Sidney Sheldon - Nothing lasts forever

For some reason, operations always seemed to make everyone hungry. They constantly discussed food. A surgeon would be in the middle of removing a gangrenous gall bladder from a patient and say, “I had a great dinner last night at Bardelli's. Best Italian food in all of San Francisco.”

“Have you eaten the crab cakes at the Cypress Club …?”

“If you like good beef, try the House of Prime Rib over on Van Ness.”

And meanwhile, a nurse would be mopping up the patient's blood and guts.

When they weren't talking about food, the doctors talked about baseball or football scores.

“Did you see the 49ers play last Sunday? I bet they miss Joe Montana. He always came through for them in the last two minutes of a game.”

And out would come a ruptured appendix.

Kafka, Paige thought. Kafka would have loved this.

At three in the morning, when Paige was asleep in the on-call room, she was awakened by the telephone.

A raspy voice said, “Dr. Taylor—Room 419—a heart attack patient. You'll have to hurry!” The line went dead.

Paige sat on the edge of the bed, fighting sleep, and stumbled to her feet. You have to hurry. She went into the corridor, but there was no time to wait for an elevator. She rushed up the stairs and ran down the fourth-floor corridor to Room 419, her heart pounding. She flung open the door and stood there, staring.

Room 419 was a storage room.

Kat Hunter was making her rounds with Dr. Richard Hutton. He was in his forties, brusque and fast. He spent no more than two or three minutes with each patient, scanning their charts, then snapping out orders to the surgical residents in a machine-gun, staccato fashion.

“Check her hemoglobin and schedule surgery for tomorrow. …”

“Keep a close eye on his temperature chart. …”

“Cross-match four units of blood. …”

“Remove these stitches. …”

“Get some chest films. …”

Kat and the other residents were busily making notes on everything, trying hard to keep up with him.

They approached a patient who had been in the hospital a week and had had a battery of tests for a high fever, with no results.

When they were out in the corridor, Kat asked, “What's the matter with him?”

“It's a GOK,” a resident said. “A God only knows. We've done X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, spinal taps, liver biopsy. Everything. We don't know what's wrong with him.”

They moved into a ward where a young patient, his head bandaged after an operation, was sleeping. As Dr. Hutton started to unwrap the head dressing, the patient woke up, startled. “What … what's going on?”

“Sit up,” Dr. Hutton said curtly. The young man was trembling.

I'll never treat my patients that way, Kat vowed.

The next patient was a healthy-looking man in his seventies. As soon as Dr. Hutton approached the bed, the patient yelled, “Gonzo! I'm going to sue you, you dirty son of a bitch.”

“Now, Mr. Sparolini …”

“Don't Mr. Sparolini me! You turned me into a fucking eunuch.”

That's an oxymoron, Kat thought.

“Mr. Sparolini, you agreed to have the vasectomy; and—”

“It was my wife's idea. Damn bitch! Just wait till I get home.”

They left him muttering to himself.

“What's his problem?” one of the residents asked.

“His problem is that he's a horny old goat. His young wife has six kids and she doesn't want any more.”

The next patient was a little girl, ten years old. Dr. Hutton looked at her chart. “We're going to give you a shot to make the bad bugs go away.”

A nurse filled a syringe and moved toward the little girl.

“No!” she screamed. “You're going to hurt me!”

“This won't hurt, baby,” the nurse assured her.

The words were a dark echo in Kat's mind.

This won't hurt, baby. … It was the voice of her stepfather whispering to her in the scary dark.

“This will feel good. Spread your legs. Come on, you little bitch!” And he had pushed her legs apart and forced his male hardness into her and put his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming with the pain. She was thirteen years old. After that night, his visits became a terrifying nightly ritual. “You're lucky you got a man like me to teach you how to fuck,” he would tell her. “Do you know what a Kat is? A little pussy. And I want some.” And he would fall on top of her and grab her, and no amount of crying or pleading would make him stop.

Kat had never known her father. Her mother was a cleaning woman who worked nights at an office building near their tiny apartment in Gary, Indiana. Kat's stepfather was a huge man who had been injured in an accident at a steel mill, and he stayed home most of the time, drinking. At night, when Kat's mother left for work, he would go into Kat's room. “You say anything to your mother or brother, and I'll kill him,” he told Kat. / can't let him hurt Mike, Kat thought. Her brother was five years younger than she, and Kat adored him. She mothered him and protected him and fought his battles for him. He was the only bright spot in Kat's life.

One morning, terrified as Kat was by her stepfather's threats, she decided she had to tell her mother what was happening. Her mother would put a stop to it, would protect her.

“Mama, your husband comes to my bed at night when you're away, and forces himself on me.”

Her mother stared at her a moment, then slapped Kat hard across the face.

“Don't you dare make up lies like that, you little slut!”

Kat never discussed it again. The only reason she stayed at home was because of Mike. He'd be lost without me, Kat thought. But the day she learned she was pregnant, she ran away to live with an aunt in Minneapolis.

The day Kat ran away from home, her life completely changed.

“You don't have to tell me what happened,” her Aunt Sophie had said. “But from now on, you're going to stop running away. You know that song they sing on Sesame Street! 'It's Not Easy Being Green'? Well, honey, it's not easy being black, either. You have two choices. You can keep running and hiding and blaming the world for your problems, or you can stand up for yourself and decide to be somebody important.”

“How do I do that?”

“By knowing that you're important. First, you get image in your mind of who you want to be, child, and what you want to be. And then you go to work, becoming that person.”

I'm not going to have his baby, Kat decided. I want an abortion.

It was arranged quietly, during a weekend, and it was performed by a midwife who was a friend of Kat's aunt. When it was over, Kat thought fiercely, I'm never going to let a man touch me again. Never!

Minneapolis was a fairyland for Kat. Within a few blocks of almost every home were lakes and streams and rivers. And there were over eight thousand acres of landscaped parks. She went sailing on the city lakes and took boat rides on the Mississippi.

She visited the Great Zoo with Aunt Sophie and spent Sundays at the Valleyfair Amusement Park. She went on the hay rides at Cedar Creek Farm, and watched knights in armor jousting at the Shakopee Renaissance Festival.

Aunt Sophie watched Kat and thought, The girl has never had a childhood.

Kat was learning to enjoy herself, but Aunt Sophie sensed that deep inside her niece was a place that no one could reach, a barrier she had set up to keep her from being hurt again.

She made friends at school. But never with boys. Her girlfriends were all dating, but Kat was a loner, and too proud to tell anyone why. She looked up to her aunt, whom she loved very much.

Kat had taken little interest in school, or in reading books, but Aunt Sophie changed all that. Her home was filled with books, and Sophie's excitement about them was contagious.