"What was that about Ba?"
"He almost scared the life out of me. What's he doing skulking around in the bushes like that?"
Sylvia smiled. "Oh, I imagine he's worried about that Times article attracting every cat burglar in the five boroughs."
"Maybe he's got a point." Alan remembered the published photos of the elegant living room, the ornate silver sets in the dining room, the bonsai greenhouse. Everything in the article had spelled M-O-N-E-Y. "If the place is half as beautiful in real life as it was on paper, I imagine it would be pretty tempting."
"Thanks," she said with a rueful smile. "I needed to hear that."
"Sorry. But you have an alarm system, don't you?"
She shook her head. "Only a one-eyed dog who barks but doesn't bite. And Ba, of course."
"Is he enough?"
"So far, yes."
Maybe Ba was enough. Alan shuddered at the thought of running into him in the dark. He looked like a walking cadaver.
"They certainly made enough of a fuss over you in the article—famous sculptress and all that. How come no mention of Jeffy? I'm surprised they didn't play up the human interest angle there."
"They didn't mention Jeffy because they don't know about him. Jeffy is not for display."
At that moment, Sylvia Nash rose another notch in Alan's estimation. He watched her, waiting for her to start with the provocative comments. None came. She was too concerned about Jeffy.
"Come take a look at him," she continued. "He's upstairs. He quieted down after I called. I hated to disturb you, but he was in so much pain, and then he vomited. And, you know… I get worried."
Alan knew, and understood. He followed her across the foyer and up the curved staircase, watching her hips swaying gracefully before his eyes. Down a hall, a left turn, and then they were stepping over a knee-high safety gate into a child's room, gently illuminated by a Donald Duck night-light in a wall outlet.
Alan knew Jeffy well, and felt a special kinship with him that he shared with none of his other pediatric patients. A beautiful child with a cherubic face, blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a terrible problem. He had examined Jeffy so many times that his little eight-year-old body was nearly as familiar as his own. But Jeffy's mind… his mind remained locked away from everybody.
He looked at the bed and saw Jeffy sleeping peacefully.
"Doesn't look very sick to me."
Sylvia stepped quickly to the bedside and stared down at the boy. "He was in agony before—doubled over, grabbing his stomach. You know I'd never call you on a lark. Is something wrong with him? Is he okay?"
Alan glanced at her concerned face and felt her love for this child sweep like a warm wave through the air.
"Let's take a look at him and find out."
"Off, Mess," Sylvia said. The black and orange cat that had been coiled in the crook of Jeffy's knees threw Alan an annoyed look as she hopped off the bed.
Alan sat beside Jeffy's sprawled form and rolled him over onto his back. He lifted his pajama shirt and pushed down his diaper to expose his lower abdomen. Placing his left hand on the belly, he pressed the fingertips of his right down onto those of his left. The abdomen was soft. He tapped around the quadrants, eliciting a hollow sound—gas. He paid particular attention to the lower right quadrant over the appendix. There was slight guarding of the abdominal wall there and maybe some tenderness—he thought he saw Jeffy wince in his sleep when he pressed there. He drew his stethoscope from his black bag and listened to the abdomen. The bowel sounds were slightly hyperactive, indicating intestinal irritability. He checked the lungs, heart, the glands in the neck, as a matter of routine.
"How'd he eat tonight?"
"As usual—like a little horse."
Sylvia was standing close beside him. Alan put away his stethoscope and looked up at her.
"And what?"
"His favorites: a hamburger, macaroni and cheese, celery stalks, milk, ice cream."
Relieved that he now had eliminated anything serious, Alan began rearranging Jeffy's pajamas. "Nothing to worry about that I can see. Either he's in the early stages of a virus or it's something he ate. Or how he ate. If he's swallowing air with his food, he'll develop some wicked bellyaches."
"It's not his appendix?"
"Not as far as I can tell. It's always a possibility, but I seriously doubt it. Usually, the first thing to go in appendicitis is the appetite."
"Well, his appetite's alive and kickin', I assure you." She put her hand on his shoulder. "Thanks, Alan."
Alan felt a warmth begin to spread from her long fingers through the fabric layers of his windbreaker and shirt. God, that felt good…
But sitting here in the almost-dark with her touching him could lead nowhere he felt he should go, so he stood up and her hand fell away.
"If there's any change during the night, yell, otherwise bring him by the office in the morning. I want another look at him."
"On Wednesday?"
"Right. I'll be out of town on Thursday so I'm having hours tomorrow. But bring him in early. I'm scheduled to be on a southbound plane by late afternoon."
"Vacation?"
"Heading for D.C. I'm supposed to testify before Senator McCready's subcommittee on the Medical Guidelines bill."
"Sounds exciting. But a long way to go to talk to some politicians. Is it that important to you?"
"I'm tempted to say something about the last in public confidence wanting to regulate the first in public confidence, but I don't see a soapbox nearby so I'll refrain."
"Go ahead. Orate away."
"No… it's just that my professional life—my whole style of medicine—is on the line down there."
"I haven't heard about the bill."
"Most people haven't, but it's an idiotic piece of legislation that will affect every single person in the country by forcing doctors to practice cookbook medicine. And if that happens, I'll quit. I'd rather paint boat bottoms than practice that way."
"Going to take your ball and go home?"
Alan stared at her, stung. "You don't mince words, do you?"
"Not usually. But that's not an answer."
"It's not so much running off and sulking. It's…" He hesitated, unsure of what to say, but anxious to clarify himself to her. "It's more like shrugging and walking away from an impossible situation. My style of practice can't coexist with the paper-shufflers. It won't codify, and if they can't stick me into their computers, they'll want to either change me or get me out of the picture."
"Because you tend to fly by the seat of your pants?"
Alan couldn't help but smile. "I like to think of it as using intuition based on experience, but I guess you could call it that. I'm flying by that pants seat tonight with Jeffy."
Concern lit in her eyes. "What do you mean?"
"Well, according to the rules laid out in the Medical Guidelines bill, I'd be required to send you and Jeffy along to the ER tonight for a stat blood count and abdominal X rays to rule out appendicitis because the history and the physical exam suggest that as a possible differential diagnosis."
"Then why aren't you?"
"Because my gut tells me he doesn't have appendicitis."
"And you trust your gut?"
"My malpractice carriers would have a heart attack if they knew, but, yeah—I've learned to trust it."
"Okay," Sylvia said with a smile. "Then I'll trust it, too."
She was staring at him appraisingly, a half smile playing about her lips. Her stare had a way of stripping away all artificiality and pretense.
Alan stared back. He had never seen her like this. She was always dressed to kill, even when she brought Jeffy to the office. It was part of her image as the rich and wild Widow Nash. Yet here she was with no makeup, her dark, almost black hair simply tied back, her slim figure swathed in a shapeless robe, and he found her as attractive as ever. What did she have that drew him so? She was a woman he could not help being aware of—as if she were emanating something like a pheromone. He wanted to reach out and—