Doctored (29 page)

Errant thoughts were racing through my head, flitting away like tiny minnows before I could grasp them. What is happening to me? Maybe I am depressed, or perhaps I am going mad; I don't know. I want to regain some control, but the reality is that there is very little one can control in life. I find it hard to accept that, to let things go, to let things be, to see beauty in the obstacles, the denials, the thwarting of your goals and ambitions, to accept things as they are, as having their own kind of beauty and logic.

A strange feeling had settled over me like a film of perspiration. At times it would well up inside me like fluid filling a cavern, and as I would fill up, my neck and shoulders would get tight, and it would flow over my eyes, and that was when I felt most out of control. The fount would gush forth at the most inopportune times, and I could not control it, no matter how hard I tried. Dr. Adams, the psychiatrist I'd been seeing for the past few months, asked me to describe it as I faced him squarely in his tiny office on the Upper West Side.

“It's like butterflies in the belly,” I said. “It isn't anger. Perhaps it's anxiety that I cannot express the anger.”

“Why the anxiety?”

“I don't know, but I am waking up with it and the workday hasn't even begun. How do I make it stop?”

I had become a slave to my circumstances. Dad was, too, for most of his life, but he didn't experience the anxiety, just the darkness. I used to be so happy when Dad was happy. I didn't want that to be the case for Mohan. I didn't want his happiness to depend on me. I had adopted so many of Dad's traits: paranoia, brooding, reluctant embrace of responsibility, a tendency to blame others for one's own problems. Of course, I took on some good qualities, like commitment and perseverance—but, unfortunately, also self-righteousness, melancholy, insecurity, inflexibility. Recognizing this didn't make it any easier, though. Perhaps what I was grieving over most was the inability to overcome my limitations.

The following day I finally got to spend some one-on-one time with Mohan. “Did you have a good dream or a bad dream?” I asked him when he woke up.

“I had”—he mulled over the answer—“a funny dream! A doggy came to my house. I loved it.”

We spent the morning at the inn. The clouds had cleared, and the sun was shining brightly. Mohan and I tossed water balloons on the lawn. We visited a nearby petting farm. We swung together on a hammock strung between two trees.

“I want to go forward, not backward.”

“That's forward, too, Mohan. Another forward.”

“Another forward?”

“Yes, another forward. You want to try?”

“Uh-kay!”

In the afternoon we went down to Old Harbor and had ice-cream cones while Sonia window-shopped. A band was playing at a tavern across the street. Mohan jiggled in my arms to the music. We watched as the ferry brought in another group of travelers. “It was a bad boat, Dadda,” he reminded me. “It was a bad ride!”

That night, as a storm again raged, he settled next to me on a rocking love seat on the porch. Resting on my shoulder, his big head was a weight of stability and contentment. At that moment, nothing else seemed to matter. All the sacrifices in my life seemed worthwhile. I nuzzled him, smudging the lenses of my spectacles. I rubbed my stubbly cheek on his neck and shoulder. He giggled.

“This whole town is a pool,” he declared.

“You're right,” I said. “That's funny.”

We stared into pitch. Water streamed in rivulets off the awning. Flowerpots were swinging wildly as the sky roared, periodically issuing electrical discharges into the blackness. Like me, Mohan seemed to find the storm relaxing. Clutching his hand, I could almost feel it vibrating, as if he were possessed of some otherworldly spirit. I palmed his cranium, squeezing it softly the way my father used to whenever I had a fever. He looked up at me and smiled, his tiny teeth arrayed like two rows of Chiclets. I wanted to be around him every single moment of his life. Marriage, I told myself, is the price of admission to the amusement park that is Mohan.

No doubt our marriage had suffered in the four years since he was born; it had slowly, inexorably turned into an anxious wait to be disappointed. My mind had been going over old issues, old arguments, regurgitating the nasty things that were said, the old irritations. The stress of the financial situation and the moonlighting, adding to the pressure of my regular job and the ongoing guilt of not spending enough time with my patients, my colleagues, or my family, led to a state of chronic edginess and angry outbursts. When I'd come home, I'd feel stressed, unhappy. I didn't want to talk, but it was impossible to avoid interaction in our shoebox apartment. And when I told Sonia any of this, it inevitably led to more conflict. “The way you reacted yesterday with obvious seething anger makes me wonder what good are these sessions with Dr. Adams,” she once said.

“What do you want me to say? Tell me what you want me to say, and I'll say it.”

“I want to let go of resentments and live in the present moment, Sandeep. I'm being beaten down by all this.”

“Can we please stop having these discussions in front of Mohan?”

“What do you want me to do, Sandeep? Mohan, stop it! We are living lives of quiet desperation. I've been trying to tell you, but it doesn't seem to bother you.”

I had almost forgotten the way things used to be: the secret smiles, the tenderness. What had happened to those times? Were they a figment of my imagination? Perhaps they were, and the true reality was exposed only after we became parents. I had been a success at everything I'd tried: physics, medicine, fatherhood. Except perhaps at being a husband. But entropy is an inexorable force. It takes two to have a healthy relationship but only one to screw it up.

I was constantly fantasizing about living my life all over again. It felt as if all the big adventures were finished and now I was just running out the clock. I was having dreams that I had never gotten married, never become a doctor or husband or father. I was going through the motions, searching for something, but I didn't know what. No doubt I was following a script. But character is destiny. There is only so much you can do to overcome the constraints of your biology.

On the porch I looked down at Mohan. A tear trickled down the bridge of my nose. Deep love is always mixed with a tinge of sadness because of the constant threat of its evaporating and the knowledge that it is short-lived, that it will all be over one day.

“Dadda, you're sad.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Yes, you are. You have that sad look on your face.”

I forced a smile. “Give me a kiss.” He brushed his soft lips gently on my cheek. It tickled.

“Why do you have to go to the office?”

“You know why.”

“Why?”

“You know.”

“Money?”

I laughed. “Yes.”

“So we can have money to buy lunch and clothes and toys?”

I had to smile. “Yeah!”

“But if you need money, you can just go to the bank.”

“And if you don't have money in the bank?”

He thought for a moment. “Then you have to sit on a chair or a piece of wood and say”—his voice suddenly got deeper—“‘I want some money. Give me some money, please.'”

Again I laughed. “Let's go,” I said.

He stood up. “You can't pass unless you answer my riddle,” he said. I nodded. He paused for a moment. “What has hair, swings from branch to branch, and goes
ooh ooh ooh ooh
?”

“Monkey?”

“Yes.” Lightning crackled. “What's big and strong and stomps like this?” He held out his arm and made a trumpet sound.

“Elephant.”

“Right! Okay, what runs fast in the dark and has hair and is really strong and scary?”

“Lion?”

“No.”

“Is it a bird or an animal?”

“Animal.”

“I give up.”

“Monster!”

After putting Mohan to bed, I went to the bathroom. I looked into a mirror, one of those concave reflecting surfaces that magnify your reflection, your flaws and imperfections. I started brushing my teeth. Sonia came in. I still hadn't told her what had happened with Chaudhry (though I did as soon as we returned home). There was a long silence, as if we were trying to think of something to say. Finally she said: “I think we should floss more. It's the next best thing to going to a dentist.”

 

PART III

ADJUSTMENT

 

FOURTEEN

Deception

We don't want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives.

—Ernest Becker,
The Denial of Death
, 1973

There is one thing that is liberating about middle age. Time is limited. You're old enough to realize that life is finite but still young enough to act on that knowledge. But how to make the most of the time you are allotted? How do you find meaning in an existence you know is going to end? If life is a guaranteed tragedy, what prevents us from sinking into hopelessness, whiling away our time till our time comes?

Perhaps it's children. For many of us, children are our legacy, and what are we striving to do in this world more than bequeathing a piece of ourselves? The anthropologist Ernest Becker argues that anxiety over death is the most powerful force affecting human behavior. He says we deny our certain mortality by accruing symbolic victories of enduring value: conquering an empire, building a temple, writing a book. We strive for heroism as a means of denying our eventual fate. And in the vast array of possible immortality projects, perhaps none is as powerful as having children. Kids help you learn to accept your mortality because you start to love something more than yourself. Our selfishness consumes us. Children can rescue us from this fate.

In many ways my children have been the redeeming grace of my middle years thus far. They are the reason I've compromised and also my salvation from the distress of compromise.

*   *   *

When I finally told Rajiv that Chaudhry had let me go, he of course blamed me. “You should have listened,” he said sadly. “It was easy money. Now what the hell are you going to do?”

We were sitting in my office with the door closed. I yawned, trying to feign a lack of concern, but in reality I was petrified. The savings that Sonia and I had put away from the past two years of moonlighting were dwindling rapidly, and we were expecting our second child to boot. “I could try talking to him again,” I said. “I could go to Richmond Hill on Sundays when he doesn't want to work.”

“He's not going to take you back,” Rajiv barked, obviously frustrated. He didn't need to remind me that the hospital had been providing malpractice coverage for my work with Chaudhry. Now, if I were going to moonlight someplace else, I'd have to purchase my own part-time policy—roughly $17,000 a year—which I couldn't afford. Perhaps the best option now, Rajiv suggested, was to do private practice full-time. Before I could respond, his mobile phone rang. “Hello! Rajiv!” He listened for a few seconds. “Oh, yes, boss,” he said pleasantly. “How are you, boss?” Then he stood up and walked out.

Feeling desperate, I phoned Malik, the physician who performed Chaudhry's treadmill tests. By then I had learned that Malik, though occasionally helpful, was a bit of a con artist. He had earned a medical degree in Pakistan but hadn't passed the American board exams, so he wasn't certified to practice independently (that was why he was working for Chaudhry and other physicians). He possessed a sort of worldly weariness, an international playboy charm masquerading as sincerity. He always said yes in the moment, deciding to worry later about the consequences of false promises. Like a politician, he rarely answered the question you posed, just the one he wanted to answer. But one often continues a farce for the sake of a friendship.

“You have to learn how to play the game,” Malik told me, trying to explain how I could get back into Chaudhry's good graces. “Your brother knows how to play the game. When he's with a Muslim, he says
salaam alaikum
. When he sees a Sikh, he says
sat sri akal.
Rajiv, Amir, they understand that medicine has become a business. You have to be friendly to have a chance to be successful.”

“I'm not friendly?” I blurted out, sounding pathetic even to myself.

“No, you're friendly,” Malik said, though I could tell he was lying. “It just takes you time to open up.”

I heard him starting the treadmill. “You have to meet Amir face-to-face,” he said, as the heavy pounding of a patient's feet began to reverberate in my earpiece. “Ask him what you need to change so you can go back to working every other Saturday. See, you don't know how to manipulate a situation. If he asks you why internists are not sending you patients, appeal to his ego. Tell him, ‘They don't want to send us patients because they are jealous of you.'”

I figured anything, even groveling, was worth a try. “So how is Amir's office running without me?” I asked tentatively.

“It's busy,” Malik replied. “He is looking to hire someone, even though he still has Ali,” the physician's assistant.

“What about the echos?”

“Still piled up on his desk. He reads at night. He goes in on weekends. But a lot of the time he's behind.”

That Chaudhry's office was operating a bit less smoothly without me was a small but tangible satisfaction. I heard the treadmill speeding up. “So call him,” Malik said. “You have nothing to lose. Remember, he is your brother's best friend.”

I phoned Chaudhry the following day. I wanted to meet in person, so he invited me to his home on Long Island. I drove there on a Saturday afternoon in the early summer. It was a stately house in Oyster Bay with manicured lawns and a pool and a tennis court about a mile from where Rajiv lived. I parked in the semicircular driveway. Giant gargoyle planters adorned the front porch. His eldest daughter let me in. Waiting in the ornate foyer while she went to get her father, I noticed a wooden plaque inscribed with gold Arabic letters. Underneath was written: “Even if you don't understand them, these words will ease your daily stress and bring additional income from unknown sources.”