget the . . . hero . . . of his childhood. I gave you, well, so much to admire as a kid, and now I’m giving you even more to be proud of.”

David raised his eyebrows in utter incredulity. “Are you thinking that I could be proud of you for teaming up with Mack Burrow?”

“Forget him. He’s just a means to my later becoming governor. You can admit it, son—aren’t you really proud of all I’ve accomplished?”

David’s mind echoed with Nicole’s anguished cries of wanting to die. For what senseless purpose would she be condemned to suffer? he wondered. He envisioned Mack Burrow with his limousine, his mansion, his followers, his press.

“Give up this hopeless quest for my sake. Tell the truth, son. Wouldn’t you rather have my love than my censure?”

“I’d rather be a bastard than be a son of yours.”

Both men were shocked into silence. Warren could have forgiven David for saying what he had if it were a cry torn from him in rage. But the fact that David uttered it calmly, coldly, and with full intent was a cut from which Warren would bleed for the rest of his life.

As a substitute for a hurt too deep to reveal, Warren became livid. He rose to his feet, pounding his fists against the desk until the vase and its gladiolas shook furiously. “I’ll not sanction lawlessness. You’ll not perform that second surgery! The answer is no!”

David stood, his body thrusting forward, his hands on the desk, his voice hitting his father from a distance of inches. “I would perform that second surgery even if it meant your death.”

“You’re no son of mine! You’re finished! When I get through with you, you’ll never operate again, just as surely as if your hands were slashed!” Warren continued slamming his fist on the desk.

Without warning and dangerously close to where David’s hands lay, the tall crystal vase shook from the force of Warren’s pounding and came crashing down. A flurry of broken glass, scattered flowers, and splashing water hit the desk.

“Look out!” Warren shouted. He pulled David’s hands away from the flying crystal an instant before it could cut him.

Both men froze, stunned by the action. Warren’s hands grasped David’s, the way one clutches a baby safely away from a fire. Trembling, Warren protectively pressed his son’s hands to his chest, with David permitting the act.

“Son, your work is a noble vision. But CareFree is noble, too.”

“They can’t both be noble, Father.”

“But how can they not be?”

David jerked his hands away. He stepped backward cautiously, as if retreating from an unknown menace too fearsome to turn his back on. Then he stopped, raised his right arm slowly, and pointed a trembling finger at Warren, his voice resonating through the room: “I told you two years ago when you accepted this post, and I’ll tell you again now: One of us is going to destroy the other. Before this matter is over, one of us will be finished!”

Part Two: Thunder

Chapter 16

The Model Citizen

David sat on the front steps of his house watching a few smoky pink clouds on the horizon turn silver gray in the western sky. Though his body looked relaxed as he leaned on his elbows, his long legs sprawling down the wooden stairs, his eyes were intense and distant. When the lawn, a lush green carpet circling the porch and stretching to the pavement, darkened to the same slate hue as the street, he walked into the house and across the kitchen.

Marie, brewing tea at the stove, watched him heading for the garage. She was wrapped in a long robe and settled in for the evening.

“Going out again tonight, David?”

“I told you on Friday that I’d be tied up for a few nights.”

“And today’s Sunday, supposedly a day when husbands spend time with their wives.”

He looked at her silently.

“I’m still in shock over what you did to your career—and to our lives—last Wednesday evening.”

He said nothing.

“Where have you been every night since you got suspended? I know one place not on your travel log, and that’s the OR. So tell me, David, how does a man pass the time after destroying his career?”

He thought that she had a right to know where he was going, but a deeper voice cautioned him to keep his business to himself. “There’s something I need to do, but I’m afraid I can’t discuss it.”

“What might that be? Anesthetize yourself in a bar?”

“If you wish.” He seemed pleased at her conclusion that he was drinking.

“I see you’re dressed like a jewel thief again.”

He was clad entirely in black—from sneakers to denim pants to polo shirt to baseball cap.

“Good night, Marie,” he called, vanishing into the garage, his voice tinged with sadness.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

Twenty minutes later, his car clattered off the metal bridge from Queens to the East Side of Manhattan. He saw few people on the streets with the hour growing late—a man walking his dog, a shopper entering a late-night grocery, a couple leaving an empty restaurant. Although he was headed west, he parked on the East Side and hailed a taxi.

David stepped into the backseat, his head lowered to avoid the driver’s glance. His face had appeared in the press that week, and he did not want to be recognized. His youthful appearance did not suggest an experienced surgeon, and his most revealing feature, the unusually intelligent eyes, were hidden by the baseball cap pulled down to his brows.

The cab’s radio was tuned to a newscast: “Today the mayor ordered an investigation into the explosion in Manhattan injuring two hundred people. The blast has been traced to a faulty gas pipeline. The Bowing Construction Company, which installed the pipeline, is already under suspicion in the recent kickback scheme involving high-level officials in the Burrow Administration. Sources indicate that the lieutenant governor may also be charged in the scandal. The governor denied any knowledge of the affair.”

The cab driver raised his eyes to peer at David through the rearview mirror. “How do you like that?” he said, snickering.

“I don’t particularly,” said David, averting his eyes in an attempt to end the conversation.

But the cab driver pressed on as he drove into the livelier nightlife of the Theater District. “You think the governor wouldn’t take kickbacks?”

“I don’t know—” David began, but his words suddenly froze.

Outside the window, workers were erecting a new billboard where a poster of Nicole had stood. The giant ad displayed the reopening date of
Triumph
with a twenty-foot-high picture of the new Pandora, touted to be “Broadway’s latest dance sensation.” He was grateful that Nicole could not see that particular sight.

As the cab crawled in traffic detoured because of the explosion, a new radio show began. “Good evening,” a soothing voice droned, “I’m Adam Nutley, your Sunday night host for
The Week in Review
. Tonight our topic is medicine and the state. Can a doctor disregard government regulations and treat a patient as he pleases? Neurosurgeon David Lang apparently thinks so. This week his experimental nerve-repair surgery on dancer Nicole Hudson, who was blinded in the gas explosion, has raised a furor in the Burrow administration, as well as in his own family.”

“That guy’s finished,” quipped the driver.

David did not listen to commentaries, as he knew they would have no bearing on his actions. He wanted to ask the driver to change the station but decided not to invite more looks through the rearview mirror.

“Here is what Dr. David Lang said in a news conference after the surgery,” said Adam Nutley.

David heard an excerpt of his statement to the press. As he had only spoken a few words in the cab, the driver apparently did not recognize the voice over the radio as his.

“This surgery is a private matter between me and my patient. It’s none of the governor’s business what I do in the OR,” said David over the airwaves.

“Dr. Lang was peppered by questions after his statement,” continued the show’s host. “Here are some of them.”

“Dr. Lang,” asked one reporter, “if this treatment is successful, do you stand to gain personally from it?”

“I do.”

“Did you
really
use drugs that weren’t approved?” asked another reporter incredulously.

“They
were
approved—by me.”

“Did you perform a procedure that wasn’t authorized?”

“It
was
authorized—by my patient.”

“But Dr. Lang, how can you know that you’re right?”

“How can a bureaucrat in Albany know better?”

Adam Nutley interjected: “And here is what Governor Burrow said about the surgery.”

“My responsibility is to protect the patient,” droned the governor through the static reception. “Here we have a doctor who bypassed the law, subjecting a helpless accident victim to an operation not approved through the proper regulatory channels and to drugs not authorized by the appropriate agencies. I will not see the public turned into guinea pigs for someone’s reckless experiments.”

“The issue,” said Adam Nutley, “is complicated by the fact that the head of the Bureau of Medicine, Dr. Warren Lang, is the surgeon’s father. The governor was asked if the doctor might get off easy, considering his connections.”

“Absolutely not! The surgeon has already been suspended,” said Governor Burrow. “Warren Lang’s integrity is unimpeachable. I
know
he’ll do what’s right.”

“What
is
right?” interjected Adam Nutley.

“Even his old man won’t be able to bail him out,” said the cabbie indifferently. “Not in an election year.”

The taxi came to a standstill, waiting its turn to pass construction trucks and blocked lanes. David noticed an unusually vigorous effort by the city to repair the roads damaged by the explosion. Was that another sign of an approaching election? He wondered if he and Nicole would face ruin because someone wanted to win an election. They were the innocent, wanting nothing from anyone, only to be left alone, yet they were somehow in the way.

“We asked the state’s foremost medical authorities for their views on Dr. Lang’s experimental surgery,” said the radio commentator. “First let’s hear from the president of the New York Academy of Medicine.”

“A doctor has an obligation to serve society,” said a voice David recognized. “We repudiate brash, egotistical, lawbreaking actions by a physician, and we repudiate David Lang.”