behind her. Feet planted, Jared had settled in at the line. Hunching over, knees bent, Jared was tapping ball against racquet, gaining his rhythm. Just before Carlisle began the quick bouncing which would signal the toss, she heard Jared's voice.
'The ol' high hard one, ' he said. Kate tensed, awaiting the familiar, sharp pok of Jared's serve and Carlisle's almost simultaneous move to return. Instead, she heard virtually nothing, and watched in horror as Carlisle, with the glee of a tomcat discovering a wounded sparrow, advanced to pounce on a woefully soft hit. The serve was deliberate-vintage Jared Samuels, his way of announcing that by no means had he forgotten their argument. 'Jared, you bastard, ' Kate screamed just as Carlisle exploded a shot straight at her chest from less than a dozen feet away. An instant after the ball left Carlisle's racquet, it was on Kate's, then ricocheting into a totally unguarded corner of the court. The shot was absolute reflex, absolute luck, but perfect all the same. 'Match, ' Kate said simply. She shook hands with each of their opponents, giving Jim's hand an extra pump. Then, without a backward glance, she walked off the court to the locker room. The Oceanside Racquet Club, three quarters of an acre of corrugated aluminum box, squatted gracelessly on a small rise above the Atlantic. 'Facing Wimbledon, ' was the way the club's overstuffed director liked to describe it. Keeping her hair dry and moving quickly enough to ensure that Jared would have to work to catch up with her, Kate showered and left the building. The rules of their game demanded a reaction of some sort for his behavior, and she had decided on taking the MG, perhaps stopping a mile or so down the road. As she crossed the half-filled parking lot, she began searching the pockets of her parka for her keys.
Almost immediately, she remembered seeing them on the kitchen table.
'Damn! ' The feeling was so familiar. She had, in the past, slept through several exams, required police assistance to locate her car in an airport parking garage, and forgotten where she had put the engagement ring Art had given her. Although she had come to accept the trait as a usually harmless annoyance, there was a time when visions of clamps left in abdomens concerned her enough to influence her decision to go into pathology rather than clinical medicine. This day, she felt no compassion whatsoever toward her shortcoming. Testily, she strode past their car and down the road. The move was a bluff. Jared would know that as well as she. It was an eight-mile walk to their home, and the temperature was near freezing. Still, some show of indignation was called for. But not this, she realized quickly. At the moment she accepted the absurdity of her gesture and decided to turn back, she heard the distinctive rev of the MG behind her. There could be no retreat now. It was a game between them, but not a game. Their scenarios were often carefully staged, but they were life all the same, actions and reactions, spontaneous or not, that provided the dynamics unique to their relationship. There had been no such dynamics in her first marriage. Put simply, Arthur Everett decreed and his dutiful wife Kathryn acquiesced. For two destructive years it had been that way. Her childhood programming offered no alternatives, and she had been too frightened, too insecure, to question. Even now there were times, though gradually fewer and farther between, when dreams of the farmhouse and the children, the well-stocked, sunlit kitchen and the pipe smoke wafting out from the study, dominated her thoughts. They were, she knew, nothing more than the vestiges-the reincarnations-of that childhood programming. Unfortunately, much of Jared's programming was continually being reinforced, thanks largely to a father who remained convinced that God's plan for women was quite different from His plan for men. 'You have a wonderful behind, do you know that? ' Jared's voice startled her.
He was driving alongside her, studying her anatomy through a pair of binoculars. 'Yes, I know that.' She stiffened enough to be sure he could notice and walked on. Please don't get hurt, she thought. Put those silly binoculars down and watch where you're going. 'And your face. Have I told you lately about your face?'
'No, but go ahead if you must.'
'It is the blue ribbon, gold medal, face-of-the-decade face, that's what.'
'You tried to get me killed in there.' Kate slowed, but did not stop.
'It was childish.'
'And… I'll 'And it was dumb.' gcand… 'And it didn't work.'
'Jared!'
'And I'm sorry. I really am. The devil made me do it, but I went and let 'im.'
He opened the door. She stopped, hesitated the obligatory few seconds, and got in. The scenario was over, Through it, a dram of purulence had been drained from their marriage before it could fester. Energy no longer enmeshed in their anger would now be rechanneled, perhaps to a joint attack today on the pile of unsplit wood in the yard and later to a battle with the Times crossword puzzle. As likely as not, before the afternoon was through, they would make love. Eyes closed, Kate settled back in her seat, savoring what she had just heard. I'm sorry. He had actually said it. Apologizing has been bred out of Samuels men was yet another teaching from the philosophy of J. Winfield Samuels. Kate had suffered the pain of that one on more than one occasion. She thought about Jared's vehement reaction to the possibility of her taking over the chairmanship of her department. The morning, she had decided, had been a draw, Dad I. Wife I. 'Now, Dr. Engleson, you may proceed with your report.'
Tom Engleson's groan was not as inaudible as he would have liked. 'Your patient is still bleeding, sir. That's my report.' During his year and a half of residency on the Ashburton Service at Metropolitan Hospital of Boston, Engleson had had enough dealings with D. K. Bartholomew to know that he would be lucky to escape with anything less than a fifteen-minute conversation. Dr. Donald K. Bartholomew held the receiver in his left hand, adjusted the notepad in front of him, and straightened his posture. 'And what is her blood count?'
'Twenty-five. Her crit is down to twenty-five from twenty-eight.'
Engleson pictured the numbers being shakily reproduced in black felt tip. 'She has had a total of five units transfused in the last twenty-four hours, two of whole blood, one of packed cells, and two of fresh frozen plasma.' He closed his eyes and awaited the inevitable string of questions. For a few seconds there was silence. 'How many fresh frozen did you say?'
'Two. The hematology people have been to see her again. Her blood is just not clotting normally.' He had decided to keep the complicated explanation for Beverly Vitale's bleeding problem out of the conversation if at all possible. A single request from Bartholomew for specifics, and the phone call could drag on for another half hour. In fact, there was no good explanation even available. The hematologists knew what-two of the woman's key clotting factors were at critically low levels-but not why. It was a problem the surgeon should have at least identified before performing her D and C. 'Have they further tests to run?'
'No, sir. Not today, anyhow.' Getting D. K. Bartholomew to come into the hospital on a Sunday morning was like getting a cat to hop into the tub.
'They suggested loading her up with fresh clotting factors and perhaps doing another D and C. They're afraid she might bleed out otherwise.'
'How long will it take to give her the factors?'
'We've already started, sir.'
There was another pause, 'Well, then, ' Bartholomew said at last.
'I guess the patient and I have a date in the operating room.'
'Would you like me to assist? ' Engleson closed his eyes and prayed for an affirmative response. 'For a D and C? No, thank you, Doctor. It is a one-man procedure, and I am one man. I shall be in by twelve o'clock.
Please put the OR team on notice.'
'Fine, ' Engleson said wearily. He had already scheduled Beverly Vitale for the operating room. He hung up and checked the wall clock over the door of the cluttered resident's office. Only eight minutes. 'A record, ' he announced sardonically to the empty room. 'I may have just set a record.'
Moments later, he called the operating suite. 'Denise, it's Tom Engleson. You know the D and C I scheduled for Dr. Bartholomew?…
Vitale. That's right. Well, I was wondering if you could switch it to the observation OR. I want to watch… I know you're not supposed to use that room on a weekend. That's why I'm asking in such a groveling tone of voice… Bartholomew doesn't want anyone assisting him, but he can't keep me from watching through the overhead… I owe you one, Denise. Thanks.'
Looking down from behind the thick glass observation window into the operating room, Tim Engleson exchanged worried looks with the scrub nurse assisting Dr. Donald K. Bartholomew. The dilatation of Beverly Vitale's cervix and subsequent curettage-scrapidg-of the idner surface of her uterus was not going well. She had gone to the emergency ward three days before because of vaginal bleeding that started with her period but would not let up. For several years, she had been receiving routine gynecologic care through the Omnicenter-the outpatient facility of the Ashburton Women's Health Service of Metropolitan Hospital. As her Omnicenter physician, D. K. Bartholomew had been called in immediately.
