George paused with his mouth open, surprised. “Okay. Great!” Damn, that turned out to be a lot easier than he thought! “Six it is.”
She smiled. “How about the Whiskey Blue over at the W? It’s close enough to walk, but they have valet parking if you prefer.”
“Perfect,” George said. “See you this evening.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
George waved bye to her as he headed back to the reading room. He was feeling better than he had in months. He’d have to remember to thank Clayton for prodding him out of his doldrums.
19
George followed Carlos into the tiered conference room carrying the remains of a vending machine lunch.
“That shit’ll kill you,” Carlos said.
“That’s what I hear. You know where I can find a good doctor?” George joked. After his little chat with Debbie, George’s appetite had returned, but he realized he didn’t have enough time to wait in line at the cafeteria. He wondered if Kasey would approve of his going out with her. He guessed she certainly wouldn’t think Debbie was his type of girl. Nor did he. There was an in-your-face toughness about Debbie that conflicted with what George had found so appealing about Kasey’s warmth and generosity. But at least he wouldn’t have to wonder what to say. Debbie wasn’t one to allow lulls in the conversation.
George took a seat near the back of the conference room near Carlos, who introduced George to some of his fellow first-year friends. They plied George with questions about the daily meeting schedule, and George explained that generally there were three a day: seven A.M., noon, and four thirty P.M., and they should consider them mandatory. If they didn’t show up, they had better have a good excuse. He added that every other Thursday, the noon conference would be a didactic lecture in physics that was a particularly must-attend event.
As he finished talking, Claudine walked into the room and made her way over. Carlos noticed her and tapped George on the knee to get his attention.
“Hey, Claudine!” George grinned. “Take a seat. Have you met everybody?” George waved toward the bevy of first-year residents.
She didn’t smile back. “Did you hear about the two patients we saw on Monday?”
“What two?” George asked.
“Greg Tarkington and Claire Wong.”
“I know about Tarkington. I was in the ER when he was brought in DOA.”
“The same thing happened to Claire Wong this morning.”
George was shocked. “You mean she died?”
Claudine nodded her head solemnly. “She was brought in and declared dead on arrival.”
“I was in the ER all morning and didn’t hear anything about it.” George shook his head. Tarkington had been a shock. Tarkington and Wong was more than a shock. It seemed like a statistical improbability. What the hell was going on?
“It spooked me,” Claudine said. “We MRI’d both two days ago. It just feels so odd. I mean, I suspected that they were both terminal, but having them die within forty-eight hours…”
“Both had bad diseases,” George replied, as if such a comment could explain the two unexpected deaths.
“It makes me feel responsible somehow,” Claudine said, “even though I know that’s not rational. Still. They seemed so normal and healthy and probably would still be if we hadn’t done the studies. I’m afraid we opened up a can of worms.”
George, aware of the first-years watching and listening, said reassuringly, “You have to remember, the diseases in both cases were remarkably aggressive, Claudine. Their deaths are surprising, but not unexpected.”
“Okay. Just wanted to tell you.” Claudine nodded absently and walked off to find a seat.
George felt momentarily addled. First, about openly dismissing the oddness of the two deaths coming so close together. Second, because those deaths were temporally and most likely causally related to the MRIs they did. His reflex motivation was to make Claudine feel better, even though he should have let her feelings initiate a dialogue so that they could all share their feelings. The trouble was that this new bit of news struck directly into his own sensitivities, reawakening his paranoia that death was stalking him; that he was personally responsible, not the MRIs.
“That was weird,” Carlos whispered to George. “I can’t believe she really thinks that MRIs could have caused two deaths.”
“Well, both MRIs suggested cancer recurrence,” George said. “The patients had probably heard the results from their oncologists. With all that they had been through, that had to be devastating news.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Listen, I don’t want to talk about it anymore at the moment. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. Sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” George assured him.
George didn’t want to dwell on these thoughts. Instead he forced himself to think that at six P.M. he was going to be at the Whiskey Blue Bar like a normal person, chatting with a very confident and attractive woman.
At that moment Clayton descended the central aisle. As he walked, his eyes darted around the room. For a brief second his eyes locked on to George’s, and he shot him a thumbs-up.
George smiled and nodded out of courtesy but was confused as to what Clayton meant by it. The only thing he could think of was that somehow Clayton had already learned that he and Debbie were planning to meet over at the W Hotel bar that evening. My God! George thought. There are truly no secrets in the hospital.
20
George had a better time with Debbie at the Whiskey Blue than he had anticipated. He couldn’t believe three and a half hours had passed since they arrived. She was the perfect distraction, even if a bit rough around the edges. She had a smoker’s voice, but it fit like a glove with her colorful, sailor trash talk, and she had an opinion, a strong opinion, about almost everything. They met a number of her friends, including several of the bartenders, who greeted her by name. It was apparent she was a regular customer. It was all very social and L.A. A few B-list celebs came in, too, and Debbie even knew a couple of them. There was nonstop chatter about all sorts of superficial subjects and nothing about medicine or, most important, death.
Along with the lively conversation there were a lot of drinks, all on Debbie’s tab, which she insisted on under no uncertain terms, and she did the ordering. George wasn’t about to make an issue of it. The only problem was that George had such a good time, he didn’t keep track of how much liquor he was throwing back, and ended up quite drunk.
Debbie on the other hand just sipped and was quite sober. George hadn’t noticed. He was having a ball, and the only thing he had had to eat was some salted nuts and dried wasabi peas.
During the course of the evening, Debbie related that she had completed her nurse’s training at the University of Colorado, but had come to L.A. as soon as she had her degree and had worked at the University Medical Center ever since. “I started out in the ER, and I’m still there,” she said with obvious pride.
When George asked about her personal life, she was happy to fill him in. She told George she’d never been married, had dated a few of the staff doctors, including Clayton for a time, but she didn’t want to talk about them, adding that she preferred to date people outside of the medical profession. George agreed with her on that issue, but said he hoped to see her again.