by Lee Goldberg
She was freshly showered and wearing a pink bathrobe, an apron tied over it at the waist and neck. Her hair was wet, bound up in a towel using a technique that completely baffled me. I have no idea how it stayed in place.
I came up behind her and gave her a big kiss on the neck, where I knew she was especially ticklish. She smelled like a flower bed, and when she smiled it lit up her whole face. Her cheeks flushed, her nose crinkled, and her eyebrows arched in glee. I loved it and it only made me want to amuse her even more.
Katherine squirmed away from me, giving up her seat.
"Stop it," she said, still smiling.
I swiped her chair at the table and sat down. "I can't help myself," I said.
I fell in love with her the first time I saw her singing at the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel. The problem was she was engaged to someone else at the time. I couldn't help myself then either.
"That's your excuse for everything." She gave me a kiss on the cheek and went to take care of breakfast.
I looked at her standing there at the stove, the apron over her bathrobe, her hair wound up in that towel, her feet in those big fuzzy slippers, and it brought tears of happiness to my eyes. No woman on earth could possibly have been more beautiful than she was at that moment.
"You'll never guess what I found in bed this morning," she said, cracking some eggs in a bowl.
"An incredibly handsome young doctor with the body of a Greek god?"
"Half of a roast beef sandwich," she said.
"That was for you," I said. "In case you woke up in the middle of the night to feed Steve and wanted a snack."
"You're so thoughtful," she said. "Was it raining hard when you came home last night?"
"Noah waved at me from the ark," I said, beginning to browse the newspaper.
"I read in Hedda Hopper's column that Alfred Hitchcock believes the twist is responsible for all the rain we're having. He says it's a pagan rain dance."
"He must be joking," I said, though I wasn't entirely sure he was. Rock music was being blamed for everything from drug addiction to communism. Pretty soon, I was sure, they'd start prosecuting people just for listening to it.
That very week, a bookseller was being tried in Los Angeles for obscenity for selling Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer in his Hollywood store. There was an article in the paper right in front of me that recounted a psychologist's testimony that the book was "the perverted, irrational babbling of an unhealthy mind." I don't know what that said about me, since I had a copy of Tropic of Cancer sitting on my nightstand.
While Katherine prepared bacon and eggs for us, I glanced at the headlines. A hundred and twenty people had to flee their homes when the LA River overflowed and flooded the streets. The U.S. Navy was testing its first nuclear-powered ship. Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller had moved to Nevada to begin her six weeks of compulsory residence before filing for divorce from the governor of New York. A landslide on the Pacific Coast Highway swept several cars out of traffic and onto the beach. Construction workers were rushing to finish the Space Needle in time for the Seattle World's Fair. And astronaut John Glenn was preparing to take off and orbit the earth in a space capsule, weather permitting.
I noticed Katherine had bent the corner down on an advertisement for new homes in the valley. She must have been waiting for me to get to it because no sooner had I arrived at the page than she placed my breakfast in front of me and said, "Did you read about the beautiful ranch-style homes they're building in Encino?" She went back into the kitchen area for the coffeepot. "All the homes have three bedrooms, two baths, sliding glass doors, and thermostatic heating."
"They start at eighteen thousand," I said. "We can't afford that."
"Not yet," she said, pouring me a cup of coffee. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't start thinking about it."
"Dreaming is more like it," I said.
"Dreams have a way of coming true." She set the coffeepot down on her new heat-resistant dinette table and gave me a big kiss. "Look at the two of us."
That's when Steve started crying. It wasn't something you could ignore. I couldn't believe a human being, especially one so small, could make a screech as earsplitting as that. It sounded like some enraged cheetah on a megaphone.
Katherine sighed, gave me another kiss, and went back to the kitchen. "Would you mind seeing to Steve? I'll get his milk ready."
I shoved a piece of bacon in my mouth and went to his room. Steve was in his crib, wailing. He was a chubby little baby. We affectionately called him the Tank. I picked him up and took him to the changing table.
Nothing in medical school had prepared me for changing Steve's diapers. It was like some six-hundred-pound grizzly bear had been wearing them instead of my son. Every time I had to do it, I found myself longing for g1oves and a nurse to swab my forehead.
Somehow I managed. He stopped crying and gave me a smile he'd obviously inherited from his mother. I couldn't resist tickling him either. He giggled and kicked and squirmed with delight. I carried him into the kitchen and gave him to Katherine, who had a bottle ready.
And that was when I saw the time. It was already after six. I couldn't possibly eat, shower, get dressed, and make it to the hospital on time. And I couldn't be late—not again. Not unless I wanted to face the wrath of Dr. Alistair Whittington.
Have you ever tried eating scrambled eggs while taking a shower? Let me tell you, it's not easy. But I'm proud to say I'm one of the few people who has mastered the art.
You can tell a lot about a person by the kind of car he drives. I was driving a two-door 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne, which I bought used with a loan from Katherine's parents. It had two gigantic horizontal rear fins that looked like mischievously arched eyebrows over a pair of teardrop-shaped taillights. The combined effect was like a big steel-and-chrome happy face.
By comparison, the car I almost smashed into as I sped, tires squealing, into a parking space at the hospital was a brand-new 1962 Chrysler Imperial Crown Southampton. In name alone, it perfectly summed up the personality and bearing of the man who owned it, Dr. Alistair Whittington, who had been recruited from England by the trustees to run the hospital and its nursing school.
The Imperial was elegant and imposing, with an aggressive face, stylish detailing, and enormous power. The same could be said of Whittington, who stood glaring at me from under his pearl-handled umbrella as I emerged from my car. It was the same umbrella he deployed on sunny days for his midday "constitutional."
He wore a dark Trilby hat, a single-breasted jacket, a white Tumbull and Asser tailored shirt, red-and-black- striped Oxford University tie, a four-pocket vest, and dark, crisply pleated pants neatly cuffed above polished shell cordovan shoes. Dr. Whittington exuded class and authority. I imagined he exuded it even when sitting on the toilet. He remained resolutely British at all times and in everything he did, refusing to bow to California's casual lifestyle or American customs.
"Good morning, Dr. Whittington," I said as I opened my umbrella, which had two broken spokes and sagged on one side. Somehow I turned into a hapless clown whenever he was around.
He looked at me with undisguised contempt. Then again, it was hard to say, since he seemed to regard every thing about America and Americans with contempt. Or maybe it was just everything about me.
"Are you familiar with Oscar Wilde, Dr. Sloan?" he asked with a heavy, upper-class British accent.
"'I have nothing to declare except my genius,'" I said. Then I caught the glower on his face.
"Is that so?" Dr. Whittington said. I wanted to disappear.
"I didn't mean I'm a genius, of course," I stammered.
"I should hope not," he said.
"I was quoting something Oscar Wilde said to show that I was familiar with him, when I suppose I just should have said yes."
"A lesson you should take to heart more often. Oscar Wilde said, 'A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.'" Whittington cleared his throat. "I do wish you'd take that step."
"Nice to see that your shoes match for a change," Whittington said. "Perhaps someday you will accomplish the same with your stockings."
In my rush to get out of the house, I'd put on two different socks. One white. One black And of course he'd noticed. He noticed everything I did wrong.
"I suppose I should be grateful that at least you aren't wearing roller skates," he said.
"I only roller-skate to work when it's sunny," I said, as we started walking toward the entrance to the hospital. "But it's interesting you should mention that, sir. I've been thinking I could accomplish more if I wore them in the hospital. We all could. Imagine how much more quickly we could get around if we were all on wheels."
He stopped and looked at me incredulously. "You'd like me to imagine a hospital full of roller-skating doctors?"
When he said it that way, it didn't sound quite the way I'd intended it. Before I could reply, he shook his head and marched on.
"You terrify me, Dr. Sloan," he said. "I fear that some day you're going to destroy this hospital. I just hope I'm not here to see it."
I didn't know it then, but he was right on both counts.
CHAPTER SIX
I fully expected Dr. Whittington to walk off without saying another word to me, but as we stepped into the emergency room, he did something surprising. He stopped, reached into his jacket pocket, and handed me an envelope.
"I'm having a little informal mixer at my home this Saturday," he said. "I hope you and your wife will come. And do try to wear matching socks."
He continued on, leaving me standing there in shock.
"Don't you just love it? We finally get a day off and we have to spend it with him," Dan Marlowe said, putting his arm around my shoulder. He looked pretty much the same then as he does now, only with a full head of hair and not a hint of gray.
"But he hates me," I said.
"He doesn't hate you, Mark," Dan said. "Whittington hates all of us."
I went to the doctors' locker room to change out of my wet clothes and swap my busted umbrella for my stethoscope. I was rooting around for an extra white or black sock when I noticed another colleague of mine, Dr. Chet Arnold, sitting on a bench snoring, with his forehead against his locker.
Chet was at the end of his shift and was so tired he'd fallen asleep before he could even open his locker. I thought I had it bad, but he had it worse. He had a wife and two toddlers at home.
The nurses called him Troy because he looked like Troy Donahue and had a movie star's natural charisma, but his bedside manner still put all his patients to sleep. He was an anesthesiologist.
I gently nudged him awake and he jerked as if electrocuted.
"Oh hell," he said. "I'm still here."
"Where did you think you were?" I asked.
"In my car, driving home," he said. "I was almost at my front door when you woke me up. I could practically smell my wife's pot roast."
"Now you have something to look forward to," I said. "Speaking of which, did you get invited to Dr. Whinington's party?"
Chet nodded and opened his locker. "You're looking forward to that?"
"Maybe he's more relaxed in a casual setting," I said.
"I doubt it," Chet said, taking off his lab coat and his shirt. "I think he's just lonely. His wife and kid have been visiting family in London for weeks."
My locker was a disorganized mess overflowing with files, books, dirty clothes, roller skates, newspapers, two lab coats, some magic tricks I was practicing, and a few sack lunches I'd never gotten around to eating.
Chet's locker was the model of organization. He had two or three sets of shirts and pants, a selection of ties, and several pairs of socks in assorted colors, all folded and rolled into neat rectangles for easy stacking.
"You mind if I borrow a pair of socks?" I motioned to my feet. "Either black or white will do."
He glanced at my mismatched socks and broke out in a big grin, then tossed me two pairs, one white and one black.
"Why don't you just poke Whittington in the eye when you see him?" Chet asked. "You know whatever you do is going to have the same effect anyway."
I took one of the white socks, swapped it for my black one, and was just tying up my shoe when there was an urgent pounding on the door. Before either one of us could reply, Alice Blevins threw open the door. I was surprised she'd bothered to knock. The last thing she cared about was the privacy or modesty of a bunch of pampered doctors. She was the head nurse and had served in a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War. Nothing rattled her except, perhaps, having to trade her camouflage fatigues for a dainty nurse's cap and apron.
"Incoming," she said.
The pounding rain created a swath of destruction in the San Fernando Valley. The Los Angeles River overflowed, washing two children, a brother and sister, off the banks and into the raging current of mud, plants, and debris. The children were carried two and a half miles before being rescued by firefighters, who dangled from the Zelzah Avenue bridge on ropes. It was during the rescue that the firefighters stumbled on another victim, a young woman caught up in some branches snagged around the bridge pilings.
The children arrived first. The nine-year-old boy was unconscious and suffering from hypothermia. A fire fighter gave him mouth-to-mouth all the way to the hospital. Dan took the boy from the gurney, draped him over his knee, and smacked him twice on the back, very hard. The boy coughed up water, and kept coughing it up, before starting to breathe on his own. Dan rushed the child into the exam room, where hot blankets were waiting. The kid was lucky to be alive, and so was his sister, a twelve-year-old girl who came in conscious but shivering, her left arm dangling awkwardly at her side. She was shivering so hard you could almost miss how much pain she was in.
She had a dislocated shoulder, and I knew the sooner we popped that arm back into place the better, or serious complications could result. I also knew it would be painful and I dreaded hurting the child, but there was no other way.
The girl was wheeled on a gurney into the exam room. I gestured for Alice to join me and to draw the curtain.
"I'm Dr. Mark Sloan," I told her. "What's your name?"
"Ginny Reese," she stammered, freezing, clutching the firefighter's blanket around herself with her good arm.
"You've dislocated your shoulder, Ginny. I have to put it back."
"Is it going to hurt?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. A lot of doctors would have soft-pedaled that, but I was a firm believer, even with the limited experience I had then, in being honest with all my patients, regardless of their age.
"Okay," Ginny said. "Let's get it over with." I smiled at Alice. "She's almost as tough as you." Alice shook her head. "I bet she's a lot tougher. Aren't you, Ginny?"
"I didn't save my brother," she said.
"I thought you were both swept up by the river," I said. "You're telling me you went in after him?"
"I'm his older sister," she said.
I wanted to hug her, but I knew how much it would hurt if I did. So instead I stroked her head.
"You're a terrific older sister," I said. "And he's just fine. He probably would have given up if it wasn't for you."
"You think so?" she asked.
"Positive," I said. "Okay, I need you to sit on the edge of the bed. Can you do that for me?"
Ginny did what I asked.
"Here's what's going to happen, Ginny. I'm going to take your arm, turn my back to you, and lift you up as if I wanted to give you a piggyback ride. This will pull your arm forward and slip it back into the shoulder socket."
I gave her a minute to think about what I'd said. When it comes to hurting children, some doctors like to amuse, trick, or distract them from the pain they are about to experience. The theory being, I suppose
, that telling children what's going to happen will terrify them, that what ever you're going to do will be over before they know it anyway.
They always know it. And then the kids end up resenting the deception and distrusting doctors, an attitude that continues into adulthood. I believe that half of fear is uncertainty and that if a child, or any other patient, knows what's coming and has a chance to prepare for it emotionally, it also deadens the pain.
"Are you ready, Ginny?"
She nodded.
I took her dislocated arm, bent my body forward, and lifted her up on my back. She screamed and I heard the pop of the humeral head slipping back into place.
Tears were rolling down her cheeks when I set her back on the gurney, but she wasn't crying. "I'm sorry I screamed."
"Of course you screamed," I said. "If it was me, I would have screamed even louder."
That's when the firefighters came in with the third victim on a gurney, the woman they'd found in the river under the bridge. I hurried out to meet them, but Dan got to her first, placing a stethoscope on her chest.
The woman was wearing a raincoat, a white blouse, and a businesslike black skirt with garter stockings. The clothes were disheveled and torn from her journey in the roiling water. Her shoes were gone. Her entire body was caked with dirt, her face scratched. Her nose and mouth were full of mud. She'd clearly drowned. Our job now was to make the obvious official.
Dan shook his head sadly and glanced at the clock on the wall. "Time of death, eight forty-eight a.m."
I stood beside him and looked at her. She was an unnatural redhead. The hair color had run and stained her blouse. She smelled of mud, rot, and fresh flowers.
I felt an inexplicable, sudden stab of fear. I took a big step back from the gurney and collided with a firefighter, who stood dripping behind me.
