Authors: Katherine Stone
“Keep in touch, Katie.”
Ross hung up the phone just as Janet walked in the door, smiling, her cheeks rosy from her brisk walk and the cool October ocean breeze.
“Who was that?” she asked, smiling, kissing him on the lips.
“It was Kathleen.”
“Oh! How’s she?”
“All right, I guess,” Ross said unconvincingly, obviously concerned. He was not sure that he wanted to tell Janet, but he was unable to forget the pain in Kathleen’s voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“Something about Mark being moody and withdrawn,” Ross said with a sigh.
“Oh,” Janet said sympathetically. “That’s too bad. I know how she feels.”
“Do you know why he acts that way?” Ross asked. Maybe Janet would tell him something that would help Kathleen. Something he could tell Kathleen.
“I have a theory,” Janet said slowly, thoughtfully, remembering. “I think Mark doesn’t really want to be a doctor. And I think it torments him.”
“If he doesn’t want to be a doctor, why doesn’t he just quit?” Ross asked, a little impatiently. Ross didn’t do things that he didn’t want to do. Not without a very good reason. He didn’t really want to live in Janet’s too tiny, country cottage, but he did because Janet was a very good reason.
“It’s not that easy.”
“Sure it is,” Ross interjected firmly.
Janet smiled thoughtfully at him. “You see things so clearly,” she said, teasing him gently.
“I just don’t have much tolerance for indecisive adults.”
“I know. I don’t think it’s a question of indecision, because there weren’t any choices. From the moment Mark was born, he was destined to be the best” Janet said, smiling sadly.
“The best,” Ross mused quietly, wondering if this had anything to do with Janet’s insistence that being the best, even though she was, didn’t matter to her.
“Mark was, is, the best at everything he does. He was raised to be and now it is part of him. The compulsion and the drive and the expectations are within him.”
“I have no argument with people wanting to be the best,” Ross said irritably, his impatience surfacing again. “But why doesn’t he quit medicine and become the best at something he likes?”
“I think Mark actually believes that being a doctor is the best. He has spent all of his life—all of it!—preparing to be a doctor, the best doctor. Now he’s there and he hates it. It’s a tremendous failure, and Mark doesn’t fail,” Janet said, frowning.
He failed you, Ross thought without venom. Ross had met Mark a few times. He liked him, respected him. Ross cared deeply about both the women who had fallen in love with Mark. As he listened to Janet, Ross became more sympathetic.
A failed marriage. A career, the
only
career, that had failed somehow. It quickly added up to a failed life. Mark had to start making choices.
“He’s not a good doctor?” Ross asked.
“Leslie says he’s a wonderful doctor. The best. He just hates it and it torments him.”
“He has to get out,” Ross said emphatically, surprised by his own sudden concern. He has to get out for Kathleen’s sake, he realized. And for his own.
“I know. It’s so easy for us to see that. It seems so obvious. I don’t think we have any idea how difficult it would be for Mark to quit. Maybe impossible. It’s hard to give up something you’ve believed in all your life,” Janet said thoughtfully, carefully. “Something that is your life, part of who you are. It’s like giving up on yourself.”
I know how hard I tried to convince myself that my marriage could work, she thought. Even long after I knew it was over. I know how much I was willing to suffer before, finally, giving up on us. Giving up on Mark.
Ross and Janet sat in silence for a few moments.
“Does Leslie know?” Ross asked finally.
“Ross, when I left Mark, he didn’t know. It was just my theory. But,” she added, “I think that Leslie does know. Now.”
Janet sighed and reached for Ross’s hand.
“We are so lucky,” Janet said.
Ross pulled her close to him and stroked her silky hair.
“So lucky,” she repeated as she curled against him. “Until the new owner decides to stop renting the cottage!”
“He’ll probably never decide that,” Ross said. “This place is too small anyway.”
“Do you think so?” she teased, feigning surprise. Ross complained almost daily about the tiny cottage. He needed floor space to spread his scripts; he needed his piano; he needed his stereo system. “Maybe someday we could buy a bigger place in the country.”
“Buy a place together?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said softly, realizing what she had just told him.
“Would you do that with someone if you weren’t married to him?”
“No,” she whispered, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistening. It was what she wanted. It didn’t scare her. It made her happy. If only he wanted it, too.
“Janet?” he asked carefully.
“What?” she asked, smiling, radiant.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, of course.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
Then Ross began to laugh.
“Ross!” she exclaimed. “Why are we laughing?”
“Because, in your—our—musicals at this point you sing a lovely song and wander off to bed with whomever.”
“That sounds wonderful, as long as whomever is
you.”
“But we have something much more important to do,” he said very seriously.
“We do? What?”
“We have to move. Into a bigger house with a bigger bedroom. Right now. Come on,” he said, pushing her gently off his lap.
“Where?” she asked. Was it possible?
“Just a mile down the road.”
“Ross. Really?
You
bought the house?”
“I did. It cost a pretty penny, too. And since the prettiest of my pennies are paying the salary of one beautiful, talented—”
“Are you marrying me for my money?” Janet asked with innocent, glistening eyes.
“You bet. For your half of the mortgage.”
“‘For your half of the mortgage.’ What a wonderful title for a love song,” she said dreamily as she followed him toward the door. “The house is furnished?”
Ross stopped, spun around and shook his head, smiling sheepishly.
“Maybe we should move in tomorrow,” Janet teased gently, lovingly.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Let’s go back to the traditional wandering off to bed with whomever then,” he said, taking her with him.
“To the tiniest bedroom in the world? With the man I love?” she asked seriously, kissing his lips hungrily.
“I love you, Janet.”
Two hours after Mark left San Francisco General Hospital to return to Atherton, Leslie was paged to the pediatric intensive care unit.
“Hi, Leslie, this is Bruce Franklin. We just had a seven year old boy admitted with profound hypoglycemia and coma. It will probably turn out to be Reye Syndrome, but there are some atypical features. Do you have time to stop by? We could use your input.”
“Sure. I’m a long way away from my last pediatrics rotation.”
“I know, but this may be an adult illness appearing in a child. We could really use your opinion.”
“I’ll be right there.”
The boy lay motionless in the bed. He could have been asleep. His eyes were closed, but his long dark lashes didn’t flutter. He wasn’t asleep.
He was in a coma, his breathing supported by a mechanical ventilator, his blood pressure maintained by medications that dripped in carefully measured, carefully timed drops into his tiny blue veins.
“It could be Reye Syndrome, Les, except that he was apparently completely well until today. No antecedent illness at all. And his liver enzymes are normal. His mother tried to wake him from a nap this afternoon, but he didn’t wake up. His serum glucose was twelve. His spinal tap, except for the low sugar, is normal.”
Leslie approached the boy, closely examining his face. Then, lifting the covers, she examined his small body. The pediatricians watched in silence, witnessing her expression change from professional, thoughtful concern to outright horror.
“He wasn’t well yesterday, Bruce,” she said flatly. “He’s cachectic. He has no fat and very little muscle mass. He’s severely malnourished, don’t you think? He must have a chronic illness.”
“We agree, Leslie,” Bruce said carefully. “He doesn’t look like a healthy little boy, but his mother says he was outside playing, as usual, yesterday.”
“Is she reliable?”
“Seems very concerned. Anything else?”
“Well, he has abrasions on his wrists and ankles,” she said. As she spoke, Leslie lifted his frail, thin arms to look at the abrasions on both wrists. Without realizing the implication of what she was doing, she crossed the wrists, laying one on top of the other. The abrasions, abrasions that could have been caused by rubbing, met at the point where the bones of the forearms crossed each other. Leslie put the arms down quickly and looked at the ankles. The pattern of the abrasions was the same, caused by rubbing at the point where the bones crossed.
“Oh, Bruce,” she whispered.
Bruce nodded.
“He was tied up, wasn’t he?” Leslie asked in horror, realizing that Bruce and the others suspected it, too. She was their independent observer, their second opinion. “And starved.”
“And murdered,” one of the residents said.
“Can’t you save him?” Leslie asked.
“We’re trying, Leslie. He’s on maximal pressors and his pressure is still low. He has renal failure. He probably has hepatic failure, even though his enzymes are normal. He just doesn’t have any viable hepatocytes left. We’re giving him everything we’ve got,” Bruce said, the emotion now evident in his voice.
“Do you think it’s the mother?” Leslie asked, incredulous. Child abuse was a disease the pediatricians saw. Internists saw the ravages of self-abuse—drugs, tobacco, alcohol, obesity—but they rarely saw innocent victims. How could it be this little boy’s mother?
“It almost has to be. When the medics arrived, he was in a bed looking like a child taking a nap, and she’s the one who insists that he was outside playing yesterday. We know that can’t be true.”
“The father?”
“Apparently they’re divorced. She has custody and a boyfriend who also seems very concerned.”
“So what do you do?”
“We try to save his life. And we call the police. They may want to talk to you, Leslie.”
“That’s fine. Bruce, have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“We see it a lot, Leslie.”
As Leslie drove to Eric’s penthouse in Pacific Heights at four-thirty the next afternoon, she thought about what had happened. She was interviewed by the police. She saw the mother and her boyfriend, well-dressed, well-groomed, in tears as the police interviewed them. She watched the little boy die despite heroic resuscitative efforts. She thought about what Mark had said, about spending your life dealing with sadness and death and tragedy, about being consumed by it.
She was consumed by the horror of what she had witnessed last night. She had spent the night trying to understand how a human being could do that to another human being, how a mother could do that to her child. It was impossible for her to imagine, but it was real. The memory, the feeling in her stomach and her heart, would never leave her.
“You look exhausted, darling,” Eric said, holding his arms out to her as she entered the penthouse.
Usually, despite her fatigue, Leslie was able to smile for Eric, to feel the rush of excitement at being with him again, but today there was no joy as she fell into his arms. Today she felt relief to be with him, to feel his warmth, his love, but she felt no joy.
The abused little boy was still with her. Her heart was full of him.
Leslie began to cry, silently, burying her head against Eric’s chest.
“Leslie? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head.
“Tell me,” he said warily, kissing the top of her head, catching strands of chestnut hair in his mouth.
Leslie hesitated. She knew that Eric didn’t like to hear about her patients. They never discussed it, but he always seemed a little distant when she told him specific details about a patient. It didn’t matter if the story was sad or happy. He was always polite; but he didn’t ask questions, and he didn’t seem interested. He always changed the subject as soon as possible.
It was something they needed to discuss sometime when they were both rested. In Hawaii, Leslie had already decided. She needed to know why Eric didn’t want to hear about her work. It wasn’t a small issue. Medicine was a part of her life, part of her. What if someday something so horrible happened that she needed to talk to him? Needed his support?
And now it had happened. She needed to tell him—to tell someone—and he was the man she loved. She was too tired and too upset to discuss the issue first.
“I have to tell you, Eric,” she said, almost apologetically. She heard the apprehension in his voice. And the love.