She hesitated, the paper cup just touching her lips, then drank. Ford watched the gentle undulation of her throat as she swallowed, reminded for an instant of the Shark and the wound that had taken his life, a wound he should have survived.
“Well, we always welcome our customers’ opinions, that’s for sure.”
“But people aren’t always as cooperative as you’d like, I suppose. I mean, there’s not much in it for them.”
“Well, if people have an opinion, they usually don’t mind telling you about it.”
“Okay, okay,” Ford said. “You’ve probably got a questionnaire, right? You can leave it with me. I’ll pass it around. I just hope it’s multiple choice, because my team doesn’t have a lot of time to write essays.”
She smiled.
“There’s no questionnaire, like I said—”
“Well, I don’t do endorsements. I’m against all that on principle. Doctors shouldn’t have a financial interest in preferring one product over another. The patient’s interests should be the only consideration. You’d have more luck at Cedars-Sinai, I’m sure.”
Wray carefully put down the cup on Ford’s desk.
“I know how busy you must be. I’ve obviously come at a bad time.”
“Not at all,” said Ford. “It’s just I think you should know where I stand, that’s all. I don’t think patient care and big business make comfortable bedfellows.”
She stood up.
“I didn’t come on business,” she said, still smiling.
“I see. Then, why…?”
She looked at him for a moment, and then headed for the door.
“It was nice seeing you again, Dr. Ford.”
Ford stood up, red-faced. She’d come to see him because she wanted to, because in those few minutes they’d been together at the conference she’d sensed something of the same attraction that he had. But, unlike him, she had actually gone out and done something about it. Maybe the visit to the Willowbrook had already been scheduled and maybe it hadn’t, but either way she had made the first move. She had been the one to take a chance on humiliation or rejection, and all he’d done was throw it back in her face.
“Wait, please, there’s”—she stopped, her hand already closed around the door handle—“there’s no need to go. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be … Look, if you knew what kind of a day I’ve had, really.” Wray turned, fixing him with her dark eyes. “My team is in danger of falling apart; they’re being paid half what they could get at other hospitals, and there’s nothing I can do about it; now there’s a suggestion that they’re actually dirty, and this afternoon each one of them had to strip naked and do squat jumps while … I can’t even tell you. So you see, morale is not as high as it could be.”
She smiled.
“I understand,” she said, “but that’s okay. I’ve got to be going, anyhow. I’ll just call for a cab and be out of your hair.”
Ford checked his watch. It was a quarter after six.
“Which way are you going? I’m all through here. If you like, I could give you a ride.”
“Honest to God, that woman hates me,” said Ford as they rode the freeway into Santa Monica. “I don’t know why. I can’t believe it’s just because I didn’t consult her about my paper.”
The sun was low over the ocean, bathing the city in pure Californian gold. A convertible went past with the top down; inside were four kids wearing sunglasses. Ford could feel himself beginning to unwind.
“Maybe she thinks you don’t belong there,” said Helen. “Maybe she feels threatened.”
“Threatened?”
“You could do a lot better anywhere else—you said so yourself—but you choose to stay. That gives you a kind of moral superiority, quite apart from your status as a professional. And maybe, in a way, she feels patronized.”
“Patronized?”
“Could be.”
Ford didn’t want to argue about it. He wanted to try and enjoy the ride with this lovely woman, this beautiful woman—he still couldn’t quite believe it—who had sought him out. The only problem was what to talk about. Flirting had never been his strong suit, and by now he had lost the knack completely.
“So … what can I do about it?” he said. “How do I make her feel unpatronized?”
“You can’t. That’s just the way it is with some people. You just have to leave them alone.”
“I wish I could, but with this infection problem in ICU she’s breathing down my neck all day.”
“She say anything about your speech? To your face, I mean.”
“No, just the odd sideswipe in meetings. She thinks these resistance cases all come down to sloppy procedure and that I just don’t want to admit it.”
“Well, Dr. Patou may think you’re out of line, but Professor Novak seemed to take you pretty seriously. And he’s a much bigger gun altogether, at least he was. Next exit, Marcus. Lincoln Boulevard.”
It looked like a nice neighborhood. The streets were lined with shady trees, and there were plenty of open spaces where people played ball or just sat around in groups. The houses ranged from prewar clapboard bungalows to miniature hacienda-style condos, their patios and windowsills crammed with pots of colorful bougainvillea. As they went north, crossing Santa Monica Boulevard, the properties became larger and more expensive-looking, with lush lawns and hedges lining the sidewalks. Just a half a mile from the beach, the neighborhood was a couple of steps up the real estate ladder from Beverlywood, where Ford had his home. You could tell that from all the European cars parked by the side of the road.
“Has he been in touch with you, by the way?” Helen asked.
“Who, Novak? No.”
“Didn’t he say he’d call?”
Ford shrugged.
“Yes, but he’s retired, right? Probably decided to go fishing.”
“Probably. What was he interested in, particularly? Did he say?”
“He said he wanted to go over the data, on the pneumoniae cases I talked about especially. Why, what’s your interest?”
Helen flipped down the visor on her side.
“Oh, nothing in particular,” she said. “He’s just such a character. He intrigues me.”
They drove past Lincoln Park. A small outdoor stage was being set up for a concert, and people were already gathering. A turquoise Frisbee cut through the air.
“So Novak must have worked in anti-infectives, is that right?” Ford asked.
“That’s what they say. He was one of a group of biochemists and genetics people who founded Helical Systems.”
“I remember the name, I think.”
“Stern bought them out maybe five or six years ago. It was before my time, but it was supposed to have been a really high-powered outfit, scientifically at least.”
“So our Professor Novak retired a rich man.”
“I don’t think so. Helical was big in the brains department, but businesswise I think it was a nonstarter. I’m not sure they ever came up with a marketable product. Stem wouldn’t have paid a whole lot, I’m sure of that.”
“Which explains why Novak was at the conference,” said Ford with a grin. “He’s probably doing a little moonlighting to pay the rent.”
“Or to get a new wardrobe,” said Helen. She pointed a manicured finger. “Just another fifty yards on the right.”
Number 940 Lincoln Boulevard was a Mexican-style whitewashed villa divided into four spacious apartments. A woman tending the roses by the front steps turned and waved as they pulled up outside.
“Well, thanks for the ride,” said Helen, slowly unbuckling her seat belt.
“Any time,” said Ford, feeling that he had to say something now if he wanted to see her again, but not sure what it should be. “It was nice of you to drop by. A nice surprise.”
“Well, it’s not every day I make a trip into South Central, that’s for sure. I have to admit it: normally I’m strictly West LA.”
Ford looked up at the house.
“It su
re is nice here. I’d forgotten how nice. We used to talk about moving to Santa Monica, I mean my wife and I did, when she was alive. We never planned to stay where we are for long. It’s just that, well, we’re kind of used to it now. And Sunny has friends in the neighborhood.”
He didn’t say any more. He hadn’t meant to talk about Carolyn, but somehow it had slipped out. And now he felt awkward.
“How long ago did she die?” Helen asked.
Ford kept on looking at the house, at the woman pruning the roses. She wore white gardening gloves and a pristine sky-blue apron.
“Three years. Road accident. Kind of ironic in a way, I suppose.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It must be tough, especially with the job you do.”
“I prefer to stay busy,” he said. “Keeps me from moping around. To tell the truth, I don’t really like free time, except with my daughter of course.”
“Everyone needs free time. You can’t function without it. You lose your sense of perspective.”
Ford looked at her. She seemed genuinely concerned.
“Well, I plan to take a week off at Thanksgiving. Take Sunny off to see her grandparents in Michigan. That should be fun.”
“That should be cold,” said Helen. “Can she skate yet, your daughter?”
“No, but I plan on teaching her, sometime.”
“She’ll love it. I used to do it in New York. Went round and round the Rockefeller Center rink every Christmas, just like in the movies. You bump into some very interesting people, literally.”
And with that she opened the car door. Ford smiled at her as she climbed out, knowing that his chance was gone. He was supposed to have been flirting, and he had ended up talking about Carolyn. What did he expect?
Helen was out of the car, her briefcase in her hand, when she leaned down and said, “Say, can you make some free time tomorrow night? Because if you can, we could go out to dinner. If you’d like to.”
3
“Turn around,” said Sunny. She tilted her head left and then right, clearly unsure what to think.
“Isn’t it a little formal, Dad?”
Ford looked down at the sports coat. To him it looked, if anything, a little casual.
“Honey, we’re going out to this tony Italian place on Melrose, not to McDonald’s.”
He raised his left arm and stared hard at the cloth as if that were going to help. It was a jacket Carolyn had always liked. But now he asked himself if that was a good reason for putting it on.
“Maybe if you took off the tie. Just wore a sweater underneath.” She snapped her fingers. “I know what you need.”
She bounced up off the couch and ran through to his bedroom. Ford stayed where he was, wishing now that he hadn’t accepted Helen Wray’s invitation. What had he been thinking of? He hadn’t dated anyone since Carolyn, and that was—he could hardly bear to think—fifteen years before. Fifteen years. Where had the time gone? Sunny walked back into the living room holding up a black turtle-neck sweater he had never seen before.
“Now,” she said with all the authority of a couturier, “in this you can look cool or dressy, whichever way you want to go.”
Ford took it from her. It smelled powerfully of mothballs.
“I don’t remember this.”
“Mom bought it for you for your birthday. It’s been in the bottom drawer for years.”
He stared, still unable to recall.
“Oh, of course,” he said, doing an it’s-all-coming-back-to-me slow nod. “I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s a little pretentious? Like I was trying to look like a jazz musician or something.”
Sunny put her hands on her hips and let out a theatrical sigh.
“Dad, pretension is okay. Just think of it as ironic. And it really is versatile. Look, if you take your jacket off…”
She started to tug the jacket off his shoulder. It was halfway off when she stopped. She took a step back, wrinkling her nose.
“What is that?” she said.
“What?”
“That smell.”
“Like a soap smell?”
“A detergent smell.”
He sniffed hard at his shirt and underarms.
“You’re right. It’s this stuff I’m showering with.”
“The insecticide stuff?”
“Germicide. It’s bactericidal.”
Ford read despair in his daughter’s eyes.
“Look, there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said, beginning to feel annoyed. “If it comes up during the evening, I’ll just have to explain. It’s not as if we’re going to be necking.”
He shot Sunny a glance, hoping this—the prospect of necking—was okay with her, at the same time hoping it would make her back off.
“How do you know?” she said boldly. “What if she decides to take the initiative?”
Ford felt his stomach flutter. He gave Sunny a look, something between irony and reproof, not really knowing what he wanted to communicate. She stood her ground.
“And she won’t mention it. You can count on that. She’ll just notice and keep quiet, and the next time you call her, she’ll be out.”
“Look, I’ll try the sweater,” said Ford. “Maybe the smell of mothballs will kill the detergent.”
He had the sweater over his head when the phone rang.
‘That’ll be her,” said Sunny. “She’s calling it off.”
It was Charles Novak.
“I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home,” he said. Ford looked at himself in the living room mirror. The surgeon pretending to be a jazz musician. Sunny was giving him the thumbs-up and nodding encouragingly.
“No, that’s fine, Professor. I’m glad you did.”
“We didn’t really have a chance to talk the other day.”
“No, that’s right.”
There was a pause in which Ford thought he heard the rustle of papers.
“Well, anyway, as I think I said at the time, I read your piece on the Enterococcus. It was interesting to get the physician’s perspective.”
“Well, I’m very flattered to hear … that a man of your standing—”
“And I have to say, my curiosity was piqued by the speech you gave. That was what I really wanted to talk about, the pneumoniae outbreak. I haven’t seen any reference to it in M and M Weekly.”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly was a CDC publication that served to disseminate information on the incidence and spread of disease, part of the published information being collected nationwide from the fifty reporting states.
“I think we were slow in getting the stuff through to Atlanta,” said Ford. “Reporting tends to get neglected when we’re really busy on the wards.”
“So can we go through the details now?”
Ford sat down on the couch.
“What did you want to know exactly?”
Novak sighed into the receiver.
“Well, everything, I guess. Perhaps you could start with the cases. There were three, as I understand it.”
Sunny pointed at her watch. Fortunately, Ford was ahead of time. Wanting to return the favor of his lift from the hospital, Helen had said she was going to “swing by” in her car at seven-thirty. It was now just after seven.
He went through the whole outbreak, from Andre Nelson’s admission and subsequent death to the deaths of the other two patients. Novak listened quietly, occasionally interrupting to get more detail. He wanted to know the exact when and where of each case regarding clinical expression of the disease and suspected original infection. He seemed particularly interested to find that all three cases lived fairly close to one another: Nelson in Lynwood, and the other two in the neighborhoods of Vernon and Huntingdon Park. Again Ford heard the rustle of paper. Was he consulting a map?
“And did you come to any conclusion regarding the vehicle of infection or a possible etiologic agent?”
“Do you mean a possible source?”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Ford heard Novak mo
ve around in his chair, “I’m looking at a descriptive epidemiology sheet. It’s a little heavy on the jargon.”
“Right,” said Ford, beginning to wonder exactly what Novak was after. Ford had hoped they were going to talk about his ideas regarding the spread of resistant pathogens in the South Central community. But it looked as though Novak just wanted raw data. “No, not really. There was some speculation. The problem with Nelson was that his immune system was in such a state he could have picked the thing up anywhere.”
“I guess that’s typical where drug users are concerned.”
“Yes. Professor Novak?” Ford checked his watch. “Forgive my asking, but your interest in all this, is it academic? I mean, are you preparing another paper? If so, you might want to consult our chief of infection control. She likes to have an input into these things.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I’ve thought about it. But…” Novak pushed out a sigh, swallowed. It sounded as if he was drinking. “I don’t think it would do any good.”
“Do any good? I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“No, I’m not going to write a paper.”
There was a trace of bitterness in Novak’s voice. Ford was puzzled.
“Then what did you have in mind?”
“I can’t say right now. … But to answer your question, my interest is not purely academic. I wanted to talk to you about this outbreak because I was interested in your … in how you read the situation. It struck me at the conference, that you … that we are on the same wavelength …. I mean regarding the situation in Los Angeles—from a microbiological standpoint.”
Ford looked at his watch. Helen would be arriving any minute, but his curiosity was aroused now. Novak’s sudden change of tone was more than intriguing.
“You can’t say, Professor? Is that because we’re talking complex epidemiological projections or…?”
“No. No … it’s not that.”
Ford listened hard.
“No, it’s … the thing is I have to talk with some people before we get into this any further.”
“What people?”
Novak’s tone hardened.
“Look, I’m coming across as mysterious, and that’s not … It’s a question of professional etiquette, protocols. You understand.”
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