The Sandman (3 page)

She was done. She was history, and he waited to feel ashamed, waited for the Space to start eating away inside of him, the rawness of the organs as the Space ate through him like an acid. He sat down heavily in his white chair, stared at the blank TV screen, and remembered the first time he had felt that way, sitting in his peeling wallpapered room on 21st street in Baltimore.

He had been staring across the alley at Rosalie Fangikis, the Greek girl, and she had started to take off her clothes. He watched her take off her sweater, toss her black hair back, walk to the window, and he felt himself getting excited—Christ how he wanted her. But then it came over him, the way his father had laughed at his skinny arms, the absurdity of his small chest, and birdlike legs. And he felt suddenly a wave of paralyzing self-loathing. It was nuts to even think of it. Not only was he not going to have Rosalie, but the fact was he was never going to have anybody. He was a mama’s boy, Lila Lee’s boy, the artsy crazy lady of the block. He began to shiver and to hold himself, wrapping his arms around his waist and moaning. It was then, at that moment, that the Space was born.

He felt hollow. He felt his heart, veins, kidneys, lungs disintegrating, like people disintegrating on Captain Video serials. He squirmed on the cold, wide bed, and tried talking to himself—it’s just a crazy feeling … it’s all in your head … your heart is still in your body, you can hear it beating … your lungs are still there, you’re still breathing. But the logic of his words didn’t ease him. He felt empty, drained out, a non-person. He was never going to be alive, never going to be a man. He was a pussy. He couldn’t even climb the fucking ropes in gym for Chrissakes. And when he turned and saw her body across the dark alley, he felt as though he were an empty goblet or a manikin. Push him over on the floor and he would shatter into a million fragments.

Now he sipped his Scotch, and looked around the room. The Space had never left him—never. He had tried to fight it, had finally, tearfully (and full of shame) told Lila Lee about his trouble, not actually mentioning the Space—he was too ashamed of that, too fearful of it to actually call it by name, at least to her—for even then he was aware that somehow she was partially responsible for it. She had taken him to Dr. Salem. He recalled the man’s old office on Greenmount Avenue, the musty smell of old furniture and the dead glare of faded yellow lampshades. He had gone into the doctor’s office and sat in front of the bald man, and after an hour of twitching and stalling, he could resist no longer, and he had broken down and told him about the Space—how he felt like nothing, how he would be on his way to school, and he would see a woman and he would feel it happening, the organs vanishing, smoking like dry ice. Eventually, after Peter had spilled himself to Salem, the doctor had asked him to wait in an adjoining room, and called in Lila Lee. Peter had sat by the door, staring down at a copy of Jack and Jill magazine. He sat quietly for a few minutes, and when the receptionist went to lunch, he crept close to the door and listened while the old man said things he didn’t fully understand, “self-image,” “hallucinations,” “due to a terrible feeling of guilt and worthlessness,” and hearing them made him even worse, for they seemed to be a death sentence, an actual confirmation of his most terrible fears. He was all these things. A “sicky,” a “weirdo,” a “nerd.”

Then he heard his mother saying, “My son is not like that. He’s just a little upset, that’s all. How dare you label my son like that.” And he had felt such tenderness toward her. She had taken up for him. She was his companion. The only one he could count on; and yet, yet wasn’t it she who had made him that way? God, it was too terrible. He loved her, and yet when they left the office, and she tried to take his hand, he had violently pulled it away and then felt guilt for that, and inside him the Space began growing again, more violently now, like a jungle vine twisting around all his organs, smothering them, and it whispered a secret message to him, that it was never going to let him go—never—that he would pay for betraying it to that doctor, that he would always pay for the rest of his life. He was nothing, nobody, dead, no, worse than dead, he would be condemned to keep on living, while feeling hollow, scooped out, less than zero.

Now he got up and walked to the bedroom. Something strange was happening—something so new and delicious that he could barely understand it. He sat down on the bed, and with his right hand he touched his left bicep. It felt strong, full of muscle, and then he poked himself in the stomach. It too was all right—flat, muscular. God, he felt exhilarated, almost ecstatic. Those old memories of the Space, the persistent feeling of worthlessness which had never left him, never even after all these years, even after success as a doctor (For what was a doctor but a mama’s boy grown up?)—suddenly the memories were simply that—memories. It was as though they were somebody else’s life story, some poor, pathetic bastard who was lost and alone.

The Space had called to him and challenged him. He had met the challenge head on. He had killed—don’t try and hide it—he had killed. He had taken the leap that every man, woman and child wondered about and secretly desired. (After all, what child hadn’t thought about killing his punishing father, what poor working slob hadn’t fantasized about doing away with a manipulating boss?)

He had killed and he felt good about it. He was alive, a man, and sitting there he felt powerful, aware of his own magnetic presence in the room. For the first time in his life he liked himself. He lay back, stared up at the ceiling, and he couldn’t believe it—peace.

He was warm, very warm, and drowsy. And then, for the first night in years, Peter Cross fell into a deep, perfect sleep.

Dr. Robert Beauregard, chief of Anesthesiology, sat at the head of the long oak conference table and stared down at Dr. Dios and Dr. Black, Dios’s assistant on the Lorraine Bell case. The long table, big enough for twenty, was where the department held its weekly morbidity and mortality meetings. During these inquisitions, any questionable deaths were discussed and accounted for.

Now with its seventeen empty chairs, the room seemed a melodramatic prop in a trial held in the Soviet Union for Crimes Against the People. At least Dios felt that way. He looked up, tried to meet Beauregard’s gaze head-on, but it was impossible. Beauregard’s power, his bearlike presence, was hidden beneath a shock of graying hair. His blue eyes were often penetrating, as though they were judging a man, even on the best of days, but during these meetings they looked cold, full of ice … Beauregard’s obsession with unnecessary deaths was a legend in the hospital. Indeed, when they felt very good, some of the surgeons might make a passing joke about it. But not today, not sitting in the hot seat staring up at him. Beauregard had the lowest of burning points. He drove himself and his staff as hard as he could, and Dios had known from the very moment of Lorraine Bell’s death that he was now on the shit list. Beauregard had said it over and over, “No unexplained OR deaths. They are unacceptable.” Dios shuddered a bit, thinking of what a scandal could do to his career. He had come from a poor family in the Philippines, worked hard to get through med school, and was just starting to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Dios’s furious musings were interrupted by Cross’s entrance. Peter swept through the door at precisely ten o’clock, a red scarf wrapped around his neck, his black raincoat unbuckled and swooping behind him like a cape. He looked, Dios thought, like some character out of the nineteenth century, very, very strange.

“Gentlemen,” said Dr. Robert Beauregard in a voice that sounded as if it had come out of the grave, “let us begin. First, let me express to you my feelings on this matter. Lorraine Bell died during a bowel obstruction probe last night. You three men were the attending physicians. A human life was offered to you, put under your care, and you allowed that life to simply fizzle out. I can see from your looks that you’re already angry at me for my tone of voice here. Well, I assure you that it’s quite intentional. I don’t accept the death of elderly patients at Eastern. As you know, I believe, and want you to believe, that older patients’ lives are, if anything, more precious simply because their condition is more precarious. Every possible precaution must be taken to see that they do not have a shock reaction. Every possible gentleness and consideration must be standard operating procedure. I’m not talking about ‘doing your job,’ I’m talking about using extra caution, extra consideration. Now, knowing that, I want some explanation, gentlemen. I want some
solid
, concrete explanation. What the hell happened last night?”

Beauregard turned and looked at Dios, and Dios felt himself burning with anger, felt his own heartbeat pumping up, as if he had just spent an hour jogging. Sweat formed on his forehead and he was afraid to wipe it off because he was afraid to acknowledge its presence. Sweat might be interpreted as guilt.

He had to say something. So he cleared his throat and began: “I needn’t explain to you that the nature of the bowel operation was made more difficult because the patient was unable to tell us what pains she was experiencing. We opened her up and we checked the small intestine. I think that Dr. Black will agree with me that we took every possible precaution with Lorraine Bell’s intestines. We handled her gently, as gently as possible. When we found the adhesion, we detached it. Again, we were extremely cautious. And when we sewed her up we were again very careful. I would say that we were
extremely
careful, wouldn’t you, Dr. Black?”

Black nodded and looked straight at Beauregard. Dios welcomed Black’s support, felt his breath come back in his lungs, and was able to swallow again.

On the other side of the table, Peter Cross remained motionless. He sat with his scarf still dangling insouciantly from his neck. His raincoat opened with a slash. His pince-nez glasses reflected the old brass lamp on the table. He heard Dios as though Dios were at the end of a long hallway, shouting to him through a broken bullhorn. He felt a wind sweep at his ankles and wondered why Debby Hunter wasn’t there.

“What about the mesentery?” Beauregard said. “When you were sewing up Lorraine Bell …”

Dios, his confidence swelling, interrupted: “The woman had an irregularly irregular heartbeat to begin with, Doctor. We had a tough job with the mesentery. I’m sure you can appreciate that the tissue was already in an advanced state of degeneration. There was nothing much to work with. But we didn’t put her under any abnormal strain.”

Beauregard’s eyes grew large and his right hand twisted into a fist. “According to whom?” he boomed.

“I don’t follow you,” Dios said, feeling the fear creep back in again.

“You said, Doctor, that you didn’t put her under any ‘abnormal’ strain. And I want to know what your definition is. What is ‘abnormal strain’ in a case such as this? Are you telling me that according to the textbook, patient X received the legitimate amount of pressure?”

“No,” Dios said, blundering forth. “I am not. I am saying that given this particular patient’s advanced degenerative state, we had to work with the tissue for quite a while. But this is normal. We had to. And while I am talking, I would like to know why you aren’t addressing some of these questions of yours to Dr. Cross, who sits over there and stares at us as if he were already absolved of any blame in this matter?”

Cross felt the words come as a blow to his face. For the first time he began to sweat. They couldn’t catch him now. They couldn’t blame him. And yet, there were two of them against him. He felt his back grow cold.

“Are you saying that I was to blame in this matter, Dr. Dios?” he said in a steely voice.

“Well,” Dios said, “perhaps you can explain why the patient’s heartbeat and breathing, given her condition, were perfectly normal one minute and dropped off violently the next?”

“I have nothing to explain,” Cross said. “I spent the entire afternoon the day before yesterday preparing for my cases. If you’ll check the records, Dr. Dios, Lorraine Bell had just been opened up two months ago….”

“I know that,” Dios said. “You can’t turn this thing around, Cross. I see what you’re doing. Trying to make it seem like I don’t know my business.”

Immediately Dios knew he had lost a point. He should have never used the word “business” there. He watched as Beauregard’s eyebrows went up. Dios looked at Dr. Black, who quickly came to his assistance.

“I was talking to Harry Gardner this morning about the case,” Black said. “He is completely neutral in his feelings and can look at it objectively. And he said to me that he was shocked by the way she started to fail. There was no indication that her heart was that weak.”

“But it was weak,” Beauregard said.

“Yes,” Black said, “it was. We all knew it was weak and we were careful, but the way she began to go off, the way her pulse and heartbeat dropped so suddenly, was unusual.”

Cross folded his arms and stared at Black and Dios. Fools, they were bungling it. Trying to pass off with innuendos. They would have been better to come right out and accuse him. But they didn’t dare. Still, Cross was afraid, afraid they were getting through to Beauregard, and he knew he must rally.

“Unusual?” he said. “Unusual with both of you tugging on her mesentery until her whole body shuddered?”

“Is that true?” Beauregard said.

“That is a gross overstatement,” Dios said. “Why don’t you ask Dr. Cross about the amount of curare he used? I told him to keep her very light, yet I saw him, several times, add other drugs to the IV.”

Cross looked at Beauregard, who was staring at him.

“You’ve got the list of the drugs I used,” Peter said. “Perhaps Drs. Black and Dios would like to call an expert in to see if I acted properly. Someone as
gifted
as Harry.”

Dios flashed a quick look at Black and shook his head. Beauregard looked at Peter Cross and nodded his head, giving a trace of a smile. Cross saw the smile and put on a grave look.

Before Beauregard could say anything, however, Black and Dios were at it again.

“He used succinylcholine … sixty milligrams … Perhaps that was a little heavy …”