I wondered what was bugging him, then remembered a rumor of a few years ago. Doctors’ dining room gossip, the kind I tried to avoid.
A Bork problem child, the youngest of four daughters. A teenaged chronic truant with learning disorders and a tendency toward sexual experimentation, sent away, two or three summers ago, hush-hush, for some kind of live-in remediation. The family tight-lipped with humiliation.
One of Bork’s many detractors had told the story with relish.
The de Bosch Institute and Corrective School. ..
Bork was watching me. The look on his face told me I shouldn’t push it any further.
“Of course,” I said.
It sounded hollow. Katarina de Bosch frowned.
But it made Bork smile again. “Yes,” he said. “So obviously, we’re eager for this conference to take place. Expeditiously. I hope you and Dr. de Bosch will enjoy working together.”
“Will I be working with both Drs. de Bosch?”
“My father isn’t well,” said Katarina, as if I should have known it.
“He had a stroke last winter.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
She stood, smoothed her skirt with brief flogging movements, and picked up her attache. In the chair she’d seemed tall-willowy-but upright she was only five two or three, maybe ninety-five bony pounds. Her legs were short and her feet pointed out. The skirt hung an inch below her knees.
“In fact, I need to get back to take care of him,” she said. “Walk me back to my car, Dr. Delaware, and I’ll give you details on the conference.”
Bork winced at her imperiousness, then looked at me with some of that same desperation.
Thinking of what he was going through with his daughter, I stood and said, “Sure.”
He put the cigar in his mouth. “Splendid,” he said. “Thank you, Alex.”
She said, “Henry,” without looking at him and stomped toward the door.
He rushed from behind his desk and managed to get to it soon enough to hold it open for her.
He was a politician and a hack-a skilled physician who’d lost interest in healing and had lost sight of the human factor. In the coming years he never acknowledged my empathy of that afternoon, never displayed any gratitude or particular graciousness to me. If anything, he became increasingly hostile and obstructive and I came to dislike him intensely. But I never regretted what I’d done.
The moment we were out the door, she said, “You’re a behaviorist, aren’t you?”
“Eclectic,” I said. “Whatever works. Including behavior therapy She smirked and began walking very fast, swinging the attach in a wide, dangerous arc through the crowded hospital corridor. Neither of us talked on the way to the glass doors that fronted the building. She moved her short legs furiously, intent upon maintaining a halfstep advantage. When we reached the entrance, she stopped, gripped the attache with both hands, and waited until I held one of the doors open, just as she’d done with Bork. I pictured her growing up with servants.
Her car was parked right in front, in the NO STOPPING ambulance zone-a brandnew Buick, big and heavy, black with a silver vinyl top, buffed shiny as a general’s boot. A hospital security guard was standing watch over it. When he saw her approaching he touched his hat.
Another door held open. I half expected to hear a bugle burst as she slid into the driver’s seat.
She started the car with a sharp twist, and I stood there, looking at her through a closed window.
She ignored me, gunned the engine, finally looked at me and raised an eyebrow, as if surprised I was still there.
The window lowered electrically. “Yes?”
“We were supposed to discuss details,” I said.
“The details,” she said, “are, I’ll do everything. Don’t worry about it, don’t complicate things, and it will all fall into place. All right?”
My throat got very tight.
She put the car into drive.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, but before the second word was out she’d roared off.
I went back into the hospital, got coffee from a machine near the admittance desk, and took it up to my office, trying to forget about what had happened and determined to focus myself on the day’s challenges. Later, seated at my desk, charting the morning’s rounds, my hand slipped and some of the coffee spilled on the blue brochure.