F Paul Wilson - Novel 02 (4 page)

 
          
"Will
do."

 
          
But
Gerry's interest was piqued. It might be nothing, doubtless was nothing, but
he'd keep an eye out for any other Lathram patients who wound up in the morgue.

 
          
Just
for the sheer hell of it.

 
          
"SURGERY DR. PANZELLA?"

           
Gin sat before a computer terminal,
completing a pre-op physical, summarizing her evaluation of a patient's
cardiopulmonary status and suitability for surgery. At least that was what she
was supposed to be doing. Actually she was staring at the screen ruminating
about yesterday's disaster at Marsden's office and that officious little, Don't
think about it.

 
          
She
looked up. A young black woman, dressed in surgical scrubs and cap, had poked
her head and upper body through the door of the record room and was looking at
her expectantly.

 
          
'"He's
ready to scrub," said Joanna, the surgicenter's OR nurse.

 
          
"Be
right there," Gin said.

 
          
She
hit F10 to save the H and P, jotted down the file name so she could finish it
later, and headed upstairs for the operating suite. Even on a V.I.P morning,
with only one very important patient, Duncan Lathram did not like to be kept
waiting. She hustled.

 
          
Not
that she had that far to go. Lathram Surgical Associates sounded like a
multicenter medical group, but actually it was one surgeon at one location in
Chevy Chase. That location was an old single-story stone building, somewhat
Gothic looking, that had once been a bank.

 
          
Duncan
Lathram and his brother Oliver, also a doctor, but a PhD in pharmacology, had
maintained the old facade while completely gutting and refitting the interior
into a state-of-the-art prlyate surgicenter.

 
          
The
main floor offered a two-room operating suite, a large recovery room with six
cubicles, a private V.I.P recovery room, an examination/consultation room, and
Duncan's office. The records room, lounge, and Oliver's lab took up the basement.

 
          
Gin
rushed into the scrub room, shucked her white coat, tucked her unruly black
hair under a disposable cap, and joined
Duncan
at the sink.

 
          
His
forearms were already coated with tan lather.

 
          
"Morning,
Duncan
." Since her first day here he'd insisted
that since she was now a full-fledged physician, she must call him by his first
name, "Call me Doctor Lathram once more and you're fired." But she
had to make a conscious effort to say
Duncan
. He'd been her hero since she was ten.

 
          
He
grunted and nodded absently as he continued working the Betadine into his skin
with the disposable brush.

 
          
Hmmm.
Preoccupied this morning.

 
          
Gin
watched him out of the corner of her eye as she adjusted the water temperature
with the foot controls and began her own scrub. Assisting Duncan Lathram at
surgery, still hard to believe it was true. Simply being alongside him like
this never failed to give her a warm tingle.

 
          
She'd
been working with him for months now and still marveled at how good he looked
for a man of sixty-two. Neat as the proverbial pin, with dark, glossy,
perfectly combed hair graying at the temples, piercing blue eyes over a
generous nose set in a longish, rugged face that creased deeply when he smiled,
which wasn't all that often. Six feet, maybe six-one, with a weathered Gary
Cooper-Randolph Scott look, more like a saddle hand than a plastic surgeon.
Long, lean, and close to the bone, a rack of baby-back ribs.

 
          
The
image made her smile and took her back to her childhood when she worked in the
family's Italian deli and meat market. Her dad made a practice then, still did,
no doubt, of labeling certain customers with the names of cuts of meat or one
of his Italian specialty dishes. Mrs. Fusco, who always had to touch
everything, was a calatnan, potbellied Mr. Prizzi was a pork loin, Mrs.
Bellini, who'd always leave her shopping list home and could never remember
what she needed, was capozella, and once when he'd thought she was in the front
of the store, Gin had heard Dad ask one of the butchers if he'd got a load of
the cannolis on Mrs. Phillips.

 
          
Little
Gin adopted the practice and began categorizing the kids she knew by cuts of
meat. Duncan Lathram was definitely a rack of baby-backs.

 
          
But
Duncan
's hands didn't quite go with the rest of
him, long, delicate, agile fingers that could perform miracles, do medical
origami with human tissues.

 
          
She
felt awkward even thinking it, but the old guy was sexy.

 
          
Listen
to me, she thought. He's older than my dad.

 
          
But
no getting around it, Duncan Lathram was an attractive man. Not that she felt
any libidinous tugs toward him. God, no. But from a purely esthetic standpoint,
he was pretty hot for an old dude.

 
          
Must
be our history, she thought. We go back a long way. And I've got the scars to
prove it.

 
          
The
big guy was quiet today.
Duncan
almost always had something to talk about. A news junkie. Read all the
District papers, plus the Baltimore San and the northern
Virginia
rags. Had them strewn all over his office
every morning. Never missed MacNeil/Lehrer and Meet the Press.

 
          
And
never failed to find something to tick him off.

 
          
Duncan
had his Permanently-Ticks-Me-Off list and
his Ticks-Me-Off-Today list. Always had something to talk about.

 
          
But
not today.

 
          
The
silence was starting to get to Gin.

 
          
"Hear
about Senator Schulz?" she said.

 
          
She
thought he seemed to stiffen at the name.

 
          
"Schulz?"
Duncan
's voice was smooth, deeply melodic.
"What about him?"

           
"According to the TV there's
rumors that his cause of death is being investigated."

           
Duncan
began to rinse the honey-colored foam from
his arms and hands. "The scuttlebutt on Schulz is that he jumped. And with
reason. He was, please excuse the demotic crookeder than most, and his scams
were unraveling."
Duncan
shook his head sadly. "Twenty stories straight down, flat on his
face." He sighed. "All that exceptional plastic work, all those hours
of toil, wasted."

 
          
"
Duncan
!"

 
          
"Well,
it's true. If I'd known defenestration was in his future, I wouldn't have taken
such pains with him." Gin thought she was used to his dark sense of humor,
so often skating along the line between mordant and sick. But sometimes he did
veer over the line.

 
          
He
pressed his elbow against a chrome disk in the wall and the OR doors swung
open. "Hurry up. Another of the kakistocracy's finest awaits us." Gin
glanced at the clock. Another minute to go with her scrub.

 
          
She
felt a warm flush as she remembered yesterday's chance encounter with Gerry
Canney, and wondered if he'd call. Not the end of the world if he didn't, but
it would certainly be nice. She reviewed the obscure words she'd collected to
spring on
Duncan
today, and then her thoughts probed the
enigma that was Duncan Lathram.

 
          
When
they first met nineteen years ago he wasn't a plastic surgeon.

 
          
At
age ten she woke up in a hospital with everything hurting.

 
          
Struggling
through the maze of her jumbled thoughts was the memory of horsing around with
two of the neighborhood boys, proving to them that she could ride a bike as
well as they could, and matching any dare they wanted to try. Suddenly she was
in the middle of
Lee Highway
with a panel truck screeching and swerving toward her. She remembered
the pale blurs of the driver's bared teeth and wide, shocked, terrified eyes
through the dirty windshield as he stood on his brake pedal and tried to miss
her.

 
          
Pain
shoved the memories aside . . . pain and fear ... Where was her mama and who
were these strange people bustling around her? Who was this big doctor bending
over her and pressing his fingers into her tummy? Some deep part of her
subconscious must have felt her life slipping away. She remembered asking him
if she was going to die, and how he'd looked so shocked that she was conscious.
Most of all she remembered the giant doctor going down on one knee beside the
gurney so that his face was only inches from hers, squeezing her hand and
saying, "Not if I've got anything to say about it. And around here, what I
say goes." Something about his supreme confidence soothe her. She believed
him.

 
          
She
closed her eyes and slipped back into unconsciousness .

 
          
That
big doctor had been Duncan Lathram. And Duncan Lathram had been a vascular
surgeon then. Not just a run-of the-mill type who spent his days doing
varicose-vein strippings, but a gonzo with a scalpel, unafraid to take on any
vascular catastrophe, the messier the better.

 
          
Like
hers. The impact with the truck had ruptured her spleen and torn her renal
artery.
Duncan
had removed her spleen and repaired the
gushing artery, saving her kidney and her life.

 
          
Gin
remembered being absolutely infatuated with the man. He became a demigod in her
eyes. From age ten on she sent him a card every Christmas. Even went to work
for him at sixteen as a part-time clerk in the record room of his office in
Alexandria
. She learned how hard he worked, putting in
fourteen- and sixteen-hour days in the hospital and office, and often being
called to the emergency at one or two in the morning to repair leaking or
severed arteries damaged by everything from atherosclerosis to car wrecks to
knife fights. He could be gruff, self-absorbed, even arrogant at times, but Gin
didn't mind. After all, wasn't that part of being a demigod? His stamina amazed
her, his dedication and boundless enthusiasm for his work inspired her so much
that when she registered as a freshman at
Princeton
, she chose premed biology as her major. The
course of her life had been set.

 
          
Eleven
years later she returned to the D. C. area as a board eligible internist and
was shocked to learn that Duncan Lathram was no longer the gung-ho, life-saving
surgical whirlwind she had left behind, somehow he had metamorphosed into a
cosmetic surgeon who devoted his abbreviated workdays to prettifying the rich
and powerful of
Washington
society.

 
          
From
gonzo to dilettante, or something close to a dilettante. What had happened
during those seven years? Gin had tried to piece it together but got nowhere.
No one who knew was talking. Only Gin seemed to care. Something was missing.
Duncan
used to fight bleeders, now he fought
wrinkles. If he'd been specializing in tummy tucks instead of vascular repair
nineteen years ago, she might not be here today. So Gin's perspective differed
from all the youth-chasing ninnies who flocked to
Duncan
to help them turn back the clock. They
worshiped this man who could help them escape the unsightly dues that nature ,
nurture, genetics, and lifestyle demanded they pay.