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Nothing Lasts Forever
Sidney Sheldon
A page-turning novel of desire and broken dreams from the internationally bestselling author of The Other Side of Midnight and If Tomorrow Comes.Three young doctors-their hopes, their dreams, their unexpected desires…Dr.Paige Taylor: She swore it was euthanasia, but when Paige inherited a million dollars from a patient, the D.A. called it murder.Dr. Kat Hunter: She vowed never to let another man too close again-until she accepted the challenge of a deadly bet.Dr. Honey Taft: To make it in medicine, she knew she'd need something more than the brains God gave her.Racing from the life-and-death decisions of a big major hospital to the tension-packed fireworks of a murder trial, Nothing Lasts Forever lays bare the ambitions and fears of healers and killers, lovers and betrayers. And proves once again that no reader can outguess Sidney Sheldon, the master of the unexpected.
SIDNEY
SHELDON
NOTHING LASTS
FOREVER
Copyright (#ulink_1423e44c-611f-5544-b705-892aa8a186f1)
HarperFiction
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Copyright В© 1994 by Sidney Sheldon
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006476580
Ebook Edition В© JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007383962
Version: 2018-07-31
TO ANASTASIA AND RODERICK MANN, WITH LOVE
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u766157c7-2c6e-5516-b601-4a9ec03347bb)
Copyright (#u0403def8-2958-59d5-bb18-92a01f1d0b63)
Dedication (#ua11ba2d4-6bf7-556b-86ca-cbafad01cc7c)
Prologue (#u067e2eed-426a-5fc3-a267-44a98f261a87)
Part One (#uc5aff4ca-0fd6-5bab-a4c1-8594a5fa77d6)
Chapter One (#u2ff6a234-7363-5e9b-aa3e-00bd538b7915)
Chapter Two (#u90736d90-872e-5bbb-884b-7f3c53bd8471)
Chapter Three (#u764be32d-26e7-5d97-8cc9-ca6dc530e0ec)
Chapter Four (#udd7f33a9-2845-56a2-9d35-cbdcf2a9ffff)
Chapter Five (#u7ba5704a-f5d2-5f54-a7a2-38852fa64a6c)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Books by Sidney Sheldon (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_ec4f2227-d8ae-5c59-a577-2e751f0e8dd3)
San Francisco Spring 1995
District Attorney Carl Andrews was in a fury. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. “We have three doctors living together and working at the same hospital. One of them almost gets an entire hospital closed down, the second one kills a patient for a million dollars, and the third one is murdered.”
Andrews stopped to take a deep breath. “And they’re all women! Three goddam women doctors! The media is treating them like celebrities. They’re all over the tube. 60 Minutes did a segment on them. Barbara Walters did a special on them. I can’t pick up a newspaper or magazine without seeing their pictures, or reading about them. Two to one, Hollywood is going to make a movie about them, and they’ll turn the bitches into some kind of heroines! I wouldn’t be surprised if the government put their faces on postage stamps, like Presley. Well, by God, I won’t have it!” He slammed a fist down against the photograph of a woman on the cover of Time magazine. The caption read: “Dr. Paige Taylor—Angel of Mercy or the Devil’s Disciple?”
“Dr. Paige Taylor.” The district attorney’s voice was filled with disgust. He turned to Gus Venable, his chief prosecuting attorney. “I’m handing this trial over to you, Gus. I want a conviction. Murder One. The gas chamber.”
“Don’t worry,” Gus Venable said quietly. “I’ll see to it.”
Sitting in the courtroom watching Dr. Paige Taylor, Gus Venable thought: She’s jury-proof. Then he smiled to himself. No one is jury-proof. She was tall and slender, with eyes that were a startling dark brown in her pale face. A disinterested observer would have dismissed her as an attractive woman. A more observant one would have noticed something else—that all the different phases of her life coexisted in her. There was the happy excitement of the child, superimposed onto the shy uncertainty of the adolescent and the wisdom and pain of the woman. There was a look of innocence about her. She’s the kind of girl, Gus Venable thought cynically, a man would be proud to take home to his mother. If his mother had a taste for cold-blooded killers.
There was an almost eerie sense of remoteness in her eyes, a look that said that Dr. Paige Taylor had retreated deep inside herself to a different place, a different time, far from the cold, sterile courtroom where she was trapped.
The trial was taking place in the venerable old San Francisco Hall of Justice on Bryant Street. The building, which housed the Superior Court and County Jail, was a forbidding-looking edifice, seven stories high, made of square gray stone. Visitors arriving at the courthouse were funneled through electronic security checkpoints. Upstairs, on the third floor, was the Superior Court. In Courtroom 121, where murder trials were held, the judge’s bench stood against the rear wall, with an American flag behind it. To the left of the bench was the jury box, and in the center were two tables separated by an aisle, one for the prosecuting attorney, the other for the defense attorney.
The courtroom was packed with reporters and the type of spectators attracted to fatal highway accidents and murder trials. As murder trials went, this one was spectacular. Gus Venable, the prosecuting attorney, was a show in himself. He was a burly man, larger than life, with a mane of gray hair, a goatee, and the courtly manner of a Southern plantation owner. He had never been to the South. He had an air of vague bewilderment and the brain of a computer. His trademark, summer and winter, was a white suit, with an old-fashioned stiff-collar shirt.
Paige Taylor’s attorney, Alan Penn, was Venable’s opposite, a compact, energetic shark, who had built a reputation for racking up acquittals for his clients.
The two men had faced each other before, and their relationship was one of grudging respect and total mistrust. To Venable’s surprise, Alan Penn had come to see him the week before the trial was to begin.
“I came here to do you a favor, Gus.”
Beware of defense attorneys bearing gifts. “What did you have in mind, Alan?”
“Now understand—I haven’t discussed this with my client yet, but suppose—just suppose—I could persuade her to plead guilty to a reduced charge and save the State the cost of a trial?”
“Are you asking me to plea-bargain?”
“Yes.”
Gus Venable reached down to his desk, searching for something. “I can’t find my damn calendar. Do you know what the date is?”
“June first. Why?”
“For a minute there, I thought it must be Christmas already, or you wouldn’t be asking for a present like that.”
“Gus …”
Venable leaned forward in his chair. “You know, Alan, ordinarily, I’d be inclined to go along with you. Tell you the truth, I’d like to be in Alaska fishing right now. But the answer is no. You’re defending a cold-blooded killer who murdered a helpless patient for his money. I’m demanding the death penalty.”
“I think she’s innocent, and I—”
Venable gave a short, explosive laugh. “No, you don’t. And neither does anyone else. It’s an open-and-shut case. Your client is as guilty as Cain.”
“Not until the jury says so, Gus.”
“They will.” He paused. “They will.”
After Alan Penn left, Gus Venable sat there thinking about their conversation. Penn’s coming to him was a sign of weakness. Penn knew there was no chance he could win the trial. Gus Venable thought about the irrefutable evidence he had, and the witnesses he was going to call, and he was satisfied.
There was no question about it. Dr. Paige Taylor was going to the gas chamber.
It had not been easy to impanel a jury. The case had occupied the headlines for months. The cold-bloodedness of the murder had created a tidal wave of anger.
The presiding judge was Vanessa Young, a tough, brilliant black jurist rumored to be the next nominee for the United States Supreme Court. She was not known for being patient with lawyers, and she had a quick temper. There was an adage among San Francisco trial lawyers: If your client is guilty, and you’re looking for mercy, stay away from Judge Young’s courtroom.
The day before the start of the trial, Judge Young had summoned the two attorneys to her chambers.
“We’re going to set some ground rules, gentlemen. Because of the serious nature of this trial, I’m willing to make certain allowances to make sure that the defendant gets a fair trial. But I’m warning both of you not to try to take advantage of that. Is that clear?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“Yes, your honor.”
Gus Venable was finishing his opening statement. “And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the State will prove—yes, prove beyond a reasonable doubt—that Dr. Paige Taylor killed her patient, John Cronin. And not only did she commit murder, she did it for money … a lot of money. She killed John Cronin for one million dollars.
“Believe me, after you’ve heard all the evidence, you will have no trouble in finding Dr. Paige Taylor guilty of murder in the first degree. Thank you.”
The jury sat in silence, unmoved but expectant.
Gus Venable turned to the judge. “If it please your honor, I would like to call Gary Williams as the State’s first witness.”
When the witness was sworn in, Gus Venable said, “You’re an orderly at Embarcadero County Hospital?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Were you working in Ward Three when John Cronin was brought in last year?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us who the doctor in charge of his case was?”
“Dr. Taylor.”
“How would you characterize the relationship between Dr. Taylor and John Cronin?”
“Objection!” Alan Penn was on his feet. “He’s calling for a conclusion from the witness.”
“Sustained.”
“Let me phrase it another way. Did you ever hear any conversations between Dr. Taylor and John Cronin?”
“Oh, sure. I couldn’t help it. I worked that ward all the time.”
“Would you describe those conversations as friendly?”
“No, sir.”
“Really? Why do you say that?”
“Well, I remember the first day Mr. Cronin was brought in, and Dr. Taylor started to examine him, he said to keep her …” He hesitated. “I don’t know if I can repeat his language.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Williams. I don’t think there are any children in this courtroom.”
“Well, he told her to keep her fucking hands off him.”
“He said that to Dr. Taylor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please tell the court what else you may have seen or heard.”
“Well, he always called her �that bitch.’ He didn’t want her to go near him. Whenever she came into his room, he would say things like �Here comes that bitch again!’ and �Tell that bitch to leave me alone’ and �Why don’t they get me a real doctor?’”
Gus Venable paused to look over to where Dr. Taylor was seated. The jurors’ eyes followed him. Venable shook his head, as though saddened, then turned back to the witness. “Did Mr. Cronin seem to you to be a man who wanted to give a million dollars to Dr. Taylor?”
Alan Penn was on his feet again. “Objection! He’s calling for an opinion again.”
Judge Young said, “Overruled. The witness may answer the question.”
Alan Penn looked at Paige Taylor and sank back in his seat.
“Hell, no. He hated her guts.”
Dr. Arthur Kane was in the witness box.
Gus Venable said, “Dr. Kane, you were the staff doctor in charge when it was discovered that John Cronin was mur—” He looked at Judge Young. “… killed by insulin being introduced into his IV. Is that correct?”
“It is.”
“And you subsequently discovered that Dr. Taylor was responsible.”
“That’s correct.”
“Dr. Kane, I’m going to show you the official hospital death form signed by Dr. Taylor.” He picked up a paper and handed it to Kane. “Would you read it aloud, please?”
Kane began to read. “ �John Cronin. Cause of Death: Respiratory arrest occurred as a complication of myocardial infarction occurring as a complication of pulmonary embolus.’ ”
“And in layman’s language?”
“The report says that the patient died of a heart attack.”
“And that paper is signed by Dr. Taylor?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Kane, was that the true cause of John Cronin’s death?”
“No. The insulin injection caused his death.”
“So, Dr. Taylor administered a fatal dose of insulin and then falsified the report?”
“Yes.”
“And you reported it to Dr. Wallace, the hospital administrator, who then reported it to the authorities?”
“Yes. I felt it was my duty.” His voice rang with righteous indignation. “I’m a doctor. I don’t believe in taking the life of another human being under any circumstances.”
The next witness called was John Cronin’s widow. Hazel Cronin was in her late thirties, with flaming red hair, and a voluptuous figure that her plain black dress failed to conceal.
Gus Venable said, “I know how painful this is for you, Mrs. Cronin, but I must ask you to describe to the jury your relationship with your late husband.”
The widow Cronin dabbed at her eyes with a large lace handkerchief. “John and I had a loving marriage. He was a wonderful man. He often told me I had brought him the only real happiness he had ever known.”
“How long were you married to John Cronin?”
“Two years, but John always said it was like two years in heaven.”
“Mrs. Cronin, did your husband ever discuss Dr. Taylor with you? Tell you what a great doctor he thought she was? Or how helpful she had been to him? Or how much he liked her?”
“He never mentioned her.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Did John ever discuss cutting you and your brothers out of his will?”
“Absolutely not. He was the most generous man in the world. He always told me that there was nothing I couldn’t have, and that when he died …” Her voice broke. “… that when he died, I would be a wealthy woman, and …” She could not go on.
Judge Young said, “We’ll have a fifteen-minute recess.”
Seated in the back of the courtroom, Jason Curtis was filled with anger. He could not believe what the witnesses were saying about Paige. This is the woman I love, he thought. The woman I’m going to marry.
Immediately after Paige’s arrest, Jason Curtis had gone to visit her in jail.
“We’ll fight this,” he assured her. “I’ll get you the best criminal lawyer in the country.” A name immediately sprang to mind. Alan Penn. Jason had gone to see him.
“I’ve been following the case in the papers,” Penn said. “The press has already tried and convicted her of murdering John Cronin for a bundle. What’s more, she admits she killed him.”
“I know her,” Jason Curtis told him. “Believe me, there’s no way Paige could have done what she did for money.”
“Since she admits she killed him,” Penn said, “what we’re dealing with here then is euthanasia. Mercy killings are against the law in California, as in most states, but there are a lot of mixed feelings about them. I can make a pretty good case for Florence Nightingale listening to a Higher Voice and all that shit, but the problem is that your lady love killed a patient who left her a million dollars in his will. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did she know about the million before she killed him, or after?”
“Paige didn’t know a thing about the money,” Jason said firmly.
Penn’s tone was noncommittal. “Right. It was just a happy coincidence. The DA is calling for Murder One, and he wants the death penalty.”
“Will you take the case?”
Penn hesitated. It was obvious that Jason Curtis believed in Dr. Taylor. The way Samson believed in Delilah. He looked at Jason and thought: I wonder if the poor son of a bitch had a haircut and doesn’t know it.
Jason was waiting for an answer.
“Ill take the case, as long as you know it’s all uphill. It’s going to be a tough one to win.”
Alan Penn’s statement turned out to be overly optimistic.
When the trial resumed the following morning, Gus Venable called a string of new witnesses.
A nurse was on the stand. “I heard John Cronin say, �I know I’ll die on the operating table. You’re going to kill me. I hope they get you for murder.’ ”
An attorney, Roderick Pelham, was on the stand. Gus Venable said, “When you told Dr. Taylor about the million dollars from John Cronin’s estate, what did she say?”
“She said something like �It seems unethical. He was my patient.’ ”
“She admitted it was unethical?”
“Yes.”
“But she agreed to take the money?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
Alan Penn was cross-examining.
“Mr. Pelham, was Dr. Taylor expecting your visit?”
“Why, no, I …”
“You didn’t call her and say, �John Cronin left you one million dollars’?”
“No. I …”
“So when you told her, you were actually face-to-face with her?”
“Yes.”
“In a position to see her reaction to the news?”
“Yes.”
“And when you told her about the money, how did she react?”
“Well—she—she seemed surprised, but …”
“Thank you Mr. Pelham. That’s all.”
The trial was now in its fourth week. The spectators and press had found the prosecuting attorney and defense attorney fascinating to watch. Gus Venable was dressed in white and Alan Penn in black, and the two of them had moved around the courtroom like players in a deadly, choreographed game of chess, with Paige Taylor the sacrificial pawn.
Gus Venable was tying up the loose ends.
“If the court please, I would like to call Alma Rogers to the witness stand.”
When his witness was sworn in, Venable said, “Mrs. Rogers, what is your occupation?”
“It’s Miss Rogers.”
“I do beg your pardon.”
“I work at the Corniche Travel Agency.”
“Your agency books tours to various countries and makes hotel reservations and handles other accommodations for your clients?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to take a look at the defendant. Have you ever seen her before?”
“Oh, yes. She came into our travel agency two or three years ago.”
“And what did she want?”
“She said she was interested in a trip to London and Paris and, I believe, Venice.”
“Did she ask about package tours?”
“Oh, no. She said she wanted everything first class—plane, hotel. And I believe she was interested in chartering a yacht.”
The courtroom was hushed. Gus Venable walked over to the prosecutor’s table and held up some folders. “The police found these brochures in Dr. Taylor’s apartment. These are travel itineraries to Paris and London and Venice, brochures for expensive hotels and airlines, and one listing the cost of chartering a private yacht.”
There was a loud murmur from the courtroom.
The prosecutor had opened one of the brochures.
“Here are some of the yachts listed for charter,” he read aloud. “The Christina O … twenty-six thousand dollars a week plus ship’s expenses … the Resolute Time, twenty-four thousand five hundred dollars a week … the Lucky Dream, twenty-seven thousand three hundred dollars a week.“ He looked up. ”There’s a check mark after the Lucky Dream. Paige Taylor had already selected the twenty-seven-thousand-three-hundred-a-week yacht. She just hadn’t selected her victim yet.
“We’d like to have these marked Exhibit A.” Venable turned to Alan Penn and smiled. Alan Penn looked at Paige. She was staring down at the table, her face pale. “Your witness.”
Penn rose to his feet, stalling, thinking fast.
“How is the travel business these days, Miss Rogers?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked how business was. Is Corniche a large travel agency?”
“It’s quite large, yes.”
“I imagine a lot of people come in to inquire about trips.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Would you say five or six people a day?”
“Oh, no!” Her voice was indignant. “We talk to as many as fifty people a day about travel arrangements.”
“Fifty people a day?” He sounded impressed. “And the day we’re talking about was two or three years ago. If you multiply fifty by nine hundred days, that’s roughly forty-five thousand people.”
“I suppose so.”
“And yet, out of all those people, you remembered Dr. Taylor. Why is that?”
“Well, she and her two friends were so excited about taking a trip to Europe. I thought it was lovely. They were like schoolgirls. Oh, yes. I remember them very clearly, particularly because they didn’t look like they could afford a yacht.”
“I see. I suppose everyone who comes in and asks for a brochure goes away on a trip?”
“Well, of course not. But—”
“Dr. Taylor didn’t actually book a trip, did she?”
“Well, no. Not with us. She—”
“Nor with anyone else. She merely asked to see some brochures.”
“Yes. She—”
“That’s not the same as going to Paris or London, is it?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Thank you. You may step down.”
Venable turned to Judge Young. “I would like to call Dr. Benjamin Wallace to the stand …”
“Dr. Wallace, you’re in charge of administration at Embarcadero County Hospital?”
“Yes.”
“So, of course, you’re familiar with Dr. Taylor and her work?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Were you surprised to learn that Dr. Taylor was indicted for murder?”
Penn was on his feet. “Objection, your honor. Dr. Wallace’s answer would be irrelevant.”
“If I may explain,” interrupted Venable. “It could be very relevant if you’ll just let me …”
“Well, let’s see what develops,” said Judge Young. “But no nonsense, Mr. Venable.”
“Let me approach the question differently,” continued Venable. “Dr. Wallace, every physician is required to take the Hippocratic Oath, is that not so?”
“Yes.”
“And part of that oath is”—the prosecutor read from a paper in his hand—“ �that I shall abstain from every act of mischief or corruption’?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anything Dr. Taylor did in the past that made you believe she was capable of breaking her Hippocratic Oath?”
“Objection.”
“Overruled.”
“Yes, there was.”
“Please explain what it was.”
“We had a patient who Dr. Taylor decided needed a blood transfusion. His family refused to grant permission.”
“And what happened?”
“Dr. Taylor went ahead and gave the patient the transfusion anyway.”
“Is that legal?”
“Absolutely not. Not without a court order.”
“And then what did Dr. Taylor do?”
“She obtained the court order afterward, and changed the date on it.”
“So she performed an illegal act, and falsified the hospital records to cover it up?”
“That is correct.”
Alan Penn glanced over at Paige, furious. What the hell else has she kept from me? he wondered.
If the spectators were searching for any telltale sign of emotion on Paige Taylor’s face, they were disappointed.
Cold as ice, the foreman of the jury was thinking.
Gus Venable turned to the bench. “Your honor, as you know, one of the witnesses I had hoped to call is Dr. Lawrence Barker. Unfortunately, he is still suffering from the effects of a stroke and is unable to be in this courtroom to testify. Instead I will now question some of the hospital staff who have worked with Dr. Barker.”
Penn stood up. “I object. I don’t see the relevance. Dr. Barker is not here, nor is Dr. Barker on trial here. If …”
Venable interrupted. “Your honor, I assure you that my line of questioning is very relevant to the testimony we have just heard. It also has to do with the defendant’s competency as a doctor.”
Judge Young said skeptically, “We’ll see. This is a courtroom, not a river. I won’t stand for any fishing expeditions. You may call your witnesses.”
“Thank you.”
Gus Venable turned to the bailiff. “I would like to call Dr. Mathew Peterson.”
An elegant-looking man in his sixties approached the witness box. He was sworn in, and when he took his seat, Gus Venable said, “Dr. Peterson, how long have you worked at Embarcadero County Hospital?”
“Eight years.”
“And what is your specialty?”
“I’m a cardiac surgeon.”
“And during the years you’ve been at Embarcadero County Hospital, did you ever have occasion to work with Dr. Lawrence Barker?”
“Oh, yes. Many times.”
“What was your opinion of him?”
“The same as everyone else’s. Aside, possibly, from DeBakey and Cooley, Dr. Barker is the best heart surgeon in the world.”
“Were you present in the operating room on the morning that Dr. Taylor operated on a patient named …” He pretended to consult a slip of paper. “… Lance Kelly?”
The witness’s tone changed. “Yes, I was there.”
“Would you describe what happened that morning?”
Dr. Peterson said reluctantly, “Well, things started to go wrong. We began losing the patient.”
“When you say �losing the patient …’ ”
“His heart stopped. We were trying to bring him back, and …”
“Had Dr. Barker been sent for?”
“Yes.”
“And did he come into the operating room while the operation was going on?”
“Toward the end. Yes. But it was too late to do anything. We were unable to revive the patient.”
“And did Dr. Barker say anything to Dr. Taylor at that time?”
“Well, we were all pretty upset, and …”
“I asked you if Dr. Barker said anything to Dr. Taylor.”
“Yes.”
“And what did Dr. Barker say?”
There was a pause, and in the middle of the pause, there was a crack of thunder outside, like the voice of God. A moment later, the storm broke, nailing raindrops to the roof of the courthouse.
“Dr. Barker said, �You killed him.’ ”
The spectators were in an uproar. Judge Young slammed her gavel down. “That’s enough! Do you people live in caves? One more outburst like that and you’ll all be standing outside in the rain.”
Gus Venable waited for the noise to die down. In the hushed silence he said, “Are you sure that’s what Dr. Barker said to Dr. Taylor? �You killed him’?”
“Yes.”
“And you have testified that Dr. Barker was a man whose medical opinion was valued?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Thank you. That’s all, doctor.” He turned to Alan Penn. “Your witness.”
Penn rose and approached the witness box.
“Dr. Peterson, I’ve never watched an operation, but I imagine there’s enormous tension, especially when it’s something as serious as a heart operation.”
“There’s a great deal of tension.”
“At a time like that, how many people are in the room? Three or four?”
“Oh, no. Always half a dozen or more.”
“Really?”
“Yes. There are usually two surgeons, one assisting, sometimes two anesthesiologists, a scrub nurse, and at least one circulating nurse.”
“I see. Then there must be a lot of noise and excitement going on. People calling out instructions and so on.”
“Yes.”
“And I understand that it’s a common practice for music to be playing during an operation.”
“It is.”
“When Dr. Barker came in and saw that Lance Kelly was dying, that probably added to the confusion.”
“Well, everybody was pretty busy trying to save the patient.”
“Making a lot of noise?”
“There was plenty of noise, yes.”
“And yet, in all that confusion and noise, and over the music, you could hear Dr. Barker say that Dr. Taylor had killed the patient. With all that excitement, you could have been wrong, couldn’t you?”
“No, sir. I could not be wrong.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Dr. Peterson sighed. “Because I was standing right next to Dr. Barker when he said it.”
There was no graceful way out.
“No more questions.”
The case was falling apart, and there was nothing he could do about it. It was about to get worse.
Denise Berry took the witness stand.
“You’re a nurse at Embarcadero County Hospital?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Five years.”
“During that time, did you ever hear any conversations between Dr. Taylor and Dr. Barker?”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
“Can you repeat some of them?”
Nurse Berry looked at Dr. Taylor and hesitated. “Well, Dr. Barker could be very sharp …”
“I didn’t ask you that, Nurse Berry. I asked you to tell us some specific things you heard him say to Dr. Taylor.“
There was a long pause. “Well, one time he said she was incompetent, and …”
Gus Venable put on a show of surprise. “You heard Dr. Barker say that Dr. Taylor was incompetent?”
“Yes, sir. But he was always …”
“What other comments did you hear him make about Dr. Taylor?”
The witness was reluctant to speak. “I really can’t remember.”
“Miss Berry, you’re under oath.”
“Well, once I heard him say …” The rest of the sentence was a mumble.
“We can’t hear you. Speak up, please. You heard him say what?”
“He said he … he wouldn’t let Dr. Taylor operate on his dog.”
There was a collective gasp from the courtroom.
“But I’m sure he only meant …”
“I think we can all assume that Dr. Barker meant what he said.”
All eyes were fixed on Paige Taylor.
The prosecutor’s case against Paige seemed overwhelming. Yet Alan Penn had the reputation of being a master magician in the courtroom. Now it was his turn to present the defendant’s case. Could he pull another rabbit out of his hat?
Paige Taylor was on the witness stand, being questioned by Alan Penn. This was the moment everyone had been waiting for.
“John Cronin was a patient of yours, Dr. Taylor?”
“Yes, he was.”
“And what were your feelings toward him?”
“I liked him. He knew how ill he was, but he was very courageous. He had surgery for a cardiac tumor.”
“You performed the heart surgery?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you find during the operation?”
“When we opened up his chest, we found that he had melanoma that had metastasized.”
“In other words, cancer that had spread throughout his body.”
“Yes. It had metastasized throughout the lymph glands.”
“Meaning that there was no hope for him? No heroic measures that could bring him back to health?”
“None.”
“John Cronin was put on life-support systems?”
“That’s correct.”
“Dr. Taylor, did you deliberately administer a fatal dose of insulin to end John Cronin’s life?”
“I did.”
There was a sudden buzz in the courtroom.
She’s really a cool one, Gus Venable thought. She makes it sound as though she gave him a cup of tea.
“Would you tell the jury why you ended John Cronin’s life?”
“Because he asked me to. He begged me to. He sent for me in the middle of the night, in terrible pain. The medications we were giving him were no longer working.” Her voice was steady. “He said he didn’t want to suffer anymore. His death was only a few days away. He pleaded with me to end it for him. I did.”
“Doctor, did you have any reluctance to let him die? Any feelings of guilt?”
Dr. Paige Taylor shook her head. “No. If you could have seen … There was simply no point to letting him go on suffering.”
“How did you administer the insulin?”
“I injected it into his IV.”
“And did that cause him any additional pain?”
“No. He simply drifted off to sleep.”
Gus Venable was on his feet. “Objection! I think the defendant means he drifted off to his death! I—”
Judge Young slammed down her gavel. “Mr. Venable, you’re out of order. You’ll have your chance to cross-examine the witness. Sit down.”
The prosecutor looked over at the jury, shook his head, and took his seat.
“Dr. Taylor, when you administered the insulin to John Cronin, were you aware that he had put you in his will for one million dollars?”
“No. I was stunned when I learned about it.”
Her nose should be growing, Gus Venable thought.
“You never discussed money or gifts at any time, or asked John Cronin for anything?”
A faint flush came to her cheeks. “Never!”
“But you were on friendly terms with him?”
“Yes. When a patient is that ill, the doctor-patient relationship changes. We discussed his business problems and his family problems.”
“But you had no reason to expect anything from him?”
“No.”
“He left that money to you because he had grown to respect you and trust you. Thank you, Dr. Taylor.” Penn turned to Gus Venable. “Your witness.”
As Penn returned to the defense table, Paige Taylor glanced toward the back of the courtroom. Jason was seated there, trying to look encouraging. Next to him was Honey. A stranger was sitting next to Honey in the seat that Kat should have occupied. If she were still alive. But Kat is dead, Paige thought. I killed her, too.
Gus Venable rose and slowly shuffled over to the witness box. He glanced at the rows of press. Every seat was filled, and the reporters were all busily scribbling. I’m going to give you something to write about, Venable thought.
He stood in front of the defendant for a long moment, studying her. Then he said casually, “Dr. Taylor … was John Cronin the first patient you murdered at Embarcadero County Hospital?”
Alan Penn was on his feet, furious. “Your honor, I—!”
Judge Young had already slammed her gavel down. “Objection sustained!” She turned to the two attorneys. “There will be a fifteen-minute recess. I want to see counsel in my chambers.”
When the two attorneys were in her chambers, Judge Young turned to Gus Venable. “You did go to law school, didn’t you, Gus?”
“I’m sorry, your honor. I—”
“Did you see a tent out there?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Her voice was a whiplash. “My courtroom is not a circus, and I don’t intend to let you turn it into one. How dare you ask an inflammatory question like that!”
“I apologize, your honor. I’ll rephrase the question and—”
“You’ll do more than that!” Judge Young snapped. “You’ll rephrase your attitude. I’m warning you, you pull one more stunt like that and I’ll declare a mistrial.”
“Yes, your honor.”
When they returned to the courtroom, Judge Young said to the jury, “The jury will completely disregard the prosecutor’s last question.” She turned to the prosecutor. “You may go on.”
Gus Venable walked back to the witness box. “Dr. Taylor, you must have been very surprised when you were informed that the man you murdered left you one million dollars.”
Alan Penn was on his feet. “Objection!”
“Sustained.” Judge Young turned to Venable. “You’re trying my patience.”
“I apologize, your honor.” He turned back to the witness. ”You must have been on very friendly terms with your patient. I mean, it isn’t every day that an almost complete stranger leaves us a million dollars, is it?”
Paige Taylor flushed slightly. “Our friendship was in the context of a doctor-patient relationship.”
“Wasn’t it a little more than that? A man doesn’t cut his beloved wife and family out of his will and leave a million dollars to a stranger without some kind of persuasion. Those talks you claimed to have had with him about his business problems …”
Judge Young leaned forward and said warningly, “Mr. Venable …” The prosecutor raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. He turned back to the defendant. “So you and John Cronin had a friendly chat. He told you personal things about himself, and he liked you and respected you. Would you say that’s a fair summation, doctor?”
“Yes.”
“And for doing that he gave you a million dollars?”
Paige looked out at the courtroom. She said nothing. She had no answer.
Venable started to walk back toward the prosecutor’s table, then suddenly turned to face the defendant again.
“Dr. Taylor, you testified earlier that you had no idea that John Cronin was going to leave you any money, or that he was going to cut his family out of his will.”
“That’s correct.”
“How much does a resident doctor make at Embarcadero County Hospital?”
Alan Penn was on his feet. “Objection! I don’t see—”
“It’s a proper question. The witness may answer.”
“Thirty-eight thousand dollars a year.”
Venable said sympathetically, “That’s not very much these days, is it? And out of that, there are deductions and taxes and living expenses. That wouldn’t leave enough to take a luxury vacation trip, say, to London or Paris or Venice, would it?”
“I suppose not.”
“No. So you didn’t plan to take a vacation like that, because you knew you couldn’t afford it.”
“That’s correct.”
Alan Penn was on his feet again. “Your honor …”
Judge Young turned to the prosecutor. “Where is this leading, Mr. Venable?”
“I just want to establish that the defendant could not plan a luxury trip without getting the money from someone.”
“She’s already answered the question.”
Alan Penn knew he had to do something. His heart wasn’t in it, but he approached the witness box with all the good cheer of a man who had just won the lottery.
“Dr. Taylor, do you remember picking up these travel brochures?”
“Yes.”
“Were you planning to go to Europe or to charter a yacht?”
“Of course not. It was all sort of a joke, an impossible dream. My friends and I thought it would lift our spirits. We were very tired, and … it seemed like a good idea at the time.” Her voice trailed off.
Alan Penn glanced covertly at the jury. Their faces registered pure disbelief.
Gus Venable was questioning the defendant on reexamination. “Dr. Taylor, are you acquainted with Dr. Lawrence Barker?”
She had a sudden memory flash. I’m going to kill Lawrence Barker. I’ll do it slowly. I’ll let him suffer first … then I’ll kill him. “Yes. I know Dr. Barker.”
“In what connection?”
“Dr. Barker and I have often worked together during the past two years.”
“Would you say that he’s a competent doctor?”
Alan Penn jumped up from his chair. “I object, your honor. The witness …”
But before he could finish or Judge Young could rule, Paige answered, “He’s more than competent. He’s brilliant.”
Penn sank back in his chair, too stunned to speak.
“Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“Dr. Barker is one of the most renowned cardiovascular surgeons in the world. He has a large private practice, but he donates three days a week to Embarcadero County Hospital.”
“So you have a high regard for his judgment in medical matters?”
“Yes.”
“And do you feel he would be capable of judging another doctor’s competence?”
Penn willed Paige to say I don’t know.
She hesitated. “Yes.”
Gus Venable turned to the jury, “You’ve heard the defendant testify that she had a high regard for Dr. Barker’s medical judgment. I hope she listened carefully to Dr. Barker’s judgment about her competence … or the lack of it.”
Alan Penn was on his feet, furious. “Objection!”
“Sustained.”
But it was too late. The damage had been done.
During the next recess, Alan Penn pulled Jason into the men’s room.
“What the hell have you gotten me into?” Penn demanded angrily. “John Cronin hated her, Barker hated her. I insist on my clients telling me the truth, and the whole truth. That’s the only way I can help them. Well, I can’t help her. Your lady friend has given me a snow job so deep I need skis. Every time she opens her mouth she puts a nail in her coffin. The fucking case is in free fall!”
That afternoon, Jason Curtis went to see Paige.
“You have a visitor, Dr. Taylor.”
Jason walked into Paige’s cell.
“Paige …”
She turned to him, and she was fighting back tears. “It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?”
Jason forced a smile. “You know what the man said— �It’s not over till it’s over.’ ”
“Jason, you don’t believe that I killed John Cronin for his money, do you? What I did, I did only to help him.”
“I believe you,” Jason said quietly. “I love you.”
He took her into his arms. I don’t want to lose her, Jason thought. I can’t. She’s the best thing in my life. “Everything is going to be all right. I promised you we would be together forever.”
Paige held him close and thought, Nothing lasts forever. Nothing. How could everything have gone so wrong … so wrong … so wrong …
Part One (#ulink_2eb36217-2a4e-59e2-81d3-7f79d6b53032)
Chapter One (#ulink_fb0c049a-29d9-5fce-bd9f-ede932d88fde)
San Francisco July 1990
“Hunter, Kate.”
“Here.”
“Taft, Betty Lou.”
“I’m here.”
“Taylor, Paige.”
“Here.”
They were the only women among the large group of incoming first-year residents gathered in the large, drab auditorium at Embarcadero County Hospital.
Embarcadero County was the oldest hospital in San Francisco, and one of the oldest in the country. During the earthquake of 1989, God had played a joke on the residents of San Francisco and left the hospital standing. It was an ugly complex, occupying more than three square blocks, with buildings of brick and stone, gray with years of accumulated grime.
Inside the front entrance of the main building was a large waiting room, with hard wooden benches for patients and visitors. The walls were flaking from too many decades of coats of paint, and the corridors were worn and uneven from too many thousands of patients in wheelchairs and on crutches and walkers. The entire complex was coated with the stale patina of time.
Embarcadero County Hospital was a city within a city. There were over nine thousand people employed at the hospital, including four hundred staff physicians, one hundred and fifty part-time voluntary physicians, eight hundred residents, and three thousand nurses, plus the technicians, unit aides, and other technical personnel. The upper floors contained a complex of twelve operating rooms, central supply, a bone bank, central scheduling, three emergency wards, an AIDS ward, and over two thousand beds.
Now, on the first day of the arrival of the new residents in July, Dr. Benjamin Wallace, the hospital administrator, rose to address them. Wallace was the quintessential politician, a tall, impressive-looking man with small skills and enough charm to have ingratiated his way up to his present position.
“I want to welcome all of you new resident doctors this morning. For the first two years of medical school, you worked with cadavers. In the last two years, you have worked with hospital patients under the supervision of senior doctors. Now, it’s you who are going to be responsible for your patients. It’s an awesome responsibility, and it takes dedication and skill.”
His eyes scanned the auditorium. “Some of you are planning to go into surgery. Others of you will be going into internal medicine. Each group will be assigned to a senior resident who will explain the daily routine to you. From now on, everything you do could be a matter of life or death.”
They were listening intently, hanging on every word.
“Embarcadero is a county hospital. That means we admit anyone who comes to our door. Most of the patients are indigent. They come here because they can’t afford a private hospital. Our emergency rooms are busy twenty-four hours a day. You’re going to be overworked and underpaid. In a private hospital, your first year would consist of routine scut work. In the second year, you would be allowed to hand a scalpel to the surgeon, and in your third year, you would be permitted to do some supervised minor surgery. Well, you can forget all that. Our motto here is �Watch one, do one, teach one.’
“We’re badly understaffed, and the quicker we can get you into the operating rooms, the better. Are there any questions?”
There were a million questions the new residents wanted to ask.
“None? Good. Your first day officially begins tomorrow. You will report to the main reception desk at five-thirty tomorrow morning. Good luck!”
The briefing was over. There was a general exodus toward the doors and the low buzz of excited conversations. The three women found themselves standing together.
“Where are all the other women?”
“I think we’re it.”
“It’s a lot like medical school, huh? The boys’ club. I have a feeling this place belongs to the Dark Ages.”
The person talking was a flawlessly beautiful black woman, nearly six feet tall, large-boned, but intensely graceful. Everything about her, her walk, her carriage, the cool, quizzical look she carried in her eyes, sent out a message of aloofness. “I’m Kate Hunter. They call me Kat.”
“Paige Taylor.” Young and friendly, intelligent-looking, self-assured.
They turned to the third woman.
“Betty Lou Taft. They call me Honey.” She spoke with a soft Southern accent. She had an open, guileless face, soft gray eyes, and a warm smile.
“Where are you from?” Kat asked.
“Memphis, Tennessee.”
They looked at Paige. She decided to give them the simple answer. “Boston.”
“Minneapolis,” Kat said. That’s close enough, she thought.
Paige said, “It looks like we’re all a long way from home. Where are you staying?”
“I’m at a fleabag hotel,” Kat said. “I haven’t had a chance to look for a place to live.”
Honey said, “Neither have I.”
Paige brightened. “I looked at some apartments this morning. One of them was terrific, but I can’t afford it. It has three bedrooms …”
They stared at one another.
“If the three of us shared …” Kat said.
The apartment was in the Marina district, on Filbert Street. It was perfect for them. 3Br/2Ba, nu cpts, lndry, prkg, utils pd. It was furnished in early Sears Roebuck, but it was neat and clean.
When the three women were through inspecting it, Honey said, “I think it’s lovely.”
“So do I!” Kat agreed.
They looked at Paige.
“Let’s take it.”
They moved into the apartment that afternoon. The janitor helped them carry their luggage upstairs.
“So you’re gonna work at the hospital,” he said. “Nurses, huh?”
“Doctors,” Kat corrected him.
He looked at her skeptically. “Doctors? You mean, like real doctors?”
“Yes, like real doctors,” Paige told him.
He grunted. “Tell you the truth, if I needed medical attention, I don’t think I’d want a woman examining my body.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.”
“Where’s the television set?” Kat asked. “I don’t see one.”
“If you want one, you’ll have to buy it. Enjoy the apartment, ladies—er, doctors.” He chuckled.
They watched him leave.
Kat said, imitating his voice, “Nurses, eh?” She snorted. “Male chauvinist. Well, let’s pick out our bedrooms.”
“Any one of them is fine with me,” Honey said softly.
They examined the three bedrooms. The master bedroom was larger than the other two.
Kat said, “Why don’t you take it, Paige? You found this place.”
Paige nodded. “All right.”
They went to their respective rooms and began to unpack. From her suitcase, Paige carefully removed a framed photograph of a man in his early thirties. He was attractive, wearing black-framed glasses that gave him a scholarly look. Paige put the photograph at her bedside, next to a bundle of letters.
Kat and Honey wandered in. “How about going out and getting some dinner?”
“I’m ready,” Paige said.
Kat saw the photograph. “Who’s that?”
Paige smiled. “That’s the man I’m going to marry. He’s a doctor who works for the World Health Organization. His name is Alfred Turner. He’s working in Africa right now, but he’s coming to San Francisco so we can be together.”
“Lucky you,” Honey said wistfully. “He looks nice.”
Paige looked at her. “Are you involved with anyone?”
“No. I’m afraid I don’t have much luck with men.”
Kat said, “Maybe your luck will change at Embarcadero.”
The three of them had dinner at Tarantino’s, not far from their apartment building. During dinner they chatted about their backgrounds and lives, but there was a restraint to their conversation, a holding back. They were three strangers, probing, cautiously getting to know one another.
Honey spoke very little. There’s a shyness about her, Paige thought. She’s vulnerable. Some man in Memphis probably broke her heart.
Paige looked at Kat. Self-confident. Great dignity. I like the way she speaks. You can tell she came from a good family.
Meanwhile, Kat was studying Paige. A rich girl who never had to work for anything in her life. She’s gotten by on her looks.
Honey was looking at the two of them. They’re so confident, so sure of themselves. They’re going to have an easy time of it.
They were all mistaken.
When they returned to their apartment, Paige was too excited to sleep. She lay in bed, thinking about the future. Outside her window, in the street, there was the sound of a car crash, and then people shouting, and in Paige’s mind it dissolved into the memory of African natives yelling and chanting, and guns being fired. She was transported back in time, to the small jungle village in East Africa, caught in the middle of a deadly tribal war.
Paige was terrified. “They’re going to kill us!”
Her father took her in his arms. “They won’t harm us, darling. We’re here to help them. They know we’re their friends.”
And without warning, the chief of one of the tribes had burst into their hut …
Honey lay in bed thinking, This is sure a long way from Memphis, Tennessee, Betty Lou. I guess I can never go back there. Never again. She could hear the sheriffs voice saying to her, “Out of respect for his family, we’re going to list the death of the Reverend Douglas Lipton as a �suicide for reasons unknown,’ but I would suggest that you get the fuck out of this town fast, and stay out …”
Kat was staring out the window of her bedroom, listening to the sounds of the city. She could hear the raindrops whispering, You made it … you made it … I showed them all they were wrong. You want to be a doctor? A black woman doctor? And the rejections from medical schools. “Thank you for sending us your application. Unfortunately our enrollment is complete at this time.”
“In view of your background, perhaps we might suggest that you would be happier at a smaller university.”
She had top grades, but out of twenty-five schools she had applied to, only one had accepted her. The dean of the school had said, “In these days, it’s nice to see someone who comes from a normal, decent background.”
If he had only known the terrible truth.
Chapter Two (#ulink_62c9bf54-c9fc-5006-9f59-5f2460806ef5)
At five-thirty the following morning, when the new residents checked in, members of the hospital staff were standing by to guide them to their various assignments. Even at that early hour, the bedlam had begun.
The patients had been coming in all night, arriving in ambulances, and police cars, and on foot. The staff called them the “F and J’s”—the flotsam and jetsam that streamed into the emergency rooms, broken and bleeding, victims of shootings and stabbings and automobile accidents, the wounded in flesh and spirit, the homeless and the unwanted, the ebb and flow of humanity that streamed through the dark sewers of every large city.
There was a pervasive feeling of organized chaos, frenetic movements and shrill sounds and dozens of unexpected crises that all had to be attended to at once.
The new residents stood in a protective huddle, getting attuned to their new environment, listening to the arcane sounds around them.
Paige, Kat, and Honey were waiting in the corridor when a senior resident approached them. “Which one of you is Dr. Taft?”
Honey looked up and said, “I am.”
The resident smiled and held out his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’ve been asked to look out for you. Our chief of staff says that you have the highest medical school grades this hospital has ever seen. We’re delighted to have you here.”
Honey smiled, embarrassed. “Thank you.”
Kat and Paige looked at Honey in astonishment. Iwouldn’t have guessed she was that brilliant, Paige thought.
“You’re planning to go into internal medicine, Dr. Taft?”
“Yes.”
The resident turned to Kat. “Dr. Hunter?”
“Yes.”
“You’re interested in neurosurgery.”
“I am.”
He consulted a list. “You’ll be assigned to Dr. Lewis.”
The resident looked over at Paige. “Dr. Taylor?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going into cardiac surgery.”
“That’s right.”
“Fine. We’ll assign you and Dr. Hunter to surgical rounds. You can report to the head nurse’s office. Margaret Spencer. Down the hall.”
“Thank you.”
Paige looked at the others and took a deep breath. “Here I go! I wish us all luck!”
The head nurse, Margaret Spencer, was more a battleship than a woman, heavyset and stern-looking, with a brusque manner. She was busy behind the nurses’ station when Paige approached.
“Excuse me …”
Nurse Spencer looked up. “Yes?”
“I was told to report here. I’m Dr. Taylor.”
Nurse Spencer consulted a sheet. “Just a moment.” She walked through a door and returned a minute later with some scrubs and white coats.
“Here you are. The scrubs are to wear in the operating theater and on rounds. When you’re doing rounds, you put a white coat over the scrubs.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh. And here.” She reached down and handed Paige a metal tag that read “Paige Taylor, M.D.” “Here’s your name tag, doctor.”
Paige held it in her hand and looked at it for a long time. Paige Taylor, M.D. She felt as though she had been handed the Medal of Honor. All the long hard years of work and study were summed up in those brief words. Paige Taylor, M.D.
Nurse Spencer was watching her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Paige smiled. “I’m just fine, thank you. Where do I …?”
“Doctors’ dressing room is down the corridor to the left. You’ll be making rounds, so you’ll want to change.”
“Thank you.”
Paige walked down the corridor, amazed at the amount of activity around her. The corridor was crowded with doctors, nurses, technicians, and patients, hurrying to various destinations. The insistent chatter of the public address system added to the din.
“Dr. Keenan … OR Three …. Dr. Keenan … OR Three.”
“Dr. Talbot … Emergency Room One. Stat … Dr. Talbot … Emergency Room One. Stat.”
“Dr. Engel … Room 212 …. Dr. Engel … Room 212.”
Paige approached a door marked DOCTORS’ DRESSING ROOM and opened it. Inside there were a dozen doctors in various stages of undress. Two of them were totally naked. They turned to stare at Paige as the door opened.
“Oh! I … I’m sorry,” Paige mumbled, and quickly closed the door. She stood there, uncertain about what to do. A few feet down the corridor, she saw a door marked NURSES’ DRESSING ROOM. Paige walked over to it and opened the door. Inside, several nurses were changing into their uniforms.
One of them looked up. “Hello. Are you one of the new nurses?”
“No,” Paige said tightly. “I’m not.” She closed the door and walked back to the doctors’ dressing room. She stood there a moment, then took a deep breath and entered. The conversation came to a stop.
One of the men said, “Sorry, honey. This room is for doctors.”
“I’m a doctor,” Paige said.
They turned to look at one another. “Oh? Well, er … welcome.”
“Thank you.” She hesitated a moment, then walked over to an empty locker. The men watched as she put her hospital clothes into the locker. She looked at the men for a moment, then slowly started to unbutton her blouse.
The doctors stood there, not sure what to do. One of them said, “Maybe we should—er—give the little lady some privacy, gentlemen.”
The little lady! “Thank you,” Paige said. She stood there, waiting, as the doctors finished dressing and left the room. Am I going to have to go through this every day? she wondered.
In hospital rounds, there is a traditional formation that never varies. The attending physician is always in the lead, followed by the senior resident, then the other residents, and one or two medical students. The attending physician Paige had been assigned to was Dr. William Radnor. Paige and five other residents were gathered in the hallway, waiting to meet him.
In the group was a young Chinese doctor. He held out his hand. “Tom Chang,” he said. “I hope you’re all as nervous as I am.”
Paige liked him immediately.
A man was approaching the group. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Dr. Radnor.” He was soft-spoken, with sparkling blue eyes. Each resident introduced himself.
“This is your first day of rounds. I want you to pay close attention to everything you see and hear, but at the same time, it’s important to appear relaxed.”
Paige made a mental note. Pay close attention, but appear to be relaxed.
“If the patients see that you’re tense, they’re going to be tense, and they’ll probably think they’re dying of some disease you aren’t telling them about.”
Don’t make patients tense.
“Remember, from now on, you’re going to be responsible for the lives of other human beings.”
Now responsible for other lives. Oh, my God!
The longer Dr. Radnor talked, the more nervous Paige became, and by the time he was finished, her self-confidence had completely vanished. I’m not ready for this! she thought. I don’t know what I’m doing. Who ever said I could be a doctor? What if I kill somebody?
Dr. Radnor was going on, “I will expect detailed notes on each one of your patients—lab work, blood, electrolytes, everything. Is that clear?”
There were murmurs of “Yes, doctor.”
“There are always thirty to forty surgical patients here at one time. It’s your job to make sure that everything is properly organized for them. We’ll start the morning rounds now. In the afternoon, we’ll make the same rounds again.”
It had all seemed so easy at medical school. Paige thought about the four years she had spent there. There had been one hundred and fifty students, and only fifteen women. She would never forget the first day of Gross Anatomy class. The students had walked into a large white tiled room with twenty tables lined up in rows, each table covered with a yellow sheet. Five students were assigned to each table.
The professor had said, “All right, pull back the sheets.” And there, in front of Paige, was her first cadaver. She had been afraid that she would faint or be sick, but she felt strangely calm. The cadaver had been preserved, which somehow removed it one step from humanity.
In the beginning the students had been hushed and respectful in the anatomy laboratory. But, incredibly to Paige, within a week, they were eating sandwiches during the dissections, and making rude jokes. It was a form of self-defense, a denial of their own mortality. They gave the corpses names, and treated them like old friends. Paige tried to force herself to act as casually as the other students, but she found it difficult. She looked at the cadaver she was working on, and thought: Here was a man with a home and a family. He went to an office every day, and once a year he took a vacation with his wife and children. He probably loved sports and enjoyed movies and plays, and he laughed and cried, and he watched his children grow up and he shared their joys and their sorrows, and he had big, wonderful dreams. I hope they all came true … A bittersweet sadness engulfed her because he was dead and she was alive.
In time, even to Paige, the dissections became routine. Open the chest, examine the ribs, lungs, pericardial sac covering the heart, the veins, arteries, and nerves.
Much of the first two years of medical school was spent memorizing long lists that the students referred to as the Organ Recital. First the cranial nerves: olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, auditory, glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal, and hypoglossal.
The students used mnemonics to help them remember. The classic one was “On old Olympus’s towering tops, aFrench and German vended some hops.“ The modern male version was ”Oh, oh, oh, to touch and feel a girl’s vagina—such heaven.”
The last two years of medical school were more interesting, with courses in internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics, and they worked at the local hospital. I remember the time … Paige was thinking.
“Dr. Taylor …” The senior resident was staring at her.
Paige came to with a start. The others were already halfway down the corridor.
“Coming,” she said hastily.
The first stop was at a large, rectangular ward, with rows of beds on both sides of the room, with a small stand next to each bed. Paige had expected to see curtains separating the beds, but here there was no privacy.
The first patient was an elderly man with a sallow complexion. He was sound asleep, breathing heavily. Dr. Radnor walked over to the foot of the bed, studied the chart there, then went to the patient’s side and gently touched his shoulder. “Mr. Potter?”
The patient opened his eyes. “Huh?”
“Good morning. I’m Dr. Radnor. I’m just checking to see how you’re doing. Did you have a comfortable night?”
“It was okay.”
“Do you have any pain?”
“Yeah. My chest hurts.”
“Let me take a look at it.”
When he finished the examination, he said, “You’re doing fine. I’ll have the nurse give you something for the pain.”
“Thanks, doctor.”
“We’ll be back to see you this afternoon.”
They moved away from the bed. Dr. Radnor turned to the residents. “Always try to ask questions that have a yes or no answer so the patient doesn’t tire himself out. And reassure him about his progress. I want you to study his chart and make notes. We’ll come back here this afternoon to see how he’s doing. Keep a running record of every patient’s chief complaint, present illness, past illnesses, family history, and social history. Does he drink, smoke, etc.? When we make the rounds again, I’ll expect a report on the progress of each patient.”
They moved on to the bed of the next patient, a man in his forties.
“Good morning, Mr. Rawlings.”
“Good morning, doctor.”
“Are you feeling better this morning?”
“Not so good. I was up a lot last night. My stomach’s hurting.”
Dr. Radnor turned to the senior resident. “What did the proctoscopy show?”
“No sign of any problem.”
“Give him a barium enema and an upper GI, stat.”
The senior resident made a note.
The resident standing next to Paige whispered in her ear, “I guess you know what stat stands for. �Shake that ass, tootsie!’ ”
Dr. Radnor heard. “ �Stat’ comes from the Latin, statim. Immediately.”
In the years ahead, Paige was to hear it often.
The next patient was an elderly woman who had had a bypass operation.
“Good morning, Mrs. Turkel.”
“How long are you going to keep me in here?”
“Not very long. The procedure was a success. You’ll be going home soon.”
And they moved on to the next patient.
The routine was repeated over and over, and the morning went by swiftly. They saw thirty patients. After each patient, the residents frantically scribbled notes, praying that they would be able to decipher them later.
One patient was a puzzle to Paige. She seemed to be in perfect health.
When they had moved away from her, Paige asked, “What’s her problem, doctor?”
Dr. Radnor sighed. “She has no problem. She’s a gomer. And for those of you who forgot what you were taught in medical school, gomer is an acronym for �Get out of my emergency room!’ Gomers are people who enjoy poor health. That’s their hobby. I’ve admitted her six times in the last year.”
They moved on to the last patient, an old woman on a respirator, who was in a coma.
“She’s had a massive heart attack,” Dr. Radnor explained to the residents. “She’s been in a coma for six weeks. Her vital signs are failing. There’s nothing more we can do for her. We’ll pull the plug this afternoon.”
Paige looked at him in shock. “Pull the plug?”
Dr. Radnor said gently, “The hospital ethics committee made the decision this morning. She’s a vegetable. She’s eighty-seven years old, and she’s brain-dead. It’s cruel to keep her alive, and it’s breaking her family financially. I’ll see you all at rounds this afternoon.”
They watched him walk away. Paige turned to look at the patient again. She was alive. In a few hours she will be dead. We’ll pull the plug this afternoon.
That’s murder! Paige thought.
Chapter Three (#ulink_0f6eb772-3c2d-5343-a977-46a29086627d)
That afternoon, when the rounds were finished, the new residents gathered in the small upstairs lounge. The room held eight tables, an ancient black-and-white television set, and two vending machines that dispensed stale sandwiches and bitter coffee.
The conversations at each table were almost identical.
One of the residents said, “Take a look at my throat, will you? Does it look raw to you?”
“I think I have a fever. I feel lousy.”
“My abdomen is swollen and tender. I know I have appendicitis.”
“I’ve got this crushing pain in my chest. I hope to God I’m not having a heart attack!”
Kat sat down at a table with Paige and Honey. “How did it go?” she asked.
Honey said, “I think it went all right.”
They both looked at Paige. “I was tense, but I was relaxed. I was nervous, but I stayed calm.” She sighed. “It’s been a long day. I’ll be glad to get out of here and have some fun tonight.”
“Me, too,” Kat agreed. “Why don’t we have dinner and then go see a movie?”
“Sounds great.”
An orderly approached their table. “Dr. Taylor?”
Paige looked up. “I’m Dr. Taylor.”
“Dr. Wallace would like to see you in his office.”
The hospital administrator! What have I done? Paige wondered.
The orderly was waiting. “Dr. Taylor …”
“I’m coming.” She took a deep breath and got to her feet. “I’ll see you later.”
“This way, doctor.”
Paige followed the orderly into an elevator and rode up to the fifth floor, where Dr. Wallace’s office was located.
Benjamin Wallace was seated behind his desk. He glanced up as Paige walked in. “Good afternoon, Dr. Taylor.”
“Good afternoon.”
Wallace cleared his throat. “Well! Your first day and you’ve already made quite an impression!”
Paige looked at him, puzzled. “I … I don’t understand.”
“I hear you had a little problem in the doctors’ dressing room this morning.”
“Oh.” So, that’s what this is all about!
Wallace looked at her and smiled. “I suppose I’ll have to make some arrangements for you and the other girls.”
“We’re …” We’re not girls, Paige started to say. “We would appreciate that.”
“Meanwhile, if you don’t want to dress with the nurses …”
“I’m not a nurse,” Paige said firmly. “I’m a doctor.”
“Of course, of course. Well, we’ll do something about accommodations for you, doctor.”
“Thank you.”
He handed Paige a sheet of paper. “Meanwhile, this is your schedule. You’ll be on call for the next twenty-four hours, starting at six o’clock.” He looked at his watch. “That’s thirty minutes from now.”
Paige was looking at him in astonishment. Her day had started at five-thirty that morning. “Twenty-four hours?”
“Well, thirty-six, actually. Because you’ll be starting rounds again in the morning.”
Thirty-six hours! I wonder if I can handle this.
She was soon to find out.
Paige went to look for Kat and Honey.
“I’m going to have to forget about dinner and a movie,” Paige said. “I’m on a thirty-six-hour call.”
Kat nodded. “We just got our bad news. I go on it tomorrow, and Honey goes on Wednesday.”
“It won’t be so bad,” Paige said cheerfully. “I understand there’s an on-call room to sleep in. I’m going to enjoy this.”
She was wrong.
An orderly was leading Paige down a long corridor.
“Dr. Wallace told me that I’ll be on call for thirty-six hours,” Paige said. “Do all the residents work those hours?”
“Only for the first three years,” the orderly assured her.
Great!
“But you’ll have plenty of chance to rest, doctor.”
“I will?”
“In here. This is the on-call room.” He opened the door, and Paige stepped inside. The room resembled a monk’s cell in some poverty-stricken monastery. It contained nothing but a cot with a lumpy mattress, a cracked wash basin, and a bedside stand with a telephone on it. “You can sleep here between calls.”
“Thanks.”
The calls began as Paige was in the coffee shop, just starting to have her dinner.
“Dr. Taylor … ER Three … Dr. Taylor … ER Three.”
“We have a patient with a fractured rib …”
“Mr. Henegan is complaining of chest pains …”
“The patient in Ward Two has a headache. Is it all right to give him an acetaminophen …?”
At midnight, Paige had just managed to fall asleep when she was awakened by the telephone.
“Report to ER One.” It was a knife wound, and by the time Paige had taken care of it, it was one-thirty in the morning. At two-fifteen she was awakened again.
“Dr. Taylor … Emergency Room Two. Stat.”
Paige said, groggily, “Right.” What did he say it meant? Shake that ass, tootsie. She forced herself up and moved down the corridor to the emergency room. A patient had been brought in with a broken leg. He was screaming with pain.
“Get an X-ray,” Paige ordered. “And give him Demerol, fifty milligrams.” She put her hand on the patient’s arm. “You’re going to be fine. Try to relax.”
Over the PA system, a metallic disembodied voice said, “Dr. Taylor … Ward Three. Stat.”
Paige looked at the moaning patient, reluctant to leave him.
The voice came on again, “Dr. Taylor … Ward Three. Stat.”
“Coming,” Paige mumbled. She hurried out the door and down the corridor to Ward Three. A patient had vomited, aspirated, and was choking.
“He can’t breathe,” the nurse said.
“Suction him,” Paige ordered. As she watched the patient begin to catch his breath, she heard her name again on the PA system. “Dr. Taylor … Ward Four. Ward Four.” Paige shook her head and ran down to Ward Four, to a screaming patient with abdominal spasms. Paige gave him a quick examination. “It could be intestinal dysfunction. Get an ultrasound,” Paige said.
By the time she returned to the patient with the broken leg, the pain reliever had taken effect. She had him moved to the operating room and set the leg. As she was finishing, she heard her name again. “Dr. Taylor, report to Emergency Room Two. Stat.”
“The stomach ulcer in Ward Four is having a pain …”
At 3:30 A.M.: “Dr. Taylor, the patient in Room 310 is hemorrhaging …”
There was a heart attack in one of the wards, and Paige was nervously listening to the patient’s heartbeat when she heard her name called over the PA system: “Dr. Taylor … ER Two. Stat … Dr. Taylor … ER Two. Stat.”
I must not panic, Paige thought. I’ve got to remain calm and cool. She panicked. Who was more important, the patient she was examining, or the next patient? “You stay here,” she said inanely. “I’ll be right back.”
As Paige hurried toward ER Two, she heard her name called again. “Dr. Taylor … ER One. Stat … Dr. Taylor … ER One. Stat.”
Oh, my God! Paige thought. She felt as though she were caught up in the middle of some endless terrifying nightmare.
During what was left of the night, Paige was awakened to attend to a case of food poisoning, a broken arm, a hiatal hernia, and a fractured rib. By the time she stumbled back into the on-call room, she was so exhausted that she could hardly move. She crawled onto the little cot and had just started to doze off when the telephone rang again.
She reached out for it with her eyes closed. “H’lo …”
“Dr. Taylor, we’re waiting for you.”
“Wha’?” She lay there, trying to remember where she was.
“Your rounds are starting, doctor.”
“My rounds?” This is some kind of bad joke, Paige thought. It’s inhuman. They can’t work anyone like this! But they were waiting for her.
Ten minutes later, Paige was making the rounds again, half asleep. She stumbled against Dr. Radnor. “Excuse me,” she mumbled, “but I haven’t had any sleep …”
He patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. “You’ll get used to it.”
When Paige finally got off duty, she slept for fourteen straight hours.
The intense pressure and punishing hours proved to be too much for some of the residents, and they simply disappeared from the hospital. That’s not going to happen to me, Paige vowed.
The pressure was unrelenting. At the end of one of Paige’s shifts, thirty-six grueling hours, she was so exhausted that she had no idea where she was. She stumbled to the elevator and stood there, her mind numb.
Tom Chang came up to her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Paige mumbled.
He grinned. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks. Why do they do this to us?” Paige asked.
Chang shrugged. “The theory is that it keeps us in touch with our patients. If we go home and leave them, we don’t know what’s happening to them while we’re gone.”
Paige nodded. “That makes sense.” It made no sense at all. “How can we take care of them if we’re asleep on our feet?”
Chang shrugged again. “I don’t make the rules. It’s the way all hospitals operate.” He looked at Paige more closely. “Are you going to be able to make it home?”
Paige looked at him and said haughtily, “Of course.”
“Take care.” Chang disappeared down the corridor.
Paige waited for the elevator to arrive. When it finally came, she was standing there, sound asleep.
Two days later, Paige was having breakfast with Kat.
“Do you want to hear a terrible confession?” Paige asked. “Sometimes when they wake me up at four o’clock in the morning to give somebody an aspirin, and I’m stumbling down the hall, half conscious, and I pass the rooms where all the patients are tucked in and having a good night’s sleep, I feel like banging on all the doors and yelling, �Everybody wake up!’ ”
Kat held out her hand. “Join the club.”
The patients came in all shapes, sizes, ages, and colors. They were frightened, brave, gentle, arrogant, demanding, considerate. They were human beings in pain.
Most of the doctors were dedicated people. As in any profession, there were good doctors and bad doctors. They were young and old, clumsy and adept, pleasant and nasty. A few of them, at one time or another, made sexual advances to Paige. Some were subtle and some were crude.
“Don’t you ever feel lonely at night? I know that I do. I was wondering …”
“These hours are murder, aren’t they? Do you know what I find gives me energy? Good sex. Why don’t we …?”
“My wife is out of town for a few days. I have a cabin near Carmel. This weekend we could …”
And the patients.
“So you’re my doctor, eh? You know what would cure me …?”
“Come closer to the bed, baby. I want to see if those are real …”
Paige gritted her teeth and ignored them all. When Alfred and I are married, this will stop. And just the thought of Alfred gave her a glow. He would be returning from Africa soon. Soon.
At breakfast one morning before rounds, Paige and Kat talked about the sexual harassment they were experiencing.
“Most of the doctors behave like perfect gentlemen, but a few of them seem to think we’re perks that go with the territory, and that we’re there to service them,” Kat said. “I don’t think a week goes by but what one of the doctors hits on me. �Why don’t you come over to my place for a drink? I’ve got some great CDs.’ Or in the OR, when I’m assisting, the surgeon will brush his arm across my breast. One moron said to me, �You know, whenever I order chicken, I like the dark meat.’ ”
Paige sighed. “They think they’re flattering us by treating us as sex objects. I’d rather they treated us as doctors.”
“A lot of them don’t even want us around. They either want to fuck us or they want to fuck us. You know, it’s not fair. Women are judged inferior until we prove ourselves, and men are judged superior until they prove what assholes they are.”
“It’s the old boys’ network,” Paige said. “If there were more of us, we could start a new girls’ network.”
Paige had heard of Arthur Kane. He was the subject of constant gossip around the hospital. His nickname was Dr. 007—licensed to kill. His solution to every problem was to operate, and he had a higher rate of operations than any other doctor at the hospital. He also had a higher mortality rate.
He was bald, short, hawk-nosed, with tobacco-stained teeth, and was grossly overweight. Incredibly, he fancied himself a ladies’ man. He liked to refer to the new nurses and female residents as “fresh meat.”
Paige Taylor was fresh meat. He saw her in the upstairs lounge and sat down at her table, uninvited.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”
Paige looked up, startled. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m Dr. Kane. My friends call me Arthur.” There was a leer in his voice.
Paige wondered how many friends he had.
“How are you getting along here?”
The question caught Paige off-guard. “I … all right, I think.”
He leaned forward. “This is a big hospital. It’s easy to get lost here. Do you know what I mean?”
Paige said warily, “Not exactly.”
“You’re too pretty to be just another face in the crowd. If you want to get somewhere here, you need someone to help you. Someone who knows the ropes.”
The conversation was getting more unpleasant by the minute.
“And you’d like to help me.”
“Right.” He bared his tobacco-stained teeth. “Why don’t we discuss it at dinner?”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” Paige said. “I’m not interested.”
Arthur Kane watched Paige get up and walk away, and there was a baleful expression on his face.
First-year surgical residents were on a two-month rotation schedule, alternating among obstetrics, orthopedics, urology, and surgery.
Paige learned that it was dangerous to go into a training hospital in the summer for any serious illness, because many of the staff doctors were on vacation and the patients were at the mercy of the inexperienced young residents.
Nearly all surgeons liked to have music in the operating room. One of the doctors was nicknamed Mozart and another Axl Rose because of their tastes in music.
For some reason, operations always seemed to make everyone hungry. They constantly discussed food. A surgeon would be in the middle of removing a gangrenous gall bladder from a patient and say, “I had a great dinner last night at Bardelli’s. Best Italian food in all of San Francisco.”
“Have you eaten the crab cakes at the Cypress Club …?”
“If you like good beef, try the House of Prime Rib over on Van Ness.”
And meanwhile, a nurse would be mopping up the patient’s blood and guts.
When they weren’t talking about food, the doctors talked about baseball or football scores.
“Did you see the 49ers play last Sunday? I bet they miss Joe Montana. He always came through for them in the last two minutes of a game.”
And out would come a ruptured appendix.
Kafka, Paige thought. Kafka would have loved this.
At three in the morning, when Paige was asleep in the on-call room, she was awakened by the telephone.
A raspy voice said, “Dr. Taylor—Room 419—a heart attack patient. You’ll have to hurry!” The line went dead.
Paige sat on the edge of the bed, fighting sleep, and stumbled to her feet. You have to hurry! She went into the corridor, but there was no time to wait for an elevator. She rushed up the stairs and ran down the fourth-floor corridor to Room 419, her heart pounding. She flung open the door and stood there, staring.
Room 419 was a storage room.
Kat Hunter was making her rounds with Dr. Richard Hutton. He was in his forties, brusque and fast. He spent no more than two or three minutes with each patient, scanning their charts, then snapping out orders to the surgical residents in a machine-gun, staccato fashion.
“Check her hemoglobin and schedule surgery for tomorrow …”
“Keep a close eye on his temperature chart …”
“Cross-match four units of blood …”
“Remove these stitches …”
“Get some chest films ….”
Kat and the other residents were busily making notes on everything, trying hard to keep up with him.
They approached a patient who had been in the hospital a week and had had a battery of tests for a high fever, with no results.
When they were out in the corridor, Kat asked, “What’s the matter with him?”
“It’s a GOK,” a resident said. “A God only knows. We’ve done X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, spinal taps, liver biopsy. Everything. We don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
They moved into a ward where a young patient, his head bandaged after an operation, was sleeping. As Dr. Hutton started to unwrap the head dressing, the patient woke up, startled. “What … what’s going on?”
“Sit up,” Dr. Hutton said curtly. The young man was trembling.
I’ll never treat my patients that way, Kat vowed.
The next patient was a healthy-looking man in his seventies. As soon as Dr. Hutton approached the bed, the patient yelled, “Gonzo! I’m going to sue you, you dirty son of a bitch.”
“Now, Mr. Sparolini …”
“Don’t Mr. Sparolini me! You turned me into a fucking eunuch.”
That’s an oxymoron, Kat thought.
“Mr. Sparolini, you agreed to have the vasectomy, and—”
“It was my wife’s idea. Damn bitch! Just wait till I get home.”
They left him muttering to himself.
“What’s his problem?” one of the residents asked.
“His problem is that he’s a horny old goat. His young wife has six kids and she doesn’t want any more.”
The next patient was a little girl, ten years old. Dr. Hutton looked at her chart. “We’re going to give you a shot to make the bad bugs go away.”
A nurse filled a syringe and moved toward the little girl.
“No!” she screamed. “You’re going to hurt me!”
“This won’t hurt, baby,” the nurse assured her.
The words were a dark echo in Kat’s mind.
This won’t hurt, baby … It was the voice of her stepfather whispering to her in the scary dark.
“This will feel good. Spread your legs. Come on, you little bitch!” And he had pushed her legs apart and forced his male hardness into her and put his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming with the pain. She was thirteen years old. After that night, his visits became a terrifying nightly ritual. “You’re lucky you got a man like me to teach you how to fuck,” he would tell her. “Do you know what a Kat is? A little pussy. And I want some.” And he would fall on top of her and grab her, and no amount of crying or pleading would make him stop.
Kat had never known her father. Her mother was a cleaning woman who worked nights at an office building near their tiny apartment in Gary, Indiana. Kat’s stepfather was a huge man who had been injured in an accident at a steel mill, and he stayed home most of the time, drinking. At night, when Kat’s mother left for work, he would go into Kat’s room. “You say anything to your mother or brother, and I’ll kill him,” he told Kat. I can’t let him hurt Mike, Kat thought. Her brother was five years younger than she, and Kat adored him. She mothered him and protected him and fought his battles for him. He was the only bright spot in Kat’s life.
One morning, terrified as Kat was by her stepfather’s threats, she decided she had to tell her mother what was happening. Her mother would put a stop to it, would protect her.
“Mama, your husband comes to my bed at night when you’re away, and forces himself on me.”
Her mother stared at her a moment, then slapped Kat hard across the face.
“Don’t you dare make up lies like that, you little slut!”
Kat never discussed it again. The only reason she stayed at home was because of Mike. He’d be lost without me, Kat thought. But the day she learned she was pregnant, she ran away to live with an aunt in Minneapolis. The day Kat ran away from home, her life completely changed.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” her Aunt Sophie had said. “But from now on, you’re going to stop running away. You know that song they sing on Sesame Street? �It’s Not Easy Being Green’? Well, honey, it’s not easy being black, either. You have two choices. You can keep running and hiding and blaming the world for your problems, or you can stand up for yourself and decide to be somebody important.”
“How do I do that?”
“By knowing that you’re important. First, you get an image in your mind of who you want to be, child, and what you want to be. And then you go to work, becoming that person.”
I’m not going to have his baby, Kat decided. “I want an abortion.”
It was arranged quietly, during a weekend, and it was performed by a midwife who was a friend of Kat’s aunt. When it was over, Kat thought fiercely, I’m never going to let a man touch me again. Never!
Minneapolis was a fairyland for Kat. Within a few blocks of almost every home were lakes and streams and rivers. And there were over eight thousand acres of landscaped parks. She went sailing on the city lakes and took boat rides on the Mississippi.
She visited the Great Zoo with Aunt Sophie and spent Sundays at the Valleyfair Amusement Park. She went on the hay rides at Cedar Creek Farm, and watched knights in armor jousting at the Shakopee Renaissance Festival.
Aunt Sophie watched Kat and thought, The girl has never had a childhood.
Kat was learning to enjoy herself, but Aunt Sophie sensed that deep inside her niece was a place that no one could reach, a barrier she had set up to keep her from being hurt again.
She made friends at school. But never with boys. Her girlfriends were all dating, but Kat was a loner, and too proud to tell anyone why. She looked up to her aunt, whom she loved very much.
Kat had taken little interest in school, or in reading books, but Aunt Sophie changed all that. Her home was filled with books, and Sophie’s excitement about them was contagious.
“There are wonderful worlds in there,” she told the young girl. “Read, and you’ll learn where you came from and where you’re going. I’ve got a feeling that you’re going to be famous one day, baby. But you have to get an education first. This is America. You can become anybody you want to be. You may be black and poor, but so were some of our congresswomen, and movie stars, and scientists, and sports legends. One day we’re going to have a black president. You can be anything you want to be. It’s up to you.”
It was the beginning.
Kat became the top student in her class. She was an avid reader. In the school library one day, she happened to pick up a copy of Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith, and she was fascinated by the story of the dedicated young doctor. She read Agnes Cooper’s Promises to Keep, and Woman Surgeon by Dr. Else Roe, and it opened up a whole new world for Kat. She discovered that there were people on this earth who devoted themselves to helping others, to saving lives. When Kat came home from school one day, she said to Aunt Sophie, “I’m going to be a doctor. A famous one.”
Chapter Four (#ulink_861c2ae9-deeb-52fc-859a-a55f9ecd4dd2)
On Monday morning, three of Paige’s patients’ charts were missing, and Paige was blamed.
On Wednesday, Paige was awakened at 4:00 A.M. in the on-call room. Sleepily, she picked up the telephone. “Dr. Taylor.”
Silence.
“Hello … hello.”
She could hear breathing at the other end of the line. And then there was a click.
Paige lay awake for the rest of the night.
In the morning, Paige said to Kat, “I’m either becoming paranoid or someone hates me.” She told Kat what had happened.
“Patients sometimes get grudges against doctors,” Kat said. “Can you think of anyone who …?”
Paige sighed. “Dozens.”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
Paige wished that she could believe it.
In the late summer, the magic telegram arrived. It was waiting for Paige when she returned to the apartment late at night. It read: “Arriving San Francisco noon Sunday. Can’t wait to see you. Love, Alfred.”
He was finally on his way back to her! Paige read the telegram again and again, her excitement growing each time. Alfred! His name conjured up a tumbling kaleidoscope of exciting memories …
Paige and Alfred had grown up together. Their fathers were part of a medical cadre of WHO that traveled to Third World countries, fighting exotic and virulent diseases. Paige and her mother accompanied Dr. Taylor, who headed the team.
Paige and Alfred had had a fantasy childhood. In India, Paige learned to speak Hindi. At the age of two, she knew that the name for the bamboo hut they lived in was basha. Her father was gorasahib, a white man, and she was nani, a little sister. They addressed Paige’s father as abadhan, the leader, or baba, father.
When Paige’s parents were not around, she drank bhanga, an intoxicating drink made with hashish leaves, and ate chapati with ghi.
And then they were on their way to Africa. Off to another adventure!
Paige and Alfred became used to swimming and bathing in rivers that had crocodiles and hippopotamuses. Their pets were baby zebras and cheetahs and snakes. They grew up in windowless round huts made of wattle and daub, with packed dirt floors and conical thatched roofs. Someday, Paige vowed to herself, I’m going to live in a real house, a beautiful cottage with a green lawn and a white picket fence.
To the doctors and nurses, it was a difficult, frustrating life. But to the two children, it was a constant adventure, living in the land of lions, giraffes, and elephants. They went to primitive cinder-block school-houses, and when none was available, they had tutors.
Paige was a bright child, and her mind was a sponge, absorbing everything. Alfred adored her.
“I’m going to marry you one day, Paige,” he said when she was twelve, he fourteen.
“I’m going to marry you, too, Alfred.”
They were two serious children, determined to spend the rest of their lives together.
The doctors from WHO were selfless, dedicated men and women who devoted their lives to their work. They often worked under nearly impossible circumstances. In Africa, they had to compete with wogesha—the native medical practitioners whose primitive remedies were passed on from father to son, and often had deadly effects. The Masai’s traditional remedy for flesh wounds was olkilorite, a mixture of cattle blood, raw meat, and essence of a mysterious root.
The Kikuyu remedy for smallpox was to have children drive out the sickness with sticks.
“You must stop that,” Dr. Taylor would tell them. “It doesn’t help.”
“Better than having you stick sharp needles in our skin,” they would reply.
The dispensaries were tables lined up under the trees, for surgery. The doctors saw hundreds of patients a day, and there was always a long line waiting to see them—lepers, natives with tubercular lungs, whooping cough, smallpox, dysentery.
Paige and Alfred were inseparable. As they grew older, they would walk to the market together, to a village miles away. And they would talk about their plans for the future.
Medicine was a part of Paige’s early life. She learned to care for patients, to give shots and dispense medications, and she anticipated ways to help her father.
Paige loved her father. Curt Taylor was the most caring, selfless man she had ever known. He genuinely liked people, dedicating his life to helping those who needed him, and he instilled that passion in Paige. In spite of the long hours he worked, he managed to find time to spend with his daughter. He made the discomfort of the primitive places they lived in fun.
Paige’s relationship with her mother was something else. Her mother was a beauty from a wealthy social background. Her cool aloofness kept Paige at a distance. Marrying a doctor who was going to work in far-off exotic places had seemed romantic to her, but the harsh reality had embittered her. She was not a warm, loving woman, and she seemed to Paige always to be complaining.
“Why did we ever have to come to this godforsaken place, Curt?”
“The people here live like animals. We’re going to catch some of their awful diseases.”
“Why can’t you practice medicine in the United States and make money like other doctors?”
And on and on it went.
The more her mother criticized him, the more Paige adored her father.
When Paige was fifteen years old, her mother disappeared with the owner of a large cocoa plantation in Brazil.
“She’s not coming back, is she?” Paige asked.
“No, darling. I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad!” She had not meant to say that. She was hurt that her mother had cared so little for her and her father that she had abandoned them.
The experience made Paige draw even closer to Alfred Turner. They played games together and went on expeditions together, and shared their dreams.
“I’m going to be a doctor, too, when I grow up,” Alfred confided. “We’ll get married, and we’ll work together.”
“And we’ll have lots of children!”
“Sure. If you like.”
On the night of Paige’s sixteenth birthday, their lifelong emotional intimacy exploded into a new dimension. At a little village in East Africa, the doctors had been called away on an emergency, because of an epidemic, and Paige, Alfred, and a cook were the only ones left in camp.
They had had dinner and gone to bed. But in the middle of the night Paige had been awakened in her tent by the faraway thunder of stampeding animals. She lay there, and as the minutes went by and the sound of the stampede came closer, she began to grow afraid. Her breath quickened. There was no telling when her father and the others would return.
She got up. Alfred’s tent was only a few feet away. Terrified, Paige got up, raised the flap of the tent, and ran to Alfred’s tent.
He was asleep.
“Alfred!”
He sat up, instantly awake. “Paige? Is anything wrong?”
“I’m frightened. Could I get into bed with you for a while?”
“Sure.” They lay there, listening to the animals charging through the brush.
In a few minutes, the sounds began to die away.
Alfred became conscious of Paige’s warm body lying next to him.
“Paige, I think you’d better go back to your tent.”
Paige could feel his male hardness pressing against her.
All the physical needs that had been building up within them came boiling to the surface.
“Alfred.”
“Yes?” His voice was husky.
“We’re getting married, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s all right.”
And the sounds of the jungle around them disappeared, and they began to explore and discover a world no one had ever possessed but themselves. They were the first lovers in the world, and they gloried in the wonderful miracle of it.
At dawn, Paige crept back to her tent and she thought, happily, I’m a woman now.
From time to time, Curt Taylor suggested to Paige that she return to the United States to live with his brother in his beautiful home in Deerfield, north of Chicago.
“Why?” Paige would ask.
“So that you can grow up to be a proper young lady.”
“I am a proper young lady.”
“Proper young ladies don’t tease wild monkeys and try to ride baby zebras.”
Her answer was always the same. “I won’t leave you.”
When Paige was seventeen, the WHO team went to a jungle village in South Africa to fight a typhoid epidemic. Making the situation even more perilous was the fact that shortly after the doctors arrived, war broke out between two local tribes. Curt Taylor was warned to leave.
“I can’t, for God’s sake. I have patients who will die if I desert them.”
Four days later, the village came under attack. Paige and her father huddled in their little hut, listening to the yelling and the sounds of gunfire outside.
Paige was terrified. “They’re going to kill us!”
Her father had taken her in his arms. “They won’t harm us, darling. We’re here to help them. They know we’re their friends.”
And he had been right.
The chief of one of the tribes had burst into the hut with some of his warriors. “Do not worry. We guard you.” And they had.
The fighting and shooting finally stopped, but in the morning Curt Taylor made a decision.
He sent a message to his brother. Sending Paige out on next plane. Will wire details. Please meet her at airport.
Paige was furious when she heard the news. She was taken, sobbing wildly, to the dusty little airport where a Piper Cub was waiting to fly her to a town where she could catch a plane to Johannesburg.
“You’re sending me away because you want to get rid of me!” she cried.
Her father held her close in his arms. “I love you more than anything in the world, baby. I’ll miss you every minute. But I’ll be going back to the States soon, and we’ll be together again.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Alfred was there to see Paige off. “Don’t worry,” Alfred told Paige. “I’ll come and get you as soon as I can. Will you wait for me?”
It was a pretty silly question, after all those years. “Of course I will.”
Three days later, when Paige’s plane arrived at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, Paige’s Uncle Richard was there to greet her. Paige had never met him. All she knew about him was that he was a very wealthy businessman whose wife had died several years earlier. “He’s the successful one in the family,” Paige’s father always said.
Paige’s uncle’s first words stunned her. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Paige, but I just received word that your father was killed in a native uprising.”
Her whole world had been shattered in an instant. The ache was so strong that she did not think she could bear it. I won’t let my uncle see me cry, Paige vowed. I won’t. I never should have left. I’m going back there.
Driving from the airport, Paige stared out the window, looking at the heavy traffic.
“I hate Chicago.”
“Why, Paige?”
“It’s a jungle.”
Richard would not permit Paige to return to Africa for her father’s funeral, and that infuriated her.
He tried to reason with her. “Paige, they’ve already buried your father. There’s no point in your going back.”
But there was a point: Alfred was there.
A few days after Paige arrived, her uncle sat down with her to discuss her future.
“There’s nothing to discuss,” Paige informed him. “I’m going to be a doctor.”
At twenty-one, when Paige finished college, she applied to ten medical schools and was accepted by all of them. She chose a school in Boston.
It took two days to reach Alfred by telephone in Zaire, where he was working part-time with a WHO unit.
When Paige told him the news, he said, “That’s wonderful, darling. I’m nearly finished with my medical courses. I’ll stay with WHO for a while, but in a few years we’ll be practicing together.”
Together. The magical word.
“Paige, I’m desperate to see you. If I can get out for a few days, could you meet me in Hawaii?”
There wasn’t the slightest hesitation. “Yes.”
And they had both managed it. Later, Paige could only imagine how difficult it must have been for Alfred to make the long journey, but he never mentioned it.
They spent three incredible days at a small hotel in Hawaii, called Sunny Cove, and it was as though they had never been apart. Paige wanted so much to ask Alfred to go back to Boston with her, but she knew how selfish that would have been. The work that he was doing was far more important.
On their last day together, as they were getting dressed, Paige asked, “Where will they be sending you, Alfred?”
“Gambia, or maybe Bangladesh.”
To save lives, to help those who so desperately need him. She held him tightly and closed her eyes. She never wanted to let him go.
As though reading her thoughts, he said, “I’ll never let you get away.”
Paige started medical school, and she and Alfred corresponded regularly. No matter in what part of the world he was, Alfred managed to telephone Paige on her birthday and at Christmas. Just before New Year’s Eve, when Paige was in her second year of school, Alfred telephoned.
“Paige?”
“Darling! Where are you?”
“I’m in Senegal. I figured out it’s only eighty-eight hundred miles from the Sunny Cove hotel.”
It took a minute for it to sink in.
“Do you mean …?”
“Can you meet me in Hawaii for New Year’s Eve?”
“Oh, yes! Yes!”
Alfred traveled nearly halfway around the world to meet her, and this time the magic was even stronger. Time had stood still for both of them.
“Next year I’ll be in charge of my own cadre at WHO,” Alfred said. “When you finish school, I want us to get married …”
They were able to get together once more, and when they weren’t able to meet, their letters spanned time and space.
All those years he had worked as a doctor in Third World countries, like his father and Paige’s father, doing the wonderful work that they did. And no, at last, he was coming home to her.
As Paige read Alfred’s telegram for the fifth time, she thought, He’s coming to San Francisco!
Kat and Honey were in their bedrooms, asleep. Paige shook them awake. “Alfred’s coming! He’s coming! He’ll be here Sunday!”
“Wonderful,” Kat mumbled. “Why don’t you wake me up Sunday? I just got to bed.”
Honey was more responsive. She sat up and said, “That’s great! I’m dying to meet him. How long since you’ve seen him?”
“Two years,” Paige said, “but we’ve always stayed in touch.”
“You’re a lucky girl,” Kat sighed. “Well, we’re all awake now. I’ll put on some coffee.”
The three of them sat around the kitchen table.
“Why don’t we give Alfred a party?” Honey suggested. “Kind of a �Welcome to the Groom’ party.”
“That’s a good idea,” Kat agreed.
“We’ll make it a real celebration—a cake, balloons—the works!”
“We’ll cook dinner for him here,” Honey said.
Kat shook her head. “I’ve tasted your cooking. Let’s send out for food.”
Sunday was four days away, and they spent all their spare time discussing Alfred’s arrival. By some miracle, the three of them were off duty on Sunday.
Saturday, Paige managed to get to a beauty salon. She went shopping and splurged on a new dress.
“Do I look all right? Do you think he’ll like it?”
“You look sensational!” Honey assured her. “I hope he deserves you.”
Paige smiled. “I hope I deserve him. You’ll love him. He’s fantastic!”
On The Sunday, an elaborate lunch they had ordered was laid out on the dining-room table, with a bottle of iced champagne. The women stood around, nervously waiting for Alfred’s arrival.
At two o’clock, the doorbell rang, and Paige ran to the door to open it. There was Alfred. A bit tired-looking, a little thinner. But he was her Alfred. Standing next to him was a brunette who appeared to be in her thirties.
“Paige!” Alfred exclaimed.
Paige threw her arms around him. Then she turned to Honey and Kat and said proudly, “This is Alfred Turner. Alfred, these are my roommates, Honey Taft and Kat Hunter.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Alfred said. He turned to the woman at his side. “And this is Karen Turner. My wife.”
The three women stood there, frozen.
Paige said slowly, “Your wife?”
“Yes.” He frowned. “Didn’t … didn’t you get my letter?”
“Letter?”
“Yes. I sent it several weeks ago.”
“No …”
“Oh. I … I’m terribly sorry. I explained it all in my … but of course, if you didn’t get the …” His voice trailed off … “I’m really sorry, Paige. You and I have been apart so long, that I … and then I met Karen … and you know how it is …”
“I know how it is,” Paige said numbly. She turned to Karen and forced a smile. “I … I hope you and Alfred will be very happy.”
“Thank you.”
There was an awkward silence.
Karen said, “I think we had better go, darling.”
“Yes. I think you had,” Kat said.
Alfred ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m really sorry, Paige. I … well … goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Alfred.”
The three women stood there, watching the departing newlyweds.
“That bastard!” Kat said. “What a lousy thing to do.”
Paige’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I … he didn’t mean to … I mean … he must have explained everything in his letter.”
Honey put her arms around Paige. “There ought to be a law that all men should be castrated.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Kat said.
“Excuse me,” Paige said. She hurried to her bedroom and closed the door behind her.
She did not come out for the rest of the day.
Chapter Five (#ulink_3cc6eb0e-0543-5241-a197-a819f07d02e2)
During the next few months, Paige saw very little of Kat and Honey. They would have a hurried breakfast in the cafeteria and occasionally pass one another in the corridors. They communicated mainly by leaving notes in the apartment.
“Dinner is in the fridge.”
“The microwave is out.”
“Sorry, I didn’t have time to clean up.”
“What about the three of us having dinner out Saturday night?”
The impossible hours continued to be a punishment, testing the limits of endurance for all the residents.
Paige welcomed the pressure. It gave her no time to think about Alfred and the wonderful future they had planned together. And yet, she could not get him out of her mind. What he had done filled her with a deep pain that refused to go away. She tortured herself with the futile game of “what if?”
What if I had stayed with Alfred in Africa?
What if he had come to Chicago with me?
What if he had not met Karen?
What if …?
On a Friday when Paige went into the change room to put on her scrubs, the word “bitch” had been written on them with a black marker pen.
The following day when Paige went to look for her scut book, it was gone. All her notes had disappeared. Maybe I misplaced it,
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