“Thanks for the referral.”
Alex,” she said plaintively, “why are you making this so painful for
me? You know the kind of doctor I am.”
She sniffed and rubbed her eyes.
I said, “Since you called me in, I feel I’ve been running a mar “Me
too. You think it’s easy having meetings with those sleazeballs and
pretending to be their little stooge? Plu’nb thinks his hand was
created in order to rest on my knee.”
She grimaced and pulled her dress lower. “You think it’s easy being
with a bunch of docs, passing Bill in the hall and hearing what they
say about him? Look, I know he’s not your idea of a nice guy, but you
don’t really know him. He’s good. He helped’ me.”
She looked out the driver’s window. “I had a problem. . . . You don’t
need to know the details. Oh, hell, why not? I had a drinking
problem, okay?”
“Okay.”
She turned around quicKly. “You’re not surprised? øDid I show it-did
I act pathologic?”
“No, but it happens to nice people too.”
“I never showed it at all?”
“You’re not exactly a drooling drunk.”
“No.” She laughed. “More like a comatose drunk, just like my mom-good
old genetics.”
She laughed again. Squeezed the steering wheel.
“Now my dad,” she said, “there was your angry drunk. And my brother,
Tom, he was a genteel drunk. Witty, charming-very Noel Cowardish.
Everyone loved it when he’d had a few too many. He was an industrial
designer, much smarter than me. Artistic, creative. He died two years
ago of cirrhosis. He was thirty-eight.”
She shrugged. “I postponed becoming an alcoholic for a while-always
the contrary kid. Then, during my internship, I finally decided to
join the family tradition. Binges on the day off. I was really good
at it, Alex. I knew how to clean up just in time to look
clever-and-together on rounds. But then I started to slip. Got my
timing mixed up. Timing’s always a tricky thing when you’re a closet
lush. . . . A few years ago I got busted for drunk driving.
Caused an accident. Isn’t that a pretty picture? Imagine if I’d
killed someone, Alex. Killed a kid. Pediatrician turns toddler into
road pizza-what a headline.”
She cried again. Dried her eyes so hard it looked as if she were
hitting herself.
“Shit, enough with the self-pity-my AA buddies always used to get on me
for that. I did AA for a year. Then I broke away from it-no spare
time and I was doing fine, right? Then last year, with all the
stress-some personal things that didn’t work out-I started again.
Those teeny little bottles you get on airplanes? I picked some up on a
flight, coming home from an A.M.A convention. Just a nip before bed.
Then a few more . . . then I started taking the little buggers to the
office. For that mellow moment at the end of the day.
But I was cool, always careful to put the empties back in my purse,
leave no evidence. See, I’m good at subterfuge. You didn’t know that
about me till now, did you? But I got you, too, didn’t I? Oh,
shit!”
She hit the wheel, then rested her head on It.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Forget it.”
“Sure, it is. It’s okay, it’s great, it’s terrific, it’s wonderful.
.
One night-a really shitty one, sick kids up the wazoo-I polished off a
bunch of little bottles and passed out at my desk. Bill was making a
security check and found me at three in the morning. I’d vomited all
over my charts. When I saw him standing over me I thought I was going
to die. But he held me and cleaned me up and took me hometook care of
me, Alex. No one ever did that for me. I was always taking care of my
mother because she was always .
She rolled her brow on the steering wheel.
“It’s because of him that I’m pulling it together. Did you notice all
the weight I’ve lost? My hair?”
“You look great.
“I learned how to dress, Alex. Because it finally mattered. Bill
bought me my coffee machine. He understood, because his family was