The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (25 page)

26.
Plan A

I SLEPT FOR TWO HOURS, ALONE, AND REPORTED TO UROLOGY ON
Sunday. As soon as I crossed the threshold of my first patient's room, a postoperative Mr. Parrish announced that he was in for—
ha ha ha
—a penile reduction. “That stuff about cancer?” he added. “Only a decoy.”

I knew it was incumbent on me to smile, to answer in kind, to postpone a discussion of the medical facts, and to assure him that I could handle genital humor.

I faked a notation in order to buy myself a little time. “Please let's not talk about male anatomy,” I finally said, shaking my head mournfully. “I'm supposed to be on my honeymoon.”

Mr. Parrish laughed, then immediately apologized for what he hoped hadn't been a lapse in good taste. See, a friend of his had sent that card over there—that's a guy's idea of a joke—and he didn't expect that the first doctor he saw after his operation—

“No apology necessary,” I said. And what could I do next to put Mr. Parrish at ease but perch myself on the side of his bed to engage him in conversation; to treat—as we were often reminded in medical school—not just the disease but the whole patient. I chose my best conversational gambit, my elopement, abridging it to a short paragraph. Mr. Parrish liked this confidence. He asked thoughtful and paternal questions; I said no, my husband was not in medicine, and yes, he
was
very understanding when it came to my long hours.

“You're an MD?” he asked.

I said yes, and flipped my ID faceup for verification.

“Not a flattering picture,” he said. “Which I mean as a compliment.”

I said I'd get a new one on July 1. If I lasted that long.

He asked what I'd meant by that. Was I worried about layoffs?

I said only, “It's a pyramid system. More of us start out than finish. For example, only one person can become the chief resident.”

“Would you want that job? I mean, being married and all? Is that such a big honor—chief resident?”

When I didn't answer right away, Mr. Parrish jumped in to volunteer that he was a guidance counselor at Rindge and Latin, in Cambridge.

I said, “It hasn't been easy. I'm trying to figure out where I belong.”

Mr. Parrish patted the edge of his mattress. “This is where you belong. Right where you are. Keeping a worried guy company at sunup.”

I knew it was a moment to be psychiatric, to ask a meaningful follow-up question, to explore
worried.
But it was easier to divert his thoughts back to my personal life. “Want to hear something strange?” I asked. “I delivered a baby today. By accident. I was invited to watch, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I actually caught the baby coming out.”

Mr. Parrish smiled. “Now,
that
is what I call a very meaningful event.”

“My name's on the record as the doctor who delivered the baby.”

“As it should be,” he said. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl,” I said. “A doozy. Nine pounds, one ounce.”

“More fun than this, I bet.” He glanced over to where I was performing my nurselike probationary responsibility, recording his urine output. I said, “It's
all
fun. Every task with every patient.”

“C'mon. You can't kid a kidder. What about the ones who die on you? And the people who arrive by ambulance bleeding and needing tubes stuck into their windpipes? That can't be any fun. Are you thinking that you have to enjoy every minute or you're not a good doctor? Because when I watch doctor shows—not just
ER
but the docudramas—being unhappy is pretty much the norm.”

“Are you giving me a pep talk?” I asked.

He smiled. “What else are you supposed to do to me today?”

I pointed groinward. “Check your site.”

He pulled the sheet to the side and yanked up his johnny in friendly, accommodating fashion.

I moved closer and said everything looked good. No redness or weeping. A lovely job.

“You know what the weird part is? I feel okay. It's not like anything hurts, if you don't count a little soreness. It's just that it's already spread.”

I dredged up something I had read: that autopsies performed on older men who died in car accidents showed that a large percentage of the victims over the age of seventy had cancerous cells in their prostate. In other words, it was practically a normal state of being.

“But I'm not even sixty,” he said. “What's normal for me?”

I thought of Meredith winking over Rachel's head and pronouncing soothing words that weren't 100 percent scientifically supportable. I said, trusting he'd recognize my answer as jocularity, “The good news is, I think you have an excellent chance of dying as an elderly man in a car accident.”

“Really? You're not just saying that?”

“Prostate cancer is one of the more treatable ones. And there are new therapies, experimental ones. I can have someone talk to you.” I added good news of my own: His urine output was excellent, 120 cc an hour.

“Meaning?”

“Everything's moving. No clots in the urethra. I don't have to flush your Foley catheter. You're doing great.”

“I hope you're right. I hope you're not being Miss Sunshine because someone out there said, ‘Be nice to him. He's terminal, but don't give it to him square between the eyes.' ”

I said, “No one's ever called me Miss Sunshine. And no; no one sent me in here to sugarcoat anything.”

“I'm Al,” he said.

“I know. I have your chart.”

“It's short for Alphonse.”

I said I knew that, too.

“Al and Alice,” he said. “Kinda nice. If you don't mind my saying that.”

I said, “You can call me anything you want. We're very informal here. All my patients call me Alice.”

It was a manifest lie, but so what? On this particular morning I felt like lying.

I TRIED RAY'S
cell phone with no success, then called my apartment and reached myself on tape. “Ray,” I said. “It's me. I'm at the hospital. I delivered a baby girl last night, sort of by accident. I'll tell you about it tonight. Also, this morning I helped a patient who had a nerve-sparing total prostatectomy. Not help in the medical sense, but just by talking to him. I should be able to get out of here by six . . . okay, never mind. I'll try your cell.”

I redialed his number, and, for the first time in the history of our telecommunications, I got the live Ray instead of his voice mail. “It's Alice,” I said. “Your wife.”

“Can't talk, Doc. I've got Joyce on call waiting. Where are you?”

“Urology,” I said. “Joyce who?”

“She's getting your father out of the tub so I can talk to them both at once.”

“About what?” I asked, but to no avail. The line clicked and I was overridden.

I STOPPED BY
the nursery to sneak a peek at the cleaned-up FIR Flowers.

“Went home,” said the nurse, a short, plump young woman named Doreen, wearing a smock patterned with cartoon characters I should have recognized.

“Is that Bernie?” I asked, pointing.

“Bert, Ernie, Cookie Monster,” she said, jabbing at faces decorating her broad bosom. “And I'm sure you know Big Bird.”

I lied again. I said of course I knew Big Bird. He was an icon; I'd had a Big Bird thermos and a Big Bird chess set.

“Are you Dr. Thrift?” asked this stranger.

It was the old sign on my back:
WELL-KNOWN FAILURE/PROBATIONEE
. “Why?” I asked.

“I heard about the delivery! Meredith said the baby would've dropped headfirst into the toilet, but you carried the mother to the bed.”

“She
did
?”

“I think that's what she said. That she couldn't lift her because of her back, and the baby was crowning—”

I shook my head. “I might have pulled the mother off the toilet seat but I didn't carry her anywhere. She sort of went careening toward the bed.”

“Whatever. Meredith said it was a close call. You know what it would have meant if the baby landed in the toilet? And
aspirated
?”

“Bad?”

“She'd be in the NICU, at the very least on a full course of antibiotics, and we'd very likely be dealing with pneumonia.”

“Well,” I said, “in that case . . . glad I could help.” I was going to ask, speaking of near-occupancy in the NICU, if she knew Leo Frawley, but babies were crying and several visitors had gathered at the viewing window, pointing at newborns. I caught on quickly, and wheeled a few Isolettes right up to the window. The homely and the wizened earned the same adoring gazes as the plump and the pretty. I lingered to watch Doreen swaddle two babies tightly, expertly, and change a diaper on the tiniest pelvis one could possess without having earned a berth among the preemies.

“Weren't you on your way home?” Doreen asked. “And didn't Meredith tell me that you're a newlywed?”

“My husband hasn't moved in yet,” I told her. “He has obligations back at his apartment.”

“Like what?”

I couldn't pronounce the truth—a previously unannounced dog—so I said, “Work. Just like me. Married to our jobs.”

“So instead of going home and chilling the champagne, you're floating—delivering a baby here, rearranging the nursery furniture there?” She said it indulgently, adding, “Just don't become one of those insane surgeons who gets in so early and leaves so late that he never sees the light of day.”

I asked if she meant
light of day,
literally: i.e., the rotation of the earth on its axis. Or figuratively—
light of day
as a metaphor for self-knowledge?

Doreen said, “I've got babies crying and their daddies watching. Can we discuss this another time?”

“Not important,” I said. “Have to run.” Pretty sure I knew the answer myself, I silently vowed to leave the hospital by the main entrance and not take the tunnel home.

I WENT DIRECTLY
to the answering machine, expecting it would yield my mother, either tearfully shrill or coyly mother-of-the-bride–ish, but there was only my own voice imploring Ray to pick up if he was there.

I jumped when the live Ray called from the direction of the bathroom, “I know, I know. I was supposed to let you handle it. But I had this brainstorm. Come on in. I want to tell you about it.”

He was in the tub, his head propped against a vinyl pillow I'd never seen before. “I know what you're thinking: The water's too hot. But I won't stand up too suddenly. Want to join me?”

I said, “What was your brainstorm?”

“The phone call to your parents. It hit me suddenly that
I
had to contact them, not you. Does a woman call home and announce she's engaged? Or does the polite man call the father and ask for his daughter's hand?”

“He doesn't if they're already married.”

“I thought about that, and I decided we were going to follow Plan A, but with a very interesting wrinkle: We don't say ‘married'; we say ‘engaged.' And I back it up a notch to ask for his blessing.”

I said, “And you didn't think that was too important a decision to make unilaterally? And a huge lie?”

“Not to me it isn't. Because let me ask you this: Do you feel married? Do we have one photograph to document it? One present? One piece of wedding cake in the freezer?”

“We're legally married. If I don't feel married it's because you haven't unpacked your suitcase yet.”

“
Shhhh.
Hon. No. I'm talking about the way I feel morally and religiously. Lots of people have two ceremonies—”

“So why not say that? Why not say, ‘We eloped, but now we'd like to do something more traditional'? Why go through this charade?”

“You're too damn black-and-white,” said Ray. “Whereas I live in the gray area. I massage things a little if it helps achieve a goal. In this case, we call ourselves engaged, we register, and in a couple of months we drive down to Princeton for a ceremony and a party. Which isn't just for the presents. It has more to do with making your parents happy and not running off like two birdbrain teenagers with something to hide.”

“What did they say?”

“You want the whole thing, from the beginning?”

“Please.”

He motioned toward the toilet, so I lowered the lid and sat.

“First I identify myself: ‘Ray Russo, Alice's friend. You remember me from the funeral of your mother. How are you doing?' ‘Yes,' she answers, kind of cold. Or maybe I was hearing something else. Like fright; like there had been an accident and I was contacting your emergency numbers. I said, ‘This is a social call. Alice is fine. She's at work. But I was wondering if I could speak to your husband?'

“ ‘He's indisposed,' she said. Still no thaw. So I ask, ‘Should I call back?' She asks if it's anything I can discuss with her, and I say—very formal, very cool, ‘I think you can probably guess why a daughter's boyfriend might ask to speak to the daughter's father.' ”

From across the very short distance of my tile floor I listened, but in a state best described as nauseated dread. Ray asking for my hand was Ray lying, and it was painful to see the self-congratulation in his face. I untied my shoes and slowly rolled my knee-highs down, studiously, concentrically.

“Am I boring you?” Ray asked.

“I'm listening,” I said.

“So finally your old man picks up the phone, dead serious, and says, like his secretary just told him that some undesirable was on the phone, ‘This is Bertram Thrift.'

“ ‘Ray Russo,' I say in return. ‘Do you have a minute?' ”

I studied my toes, which bore the impression of my kneehighs ' cable stitch; I felt for the pulse in my ankle and rested my fingertips there for several reassuring throbs.