'How are my ladies doing?'
'They're both sleeping.'
'Thank God. When I spoke to Cindy this afternoon, she sounded exhausted. I brought this from downstairs'- raising one cup-'to help fuel her. But sleep is what she really needs.'
He began walking toward the teak doors. I tagged along. Are we keeping you from hearth and home, Doctor?'
I shook my head. 'Been and returned.'
'Didn't know psychologists kept that kind of schedule.'
'We don't when we can avoid it.'
He smiled. 'Well, the fact that Cindy's sleeping this early means Cassie must be getting healthy enough for her to relax. So that's good.'
'She told me she never leaves Cassie.'
'Never.'
'Must be hard on her.'
'Unbelievably hard. At first I tried to ease her away from it, but after being here a few times and seeing other mothers, I realized it was normal. Rational, actually. It's self-defense.'
Against what?'
'Screw-ups.'
'Cindy talked about that, too,' I said. 'Have you seen a lot of medical error around here?'
As a parent or as Chuck Jones's son?'
'Is there a difference?'
He gave a small, hard smile. 'You bet there is. As ChuckJones's son, I think this place is pediatric paradise, and I'll say so in the next banquet journal if they ask me. As a parent, I've seen things the inevitable human errors. I'll give you an example-one that really shook me. A couple of months ago, the whole fifth floor was buzzing.
Seems there was this little boy being treated for some kind of cancergetting an experimental drug, so maybe there wasn't much hope anyway. But that's not the point. Someone misread a decimal point and he got a massive overdose. Brain damage, coma, the whole bit. All the
parents on the floor heard the resuscitation page and saw the emergency team rush in. Heard his mother screaming for help. Including us-I was out in the hall, actually heard his mother scream for help.'
He winced. 'I saw her a couple of days later, Dr. Delaware.
When he was still being respirated. She looked like a concentration camp victim. That look of being beaten down and betrayed? All because of one decimal point. Now that kind of thing probably happens all the time, on a smaller scale-things that can be smoothed over. Or don't even get picked up in the first place. So you 'No, thanks,' I said.
He laughed softly. 'The voice of experience, huh? Has it always been this bad?'
Always.'
'Look at this little Erron Valdez we've got here.' A faint, rainbowed slick floated on the black surface. Grimacing, he raised the other cup to his lips. 'Yum-essence of grad school. But I need it to keep conscious.'
'Long day?'
'On the contrary-too short. They seem to get shorter as you get older, don't they? Short and crammed with busywork. Then there's having to drive back and forth between work and home and here. Our glorious freeways- humanity at its nadir.'
'Valley Hills means the Ventura Freeway,' I said. 'That's about as bad as it gets.'
