Michael Palmer - Flashback

Dartmouth-trained and a member of the Ultramed-Davis staff for almost two years, she was thirty-three or thirty-four, divorced, and the mother of a six-year-old girl. In addition, she was co-owner, along with another divorcee in town, of a small art gallery and crafts shop Zack had tried, with little success, for a more subjective assessment of the woman, but Frank, distracted and anxious to leave, had completely missed the point. Now, as he sat alone, Zack wondered if it was worth waiting any longer for the woman to finish her work in the unit and, as she had promised, stop by for "a hit of decaf." The nurses had told him that it was not that uncommon for Suzanne, as they called her, to spend the night in the hospital if she had a particularly sick patient, and this night — with Annie and her pacemaker case-she had two Who are you? What are you doing up here?

The state of infatuation with a woman was not something with which Zack was all that familiar or comfortable. A bookworm throughout his college years, and a virgin until his junior year, he had had a reasonable number of dates, and a few short-lived romances after Lisette, but no prolonged relationships until Connie. He had once described his social life in college as a succession of calls to women the day after they had met someone special. Connie was five years younger than he, but possessed a worldliness and sophistication that he felt were missing from his life. She had an MBA degree from Northwestern, a management-track position at one of the big downtown companies, a condo in the Back Bay, a silver BMW, friends in the symphony, and an interest in impressionist painters ("Pissarro has more depth, more energy in one brush stroke, than Renoir has in a dozen canvases, don't you think? ") and foreign films ("Zachary, if you would stop insisting on plot all the time, and concentrate more on the universality of the characters and the technical brilliance of the director, this film would mean more to you"). Friends of his spoke to him from time to time of what they perceived might be a mismatch, but he countered by enumerating the new awareness Connie had brought into his life. Whether he truly loved the woman or not, he was never sure, but there was no questioning that he was, for most of their time together, absolutely infatuated with her beauty, her confidence, and her style. Her decision to break off their engagement had hurt him, but not as deeply as he first thought. And over the months that followed, he had spent what free time he had flying the radio-controlled airplane he had built in high school, exercising himself back into rock-climbing shape, hiking with Cheap dog, and horseback riding with friends along the seashore at the Cape-but not one minute at a gallery or locked in combat with a foreign film. "Hi."

Startled, Zack knocked over his Styrofoam cup, spilling what remained of his coffee into a small pool on the veneer tabletop. "Hi, yourself, " he said as Suzanne Cole plucked a pad of napkins from the nearby counter and dabbed up the spill. Was there to be no end to his ineptitude in front of this woman?

"It would seem you might have reached the limit of your caffeine quota for the day, " she said. She had changed into street clothes-gray slacks and a bulky fisherman-knit sweater-and she looked as fresh as if she had just started the day. "Actually, " he said. "I use caffeine to override my own inherent hyperness. I think it actually slows me down."

She smiled. "I know the syndrome. I'm surprised to find you still here, what with tomorrow being your first day in the office and all."

"I wanted to be sure Annie was out of the woods. She's been pretty special to me and my family. Besides, I just finished my residency yesterday. It'll probably be months before my internal chemistry demands anything more than a fifteen-minute nap in an institutional, Naugahyde easy chair."

"I remember those chairs well, " Suzanne said, leaning against the counter. "There's an old, ratty, maroon one in the cardiac fellows' room at Hitchcock that I suspect would one day have a sign on it proclaiming, Suzanne Cole slept here-and only here… So, it's a progress report you're after. Well, the news is good. At least for the moment. Your Annie's awake and stable, with no neurologic deficit that I can identify, although you might want to go over her in the morning. In fact, I think I'll make her your first consult, if that's okay. You did say you were going to do neurology as well as neurosurgery, yes?"

"Absolutely. I actually enjoy the puzzles nearly as much as I do the blood and guts."

Her eyes narrowed. "You sure don't talk like a surgeon, " she said. "The ones I know have signs in their rooms like, To cut is to cure, and All the world is pre-op."

"Oh, I have those, too. Believe me. Only as an enlightened, Renaissance surgeon, mine say, Almost all the world is pre-op." He pushed a chair from the table with his foot. "Here, have a seat."

"Sorry, but I can't, " she said. "I've got to go. Mrs. Doucette was my third critical admission this weekend, and I have a full day tomorrow.

You ought to get some sleep, too, so you'll be sharp for my consult.

Good night, now." She slipped on her coat and headed for the door.

"Wait, " Zack said, realizing even as he heard his own voice that the order was coming from somewhere outside his rational self-somewhere within his swirling fantasies. "Yes?"

She turned back to him. The darkness in her eyes and the set of her face were warning him not to push matters further. He picked up on the message too late. "I… um… I was wondering if we might have dinner or something together sometime."

Suzanne sagged visibly. "I'm sorry, " she said wearily. "Thank you, Zack's fantasies stopped swirling and began floating to earth like feathers. "Oh, " he said, feeling suddenly very self-conscious. "I didn't mean to… what I mean is, it seemed like-"

"Zack, I'm sorry for being so abrupt. It's late, and I'm bushed.

I appreciate your asking me, really I do. And I'm flattered. But I…

I just don't go out with people I work with. Besides, I'm involved with someone."

The last of the feathers touched down. Zack shrugged. "Well, then, " he said with forced cheer, "I guess I should just hope that a lot of folks show up at this hospital with combined cardiac and neurosurgical disease, shouldn't I?"

Suzanne reached out and shook his hand. "I'm looking forward to working with you, " she said. "I know we'll be terrific."

At that moment, from the far end of the emergency ward, a man began screaming, again and again, "No! I won't go! I'm going to die. I'm going to die!"

The two of them raced toward the commotion, which centered about an old man-in his seventies, Zack guessed-whom the nurse, the emergency physician, and a uniformed security guard were trying to move from a litter to a wheelchair. The man, with striking, long, silver hair and a gnarled full beard, was struggling to remain where he was. Zack's gaze took in his chino pants and flannel shirt, stained with grit, sweat, and grease, and a pair of tattered, oily work boots. The old man's left arm was bound tightly across his chest with a shoulder immobilizer, the tissues over his cheek and around his right eye were badly swollen by fresh bruises. "No! " he bellowed again. "Don't move me. I'm going to die if I go back there tonight. Please. Just one night."

"What gives? " Zack asked. The emergency physician, a rotund, former GP in town, named Wilton Marshfield, released his hold, and the old man sank back on the litter. "Oh, hi, Iverson, Dr. Cole, " he said, nodding.

"I thought you two had gone home."

"We were about to, " said Zack. "Everything okay?"

He had known Marshfield, a marginally competent graduate of a now-nonexistent medical school, for years, and had been surprised to find him working in the emergency room. During a conversation earlier in the evening, the man had explained that Frank had talked him out of retirement until a personnel problem in the E. R. could be stabilized.