Robin Cook - Terminal

“Open the door a crack and see if she’s gone,” Sean said.

“This is ridiculous,” Peter said, but he opened the door several inches nonetheless. Janet was at the counter talking to Carla Valentine, the head nurse. Peter let the door shut.

“She’s right outside,” he said.

“Damn!” Sean exclaimed. “I don’t want to talk to her right now. I’ve got too much to do, and I don’t want a scene. She doesn’t know I’m leaving for Miami for that elective at the Forbes Cancer Center. I don’t want to tell her until Saturday night. I know she’s going to be pissed.”

“So you have been dating her?”

“Yeah, we’ve gotten pretty hot and heavy,” Sean said. “Which reminds me: you owe me five bucks. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. At first she’d barely talk to me. But eventually, utter charm and persistence paid off. My guess is that it was mostly the persistence.”

“Did you bag her?” Peter asked.

“Don’t be crude,” Sean said.

Peter laughed. “Me crude? That’s the best example of the pot calling the kettle black that I’ve ever heard.”

“The problem is she’s getting serious,” Sean said. “She thinks because we slept together a couple of times, it’s leading to something permanent.”

“Am I hearing marriage here?” Peter asked.

“Not from me,” Sean said. “But I think that’s what she has in mind. It’s insane, especially since her parents hate my guts. And hell, I’m only twenty-six.”

Peter opened the door again. “She’s still there talking with one of the other nurses. She must be on break or something.”

“Great!” Sean said sarcastically. “I guess I can work in here. I’ve got to get these off-service notes written before I get another admission.”

“I’ll keep you company,” Peter said. He went out and returned with several of his own charts.

They worked in silence, using the three-by-five index cards they carried in their pockets bearing the latest laboratory work on each of their assigned patients. The idea was to summarize each case for the medical students rotating on service come March 1.

“This one has been my most interesting case,” Sean said after about half an hour. He held the massive chart aloft. “If it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t even have heard about the Forbes Cancer Center.”

“You talking about Helen Cabot?” Peter asked.

“None other,” Sean said.

“You got all the interesting cases, you dog. And Helen’s a looker, too. Hell, on her case consults were pleading to be called.”

“Yeah, but this looker turned out to have multiple brain tumors,” Sean said. He opened the chart and glanced through some of its two hundred pages. “It’s sad. She’s only twenty-one and she’s obviously terminal. Her only hope is that she gets accepted by the Forbes. They have been having phenomenal luck with the kind of tumor she has.”

“Did her final pathology report come back?”

“Yesterday,” Sean said. “She’s got medulloblastoma. It’s fairly rare; only about two percent of all brain tumors are this type. I did some reading on it so I could shine on rounds this afternoon. It’s usually seen in young children.”

“So she’s an unfortunate exception,” Peter commented.

“Not really an exception,” Sean said. “Twenty percent of medulloblastomas are seen in patients over the age of twenty. What surprised everyone and why no one even came close to guessing the cell type was because she had multiple growths. Originally her attending thought she had metastatic cancer, probably from an ovary. But he was wrong. Now he’s planning an article for the New England Journal of Medicine .”

“Someone said she was not only beautiful but wealthy,” Peter said, lamenting anew he’d not gotten her as a patient.

“Her father is CEO of Software, Inc.,” Sean said. “Obviously the Cabots aren’t hurting. With all their money, they can certainly afford a place like the Forbes. I hope the people in Miami can do something for her. Besides being pretty, she’s a nice kid. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with her.”

“Remember, doctors are not supposed to fall in love with their patients,” Peter said.

“Helen Cabot could tempt a saint.”

Janet Reardon took the stairs back to pediatrics on the fifth floor. She’d used her fifteen-minute coffee break trying to find Sean. The nurses on seven said they’d just seen him, working on his off-service notes, but had no idea where he’d gone.

Janet was troubled. She hadn’t been sleeping well for several weeks, waking at four or five in the morning, way before her alarm. The problem was Sean and their relationship. When she’d first met him, she’d been turned off by his coarse, cocky attitude, even though she had been attracted by his appealing Mediterranean features, black hair, and strikingly blue eyes. Before she’d met Sean she hadn’t known what the term “Black Irish” meant.

When Sean had initially pursued her, Janet had resisted. She felt they had nothing in common, but he refused to take no for an answer. And his keen intelligence pricked her curiosity.

She finally went out with him thinking that one date would end the attraction. But it hadn’t. She soon discovered that his rebel’s attitude was a powerful aphrodisiac. In a surprising about-face, Janet decided that all her previous boyfriends had been too predictable, too much the Myopia Hunt Club crowd. All at once she realized that her sense of self had been tied to an expectation of a marriage similar to her parents’ with someone conventionally acceptable. It was then that Sean’s Charlestown rough appeal had taken a firm hold on her heart, and Janet had fallen in love.

Reaching the nurses’ station on the pediatric floor, Janet noticed she still had a few minutes left on her break. Pushing through the door to the back room, she headed for the communal coffee machine. She needed a jolt to get her through the rest of the day.

“You look like you just lost a patient,” a voice called.

Janet turned to see Dorothy MacPherson, a floor nurse with whom she’d become close, sitting with her stockinged feet propped upon the countertop.

“Maybe just as bad,” Janet said as she got her coffee. She only allowed herself half a cup. She went over and joined Dorothy. She sat heavily in one of the metal desk chairs. “Men!” she added with a sigh of frustration.

“A familiar lament,” Dorothy said.

“My relationship with Sean Murphy is not going anywhere,” Janet said at length. “It’s really bothering me, and I have to do something about it. Besides,” she added with a laugh, “the last thing I want to do is to be forced to admit to my mother that she’d been right about him all along.”

Dorothy smiled. “I can relate to that.”

“It’s gotten to the point that I think he’s avoiding me,” Janet said.

“Have you two talked?” Dorothy asked.

“I’ve been trying,” Janet said. “But talking about feelings is not one of his strong points.”

“Regardless,” Dorothy said. “Maybe you should take him out tonight and say what you’ve just said to me.”

“Ha!” Janet laughed scornfully. “It’s Friday night. We can’t.”

“Is he on call?” Dorothy asked.

“No,” Janet said. “Every Friday night he and his Charlestown buddies get together at a local bar. Girlfriends and wives are not invited. It’s the proverbial boys’ night out. And in his case, it’s some kind of Irish tradition, complete with brawls.”

“Sounds disgusting,” Dorothy said.

“After four years at Harvard, a year of molecular biology at MIT, and now three years of medical school, you’d think he’d have outgrown it. Instead, these Friday nights seem to be more important to him than ever.”