For some reason I become aware of my seedy suit. Ellen is not around much and I pay no attention to what I wear. I haven’t got around to buying clothes since my return. My cousin Lucy calls it my Bruno Hauptmann suit, a ten-year-old double-breasted broad-stripe seersucker, which I wasn’t even aware I was wearing until suddenly it feels dank and heavy.
“Let’s get this over with, guys,” says Bob Comeaux briskly, leaning over his hands and swinging his leg. “So we can have a drink or something. I got to muck out a stall.” This, we understand, is in a manner of speaking.
“Right,” says Max. Max and I are now sitting like patients in two chairs facing Bob Comeaux’s splendid desk.
“Oh, say, Tom,” says Bob Comeaux.
“Yes?”
“Thanks for looking in on Mrs. LaFaye this morning. I appreciate it.”
“Glad to. As a matter of fact, I’d like to speak to you, to both of you, about the clinical changes in her. I have an idea that—”
“Yeah, sure,” says Bob, looking at his watch. “We’ll do that.”
“I’m also a bit confused about the consultation. It was never made clear to me who requested it.”
“We’ll get into that too. Right now, what say if we do the boiler plate and get the official crud out of the way.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Yes,” says Max. “Here’s what I suggest—”
“Let’s do it by the book, guys,” says Bob Comeaux, removing his hands from his pockets and clapping one softly into the other. “What I’m proposing is that, at least for the time being, Tom come aboard here in my division. It’s not just a matter of my making room for him — hell, I’ve been after him for years and he can write his own ticket — and he won’t need a license.”
“Wait,” says Max. “Hold it, Doctor.” Max holds up a hand like the Tulane professor that he is, flagging down an errant intern on grand rounds. “Let’s just hold it a second.”
“Very well, Doctor,” says Bob Comeaux gravely. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem. Possibly a misunderstanding. My understanding is that Dr. More wants to return to private practice. Has, in fact. Isn’t that so, Tom?”
“That’s so,” I say, thinking for some reason about an expression in Mickey LaFaye’s eyes, in Donna’s eyes. There was something about her, them — There was something like—
“I understand! I read you, Doctor! And believe me, there is nothing I admire more about us old-time clinicians, ha, than our concern for the traditional one-on-one doctor-patient relationship. But we got a little problem here.”
“What’s the problem?” says Max in his old ironic style. Max is upset about something. I am noting that for some reason Bob Comeaux is striving for standard medical heartiness and not succeeding; is, in fact, doing very badly.
“The problem, fellows,” says Bob Comeaux, looking up for the first time and smiling his rueful attractive smile, “is that Tom’s license to practice is in bureaucratic limbo. Theoretically he has a probationary license, but that leaves him open to malpractice suits and any cop who wants to lean on him. What I’m saying is that I can take him aboard here and he can do what he pleases, licensed or not.”
“That’s ridiculous,” says Max to me. “That’s wrong!”
“What’s ridiculous?” asks Bob Comeaux, puzzled.
“That he has to report to us on his practice.”
Bob Comeaux leans forward over his pocketed hands, frowning but not unpleasantly. “I’m not clear, Max. Do you mean that we both agree that Tom should be practicing any kind of medicine he pleases? Or do you mean that he was wrongfully deprived of his license?”
“I mean it’s wrong! The whole damn thing.”
We fall silent. Max’s defense of me is loud and lame.
I am thinking that I should be experiencing a sinking of heart at Max’s lame defense of me, but that I’m not. Instead, I find myself watching Bob Comeaux curiously. There is a new assurance about him. I observe that when he leans over, and now when he takes his hands out of his pockets and folds them across his chest, grasping his suede-clad arms, at the same time sitting-leaning gracefully, one haunch on the desk, he is doing so consciously and well. There is a space between what he is and what he is doing. He is graceful and conscious of his gracefulness, like an actor.
Max is nothing of the sort. He is upset and at a loss. Max suddenly looks tired and old. No longer the bright young Jesus among the elders, planes of his temples flashing light, amazing the older staff physicians with his knowledge, he sounds more like a Jewish mother. He moralizes: This is wrong, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.
But Max revives, perks up, sits erect. “Excuse me, Bob, but this is all a lot of humbug. The fact is that is why we are here: to review Dr. More’s competence and integrity, which I’m assuming is not in question here, and as members of the ethics committee of the medical society to recommend to the state board that his license be reinstated in full, which will then occur as a matter of course, right?”
“Right. Except for one annoying little glitch like I told you,” says Bob Comeaux patiently. He looks both genial and doleful.
“What glitch?”—Max, cocking his head.
“You know as well as I do, Max,” says Bob Comeaux wearily. “In the case of a felony count, even with our recommendation, a license can only be reinstated after a year’s probationary service under our supervision — which is exactly what I’m offering him, except that he’ll be free and won’t have to report to us.”
“Felony?” Max spreads his hands, beseeches the four walls, the Mississippi River. “What felony?”
“Oh boy,” says Bob Comeaux softly, shaking his head. He flips open the file next to his thigh on the desk where he’s still lounging at ease, reads in a neutral clerk’s voice, sighting past his folded arms. “These are the minutes of the first hearing before the State Medical Board. Dr. Thomas More charged by Agent Marcus Harris of the ATFA — let me see, blah blah — with the sale of one hundred prescriptions of Desoxyn tablets and two hundred prescriptions of Dalmane capsules at one dollar per dose for the purpose of resale at the Union 76 truck stop of I-12 near Hammond, Louisiana — blah, blah — look, guys, there is no need to go back over this stuff.” He closes the file.
“That’s entrapment!” Max cries, again to the world at large. “That narc guy was posing as a trucker.”
“Right,” says Bob Comeaux glumly. “A sting operation. Could I ask you something, Tom — something I’ve never understood?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve never understood why you didn’t just charge those guys a medical fee. Why sell the damn prescriptions wholesale through a goddamn truck stop?”
“I needed the money. I knew the owner of the truck stop and had confidence in him, that he would only deal with truckers who needed them. You will note that the dosages were minimal, twenty-five milligrams of Desoxyn and thirty milligrams of Dalmane, just enough to get them up enough to keep awake and then down so they could sleep. You know those guys push those big double and triple tandems over crumbling interstates for up to eighteen hours a day. Then they’re so tired they can’t sleep.”
“Oh boy,” says Bob Comeaux.
Max opens his hands again but says nothing. Doesn’t have to. Tom, that was dumb, was what he would say.
“Okay,” says Bob gently. “Here’s our little problem. Desoxyn is an amphetamine, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Yes.”
“Dalmane is a hypnotic, right?”
“Yes.”