gonna take caeeof the problems now don’t give me
y shi .whothe: fuckareyou to tell me when I
an see my kids.
isn’t going anywhere—”
right, Headshrinker. You listen
and. yoU. listen good, they’ll be hell to pay if I’m
not st uP in my rightful place as daddy ..
He emptied a bucket of verbal swill and ater
listening for several minutes
being sullied.
-. In the silence of the kitchen I became aware of
the pounding of my heart and the sick-feeling at
pit of my stomach. Maybe I’d lost the touch–the
therapist’s ability to put distance between himself
and the ones who suffered so as to avoid being
battered by a psychological hailstorm.
I looked down at the message pad. Raoul Melen-
He probably wanted me to give a semi:
nar to the residents on the psychological aspects of
chronic disease xr behavioral approaches to pain
control. Something nice and academic that would
let me hide behind slides and videotape and play’
professor again.
At that moment it seemed an especially atxrac-tive
prospect and I dialed his number;
A young woman answered the phone, breathless.
“Carcinogenesis lab.”
“Dr. Melendez-Lynch, please.”
“He’s not here.”
“This is Dr. Delaware returning his call.”
“I think he’s over at the hospital,” she said, sounding
preoccupied.
“Could you connect me to the page operator,
please.”
“i’m not sure how to do that–I’m not his secretary,
Dr, Delray. I’m in the middle of an experi-
ment and I really have to run. Okay ?”
“Okay.”
I broke the connection, dialed the message desk
at Western Peds, and had him paged. Five minutes
later the operator came and told me he hadn’t answered.
I left my name and number and hung up,
thinking how little had changed over the years.
with Raoul had been stimulating andchal*
ienging, but fraught with frustration. Trying to pin
him down could be like sculpting with shaving
cream.
I went into the library and settled in my soft
leather chair with a paperback thriller. Just when
I’d decided the plot was forced and the dialogue too
cute, the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Alex!” His accent turned it into Ahleex.
“So good of you to return my call.” As usual, he
talked at a’ breakneck pace.
“I tried to reach you at the lab but the girl who
answered wasn’t too helpful.”
“Girl? Ah yes, that would be Helen. My’new
post-doc. Brilliant young lady from Yale. She and I
are collaborating on an N.I.I’L study aimedat clarifying
the metastatic process, She worked with
Brewer at New Haven–construction of synthetic
cell wallsmand we’ve been examining the relative
invasiveness of varying tumor forms 6n specific
models.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
“It is.” He paused. “Anyway, how have you been,
my friend?”
“Fine. And you?”
He chuckled.
“It’s–nine forty-three and I haven’t yet finished
charting. That tells you how Fve been,”
“Oh come on, Raoul, you love it.”
“Ha! Yes I do. What did
the quintessential type A
;
“A plus.”
.
“I will die of a
work will be completed.”
:- It was only a partial jest, His father, dean of a
!.medical school in pre-Castro ‘Havana, had keeled
, over on the tennis coui’t and died at ,forty-eight
Raoul was five years from that age and he d inherr-
ited his sire s lifestyle as well as some bad genes.
thought him changeable but had long ago
trying to slow him down. If four failed
marriages hadn’t done the trick, nothing would.
“You’ll win the Nobel Prize,” I said.
“And it will all go for alimony!” He thought that
fu,nny. When his laughter died down
“‘I need a favor, Alex. There’s a family that’s
giving us some trouble–noncompliance pr,o,,blems—
an, ,I wondered if you could talk to them, ‘
,,
I m flattered but what about the regu!,ar staff?.
“The regular staff made a mess of it, he said,
peeved. “Alex, you know the high regard I have for
you–why you abandoned a brilliant career I’ll never
know, but that’s another issue. The’ people Social
Services’ are sending me are amateurs, my friend.
Rank amateurs. Starry-eyed cageworkers who. see
themselves as patient advocates–provocateurs. The
psych.people will have nothing to do with us be-
cause Boorstin has a death phobia and is terrified