to call the caller back. Then-unless the caller said it was an emergency, and especially at this time of night; it was half past two-they would make a note on a card and keep it until Dr. Whoever called in for his messages.
If the caller said it was an emergency, same procedure, except that they would call the numbers Dr. Whoever had given them, where he could be reached in an emergency.
'Then I'm afraid I can't help you, sir,' Mrs. Loretta Dubinsky, RN, said.
'Look, I got an important message for her.'
'Then I suggest you call her in the morning.'
'This won't wait until morning.'
'I'm afraid it's going to have to, sir. There's nothing I can do to help you.'
'Who are you?'
Mrs. Dubinsky replaced the telephone in its cradle.
Two minutes later-Paulo Cassandro having worked his way through the hospital switchboard again-the telephone rang again, and Nurse Dubinsky picked it up.
'Seven-C.'
'Look, lady, you don't seem to understand. This is important. '
'Sir, I told you before,' Mrs. Dubinsky said, her pale skin coloring, 'that Dr. Payne is not on the ward, and that I have no idea where she is.'
'I got to get a message to her.'
'What is it?'
'Who are you? This is private, personal.'
'My name is Dubinsky. I'm the nurse-in-charge.'
'There's no doctor around there?'
'You want to give me the message or not?'
'Let me talk to a doctor,' Cassandro said.
'I'm afraid that's not possible,' Mrs. Dubinsky said.
'Let me talk to a goddamn doctor!'
Mrs. Dubinsky again replaced the handset in its cradle.
And two minutes later, the telephone ran again.
'Look, lady, I'm sorry I lost my temper. But this is really important.'
'I will try to get a message to Dr. Payne. What is it?'
'I need to talk to a doctor. Could you please get one on the line?'
'I told you, sir, that's just not possible.'
'Jesus Christ, will you get a goddamn doctor on the phone?'
Mrs. Dubinsky again replaced the handset in its cradle.
And two minutes later, the telephone rang again.
'Seven-C'
'You might as well get it through your goddamn head that I'm gonna speak to a goddamn doctor if I have to call every two minutes until the goddamn sun comes up!'
Mrs. Dubinsky, her facial skin now blotched with red spots, started to replace the handset in its cradle again, but at the last moment instead laid it on the plate glass on her desk.
Shaking her head, she got out of her chair, left the nurses' station, and walked down the corridor to her left, where she entered a room about halfway down. She walked to the bed, where a very small, thin, brown-skinned man in a medical smock was sleeping under a sheet.
She gently pushed his arm, and when he showed no sign of waking, pushed harder.
'Doctor?' she said.
Juan Osvaldo Martinez, M.D., opened his eyes and sat up abruptly.
'Sorry,' Nurse Dubinsky said.
'There is a problem?'
'There's a nut on the phone who insists on speaking to a doctor.'
Dr. Martinez's eyebrows rose in question.
'He won't give up, Doctor. He calls every two minutes.'
He nodded his understanding, swung his feet off the bed, and sort of hopped to the floor.
He retraced his steps to the nurses' station and picked up the telephone.
'Dr. Martinez,' he said.
There was no reply. He looked at Nurse Dubinsky and shrugged helplessly.
'No one on the line.'
'Hang up. He'll call back,' Nurse Dubinsky said with certainty.
Dr. Martinez hung up the phone. The two of them stared at it for two long minutes. It did not ring.
'Well,' Dr. Martinez said, and shrugged again.
That figures, Nurse Dubinsky thought, after I wake this poor young man up, then this bastard decides to hell with it, he'll wait 'til morning.
'I'm sorry, Doctor.'
'It is not a problem,' Dr. Martinez said, and started back down the corridor.
He had taken a half-dozen steps when the telephone rang.
He picked it up.
'Seven-C, Dr. Martinez.'
'You're a hard man to get on the goddamn phone, Doctor. '
'How may I help you?'
'I have a message for Dr. Amelia A. Payne.'
'She's not here,' Dr. Martinez said.
'The nurse told me that. That's why I wanted to talk to you.'
'What is the message?'
'You got a pencil and paper?'
'Yes,' Dr. Martinez said, although in fact he did not.
'Okay. Now, get this right. You ready?'
'Ready.'
'To Dr. Amelia A. Payne. Your patient, Miss Cynthia Longwood… Am I going too fast for you?'
'No. Go ahead,' Dr. Martinez said.
He had looked in on 723 just before going to an empty room to try to catch a little sleep. She had been awake. Privately, Dr. Martinez disagreed with her attending physician, Dr. Payne. If the Longwood girl had been his patient, he would have prescribed at least a mild sedative to help her through the night. She had recurring, and very disturbing, dreams, the consequence of which was that she slept very badly, did not get enough sleep, and thus dozed through the day.
If she had been his patient, he believed it would be best to have her rested when he spoke with her, trying to get to the root of her problem. But she was Dr. A. A. Payne's patient, not his. And he was a resident, and Dr. Payne was not only an adjunct professor of psychiatry, but held in the highest possible regard by the chief of Psychiatric Services, Aaron Stein, M.D., former president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Despite that, and his own genuine respect for her, Dr. Martinez felt that Dr. Payne was wrong when she told him that in cases like this the best sedation was the least sedation, and it was her call.
'Okay,' the caller said. 'She was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic. You got that?'
'No. You were going too fast for me,' Dr. Martinez said as he gestured to Nurse Dubinsky that he wanted to write something.
She pushed an aluminum clipboard to him, and when she saw that he was having trouble finding his own pen or pencil, handed him her own ballpoint.
'Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped,' the caller began, very slowly, making it clear to Dr. Martinez that he was reciting-probably reading-what he was saying, 'by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic. You got it all now, Doc?'
And what he had recited-probably read-didn't sound as if it had been written by the man on the
