My head swiveled back to Turk, who had remained at the other side of the crowded room, waiting for Haggens to return. They spoke, leaning close to each other. Haggens nodded, as if in grudging acceptance. Then he made his way across the room, vanishing somewhere against the far wall.
Turk returned to the table in a dark humor. His eyebrows were knotted together so acutely that he looked raptorish. “Come, Carroll,” he said brusquely, without sitting. “We’re leaving. Sorry, ladies.”
“But it’s so early,” moaned Suzette.
“Stay,” said Monique, looking languorously at me. “Let’s have another drink.”
“It’s not that late, Turk,” I heard myself say. “Why must we leave?”
Turk grasped me under the arm and pulled me to my feet. His grip was extremely strong. “Carroll, when I say it’s time to leave, it’s time to leave. If you wish to get home with your health intact, I suggest you listen. Pay the bill and come with me.”
The bill was somehow already on the table, and my stomach roiled when I saw that it was ten dollars, as much as I made in a week. I barely had enough to cover the cost and as I fumbled for the coins, Monique grasped my wrist. Her hand was warm and slightly moist. “Don’t listen to him, Ephie. Stay. Have some fun.”
I wanted very much to do as she suggested but Turk still had me under the arm. “I’m very sorry, Monique. You are lovely, but I must go. Perhaps another time.”
Before she could respond, Turk had dragged me from the table. “Get a move on, Carroll. We have to leave now.”
All the way across the floor, Turk looked around, as if waiting for someone to appear. He did not relax until the carriage had put some considerable distance between us and The Fatted Calf.
CHAPTER 4
I DID NOT ARRIVE AT the hospital until nine the next morning, at least one hour later than was customary. If not for my landlady, I might not have made it at all. It had taken her ten minutes of knocking on my door to rouse me and, after she had, it seemed as if the pounding had merely transferred itself to the inside of my skull. After I moaned that I was awake, Mrs. Mooney left me to struggle out of bed. When I finally made my appearance in the parlor, she peered at me over her spectacles in sympathetic reproach, as one would treat a favored pet that had uncharacteristically soiled the carpet. She insisted that I take coffee and a light breakfast, which I did only with Spartan will.
My memory of the previous night had taken on a preternatural aura. Although I was certain of the basic time line and some of the events remained clear, there were any number of particulars, especially in The Fatted Calf, that I could not be sure were actual occurrences or partially imagined. While I remembered with utter clarity the press of Monique’s breasts and thighs, my brief glimpse of the man in the bowler hat had evolved into phantasm. The notion that it had been Dr. Osler seemed preposterous, but I somehow could not expunge the vision of him from my mind.
The ride home remained a blur. Turk had spoken little, but rather had seemed weighed upon by a great burden. I had assured him that since we were now friends, he could confide in me, but he had merely glared and may have even called me a moron. After he dropped me at my rooms, I had no memory of how I made my way upstairs and into bed. I vowed never to drink to excess again, a vow I had made a number of times in the past, but never since I had arrived in Philadelphia.
My disquiet, however, went deeper than memories clouded by cheap champagne. Had Turk not forced me to leave, there was no doubt that I would have committed an indiscretion with Monique. I had wanted to desperately and, had I succumbed, I would have engaged in a monumentally foolhardy act. Men of my generation could not take such risks. When desperation overcame reason, those who resorted to prostitutes—or dancers in Bonhomme’s Paris Revue—did so at great peril. Disease was rampant and the protection that did exist, disgusting devices called condoms—thick, galvanized rubber monstrosities with a seam running down one side—were so unpleasant and unwieldy that few employed them. My one sexual experience had come during my tenure in Chicago and I had been lucky to escape unscathed.
Her name was Wanda. She was a Polish girl of eighteen, with blond braids and woeful eyes, the daughter of a patient. Our association began innocently enough—we visited the local arcade or took a streetcar to the lakefront and strolled under the stars. After about a month, she suggested that we return to my rooms. I was twenty-three years old; I allowed desire to overwhelm reason. Afterward, as we lay in bed together, I felt both an enormous feeling of well-being and a crippling rush of guilt.
I continued to see her, our time together consisting almost entirely of lovemaking. When I was with her, I could not restrain myself and as much as the release was ecstatic, it always left me wanting more. I didn’t love her, however, and when I was not with her, I was inflamed with remorse.
Then, one night, she said that we should be married.
Wanda had every right to expect that our love affair would culminate in a proposal and it was the honorable action to take. But at the mere consideration of such a prospect, I was seized with dread. Marriage to her meant that I would pass my remaining days on the West Side of Chicago, growing old and beaten down by the poverty and despair around me. I realized too that Wanda had all of this planned. For her, marriage to a physician, regardless of circumstances, was a great step up, as it had been a great step up for me to have become a physician.
I told her I could not marry her.
I expected tears but, instead, Wanda flew into a rage. She shrilly inquired whether or not I intended to abandon her now that I had rendered her unfit for other men. I retorted that I was not a fool and was therefore well aware that I had hardly been the first man who had ruined her for others. At that, she softened her tone. She informed me that she was with child. I replied that I did not believe her, that I was, after all, a doctor, and if she wished, she could accompany me to the hospital where we could find out whether she was expecting or not. She leapt out of bed, gathered up her clothes, dressed, and departed, informing me on her way out that if I ever encountered her father, uncles, brothers, or myriad other relatives, I would be the worse for it. I left Chicago not a month later.
The episode caused me to realize what a complete fool I had been. How close I had come to precipitating my own downfall. Since then, when I could stand the strain no longer, I resorted, like most, to self-abuse. Yet, with all of that, the one feeling from last night that had not passed with the coming of the new day was an immense lust to be coupled with Monique, feeling her body thrusting against mine.
Once at the hospital, my headache still murderous, I called on the Professor in his office. I was reassured to find that he could not have been more open or in better spirits.
“My word, Carroll,” he said, taking immediate note of my condition, “if I did not know you better, I would say that you had been gallivanting. Since I do know you, however, I assume that you simply stretched out in the middle of Broad Street last night and allowed the traffic to run over you.”
I tried miserably to manage a small smile in reply, which the Professor laughed off as he bade me accompany him on rounds. He was so buoyant and lighthearted that the memory of the previous day and night began to seem more and more illusory. It was, after all, completely possible that what Turk had put forward as a gibe was actually true—that in the Dead House, the Professor had simply been shocked by the unfortunate woman’s youth and beauty and found himself unable to cut into her flesh. As we headed for the wards, I felt foolish for my suspicions.
Going on rounds with the Professor was an opportunity to experience medicine at its apex. He had introduced an entirely new manner of training even first-year medical students to deal not only more effectively with illness but more humanely with the afflicted. He began, as was his wont, in the children’s ward. The Professor adored children, and the sentiments were heartily reciprocated. (Years later, long after he had fled America for Great Britain, upon hearing that he was to be knighted, one of his young patients
exclaimed, “Too bad. They should have made him king.”) This day, we had been joined by, among others, Corrigan, Farnshaw, and Simpson—in fact, everyone who had been at yesterday’s session in the Dead House, save one.
“Dr. Turk will not be joining us this morning,” the Professor informed us. “He sent word that he has been laid low with a gastrointestinal ailment. I know how much we will all miss him, but we have no choice but to soldier on, eh?”
I took brief comfort in the thought that Turk had weathered the evening even less well than I until Simpson sidled up next to me. “You look positively dreadful,” she observed quietly, with what I could not be sure was reproach or amusement.
“Thank you,” I mumbled. “I was hoping someone would notice.”
“Raw egg and Worcestershire sauce,” she whispered. “Best thing.”
“I believe I’d rather be sick,” I replied, wondering how she had come by the information.
“At least you did better than poor Farnshaw,” she continued.
“Farnshaw?” Had Farnshaw been there last night? I was confused, but then remembered that Turk had befriended Farnshaw for a time.
“Turk took him out to some dive near the waterfront, just after he arrived here. It had some odd biblical name….”
“The Fatted Calf?” When Simpson confirmed my conjecture, I excused myself and sidled over to Farnshaw.
The young Bostonian had a compulsion to reveal everything that he knew to anyone who would listen, so it was not necessary to ask a direct question. I merely noted that Turk’s illness might have been due to other than a microbe.
“I couldn’t agree more, Carroll,” my young colleague replied eagerly. “From the evidence I’ve seen, it’s remarkable he can stand upright. I don’t think you know this, but he asked me to join him out one evening just after I came on the staff.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Farnshaw said. “He told me that it must be difficult coming to a new city and working with strangers. I thought it was quite decent of him. We went first to dinner at a very lively restaurant….”
“Barker’s?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I’ve been there myself.”
“Ah. In any event, Turk could not have been more affable. He even insisted on paying, though by rights, the check should have been mine.”
“Why is that?”
Farnshaw grew uncomfortable. “It’s obvious … Turk … as we all know … must scrape by on a staff physician’s remuneration, whereas I am … uh …”
“Rich?”
“It is not my fault that I come from means,” he replied haughtily. “In any event,” he continued, “after we had finished dinner, Turk invited me to see some of the city and suggested a drinking establishment he knew. It was down in the waterfront district, but he assured me that I was quite safe with him and that we should have great fun.”
“And you went.”
“I’m sorry to say that I did. Don’t get me wrong, Carroll, it was great fun … for a time at least. But I’m afraid that I’m not as accustomed to revelry as I believed, and certainly not as much as is Turk. We drank prodigiously and I became somewhat intoxicated, although Turk, as I remember, was largely unaffected.”
“Was it just the two of you, or were you joined by Turk’s friends?”
“Just us. He did introduce me to a number of people, denizens of the place it seemed, including some most appealing ladies. He was quite familiar … he made sure everyone knew my name. ‘Here’s George,’ he said or, ‘Everyone, meet George.’ I believe that by the time we left, half of the men and women in the establishment knew who I was.”
“That was very generous of him,” I said. “Did he ever take you there again?”
“No,” said Farnshaw, demonstrating genuine puzzlement. “It was quite odd. When I told him on the way home how much I had enjoyed myself, he refused to even acknowledge me. Perhaps I embarrassed him by becoming intoxicated. I was quite ill, I’m afraid. It took three days to recover. But ever since, he has either ignored or made sport of me. Harvard fees, indeed.”
“Turk makes sport of everyone,” I reassured him.
“I know that,” replied Farnshaw, “but I thought he liked me.”
I felt more than a bit foolish to have been taken in by the same ploy used on my naïve colleague. I wondered why someone as calculating as Turk would waste his time on Farnshaw—or me, for that matter. Before I could inquire further, however, the Professor had moved to the entrance of the children’s ward and swung open the door.
We entered a large and airy room with tall windows that admitted bountiful light. At his insistence, beds had been moved to be at least three feet apart and screens made readily available so that a young patient might enjoy a modicum of privacy during treatment.
In the first bed lay a boy of nine with dark eyes and a mop of black hair, who had been admitted the previous day suffering from dizziness and extreme fatigue. Blood had been taken and examined under the microscope.
“Hello, Giuseppe,” the Professor said with a smile. “How are you feeling today?” Another of the improvements in the care of children was an identification card at the foot of each bed, so that a physician or nurse might address the patient by name. The Professor never needed to look at a card more than once.
“Johnny,” the boy replied weakly. “Not too swell.”
The Professor pulled up a chair. “Okay, then, Johnny, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
The boy looked suspicious.
“These are my students,” the Professor went on, “and, well, some of them aren’t very good.” Two or three of my colleagues around the bed pretended to look aghast, which elicited a faint smile from Johnny. “I was wondering if you could help me teach them to be better doctors.”
“What do I have to do?”
“I’m trying to teach them to remember four words—just four—but they can’t seem to get it.”
“I could do it,” said the boy.
“They’re kind of tricky.”
“Ah, four words won’t be no trouble.”
The Professor stroked his mustache, then nodded. “All right. Let’s try. Each of these words stands for something that every doctor should do each time he sees a patient. Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“The first word is ‘inspect.’ Do you know what that means?”
Johnny’s smile broadened. Most of us attending stood blank-faced. Farnshaw had succeeded in appearing positively stupid. “To check something out,” said the boy.
“Perfect!” said the Professor. He turned to us. “A natural, this lad is. That’s right, the first thing a doctor should do is check out the patient, see how the patient looks and feels. So, Johnny, how do you feel today? What bothers you?”
“I’m real tired,” the lad answered. “Every time I stand up, I feel like I’m gonna fall.”
“Do your ears ring?”
“Nah.”
“Are you eating all right? Do you get sick after you eat?”
“Nah.”
“Does it hurt when you breathe?”
“Nah.”
“Fine,” said the Professor. “Now, on to the second word. This one is harder. Do you know what ‘percussion’ means?”
Johnny shook his head.
“It means to knock two things together and see what kind of sound it makes.” The Professor stood. “Watch.” Without warning, he rapped his knuckles against my head. Rounds had distracted me from my postalcoholic malaise but, although it was a physiologic impossibility, I felt as if my brain had shifted inside my skull.
“I just percussed Dr. Carroll here,” he informed the boy with a grin, and I wondered if he had chosen me on purpose. “From the sound, I can tell you what’s inside his head. Sounded kind of hollow, eh?”
Johnny was not the only one who agreed.
“Now, I’m going to percuss your stomach and chest.” The Professor pulled back the sheet and the boy wat
ched with curiosity as the Professor examined his abdomen and thorax. “Perfect,” the Professor declared when he had finished. “Nothing bad going on there. On to number three, another tricky one. It’s ‘palpate.’ “
“Don’t know that one,” Johnny said.
“It means to press on something, to see how it feels, if it’s too hard or too soft. I’m going to palpate your stomach and your liver.”
When he was finished, the Professor said, “The last word is the hardest, Johnny. It’s ‘auscultate.’ It means to listen. For this one, we have something special.” Dr. Osler removed the familiar device from the pocket of his coat. “This is called a Cammann binaural stethoscope. A lot of big words, but it just makes sound louder. Want to hear your heart?”
“Sure,” said the boy.
The Professor put the earpieces in Johnny’s ears and placed the diaphragm against his chest wall. The boy’s eyes went wide. The Professor then listened himself. When he had completed the examination and tucked the stethoscope back into his coat, he asked, “Well, Johnny, my friend, can you repeat the four words for my doctors here?”
Other than leaving the first “t” out of auscultate, the lad got all four.
“Congratulations,” Dr. Osler exulted. “You now know the four points of the medical student’s compass.” “The four compass points”—inspect, percuss, palpate, auscultate—was to become one of the Professor’s trademark teaching tools. “Johnny,” he went on, “I want you to promise that when you decide to go to medical school, you’ll come here and work for me.”
Johnny, now feeling very good about himself, pursed his lips, looked up at the group clustered around his narrow bed, then nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
“And I’m going to make you a promise. You’ll be out of here by early next week and you’re going to be feeling a lot better.”
This was, in fact, a routine diagnosis. Examination of a blood sample had confirmed a red cell deficiency—anemia—which, given the boy’s slum address, was almost certainly due to iron deficiency in his diet. Simple anemia could be treated with an elixir rich in that element, although the boy’s diet once he returned home was unlikely to prevent a relapse.
The Anatomy of Deception Page 5
