"Close the door behind you, please."
Honey closed the door.
"Take a seat."
Honey sat down across from him. She was almost trembling.
Benjamin Wallace looked across at her and thought, It's like kicking a puppy. But what has to be done has to be done. "I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news for you," he said.
One hour later, Honey met Kat in the solarium. Honey sank into a chair next to her, smiling.
"Did you see Dr. Wallace?" Kat asked.
"Oh, yes. We had a long talk. Did you know that his wife left him last September? They were married for fifteen years. He has two grown children from an earlier marriage, but he hardly ever sees them. The poor darling is so lonely."
Book II
Chapter Fourteen
It was New Year's Eve again, and Paige, Kat, and Honey ushered in 1994 at Embarcadero County Hospital. It seemed to them that nothing in their lives had changed except the names of their patients.
As Paige walked through the parking lot, she was reminded of Harry Bowman and his red Ferrari. How many lives were destroyed by the poison Harry Bowman was selling"? she wondered. Drugs were so seductive. And, in the end, so deadly.
Jimmy Ford showed up with a small bouquet of flowers for Paige.
"What's this for, Jimmy?"
He blushed. "I just wanted you to have it. Did you know I'm getting married?"
"No! That's wonderful. Who's the lucky girl?"
"Her name is Betsy. She works at a dress shop.
We're going to have half a dozen kids. The first girl is going to be named Paige. I hope you don't mind."
"Mind? I'm flattered."
He was embarrassed. "Did you hear the one about the doctor who gave a patient two weeks to live? 'I can't pay you right now,' the man said. 'All right, I'll give you another two weeks.' "
And Jimmy was gone.
Paige was worried about Tom Chang. He was having violent mood swings from euphoria to deep depression.
One morning during a talk with Paige, he said, "Do you realize that most of the people in here would die without us? We have the power to heal their bodies and make them whole again."
And the next morning: "We're all kidding ourselves, Paige. Our patients would get better faster without us. We're hypocrites, pretending that we have all the answers. Well, we don't."
Paige studied him a moment. "What do you hear from Sye?"
"I talked to her yesterday. She won't come back here. She's going ahead with the divorce."
Paige put her hand on his arm. "I'm so sorry, Tom."
He shrugged. "Why? It doesn't bother me. Not anymore. I'll find another woman." He grinned. "And have another child. You'll see."
There was something unreal about the conversation.
That night Paige said to Kat, "I'm worried about Tom Chang. Have you talked to him lately?"
"Yes."
"Did he seem normal to you?"
"No man seems normal to me," Kat said.
Paige was still concerned. "Let's invite him for dinner tomorrow night."
"All right."
The next morning when Paige reported to the hospital, she was greeted with the news that a janitor had found Tom Chang's body in a basement equipment room. He had died of an overdose of sleeping pills.
Paige was near hysteria. "I could have saved him," she cried. "All this time he was calling out for help, and I didn't hear him."
Kat said firmly, "There's no way you could have helped him, Paige. You were not the problem, and you were not the solution. He didn't want to live without his wife and child. It's as simple as that."
Paige wiped the tears from her eyes. "Damn this place!" she said. "If it weren't for the pressure and the hours, his wife never would have left him."
"But she did," Kat said gently. "It's over."
Paige had never been to a Chinese funeral before. It was an incredible spectacle. It began at the Green Street Mortuary in Chinatown early in the morning, where a crowd started gathering outside. A parade was assembled, with a large brass marching band, and at the head of the parade, mourners carried a huge blowup of a photograph of Tom Chang.
The march began with the band loudly playing, winding through the streets of San Francisco, with a hearse at the end of the procession. Most of the mourners were on foot, but the more elderly rode in cars.
To Paige, the parade seemed to be moving around the city at random. She was puzzled. "Where are they going?" she asked one of the mourners.
He bowed slightly and said, "It is our custom to take the departed past some of the places that have meaning in his life—restaurants where he ate, shops that he used, places he visited ..."
"I see."
The parade ended in front of Embarcadero County Hospital.
The mourner turned to Paige and said,' 'This is where Tom Chang worked. This is where he found his happiness."
Wrong, Paige thought. This is where he lost his happiness.
Walking down Market Street one morning, Paige saw Alfred Turner. Her heart started pounding. She had not been able to get him out of her mind. He was starting to cross the street as the light was changing. When Paige got to the corner, the light had turned to red. She ignored it and ran out into the street, oblivious to the honking horns and the outraged cries of motorists.
Paige reached the other side and hurried to catch up with him. She grabbed his sleeve. "Alfred ..."
The man turned. "I beg your pardon?"
It was a total stranger.
Now that Paige and Kat were fourth-year residents, they were performing operations on a regular basis.
Kat was working with doctors in neurosurgery, and she never ceased to be amazed at the miracle of the hundred billion complex digital computers called neurons that lived in the skull. The work was exciting.