Snapshot (11 page)

Renzel said, “This is great, Jerome. God knows we've got projects to fund.”

The phone buzzed. Muir picked up on the first bleep. His hands hadn't aged as well as the rest of him; they were gnarled, the knuckles scarred and red. “Yes, Barbara, I know. I know. I'm on my way.”

“Do you accept?” I asked eagerly. “Can you do it?”

“I'm extremely honored,” he said solemnly. “And I'd be delighted. I'll need to check my calendar, make sure I'm available. Hank, do we have any conferences near Thanksgiving?”

“Not that I remember,” Renzel said. “Unless that Hoffman—La Roche thing—no. That's December in Hawaii.”

Muir smiled warmly. “Mrs. Everett, please extend my gratitude to your membership, and do leave your phone number with Barbara. I'll have her get back to you within the week.”

“That would be wonderful. Thank you so much.” I took a deep breath and plunged on. “We were worried you'd be all booked up, and after Emily Woodrow recommended you in such glowing terms—well, we did hope you'd accept.”

Muir grew very still. “Emily Woodrow?”

“Her daughter was treated for leukemia here.”

He examined my face searchingly. “Are you certain it was Mrs. Woodrow who recommended me?”

“Yes, I am.”

He smoothed back his carefully combed white hair. “How extraordinarily generous of her. I thought she might have harbored some … hard feelings. You know her daughter didn't respond to … her daughter died.” He seemed genuinely distressed, possibly more upset than a doctor who'd seen death so often ought to be.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I said. “I could be mistaken. But I thought—no, I'm sure it was Emily.”

“It doesn't matter,” Muir said, almost his regal self again.

“No,” I said hesitantly, “I guess it doesn't. Only—well, I suppose I ought to ask. The ladies might think me rude, but please, don't be offended. I feel I have to follow through on this. There isn't any reason why you
wouldn't
wish to be our speaker, is there?”

“I'm not sure I know what you mean.”

“You're not expecting any difficulties, uh, nothing of a legal nature, concerning Emily's daughter's death?”

The sparkling eyes froze and I got a glimpse of steel. “Certainly not. Not to my knowledge.”

“I'm sorry. It's just I know that Emily's husband's a lawyer, and lawyers do tend to sue anytime things don't work out.”

He made a dismissive noise and straightened his perfect tie. “Some people believe there always has to be a happy ending. Perhaps it's the television they watch. I don't know.”

“The death of a child is hard to accept,” I said.

“Indeed,” Muir responded. “For all of us.”

The phone buzzed again, two short bleats.

“I really must go now, Mrs. Everett.”

“Thank you so much for your time, and for all the good work you do.” I stood and offered my hand. He crossed to take it. His handclasp was firm and dry. He was wearing a spicy after-shave that successfully blocked the hospital smell. With his door shut, we could have been in any fancy corporate office.

Dr. Renzel interrupted our farewells. “I could show you a couple of current construction projects, if you're interested,” he said.

I turned to him and he flashed a quick smile. I studied his face. Ordinary, except for the prominent cheekbones. Not quite enough chin. His voice was another story. Smooth as a well-bowed cello. Put him to work in telephone sales, he'd have a hell of a future.

“Mrs. Everett, this is Dr. Renzel.” Muir made the belated introduction hurriedly, then added, “Mrs. Everett's from a local newspaper,” as if Renzel hadn't been hanging on our every word. I wondered if Muir stressed my newspaper affiliation to remind Renzel to discuss only printable matters.

“A newsweekly, really. But I'm here only as a representative of the Silver Crescent,” I reminded them.

Renzel smiled enthusiastically. “Well, maybe I can talk you into doing a puff piece for us. Something that will get a few philanthropists to stop sitting on their wallets.”

“That's an idea,” I said.

“Have you seen any of the newer areas of the hospital?” he asked me.

“No.” I patted my phony curls. Maybe blondes do have more fun. And maybe I could talk him into a guided tour of the chemotherapy treatment rooms.

Muir left the room before we did, his back imperially erect. We followed him like sheep, like courtiers.

13

“First of all,” Renzel said, leading me briskly into the waiting room, taking a sharp right, then a left toward the elevators, “do you have all our literature? We do a quarterly magazine that details our progress. Scholarly articles. Chitchat. Who's new on the staff.”

I fumbled a notebook out of my purse: Sandy Everett, resourceful reporter, always prepared for a story. I doubted I could get him to tell me the
right
story, but maybe I could finesse him into tossing me a lead.

“This is very kind of you,” I said, “but first things first. Like who exactly are you?”

He lowered his lashes and gave me a little-boy-lost look. His thick-lensed glasses microscoped his brown eyes.

“Probably most of the people around here know who you are and what you do,” I said. “But I've got to start with the basics: who, what, when, where, why.”

“Just because people at JHHI may know who I am,” Renzel said contritely, “is no reason to come off as a self-important windbag. I'm sorry. I get carried away. My enthusiasm for the hospital takes off.”

The legendary Muir, I thought, might rate as a self-important windbag, but so far Renzel, with his great voice and his willing tour-guide offer, certainly hadn't.

“I'm Chief of Pharmacy,” Renzel declared. After a brief pause, he added, “Everybody calls me Hank.”

“Not Doctor?”

“Oh, that, too. I am a doctor. A Ph.D. doctor. A scientist, not a clinician.”

He pressed the elevator call button. “I'm going to show you the new floor,” he said, the way a doting father might say “I'm going to show you the new baby.”

“And how long have you worked here?” I asked.

“Four years or so. It surprises me I've stayed this long. I'm an academic at heart.”

“Chief of Pharmacy certainly sounds impressive,” I said. “If Muir can't give the Silver Crescent lecture, maybe you can pinch-hit for him.” I was trying to figure how far I could push my reporter ruse. Why had Renzel volunteered so cheerfully to show me around? Was he lonely? Underworked?

“Well, it may sound impressive,” he said ruefully, “but it would be a lot more impressive if I held a key chair at a medical school as well. You know what it costs to endow a university chair these days? Two biggies. That's two million dollars.”

I whistled. “More than the Silver Crescent could raise.”

“And, admit it, your ladies would be disappointed if they had to put up with a relative nobody like me. Around here, Jerome Muir's pretty much the show. Rightfully. He deserves it. I'm more the professorial type. I'm used to people calling me Professor, not Doctor. What are you used to?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, do people call you Mrs. Everett or what?”

I almost confessed to Carlotta. He had a way about him, an engaging bedside manner. “Sandy,” I said.

He reached over and formally shook my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sandy.” He was slow to end the handshake. Close up, his bony face seemed interesting rather than homely.

“You seem fond of Dr. Muir,” I said. “Do you see him as kind of a role model, a father figure?”

“Why do you ask?” His mouth curved into a smile.

“Oh,” I said, “I don't know. I guess it's because I've been seeing a therapist lately. Stuff like that rubs off.”

“You've had some troubles?”

“It's nothing,” I lied cheerfully. “My divorce.”

“That's not nothing, Sandy,” he responded earnestly.

The elevator slowly opened its doors. We got in and he brushed his hand against mine. Muir had been wearing after-shave. Renzel's scent was definitely cologne, pungent and sweet.

“So tell me,” he said. “Are you dating yet?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Well, you ought to be.” He edged a little closer.

I took a step back and felt the wall behind me. “Soon, maybe,” I said.

The doors closed.

“Um, you mentioned a new floor,” I said. “You're expanding up? Why is that? I noticed a lot of vacant buildings nearby.”

“The changing ethnic character of the area is a fund-raising problem,” he said. “We're confining ourselves to renovation at the moment. We freed up the sixth floor by streamlining our records. Computerizing. Contracting out some of the billing and accounts. Medical technology changes so rapidly, it's all we can do to keep pace. Real expansion would cost more money than we've got. Unless Silver Crescent runs a close second to the Shriners.”

“We don't. Sorry.” I was starting to feel guilty.

“Well, we have great hopes: a major bequest in the wind.”

“Can you tell me more about that?”

“No.”

“Well, can I get a little more background?”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Dr. Muir,” I said quickly. “How old is he?”

“I thought you were going to ask about me. My job. But everybody's interested in Muir.” He sighed deeply and shot me a grin. “Did you ask him how old he was?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I didn't have the nerve. It would have seemed so rude.”

“He has that effect, doesn't he? You don't want to discuss anything unpleasant in front of him. And age, well, there's no reason to think he won't go on forever.”

The elevator opened its doors. Renzel took my arm and ushered me into an unfinished lobbylike area.

“You're not answering my question,” I said.

“You're right.” He seemed in no hurry to rush into guided-tour mode. He looked comfortable enough, just standing and talking. Didn't seem to mind that I had a couple inches' height advantage on him. Some guys hate that.

I tried another tack. “His memory, how good is it?”

“He probably has to write down a few more things now than he did when he was twenty, if that's what you mean. But don't worry, he'll do a bang-up lecture for your group.”

“It's not that.”

“What?”

“I'm surprised he remembered Emily Woodrow's name right off.”

“The woman whose daughter died?”

“I think it's sort of touching, him remembering, as busy as he must be.”

“It doesn't surprise me,” Hank Renzel said resolutely. “I'm sure he loses sleep over every child who doesn't make it.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I'm not writing this down.”

“You can write it or not. It won't change. Jerome Muir's a gentleman, an old-fashioned word for an old-fashioned man. I know. I travel with him. Time-zone changes, lost luggage, fouled-up hotel reservations, he sits politely and waits, as if he were a small-town schoolteacher instead of one of the most powerful voices in American medicine.”

“That might make a good story,” I said. “Sort of a companion piece to the Silver Crescent award. Play up his humble side.”

Renzel went on. “We do a lot of traveling together. On business. Mainly abroad, but in the states, too. Do you like to travel? Weekends? Up north? I have a little place in Vermont, just a cabin really, but it's on a hill and the view is astonishing.”

“Maybe I can work it into the story,” I said pensively, ignoring the dating-bar chat, “about his remembering that little girl, Rebecca Woodrow.”

“Did you know her?” Renzel asked.

“No, but the family's socially prominent,” I said.

“The kind of name that sells newspapers?” he asked pointedly. “Funny. Jerome remembers the mom's name and you remember the girl's.”

Time to abandon newspaper talk, I thought. Even if it meant a brief return to the dating bar. “So tell me about your job,” I said.

“Mainly managerial,” he responded. “Not enough funds to do the kind of research and development I'm trained to do.”

“Which is?”

“It's all biotech, now. Genetic engineering. Never enough space, never enough money. These days, you really need university backing. Here, let me show you around the floor.”

He touched my arm again and led me through a corridor, past tarpaulin-covered sawhorses and partially glassed-in chambers. I couldn't see a construction crew, but hammering and hollering told me they weren't far off. The creamy wallboard hadn't been painted yet.

“We're doing amazing things, amazing,” the Chief of Pharmacy said. “You can't tell by this, but the whole floor—you can see the blueprints, if you'd like—will be absolutely devoted to patients undergoing bone-marrow transplants. An entire sterile floor, because the immune system becomes so compromised in these patients that the chance of opportunistic infection skyrockets.”

I heard more about bone-marrow transplants than I wanted to know. The man was a motor-mouth nonstop Helping Hand booster. They should have hired him as a professional fundraiser.

“Will the chemotherapy rooms be located up here?” I asked, hoping to stem the tide of information.

“No,” he said. “Why?”

“Doesn't chemotherapy lower your resistance to other diseases?”

“To some extent, but conventional sterile methods are generally considered adequate.”

I sighed. “I guess I was still thinking about Rebecca Woodrow. How she died.”

“We have hundreds of patients who get well. Why not do a story on one of them?”

“Dog bites man, you know, that's the story. This one little girl who didn't make it, in spite of the odds.”