Noble Vision (47 page)

“But, Mack, listen to yourself. All you’re saying is that David acted against
you
and will make it harder for you to win. But he didn’t do anything against the
public
.”

“I stand for the public! An act against Mack Burrow is an act against the people!” Burrow roared angrily. Then his voice lowered to a whisper, as if sharing a secret: “
The
public
interest
is
me,
Warren
. Haven’t you figured that out yet?
The
public
interest
is
me
!
”

Warren looked dumbfounded, like an animal frozen in the sudden glare of approaching headlights. “You mean,” he said, his voice trembling, “that there is no . . . noble cause. There’s only . . . you?” The headlights were closer, larger, blinding.

Burrow’s sagging face came alive. The immense power he wielded burst from his towering voice. “That’s the glory, man! Great leaders make an impact on their times. We alter the course of history!” His hand was raised in a fist, his eyes wild with excitement.

Warren was shaking, his voice a mere whisper. “Are you telling me, Mack, that I sacrificed the gifted surgeon who is my son for the sake of
your
interests . . . for . . .
you
? I thought that I was working for something greater than us, something noble. But now you’re telling me that the public interest is only you—it’s whatever you want, your wishes, your . . . arbitrary . . . whims.”

“It’s your whims, too, Warren. Don’t forget that,” Burrow said shrewdly. “We’ve been over this ground before, man.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to figure out how to deal with your son myself from now on. I’ve got a press conference, so if you’ll excuse me . . .”

He rose from his desk and reached into the drawer. He examined two different documents and selected one.

“What did you choose, Mack? Plan A or plan B?” Warren asked timidly, his white hair disheveled, his imported suit rumpled, his face unable to capture its former dignity. His eyes held the fixed stare of a patient dreading a terminal diagnosis.

“I’m afraid it’s plan B, Warren.” Feeling slightly sympathetic, Burrow tapped him on the shoulder consolingly and left the room.

*
  
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*

Warren listlessly returned to his office, like a man who had nothing better to do. Doris followed him to his desk, standing over him with her notepad. “Senator Tibald and Congressman Ederly called.
National
Weekly
wants to interview you.” She peered up from her glasses, “Dr. Lang? Are you listening?”

“No,” said Warren indifferently.

“Shall I come back later?”

“If you wish.”

“Dr. Lang, are you feeling all right? Can I get you anything?”

“No,” he said despondently. “And I don’t want to see anyone.”

“But people to whom you granted appointments are waiting.”

“All right. Show them in.”

A succession of citizens paraded into Warren’s office to plead their cases to the person who held their future in his hands.

An older man with a cane was Warren’s first visitor. “Mr. Secretary, I pay four times the taxes my neighbor does. Four times! How come he got a liver transplant when I can’t get dialysis? What makes his liver more important than my kidneys? They say I’m too old to qualify for dialysis. I’m only sixty-two, not too old to pay taxes for other people’s treatment!”

Warren’s next visitor was a woman in her fifties. “I’m on a waiting list for heart bypass surgery. I’m told there are no beds, but I passed a ward of empty beds in my hospital. It’s something about exceeding their budget, so the hospital took beds out of service. Does this make sense?”

Then a woman in her forties entered. “I was able to get a screening test for lung cancer in one day. But now that I learned I have cancer, I have to wait three months for surgery. Three months! My neighbor’s kid just had an operation on his knee, so he can play sports. My husband is not an enlightened man, Dr. Lang. He doesn’t understand why the boy’s knee got priority over my lungs. I’m afraid he’s going to bash in the child’s other knee!”

How could he decide these cases? Warren wondered, terrified at the answer flashing in his mind. He heard the echo of David’s voice:
What must my patient do to win a door prize, too?
And the snicker of another man who had said:
It’s your whims, too, Warren.

Then a hospital administrator arrived: “Why has Coleridge Hospital been denied a request to repair its only brain scanner? We’re a small hospital, Dr. Lang, but we’ve always prided ourselves on our modern technology. We’ve never been without a scanner, and Hudson Hospital just got two approved. Why them and not us?”

Another hospital administrator followed that visitor. “Why can’t Mercy Hospital charge higher fees than Jefferson Memorial? Mercy is in a more expensive area, with higher mortgage, taxes, and other expenses. How can you expect us to charge the same rates as a hospital with half the overhead?”

The gratification that Warren had once felt in deciding the matters before him now turned to revulsion. He recalled Randy’s haunting words:
You don’t see that the same bug that bit Burrow has infected you?

Warren no longer felt a thrill from granting favors, refusing requests, being the one who decides the fate of millions. When the person with the last appointment left, he picked up his picture of eleven-year-old David, wrapped in a surgical gown, watching his first operation. Warren observed the eagerness on the boy’s face. Then he thought of himself flying in a private plane, sipping whiskey with windbags at political meetings, and seeing his picture on the cover of
National
Weekly
. He thought of the faceless doctors who had only a fraction of the talent of the boy in the picture, the doctors who would attend the right parties, say the right things, and mingle with the right people. They would get the grants and the positions of importance, he knew. Warren closed his eyes against a deadly question forcing itself on him: Who would have made that possible?

He placed David’s picture in his pocket and opened the door. “I’m going home, Doris. I don’t feel well.”

“But Dr. Lang, your department heads are arriving for a meeting with you.”

She spoke to the back of his head as he quietly left.

*
  
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*
  
*
  
*

When Warren arrived at his apartment, he removed the photographs hanging in his living room, leaving a dotted black line of bare hooks across the almond-colored walls. On one of the hooks, he hung the picture of David as a boy. Then he poured himself a drink and sat facing the little photo. He thumbed through a large scrapbook stuffed with news clippings and magazine articles. Years ago he had filled the book with stories of David’s surgery to separate the conjoined twins. He paused over a picture of David in scrubs after the landmark operation. His son looked weary from the ordeal, but his head was tilted upward and his eyes filled with the most profound pride that Warren had ever seen. He glanced at the boy of eleven in the OR, beaming at him from the wall. He saw the pride of the surgeon contained in the face of the boy, and the childlike excitement of the boy in the face of the surgeon. Then Warren left the room to enter his study. He returned with David’s love letter and lit a match to it.

The father spoke to the eleven-year-old boy in the picture:

“You and Randall were right about me. I bragged about doing things for the public interest, but I was never concerned with real, individual people. I gave things to some people at the expense of others, prompted only by my political ambitions. Oh, yes, I admit it! I destroyed you, David, not for any noble cause but just so I could be Burrow’s running mate and grasp the most exciting thing I’ve ever experienced, the thing I breathe for. The true nature of my acts was never real to me until your case. I knew that the
means
used by Burrow—and me—were corrupt, but I didn’t know that the
end
. . . that there was no noble end, only a string of . . . injustices . . . I committed toward other men’s children, and now toward my own son as well. But the most shocking thing of all to me is that even knowing this, I’d still give anything to stand with Burrow on the steps of the capitol, and I’m devastated by losing my most passionate dream. To lose you and Randall on top of that is too much. There was a time when I did love medicine and you, and I see that I was happy then. Now there’s no going back . . . and no . . . going . . . forward.”

*
  
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*

As Governor Burrow stood at a podium at the Rutledge Hotel, announcing the state comptroller as his running mate, there was a commotion on the street outside of Warren’s high-rise condominium. Someone had fallen from a balcony. A white head of hair lay crushed against the black pavement.

Part Three: Hope

Chapter 24

A Colorless Day

As Warren Lang pronounced his verdict in the courtroom, Nicole Hudson slept. She had awakened during the night, and, exhausted from her recent bouts of sleeplessness and fearing the return of her nightmares, she had taken more sleeping pills, exceeding David’s prescribed dosage. Mrs. Trimbell had followed David’s advice and let her sleep through the trial. Hence, the ballerina rested as soundly as the princess of her childhood ballet. However, unlike the princess, Nicole was awakened not by the pleasantness of a kiss but rather by the ring of her cell phone. She groped for it on the nightstand.

“Hello,” she said groggily.

“Hello, Nicole, dear. Do you know who this is?”

Nicole recoiled at the voice. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I called to tell you how terribly sorry I am.”

“About what?”

“You mean you don’t know, dear?”

Nicole tapped the talking clock on her night table. It was three-thirty in the afternoon! She sat up abruptly. “What are you talking about?”

“You sound as if you’re just getting up. How very thoughtful of your doctor to let you sleep through everything. I’m talking about the news everyone knows but you, dear.”

The voice paused teasingly, as if wanting to be prodded. Nicole did not oblige but waited silently.

“This morning your doctor was suspended for a year, fined twenty-five thousand dollars, and prohibited from continuing your treatment. He must comply or lose his license and never practice medicine again.”

The caller could not hear the gasp Nicole suppressed or see the phone trembling in her hand.

“And I’m afraid there’s more, Nicole. Are you still there, dear?”

It took the whole of Nicole’s effort to whisper two steady words: “Go on.”

“Warren Lang fell from his balcony and was pronounced dead.”

*
  
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By six o’clock that evening, Nicole had slipped two of David’s sleeping pills into Mrs. Trimbell’s coffee, and the hardy woman had fallen asleep. The distraught ballerina called for a car and, aided by her cane, left the apartment to wait for her ride. Someone observed her from a vehicle parked down the street: David. He had been returning from the hospital where he had identified his father’s body and met with family members. As he had been wondering how to tell Nicole the terrible news of the day, she appeared at the entrance of her building carrying a suitcase. The shock of the verdict and the horror of his father’s demise had unnerved him. The sight of Nicole running away again made him livid. He would teach her a lesson, so she would never pull this stunt again. Those events were what led a doctor to frighten a blind person.

He pulled his car up to her building and got out. Hearing the slam of the door, Nicole opened the locked gate of her residence.

“Is that you, Mike?” she said.

David shoved his way through the gate. He pinned her arms behind her and gripped both of her wrists with one hand. He gagged her mouth with the other, suppressing cries of pain and fear. He dragged her into the bushes lining the verdant entrance. Hidden by tall shrubs, he pushed her into the side of the building and pressed his body against her. She felt cold bricks scraping her back and a warm body squeezing her chest and thighs. Her sightless eyes saw terror. Sandwiched between the building and the body, Nicole’s desperate efforts to scream, to pull away, to kick, to scratch were fruitless against his iron grip. She was horrified.

“You crazy kid! It would be so simple to hurt you!” he said at last.

“David!” she murmured through his hand. At the sound of his voice, the fight drained from her body. She stood limp in the arms of a man she had no capacity to fear. He eased his grip on her.

“You scared me to death! And you hurt me! David, how could you?”

“No one saw me. You couldn’t identify me. I could rob you, rape you, murder you!” He shouted angrily, shaking her by the shoulders.

Hands still trembling from her scare curled around his neck. She felt firm muscles through his thin shirt. “You loved him. From the way you spoke of him, I know he once meant a great deal to you, David.”