brought no response and the door was locked.I
opened the curtains, waited a while, paged’him and
got no callback. My watch said ten after nine. Old
feelings of impatience and resentment began to
surface.
Fifteen minutes more, I told myself, and then Ill
ieave. Enough is enough.
Ninety seconds before the deadline-he blew in.
“Alex, Alex!” He shook my hand vigorously.
“Thank you fo coming!”
He’d aged. The paunch had grown sizably ovoid
and it strained his shirt buttons. The last few strands
of hair on his crown had vanished and the dark
curls around the sides bordered a’ skull that-was
high, knobby, and shiny. The thick mustache, once
ebony, was a variegated thatch of gray, black, and
white. Only the coffee bean eyes, ever moving, ever
alert, seemed agelessly charged and hinted at the
fire within. He was a short man given to pudginess
and though he dressed expensively, his wardrobe
wasn’t selected with an eye toward camouflage.
This morning he wore a pale pink shirt, a black tie
.wit pink clocks, and cream-colored slacks that
matched the jacket over the chair. His shoes were
mirror-polished, sharp-toed tan loafers of perforated
leather. His long white coat was starched and immaculate
but a size too large. A stethoscope was
draped around his neck, and pens and documents
stuffed the pockets of the coat, causing them to sag.
“Good morning, Raoul.”
“Ha,e you had breakfast yet?” He turned his
back to me and moved his thick fingers rapidly
oVer the piles on the desk like a blind man speed
reading
Braille.
“No, you said you’d”
“How about we go to the doctors’ dining room
and the department will buy you some?”
.”That would be fine,” I sighed.
“Great, great.” He patted his pockets, searched
in them, and muttered a profanity in Spanish. “Just
let me make a couple of calls and we’ll be off–”
“Raoul, I’m under some time pressure. I’d appreciate
it if we could get going now.”
He turned and looked at me with great surprise.
“What?-Oh, of course. Right now. Certainly.”
A last glance at the desk, a grab for the current
copy of Blood, and we were off.
Though his legs were shorter than mine by a
good four inches, I had to trot to keep up-with him
as we hurried across the glassed-in bridge that connected
Prinzley with the main building. And since
he talked as he walked, keeping up was essential.
“The family’s name is Swope.” He spelled it.
“The bgy is Heywood–Woody for short. Five Fears
old. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, localized. The initial
site was in the G.I. tract with one regional
node. The metastatic scan was beautiful–very clean.
The histology is nonlymphobtastic, which is excellent,
because the treatment protocol for nonlym-phoblastics
is well-established.”
We reached the elevator. He seemed out of breath,
tugging at his shirt collar and loo.ening his tie. The
doors slid open and we rode down in silence to the
ground floor. Silence–but not serenity, because he
couldn’t stand still: he tapped his fingers on the
elevator wall,, played with strands ‘of his mustache,
edly.
The ground floor corridor was a tunnel of noise,
glutted with doctors, nurses, techs, and patients.
He continued talking until I tapped his shoulder
and-shouted that I couldn’t hear him. His head
gave a curt little nod and he picked up his pace. We
zipped through the cafeteria and passed into the
dimly lit elegance of the doctors’ dining room.
A group of surgeons and surgical residents sat
eating and smoking around a circular table, dressed
in greens, their caps hanging across their chests
like bibs; otherwise the room was unoccupied.
Raoul ushered me to a corner table, motioned for
service, and spread a linen napkin over his lap. He
picked up a packet of artificial sweetener and turned
it on its side, causing the powder within to shift
with a dry whisper, like sand through an hourglass.
He repeated the gesture half a dozen times and
started talking again, stopping only when the waitress
came and took our order.
“Do you remember the COMP protocol, Alex?”
“Vaguely. Cyclophosphamide, um–methotrexate
and prednisone, right? I forget what the 0 stands
“Very good. Oncovin. We’ve refined it for non-Hodgkin’s.