Robin Cook - Godplayer

Thomas walked over to Mr. Campbell’s bed. The man smiled weakly. Then he started to speak.

Thomas bent over. “What did you say, Mr. Campbell?”

“I have to urinate,” said Mr. Campbell softly.

“You have a catheter in your bladder,” said Thomas.

“I still have to urinate,” said Mr. Campbell.

Thomas gave up. He’d let the nursing staff argue with Mr. Campbell.

As he turned to leave, he glanced at the sorry case in the bed next to Mr. Campbell. It was one of Ballantine’s disasters. The patient had embolized air to the brain during the operation and now was no more than a living vegetable totally dependent on a breathing machine, but with the quality of the nursing care at the Memorial, he could be expected to live indefinitely.

Thomas felt an arm on his shoulder. He turned and was surprised to find George Sherman.

“Thomas,” began George. “I think it is healthy that we have disagreements if only because it might force us to examine our own positions. But it upsets me to think there has to be animosity.”

“I was embarrassed at my own behavior,” said Thomas. That was as close as he could come to an apology.

“I got a bit hot under the collar myself,” admitted George. He let his eyes leave Thomas’s face, noticing which bed Thomas had stopped at. “Poor Mr. Harwick. Talk about a shortage of beds. Here’s another one we could use.”

Thomas smiled in spite of himself.

“Trouble is,” added George, “Mr. Harwick is going to be here for a long time unless…”

“Unless what?” asked Thomas.

“Unless we pull the plug, as they say,” George smiled.

Thomas tried to leave, but George gently restrained him.

Thomas wondered why the man felt obligated to touch him all the time.

“Tell me,” asked George. “Would you have the courage to pull the plug?”

“Not unless I talked with Rodney Stoddard first,” said Thomas sarcastically. “What about you, George? You seem willing to do most anything to get more beds.”

George laughed and withdrew his arm. “We all have our secrets, don’t we? I never expected you to say that you’d talk to Rodney. That’s a good one.” George gave Thomas another of his little taps and walked away, waving good-bye to the ICU nurses.

Thomas watched him, then glanced back at the patient, thinking over George’s comments. From time to time a brain-dead patient was taken off his life support system, but neither doctors nor nurses acknowledged the fact.

“Dr. Kingsley?”

Thomas turned to face one of the ICU clerks.

“Your service is on the line.”

Giving Ballantine’s patient one last glance, Thomas walked over to the central desk wondering how he could get Ballantine to refer his difficult cases. Thomas was confident these “unanticipated” and “unavoidable” tragedies would not happen if he did the surgery.

Thomas answered the phone with undisguised irritation. Invariably when the answering service looked for him it meant bad news. This time, however, the operator just said that he should call his mother as soon as he could.

Perplexed, Thomas made the call. His mother never called him during the day unless it was something important.

“Sorry to bother you, dear,” said Patricia.

“What is it?” asked Thomas.

“It’s about your wife.”

There was a pause. Thomas could feel his patience evaporating.

“Mother, I happen to be rather busy.”

“Your wife paid me a visit this morning.”

For a fleeting moment Thomas thought that Cassi might have mentioned his impotence. Then he realized that was absurd. But his mother’s next statement was even more alarming.

“She was suggesting you were some kind of addict. Dexedrine, I think she said.”

Thomas was so angry he could barely speak.

“Wha-what else did she say?” he finally stammered.

“I think that’s rather enough, don’t you? She said you were abusing drugs. I warned you about this girl, but you wouldn’t listen to me. Oh, no. You knew better…”

“I’ll have to talk to you tonight,” said Thomas, disconnecting the line with his index finger.

Still gripping the receiver, Thomas struggled to control his rage. Of course he took a pill now and then. Everybody did. How dared Cassi betray him by making a big deal of the fact to his mother? Abusing drugs! My God, an occasional pill didn’t mean he was an addict.

Impulsively Thomas dialed Doris at home. She answered on the third ring out of breath.

“How about a little company?” asked Thomas.

“When?” asked Doris enthusiastically.

“In a few minutes. I’m at the hospital.”

“I’d love it,” said Doris. “I’m glad you caught me. I was just on my way upstairs.”

Thomas hung up. He felt a twinge of fear. What if the same thing happened with Doris as happened last night with Cassi? Knowing it was better not to think about it, Thomas hurried through the rest of his rounds.

Doris lived only a couple of blocks from the hospital on Bay State Road. As Thomas walked to her apartment, he could not stop thinking about what Cassi had done. Why would she want to provoke him like that? It didn’t make sense. Did she really think he wouldn’t find out? Maybe she was trying to get back at him in some illogical way. Thomas sighed. Being married to Cassi had not been the dream he’d envisioned. He’d thought she was going to be such an asset. So many people had swooned over her that he’d been convinced she was something special. Even George had been crazy for her, wanting to marry her after a handful of dates.

Doris’s voice mixed with static greeted him over the intercom when he pushed her bell. He started up the stairs and heard her door open.

“What a nice surprise,” she called as he rounded the first landing. She was dressed in a skimpy jogging outfit of shorts and a T-shirt that barely covered her navel. Her hair was loose and seemed incredibly thick and shiny.

As she led him inside and closed the door, Thomas glanced around the apartment. He hadn’t been there for months, but not much had changed. The living room was tiny, with a single couch facing a small fireplace. At the end of the room was a bay window that overlooked the street. On the coffee table were a decanter and two glasses. Doris walked up to Thomas and leaned against him. “Did you want to dictate a little?” she teased, running her hands down his back. Thomas’s fears about his potency quickly vanished.

“It’s not too early for a little fun, is it?” asked Doris, pressing herself against Thomas and sensing his arousal.

“God, no,” said Thomas, pulling her down onto the couch and yanking off her clothes in an ecstasy of excitement and relief at his own response. As he plunged into her he comforted himself that the problem that he’d experienced the night before was Cassi’s, not his. It never occurred to him that he had yet to take a Percodan that day.

The nurses in the surgical intensive care unit knew that problems, particularly serious problems, had an uncanny way of propagating themselves. The night had begun badly with the eleven-thirty arrest of an eleven-year-old girl who’d been operated on that day for a ruptured spleen. Luckily things had worked out well, and the child’s heart had begun beating again almost immediately. The nurses had been amazed at the number of doctors who had responded to the code. For a time there had been so many doctors that they’d been falling over each other.

“I wonder why there are so many attendings in the house?” asked Andrea Bryant, the night supervisor. “It’s the first time I’ve seen Dr. Sherman here on a Saturday night since he was a resident.”

“Must be a lot of emergency cases in the OR,” said the other RN, Trudy Bodanowitz.