“How are you feeling? I’ve been so busy I forgot to ask.”
I had to think for a minute before I realized what on earth he was talking about. I’d nearly forgotten about my tumble off the sailboat. “Much better, thanks. The medication really helped.”
The doctor balled up his sandwich wrapper and, with a flip of his wrist, made a perfect rim shot to the trash can. “Good. Just make sure you don’t overdo it, okay?”
I promised I wouldn’t, all the time thinking, Fat chance! I called prescriptions in to the local Giant and Safeway pharmacies and waited, with butterflies in my stomach, for the waiting room to fill up. At two-thirty I got a break. With a Pap smear in A and an EKG in?, I calculated that Dr. Chase would be busy for a while.
I felt guilty about hustling the poor woman in A into a paper gown and assisting her up onto the examining table without so much as a magazine to pass the time. How many countless hours had I spent lying about on upholstered tables covered with paper, feeling forgotten, with the air-conditioning whistling through gaps between the ties in my robe, freezing my back, boobs, or buns? How many doctors had kept me waiting with nothing to do but count the holes in the acoustical ceiling tiles? So I used up precious minutes making sure she had everything she needed.
“Comfy?” I asked.
She held the inadequate gown together at her chest with a heavily ringed hand. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I am,” I said, and handed her a copy of the New Yorker magazine that was, amazingly, only two weeks old. She looked like the New Yorker type.
“Do me a favor,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Ask him to warm up the speculum.”
I laughed and patted her chubby knee. “Will do!”
I closed the door behind me and tiptoed down the hall feeling like the thief I was about to become. Just outside the door of Examining Room? I paused. Inside, I could hear the doctor’s low voice speaking in soothing tones to a patient who was a nervous mountain of a man in his late seventies. As cover-I figured I needed it-I grabbed two charts from the pile waiting to be filed and scurried back to Dr. Chase’s inner sanctum, trying to appear as if I knew what I was doing. Even so, when I finally stood in his office doorway, my face burned and I found myself acutely aware of everything in the room. The framed diploma hanging crookedly on the wall next to the window, the faded floral drapes parted to reveal the untidy garden with the Crestar Bank sign in the near distance behind it, a VCR blinking red at 12:00, even the damned decoys all seemed to have eyes and were staring at me.
I crossed to the desk, held my breath, and raised a corner of the blotter. The chart was still there. I pulled it out, hardly daring to believe what I read on the labeclass="underline" Dunbar, Katherine Louise.
I stood there wasting valuable time, my heart thudding in my ears, flipping through the pages, trying to interpret old Dr. Chase’s scrawls, symbols, and abbreviations. I don’t know what I expected, notes in a neat, round hand maybe like “This girl’s pregnant” or “The rabbit died,” so I was disappointed when at first I couldn’t make heads or tails out of anything I saw. Katie’s chart might just as well have been written in code. I found a date: 10/2/90. That was a good sign. BP125/70 must have been her blood pressure and I certainly knew what Pap and menses were, but the meaning of the rest of it, including a funny little diagram with lines and numbers, completely escaped me. I had the feeling that even if I had worked for Dr. Chase’s father for a hundred years, I’d still have needed an interpreter to decipher those Martian runes. It wasn’t until I turned to the next page that I saw it: “A/P:1 8 wk pregnancy.” I didn’t need a translator for that!
It had been my intention to slip a few pages out of the chart and photocopy them, but I forgot about the fasteners. Katie’s chart consisted of approximately twenty pages held together by a metal bar that passed through two holes that had been punched through the top of each sheet with the ends folded over and secured with another thin strip of metal. Nuts! I’d have to borrow the whole chart. I stuck Katie’s chart among those still in my hand. Clutching the booty to my chest, I ventured out into the hallway and was halfway to the photocopier when the door to Examining Room B opened and Dr. Chase emerged with the old gentleman, who looked so fat and flushed that I expected him to stroke out at any minute. I stood in the hallway grinning stupidly as the two men passed and the doctor began what I now recognized as his customary farewell ritual. I knew he’d spend time standing at the front door waving the old guy down the sidewalk, so I made a mad dash for the photocopier.
The machine was ominously quiet.
Damn and double damn! Dr. Chase must have turned the photocopier off while I was fetching lunch. Now I would have an infuriating wait while the blasted thing warmed up. I folded a few pages back and slammed Katie’s chart against the glass. I mashed the photocopier cover over the chart and held it down while I waited for the ready light to come on. Shit! I heard a familiar thud as the front door closed, followed by the sound of Dr. Chase’s footsteps returning down the hall. Through the glass panels of the swinging doors I could see the approaching expanse of his white lab coat and flashes of light reflecting off his little, round glasses.
At that moment the copier’s ready light blinked on. I punched the green copy button, deathly afraid that he’d figure out what I was doing. A brilliant bar of light swept over the page from right to left and back again. A single copy dropped into the paper tray. I could see Dr. Chase’s arm extended toward the door, pushing it open ahead of him.
I snatched the chart from the photocopier and held it behind my back like a naughty child, but Dr. Chase entered the room and passed me with merely a nod before vanishing into Examining Room A. I flipped to the next page of Katie’s chart, slapped the chart down on the photocopier and had another go with the print button. Just as the copy emerged into the tray, I heard him call, “Hannah, I’ll need you to assist.”
Damn! I’d forgotten a doctor couldn’t be alone with a female patient during a gynecological exam. I stalled for time. “She says she’d like you to warm up the speculum, Doctor.” I folded the photocopies I had made into quarters and stuffed them into the pocket of Connie’s blazer.
“I always do.”
Although Dr. Chase was in the examining room, the door stood wide open. I couldn’t get back to his office without his seeing me. What would I do with Katie’s chart? I shoved it into the nearest file cabinet. I would sneak it back under his blotter later.
But I never got the chance. Dr. Chase kept me busy the rest of the day. Even after the last patient left at four-thirty, he remained in his office. I was determined not to leave until I had replaced the chart, so I dawdled at the reception desk, straightening up a desk that was already impossibly neat. I washed dirty coffee mugs. I cleaned the coffeepot. I watered the potted plants. I telephoned folks to remind them of tomorrow’s appointments, mostly talking to answering machines.
The next time the telephone warbled, it was for me.
“Hi, hon.”
“Paul!”
“Just got off the horn with Connie. Glad to be back on the employment rolls?”
“If you called me more often, you wouldn’t have to ask.” There was a long silence, and I could hear the antique clock in our entrance hall strike five.
Paul cleared his throat. “I just turned in my final grades and wanted to let you know that I’m off. For a few weeks at least.”
“Where to, may I ask?”
“Cape Cod. Do you remember Steve Zelko? He’s renting a summer house in North Truro.”
“The strange little English prof with the black glasses and the fifties crew cut?”