He punched the wall.
I sensed that anything I said would make matters worse, but I knew silence wouldn’t help much either.
The elevator door opened and we stepped in.
“Pissed-off parents,” he said, punching the DOWN button hard. “Pleasant way to end your day.”
“My job.”
“Some job.”
“Beats honest labor.”
He smiled.
I pointed to the cup in his hand. “That’s got to be cold. How about we both get some fresh sludge?”
He thought for a moment. “Sure, why not?”
The cafeteria was closed, so we went down the hall, past the Residents’ Lounge, where a row of vending machines stood next to the locker room. A thin young woman in surgical scrubs was walking away with two handfuls of candy bars. Chip and I each bought black coffee and he purchased a plastic-wrapped packet containing two chocolate chip cookies.
Farther down the corridor was a sitting area: orange plastic chairs arranged in an L, a low white table bearing food wrappers and out-of-date magazines. The Path Lab was a stone’s throw away. I thought of his little boy and wondered if he’d make the association. But he ambled over and sat down, yawning.
Unwrapping the cookies, he dunked one in the coffee, said, “Health food,” and ate the soggy part.
I sat perpendicular to him and sipped. The coffee was terrible but oddly comforting — like a favorite uncle’s stale breath.
“So,” he said, dunking again, “let me tell you about my daughter. Terrific disposition, good eater, good sleeper — she slept through at five weeks. For anyone else, good news, right? After what happened to Chad, it scared the shit out of us. We wanted her awake — used to take turns going in there, waking her up, poor thing. But what amazes me is how resilient she is — the way she just keeps bouncing back. You wouldn’t think anything that small could be so tough.
“I feel kind of ridiculous, even discussing her with a psychologist. She’s a baby, for God’s sake — what kind of neuroses could she have? Though I guess with all this she could end up with plenty, couldn’t she? All the stress. Are we talking major psychotherapy for the rest of her life?”
“No.”
“Has anyone ever studied it?”
“There’s been quite a bit of research,” I said. “Chronically ill children tend to do better than experts predict — people do, in general.”
“Tend to?”
“Most do.”
He smiled. “I know. It’s not physics. Okay, I’ll allow myself some momentary optimism.”
He tensed, then relaxed — deliberately, as if schooled in meditation. Letting his arms drop and dangle and stretching his legs. Dropping his head back and massaging his temples.
“Doesn’t it get to you?” he said. “Listening to people all day? Having to nod and be sympathetic and tell them they’re okay.”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But usually you get to know people, start to see their humanity.”
“Well, this is sure the place to remind you of that — ‘A rarer spirit never did steer humanity; but you, gods, will give us some faults to make us men.’ Words, Willy Shakespeare; italics, mine. I know it sounds pretentious, but I find the old bard reassures me — something for every situation. Wonder if he spent any time in hospitals.”
“He may have. He lived during the height of the black plague, didn’t he?”
“True... Well” — he sat up and unwrapped the second cookie — “all credit to you, I couldn’t do it. Give me something neat and clean and theoretical, anytime.”
“I never thought of sociology as hard science.”
“Most of it isn’t. But Formal Org has all sorts of nifty models and measurable hypotheses. The illusion of precision. I delude myself regularly.”
“What kinds of things do you deal with? Industrial management? Systems analysis?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s the applied side. I’m theoretical — setting up models of how groups and institutions function on a structural level, how components mesh, phenomenologically. Ivory tower stuff, but I find it great fun. I was schooled in the ivory tower.”
“Where’s that?”
“Yale, undergrad; University of Connecticut, grad. Never finished my dissertation after I found out teaching turns me on a lot more than research.”
He stared down the empty basement corridor, watching the occasional passage of wraithlike white-coated figures in the distance.
“Scary,” he said.
“What is?”
“This place.” He yawned, glanced at his watch. “Think I’ll go up and check on the ladies. Thanks for your time.”
We both stood.
“If you ever need to talk to me,” he said, “here’s my office number.”
He put his cup down, reached into a hip pocket, and pulled out an Indian silver money clasp inlaid with an irregular turquoise. Twenty-dollar bill on the outside, credit cards and assorted papers underneath. Removing the entire wad, he shuffled through it and found a white business card. Placing it on the table, he retrieved a blue Bic from another pocket and wrote something on the card, then handed it to me.
Snarling tiger logo, WVCC TYGERS circling it. Below that:
Two lines at the bottom. He’d filled them in using dark block letters:
“If I’m in class,” he said, “this’ll connect you to the message center. If you want me around when you come visiting at the house, try to give me a day’s notice.”
Before I could reply, heavy rapid footsteps from the far end of the hall made both of us turn. A figure came toward us. Athletic gait, dark jacket.
Black leather jacket. Blue slacks and hat. One of the rent-a-cops patrolling the halls of Pediatric Paradise for signs of evil?
He came closer. A mustachioed black man with a square face and brisk eyes. I got a look at his badge and realized he wasn’t Security. LAPD. Three stripes. A sergeant.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, speaking softly but giving us the once-over. His name tag read PERKINS.
Chip said, “What is it?”
The cop read my badge. It seemed to confuse him. “You’re a doctor?”
I nodded.
“How long have you gentlemen been out here in the hall?”
Chip said, “Five or ten minutes. What’s wrong?”
Perkins’s gaze shifted to Chip’s chest, taking in the beard, then the earring. “You a doctor too?”
“He’s a parent,” I said. “Visiting his child.”
“Got a visiting badge, sir?”
Chip pulled one out and held it in front of Perkins’s face.
Perkins chewed his cheek and swung back to me. He gave off a barbershop scent. “Have either of you seen anything unusual?”
“Such as?” said Chip.
“Anything out of the ordinary, sir. Someone who doesn’t belong.”
“Doesn’t belong,” said Chip. “Like somebody healthy?”
Perkins’s eyes became slits.
I said, “We haven’t seen anything, Sergeant. It’s been quiet. Why?”
Perkins said, “Thank you,” and left. I watched him slowing for a moment as he passed the pathology lab.
Chip and I took the stairs to the lobby. A crowd of night-shifters crowded the east end, pressing toward the glass doors that led outside. On the other side of the glass the darkness was cross-cut with the cherry-red pulse of police lights. White lights, too, refracting in starbursts.