There Are Doors

When he was outside in the reception room again, he tried to remember the telephone calls he had made from United. The harsh male voice—had that been Perlman?

Ella asked, “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” he said absently, suppressing the fact that he had to go see some doctor he could not remember. Had there been a doctor’s bill in the mail in his box? Or in all the stuff that he had picked up at the post office? He had not paid a lot of attention to most of it; he could not remember that either.

“Ella, you said you called my apartment?”

She nodded.

“Mr. Drummond mentioned that, too. He said you talked to somebody named Perlman once.”

Ella shook her head. “I never got an answer at all.” She hesitated. “If you’re going to be here in the store about noon, how about letting Personnel buy your lunch? Sort of celebrate your coming back.”

“You didn’t talk to anybody named Perlman?”

“I didn’t talk to anybody,” Ella said. She seemed suddenly depressed, for no reason he could see. “But I was out for a week with my back, and they got a temp. Dixie’s been blaming me for her mistakes ever since, so she was probably the one that talked to Perlman. But if you ask me it was a wrong number.”

There was an employee lounge on the floor below, a bare and frequently dirty room in which associates who brown-bagged ate their lunches. He fed coins into the coffee machine (recalling Joe in the basement of the hospital), found a clean chair, and sat down.

Doctors had to be paid. He got out his checkbook and read through the stubs. He had written no check to any doctor. None at all. Yet doctors were paid, by someone.

By the company’s medical plan, then, very likely; but that was administered by Personnel. If he asked Ella for the number of his doctor, she would tell Drummond. He could not just start telephoning doctors. How many doctors were there in the city? Thousands, probably. He tried to recall what Drummond had said about this one: “Your doctor will see you as soon as you get to his office. He doesn’t take appointments. There’s no reason you can’t be back before lunch.”

No, that was wrong. Not he. It was she. She doesn’t take appointments. The doctor was a woman. There might be thousands of doctors, but how many of those were women?

Fifty, maybe. And he wouldn’t go to a doctor out in the suburbs.

There was a phone in a corner of the room, with a tattered directory on a shelf under it. He opened it to the physicians’ listings and got out his pen.

Some of the doctors had provided only initials; he decided to consider them male for the purpose of his search. At least half the women were gynecologists or pediatricians; they could be eliminated too. He crossed off all those with addresses more than six blocks from the store and his apartment and was pleased to see that only three names remained. Pushing coins into the slot, he got out his wallet and checked the name he and North had chosen in the hotel. A. C. Pine—that was it. He laid the driver’s license on the shelf.

“Dr. Nilson’s office.”

Did this doctor take appointments? He said, “This is Adam Pine. I need an appointment with the doctor as soon as possible—this morning, if you can arrange it.”

“Dr. Nilson—” Faintly someone called, “Lara! Lara!” He could not tell whether the voice was male or female; it sounded far off and scratchy.

“Would you mind if I put you on hold, Mr. Green?”

She did not wait for his answer. Her voice was gone, and after a moment or two had passed, a piano began “Clair de Lune.”

He waited, telling himself he would stand there all day if necessary. “Clair de Lune” ended, and something else began, a piece he did not recognize.

At last a new voice said, “Dr. Nilson speaking.”

“I want to talk to Lara.”

“To Lora? She just left.”

“Then I want an appointment to see you as soon as possible.”

“I don’t take appointments—it’s first come, first served. Come to my office. It’s in the Downtown Mental Health Center, and I’ll fit you in when I can.”

He tried twice before he could get out the words. “I think you’ve treated me before. That you have a file on me.” He gave his name.

Dr. Nilson’s voice became warm. “Oh, of course, Mr. Green. Believe it or not, I was looking over your case the other night and hoping you’d drop in again. It’s been more than a month.”

He started, “If you’ve tried to phone—”

“I never do, except in emergencies. It’s so much better if the patient contacts me because he wants to. Come this morning, won’t you? I’ll see that you get in.”

“Yes.”

“And now, if you’ll excuse me—Lora’s not here, and there’s someone on the other line.”

His Doctor