forces, or is it a crazed killer who hates people with minor ailments? Susan, if you hypothesize so extravagantly and with such creativity, then come up with some ideas of motive. I mean, a demented killer was OK for Hollywood and George C. Scott in Hospital just to create an artificial mystery ... but it’s a little too farfetched for reality.
I admit Harris’s performance sounds a bit weird, there’s no doubt about that. But at the same time I think I could come up with some reasonable explanation for his unreasonable behavior.”
“Try.”
“OK, I’m sure Harris is already completely uptight about this problem of coma. After all, it’s his department which essentially has to shoulder the responsibility. And here comes a young medical student to drive in the painful spikes a little more. I think it’s understandable for an individual to overreact under that kind of stress.”
“Harris did a little more than overreact. This nut came from behind his desk with the intent of knocking me around the room.”
“Maybe you turned him on.”
“What?”
“On top of everything else maybe he was reacting to you sexually.”
“Come on, Mark.”
“I’m serious.”
“Mark, this guy’s a doctor, a professor, a chief of a department.”
“That does not rule out sexuality.”
“Now you’re the one being absurd.”
“A lot of doctors spend so much time with the nuts and bolts of their profession that they fail to ever really adequately resolve the usual social crises of life. Socially speaking, doctors are not very accomplished, to say the least.”
“Are you speaking for yourself?”
“Possibly. Susan, you have to realize you are a very seductive girl.”
“Fuck you.”
Bellows looked at Susan, stunned. Then he glanced around to see if anyone was listening to their conversation. He had not forgotten they were in the coffee shop. He took a sip of coffee and then regarded Susan for several minutes. She returned his stare.
“Why did you say that?” said Bellows with a lowered voice.
“Because you deserved it. I get a little tired of that kind of stereotyping. When you say I’m seductive you imply to me that I am actively trying to seduce. Believe me, I am not. If medicine has done anything to me, it certainly has cut into my image of myself as conventionally female.”
“All right, maybe it was a bad word. I didn’t mean to imply it was your fault. You’re an attractive girl ...”
“Well there’s a helluva difference between saying someone’s attractive and saying someone’s seductive.”
“OK, I meant attractive. Sexually attractive. And there are people who may find that hard to deal with. Anyway, Susan, I didn’t mean to get into an argument. Besides, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a case in fifteen minutes. If you want, we can talk about it tonight over dinner. That is, if you still want to have dinner?” Bellows started to get up, taking his tray.
“Sure, dinner’s fine.”
“Meanwhile, couldn’t you try to be normal for a little while?”
“Well, I have one more stone to turn over.”
“What’s that?”
“Stark. If he doesn’t help me, I’ll have to give up. Without some support I’m doomed to failure, unless of course you want to get the computer information for me.”
Bellows let his tray drop back onto the table. “Susan, don’t ask me to do anything like that, because I can’t. As for Stark, Susan, you’re crazy.
He’ll eat you alive. Harris is a jewel in comparison to Stark.”
“That’s a risk I have to take. It’s probably safer than undergoing minor surgery here at the Memorial.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair? What a choice word. Why don’t you ask Berman if he thinks it’s fair?”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?” Susan paused, waiting for Bellows to explain himself. Susan did not want to think of the worst but it came to her automatically.
Bellows started toward the tray rack without explaining himself.
“He’s still alive, isn’t he?” asked Susan with a tingle of desperation in her voice. She got up and walked behind Bellows.
“If you call that heart beating being alive, he’s alive.”
“Is he in the recovery room?”
“No.”
“The ICU?”
“No.”
“OK, I give up, where is he?”
Bellows and Susan put their trays into the rack and walked from the coffee shop. They were immediately engulfed by the mob in the hall and forced to quicken their steps.
“He was transferred to the Jefferson Institute in South Boston.”
“What the hell is the Jefferson Institute?”
“It’s an intensive care facility built as part of the area’s Health Maintenance Organization design. Supposedly it’s been designed to curtail costs by applying economics of scale in relation to intensive care.
It’s privately run but the government financed construction. The concept and plans came out of the Harvard-MIT health practices report.”
“I’ve never even heard about it. Have you visited it?”
“No, but I’d like to. I saw it from the outside once. It’s very modern ...
massive and rectilinear. The thing that caught my eye was that there were no windows on the first floor. God only knows why that caught my eye.” Bellows shook his head.
Susan smiled.
“There’s a tour organized for the medical community,” continued Bellows, “to visit the place on the second Tuesday of each month. Those that have gone have been really impressed. Apparently the program is a big success. All chronic-care ICU patients who are comatose or nearly so can be admitted. The idea is to keep the ICU beds in the acute-care hospitals available for acute cases. I think it’s a good idea.”
“But Berman just became comatose. Why would they transfer him so quickly?”
“The time factor is less important than stability. Obviously he’s going to be a long-term-care problem and I guess he was very stable, not like our friend Greenly. God, she’s been a pain in the ass. Just about every complication known, she’s had it.”
Susan thought about emotional detachment. It was difficult for her to understand how Bellows could be so out of touch emotionally with the problem Nancy Greenly represented.
“If she were stable,” continued Bellows, “even threatened stability, I’d transfer her to the Jefferson in a flash. Her case demands an inordinate amount of time with thin rewards. Actually, I have nothing to gain by her.
If I keep her alive until the services switch, then at least I’ve suffered no professional harm. It’s like all those Presidents keeping Vietnam alive.
They couldn’t win, but they didn’t want to lose either. They had nothing to gain but a lot to lose.”
They reached the main elevators and Bellows made sure one of the silently waiting crowd had pushed the “up” button.
“Where was I?” Bellows scratched his head, obviously preoccupied.
“You were talking about Berman and the ICU.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I guess he was stable.” Bellows looked at his watch, then eyed the closed doors with hatred. “Goddamn elevators.
“Susan, I’m not one to give advice usually, but I can’t help myself. See Stark if you must, but remember I’ve
