Michael Chabon - Telegraph Avenue

“Good Lord,” Aviva said.

“Whoa.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I was trying for a certain intimidation factor,” Gwen said. “Frankly, I had not counted on the Birkenstocks.”

“Gwen!”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s fine ?”

“He just needs to sit there. To be there, physically, taking up that much lawyer space in the room.”

“Okay,” Aviva said, meaning it was not okay. “I’m confused. When Garth Newgrange threatens us with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit that not only could put us out of business but also could leave us both totally fucking bankrupt, you won’t even talk to a lawyer.”

“Garth has no grounds for a suit. His baby was fine, Lydia was fine.”

“Then for this thing,” deaf as Mr. Robert when she needed to be, “you bring in a guy, the venue of his last trial was SeaWorld .”

“Ladies,” said Moby with the most terrible suavity imaginable. Gwen felt another tremor of uncertainty. On the way up in the elevator, however, Moby assumed a surprisingly professional demeanor, speaking low and fast, buoyant and aswim in his own expertise.

“I spoke to the general counsel,” he told the partners. “She said that even though a formal complaint has been brought, it’s not like it’s, you know, can’t be expunged. Written in stone. The board has discretion, and they have authority to toss the thing out as long as we can satisfy Lazar and give them a reason to let it drop. Maybe they keep you, Gwen, on probation for six months, a year. Then everything goes back to normal.”

“‘Give them a reason,’” Gwen said. “What kind of reason did legal affairs have in mind? How’m I supposed to ‘satisfy’ Lazar?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Gwen, you know what you have to do,” Aviva said.

“What?”

Aviva didn’t say anything, didn’t feel she needed to say anything, smug as ever in the telepathic power of her self-evident correctness. Gwen refused this time, knowing the secret word was “apologize,” but staring right back at Aviva as the elevator opened at the fourth floor for a ghost, closed, carried on.

“Apologize,” Aviva said at last, giving it a slight hint of the imperative.

“‘Apologize?’” Gwen feigned a degree of shock at the revelation. “To Lazar ? For what ?”

“For nothing. It’s a meaningless, empty formula: ‘I’m sorry.’ Literally? It means you are in pain, you are sore. But nobody knows that, and nobody means to say that. They’re just words , Gwen. It’s a token, a little box on somebody else’s checklist, you take your pencil and you go…” She ticked off a little checkmark in midair. “You just mouth the words, take your medicine, and we can all—”

“Take my medicine,” Gwen said, breaking out another package of ironizing quote marks, her supply maybe starting to run low. “Okay, sure, hey, they’re doctors , right? As long as they don’t try to administer it rectally —”

The doors opened on the sixth floor, and Gwen shut up. They briefly became quite lost, looking for the conference room, wandering through an intricacy of corridors and sub-lobbies until they ran into Lazar himself, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve, turning from a drinking fountain halfway along a blue-carpeted branch corridor behind Personnel. He was in a light blue button-down shirt with a square-tip knit necktie and a pair of blue twill trousers so tight that his bicyclist thighs hoisted the cuffs to floodwater levels.

“I’m sorry it got this far,” Aviva told him.

“I’m sure you are,” he said, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Gwen. He opened the door to the conference room and stood aside to let them pass.

As they made the introductions, Gwen saw that she had lucked out: the midwifery review board as currently constituted was three OBs, all of them men. She knew and had worked with all three over the years, and her relations with them, like Aviva’s, were in each case at least cordial and, in the case of Dr. Bernstein, who was chairing the proceedings, warm. Bernstein had referred dozens of patients to Birth Partners, and Gwen at various times had formed the distinct impression that old Aryeh Bernstein was macking, in that pass-the-time doctorly way, on Aviva. But none of that formed the basis of Gwen’s luck.

3 WHITE MALE OBS, Aviva wrote on the topmost sheet of one of the legal pads that the hospital stenographer had distributed to the partners when they sat down. VS. 1 BLACK MIDWIFE = TOTALLY FAIR.

“Totally,” Gwen said aloud, though she wasn’t entirely sure where to place Dr. Soleymanzadeh on the whiteness scale.

The stenographer, a formidable older Filipina who was also tape-recording the proceedings, frowned, then typed seven letters into the transcript. Bernstein started, caught off guard by the tap of the keys, obviously fearing maybe that things were starting without him.

“Okay, then,” he said, with a nod to Soleymanzadeh and Leery on his left and right. “Ms. Jaffe, Ms. Shanks. Gwen, Aviva. As you know, we’re here today to follow up on a complaint filed by Dr. Lazar, here, Paul Lazar, following from an incident that occurred in the ER back on the twentieth. At this point, the hearing is purely for the purpose of gathering information, trying to fill out a more complete picture of what transpired, which Doctors Soleymanzadeh, Leery, and I will use to come to some kind of recommendation about the status of your privileges here at Chimes General. Now, this is a serious complaint, and there’s no question it’s an important matter. Also, I should probably mention that whatever our recommendation should be, that is likely to become the action taken by the hospital. But—”

“Or not taken,” Moby said as if helpfully.

“But,” Bernstein resumed, “I’d like to begin by reminding you, Gwen, Aviva, that this hearing falls strictly within the purview of hospital and departmental policy regarding the conduct and status of nurse-midwives with privileges at Chimes. It is emphatically not a legal proceeding. You do not need a lawyer.”

“Dr…. Bernstein. Here’s the thing, a lawyer is sort of like an umbrella,” Moby said, looking more relaxed and in his element than Gwen had ever seen him, not a trace of Boogaloo Shrimp in his manner or his voice. “You don’t bring it, it rains.”

“I understand, Doctor,” Gwen said. “I’m just being careful. I hope you’ll be careful, too.”

She saw how it landed, the way Joe Leery’s eyebrows shot skyward before parachuting back down to the ridge of his brow.

“Okay,” Bernstein said, “and, well, you are certainly free to do so. Mr. Oberstein.”

“Doctor.”

“Before we get into the serious charges and issues that have been brought up in this case, I think we should all take a moment to remind ourselves of the most important thing, which is that the mother and the baby are both fine. That isn’t the issue here.”

Seven different variations on the pious nod, everybody safely in agreement on that score.

“Now, Dr. Lazar,” Bernstein said, “we’ve all got your complaint, and I think it’s pretty clear you feel that Ms. Shanks’s conduct not only lacked professionalism but diminished the quality of care—”

“Look,” Lazar said, the man everlastingly an asshole, through and through, a common enough trait among doctors statistically and one not necessarily falling, therefore, under the heading of Gwen’s good luck. “I’m not going to get into a pissing match, okay? I’m not interested in who screwed up, or how they screwed up, or whether or not it makes sense for people to have babies in their bathtubs. To me, this all boils down to the fact that Ms. Shanks, here, when I confronted her, as I was well within my rights to do, was belligerent, threatening, and aggressive. Okay? And if that isn’t considered inappropriate conduct toward staff by somebody with privileges at this hospital, then, I mean, what the fuck is?”