Miracle Cure (12 page)

“How about some ice cream?”

“You can’t eat ice cream, Jack.… Oh, hell. Listen, I’ll be home by eight, and I’ll bring you a cone from Schiller’s.”

“Hey, that would be great. That kind made out of cookies, okay?”

“Oreo, Pop. You’ve got it.”

Brian said good-bye and set the receiver down, wondering where it was all going to end.

“Thanks,” he said to Earl. “Thanks a lot. Say, listen, I was just watching one of those chimps back there, cage number four-three-eight-six, and I swear he’s sick.”

“Nonsense. Ol’ Jake is fat ’n lazy. But he ain’t no sicker ’n you or me.”

“Maybe so, but I think he’s got pretty severe fluid retention. Come on back and I’ll show you.”

“I ain’t goin’ no place except here. I’ll look in on him before I leave.”

There was clear irritation in his voice.

“Hey, easy does it,” Brian said, trying to remain cheerful, but sensing his own temper beginning to click in. “It won’t take a minute to come check him.” He gestured at the
Herald
. “That’ll be there when you get back.”

The moment he said it, Brian knew the facetious remark was a mistake.

Earl pushed unsteadily to his feet and confronted him, his face distorted and crimson. The alcohol odor was even heavier than Brian had at first appreciated.

“Look,” Earl said, “I told you I’d check Jake in my own time and tha’s what I’m gonna do. You’re a druggie, ain’t you. Everyone’s been sayin’ that. Well, you just watch your step, ’n watch who you’re orderin’ around.”

Brian was shocked. He warned himself to leave and just let the matter drop. But the quarterback in him wouldn’t allow it.

“Earl, I may be new, but I’m still a doctor on the faculty here, and I don’t think what I’m asking is so unusual. Look, just tell me what study the monkey’s involved in. I’ll speak to the researcher myself.”

“These are my animals. If they’s any reportin’ to do, I’ll do it myself.”

“Hey, I don’t know what’s with you, but you’ve been drinking—quite a bit, I think. I’m going to speak with Dr. Pickard about what’s going on down here.”

Earl jutted his chin out.

“You just go ahead,” he said. “Report me to anyone you fuckin’ want. My bet is you do that ’n you’ll find yourself on unemployment quicker than you can say junkie. Now get out of here.”

Brian held his temper in check, but just barely. The fallout of being involved in a major incident with an employee after only a few hours on the job wasn’t worth it. Fists clenched, he whirled and left.

B
RIAN SLEPT LESS THAN TWO HOURS DURING THE NIGHT
before his first full day on duty. It was hardly the way he wanted to prepare his mind or body for a morning in the cath lab and the afternoon covering the clinical service. But the emotional roller coaster of his orientation day had refused to slow down.

 … Report me to anyone you fuckin’ want. My bet is you do that ’n you’ll find yourself on unemployment quicker than you can say junkie.…

Jesus!
Gianatasio’s assessment of the situation notwithstanding, the word about him certainly
was
out. And it was clear that although he might be given responsibility for patient management, resuscitations, performing cardiac catheterizations, and running the Vasclear clinic, he was still very much the low man on the BHI totem pole. But he also felt the strength of his recovery had him ready to deal with whatever life in the hospital held in store.

The moment of truth for him had come nearly eighteen months ago, on his second day at the Fairweather Center. His counselor, Lois, herself a long-term recovering addict, had two small plaques tacked to the wall above her desk.

Brian was staring up at the words without really comprehending either message when Lois suddenly snapped a ruler down on her desk.

“Okay, Dr. Holbrook,” she said, “it’s time for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. What are you willing
to do to get out from under the shit that’s burying you right now?”

Brian, then just a week past the morning when two Drug Enforcement Agency officers had marched into his office with a computer printout of wholesale-drug-house Percocet orders, and a dozen or so prescriptions made out to various members of the Holbrook family, was too frightened, bewildered, and depressed to respond to the woman right away. He had no way of knowing that there was only one totally acceptable answer to her question, and that he was about to give it. Finally, he looked up at her, his eyes glazed and reddened, his face unshaven.

“I’m willing to do anything,” he said. “Just tell me what to do.”

Where those words came from at that moment, he still didn’t know. And at the time, he certainly didn’t notice the glow that they brought to his counselor’s face. But they marked the beginning of the radical overhaul of his life.

The Fairweather Center specialized in helping alcoholic and chemically dependent health professionals. Many of the seventy or so who were residents there at the same time as Brian were physicians. And almost all of them, Brian included, had to overcome their own arrogance, drive, discipline, denial, and logic in order to free themselves from their addictions. They had to learn that what worked for them in courses like organic chemistry—intellect and sheer willpower—was not going to be enough to bring about lasting recovery, and in fact, was going to be an impediment in the early stages.

For Brian, the teachings of Lois and the rest were like a log floating past a drowning man. He grabbed on and held tight, with no idea where the current was taking him. For others at Fairweather, meetings and sponsors and surrender to a higher power made no sense whatsoever.
And while they argued and rationalized and resisted, their log drifted on past. Some of those docs—physicians with so much training, so much intelligence, and so much to give—were already dead.

“For the past three months you’ve been leading a sheltered existence here at Fairweather,” Lois told him as she handed over his discharge plan. “But trust me, real life is waiting for you up there in Massachusetts, and real life can be pretty damn cruel at times, especially for an M.D. with your history. So, just remember, it’s a day at a time, an hour at a time, a minute at a time. Whatever it takes to get through a situation without resorting to pills again.”

 … My bet is you do that ’n you’ll find yourself on unemployment quicker than you can say junkie.…

 … Real life can be pretty damn cruel at times.…

The words continued reverberating in his head as Brian entered the hospital through the White Memorial lobby. He was still shaken by what had happened in the animal lab the night before, but he knew that whatever he had to endure, he would. All he had ever asked was to get his foot back in the door of medicine. Now, it was time to begin proving himself. And if proving himself meant turning the other cheek to bastards like the animal keeper, that’s what he would do. There was simply too much at stake not to—for him and for his father.

At eight-fifteen the previous evening, when Brian arrived home from his orientation, he had found Jack asleep in his chair. Sally Johansen, the neighbor on duty, put a finger to her lips, then pointed to the nitroglycerin vial and put up three fingers. Three episodes of pain. Brian thanked her silently, kissed her on the cheek, and waved her out. Then he gently woke Jack up to give him his Oreo cone. Jack stayed awake long enough to wolf down
the ice cream and then allowed Brian to walk him to bed, a concession that was totally out of character. The man was failing. Difficult decisions could not be postponed much longer.

Brian set a stack of cardiology texts and journals on the floor by the couch. Then, suddenly restless, he had pulled on a pair of sweats and gone for a slow three-mile jog through the balmy evening—the first time in months he had run. The encounter with Earl was tough to shuck, but finally, after half a mile or so, he managed to get his mind to drift into hazy images of what life would be like once he had a private practice again and a few years of decent income.

Back at home, he had showered, then settled in for what turned out to be several hours of studying. He was dozing on the living-room couch when he heard Jack groan, shuffle to the bathroom, then back to bed. Brian finished the chapter he was reviewing and went to the doorway to check on him. His father was propped against the headboard, the tiny vial of nitroglycerin in his hand.

“Pain wake you up?” Brian asked, startling him.

“Oh, hi … no … I mean, a little. Yesterday wasn’t my best.”

“Mine, either,” Brian said before he could edit himself.

“What do you mean by that? You said over the phone that things were going great.”

“They’re fine. Everything’s fine … except you and that angina.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Jack said, slipping a nitro under his tongue, “when you level with me, I’ll level with you.”

He closed his eyes and slid back down on the pillow, waiting for the medication to dilate his coronary arteries and bring a little extra blood to his oxygen-starved heart muscle. In just a few minutes he was asleep on his back,
snoring. Brian stood there for a time, looking down at him.

What if I hadn’t changed that play that you called?
he was thinking.

Brian arrived at the cath lab after making rounds on the eighteen patients on the clinical ward with Phil, a cardiac fellow, two residents, two medical students, and the nurses. He was not surprised that his old friend was an excellent teacher and compassionate physician. Only two of the eighteen patients were part of the Vasclear study, and although both were quite ill from cardiac disease, both were in the gamma group, which Phil said was almost certainly placebo. If anything, the bedside discussion of Vasclear and the consistent lack of side effects in the beta group made him even more certain that Jack would benefit from treatment with it.

The case he would be assisting Carolyn Jessup on was a routine eighteen-month, post-Vasclear cath study in a sixty-nine-year-old woman named Nellie Hennessey. Brian walked down to the basement from the fifth floor, with the faces of Earl the animal keeper and the pockmarked man flashing alternately in his mind like a neon sign.

Before entering the cath suite, he glanced down the corridor at the animal facility.
Number 4386
. Was it worth speaking to anyone about the pathetic chimpanzee, or, for that matter, about Earl’s abominable behavior? At this moment in his brief history at Boston Heart, the answer to both questions was a resounding
No
. If he was going to make waves about anything, it would be about getting Jack randomized into the Vasclear study.

Andrew, the cath tech, was changing into his scrubs in the men’s locker room.

“Morning, Dr. Holbrook,” he said. “Welcome to the staff.”

There was genuine warmth in his expression. Brian extended his hand and the man gripped it firmly. When they met at Jack’s cath, Brian had liked Andrew immediately. Now, he felt a twinge of discomfort that, like everyone else in the institute, Andrew had probably encountered some version of his life story.
Get used to it
, he thought, paraphrasing something Freeman had said to him more than once.
Get used to it, then get over it
.

“It’s Brian,” he said.

“Very well, then, Brian. How’s your father doing?”

“Well, you saw his cath.”

“I did. I hope the show Dr. Randa put on didn’t frighten you both out of following his recommendation. He’s just like that.”

“As a matter of fact, Randa did send me scrambling to get my dad into the Vasclear program.”

“And?”

“I haven’t heard yet. Apparently his prior bypass surgery is a problem.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Vasclear sure has been a wonder. Mrs. Hennessey, who we’re doing this morning, looked just about as bad as your father before we started treatment. And now, just wait till you see.”

“Is she here yet?” Brian asked.

“Right outside in the holding area with Jennifer, the cath nurse. Lauren will be operating the console in the control room. Both of them were here when we did your father.”

“Well, I’m ready.”

“Dr. Jessup’s here, too. I just saw her go into the locker room, so it shouldn’t be too long before we’re ready to go. That Mrs. Hennessey’s a nice lady. Real nice.”

Brian entered the cath lab just as Nellie Hennessey
was being helped from the stretcher onto the cath table. He had seen her pleasant, impish face before, although it took him a few seconds to remember where. She was the Vasclear poster child featured in the video. Brian remembered her snapping blue eyes.

“Nellie, look at these two men,” Jennifer said. “Twin towers. They look like basketball players.”

Nellie Hennessey pointed up at Brian.

“Andrew I know, darlin’,” she said. “But who’s he?”

“A new doctor here. Dr. Holbrook. He’s going to be assisting Dr. Jessup with your cath.”

Nellie motioned Jennifer to bend closer.

“He’s very cute,” Brian heard her say in a stage whisper.

“Mrs. Hennessey, it’s nice to meet you,” he said, taking her hand. “But I think I sort of met you yesterday when I watched the film about Vasclear.”

“Oh, yes,” Nellie said. “My fifteen minutes of fame. How long have you been a doctor?”

“Quite a while. But I’m new
here.”

She thought about that for a moment.

“Well,” she said, “Dr. Jessup’s the best. She’ll teach you all you need to know about doing this.”