"Of course."
"What do you think of him?"
"His Circle of Willis is clogged with fecaliths."
Alan burst out laughing. Axford was anything but charming, but his candor was endearing. So was his wit. Alan had never heard anyone called a shithead in such an oblique manner.
"Do I detect a note of hostility toward academic medicine?" Axford said.
"No more than the average clinician."
"And I suppose you think you can get along just ducky without the research physician and the academician?"
"They have their places, but when a guy who hasn't laid a finger on a living patient since 1960 condescends to tell me how to practice clinical medicine—"
"You mean you actually touch people?" Axford said with an exaggerated grimace of distaste.
Lou Albert was passing by then and Axford caught him by the elbow.
"I say, why don't we three doctor-types stand around and talk shop, what? I understand you two were partners once upon a time. Is that so?"
Lou looked decidedly unhappy, but he stopped and nodded. He was shorter than either Alan or Axford, and at least a decade older, but he stood tall as always with his military-straight spine and gray, crew-cut hair. "You know damn well that's so. You asked me about it an hour ago."
"That's right, that's right. I did, didn't I?" Alan saw a gleam begin to glow in Axford's eyes. His smile became vulpine. "Years ago, wasn't it? And didn't you tell me that Alan here stole a lot of patients from you?"
Lou's face reddened. "I said no such thing!"
"Oh, do come along, old fellow. I asked you how many patients he stole from you and you said… ?" Axford's voice curved up at the end like the barb on a hook.
"I said 'a few,' that's all."
Alan couldn't fathom what Axford was after, but he knew he was up to no good. Still, he found himself unable to keep silent.
" 'Stole,' Lou?" Alan heard himself saying. "Since when do patients belong to anybody? I haven't seen any yet that came with your Social Security number stenciled on them."
"They wouldn't be going to you now if you hadn't had your secretary call them all up and tell them where your new office was!"
I don't believe I'm getting sucked into this! Alan thought as he glared at the contentedly smiling Axford.
"Look, Lou," he said. "Why don't we drop it for now. I'll just say that the only reason I had my secretary call all those patients was because the few who found me on their own said your office told them I'd left town."
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Axford said in a mock-conciliatory tone. "It wounds me to see two primary-care physicians, two foot soldiers on the bloody frontlines of medicine, bickering so! I—"
"I've had just about enough of this!" Lou said. "My niece's taste in friends is equal to her taste in doctors!" He stormed off.
"Really, old boy," Axford said, turning to Alan. "What did break you two up?"
Alan was about to suggest a dark place where Axford could store his curiosity when Ginny and Sylvia walked up. Alan thought the presence of the women might blunt Axford's goading, but it only seemed to spur him on.
"I mean, was one of you using too much B-12? Not shooting enough penicillin? Tell me: Doesn't general practice get bloody boring, what with all those endless sore throats?"
"At times," Alan said, keeping cool and pretending to take Axford very seriously. "Beats abusing white rats for a living, though."
Axford's eyebrows rose halfway to his hairline. "Does it now? And how many colds have you treated this week? How many stomach viruses? How many hangnails? How many boils and carbuncles?"
"Careful, Charlie," Sylvia said somewhere to the right of Alan's shoulder. Alan couldn't see her. His face was no more than a foot from Axford's and their eyes were locked. "You're getting yourself too exercised."
"None," was all Alan said.
Axford's face parodied shock. "None? Pray tell, then, old sock, what do you treat?"
"People."
Alan heard Ginny clap and laugh and Sylvia say, "Touche, Chuck-o! A ten-pointer!"
Axford's third-degree interrogator's expression wavered, then broke into a rueful smile. "How did I let myself get maneuvered into that old saw?" He looked at Sylvia. "But ten points is a bit much, though, wouldn't you say? After all, I gave him all those openings, unintentional though they might have been."
Sylvia wouldn't budge. "Ten."
What's going on here? Alan felt like a species of game fish that had spit a hook. He was about to say something when angry shouting arose in the living room. They hurried in as a group to find the cause.
Had to happen, Alan said to himself from his vantage point behind a couch as he saw florid, overweight Andrew Cunningham of the MTA squared off against dapper Congressman Switzer in the center of the room. Cunningham had evidently had too much to drink, as evidenced by his unsteady stance. Alan and the rest of the New York Metropolitan area had been watching the two swap accusations and insults via the TV and the newspapers for the past three or four months. The situation had escalated from the political to the personal, with Switzer painting Cunningham as the ringleader of the most graft-ridden, featherbedded transportation system in the country, and Cunningham calling the congressman a headline-grabbing traitor to the district that elected him. As far as Alan could tell, neither was completely wrong.
As Alan and most of the other guests watched, Cunningham roared something unintelligible and threw his drink in Switzer's face. The congressman went livid, grabbed the MTA chief by the lapels, and swung him around. They pushed and shoved this way and that across the room like a couple of barroom brawlers while the rest of the guests either called for them to stop or shouted encouragement to one or the other.
Alan saw Ba standing off to the side in a corner of the room. But he was not watching the fight; instead, his eyes were fixed somewhere to Alan's left. Alan looked and there stood Sylvia. He had expected to see a look of dismay on her face, but he was wrong. She stood on tiptoes, her eyes bright, a tight smile on her face as she pulled short, quick breaths between her slightly parted lips.
She's enjoying this!
What was it with her? And what with him? He should have been repulsed by the pleasure she took from these two grown men, two public figures, making fools of themselves. Instead, it drew him more strongly to her. He thought he knew himself, but where this woman was concerned… everything was new and strange.
Alan turned back to the struggle in time to see Cunningham lose his grip and stumble backward toward the fireplace. His heel caught the lip of the outer hearth and he lost his balance. As his arms flailed helplessly in the air, the back of his head struck the corner of the marble mantelpiece. He went down in a heap.
Alan leaped over the couch, but was not the first to reach the fallen man. Ba was already there, crouched over the bulky, unconscious form.
"He's bleeding!" Alan said as he saw the characteristic red spray of an arterial pumper along the white marble of the mantelpiece. Probably a scalp artery. A small puddle had pooled around the back of Cunningham's head and was spreading rapidly.
The room, filled a moment ago with shouting and catcalls, had gone deathly still.
Without being told, Ba lifted the head and rolled the man onto his side so Alan could inspect the wound. Alan immediately spotted the jagged two-inch gash in the lower right occipital area. Wishing he carried a handkerchief, he pressed his bare hand over the wound, applying pressure. Warm blood filled his palm as he tried to press the slick, ragged edges closed with his fingers.