Do No Harm

"One can hardly blame her," Peter said. He manipulated his knife and fork gracefully, hands turning in deft, fluid motions. It was a pleasure to watch him dine.

"The last thing we need is a war mentality on the floor," David said. "Especially with the demographic moving through there. And people are angry." Absentmindedly, he tapped the tines of his fork against the plate. "God, are they angry."

"And why shouldn't they be? Two lovely young practitioners mauled and mutilated. At the place where they render medical care."

"Yes, thank goodness they weren't homely sewer workers."

Peter regarded David humorlessly. "You understand what I'm saying," he said. "This business is vile. Simply vile."

"I'm taking that as a given," David said. "And believe me, I knew both these women, and treated them when they came in. What I'm saying is, we need to look closer. Violence should not attenuate our medical empathy."

"Bah!" Peter said. Peter was the only person David knew who said "Bah." "A little anger is a good thing." Peter fiddled with his wire-rim glasses, cleaning the circular lenses with a corner of his napkin. The clipped, meticulous movements of his hands betrayed his irritation. "This man-he's the result of what? A bad tour of duty? Castration threats from an unloving mother? It's not an excuse. None of the hands we are dealt contain a Get-Out-of-Morality card. We grow and we fight and we cope." His finger, pointing down into the tablecloth, grew white around the knuckle. "This man is deserving of our anger."

"He has my anger," David said. He set down his fork, resting the neck on the lip of the plate. Peter watched him closely, intelligently. "I'm sorry," David said.

Peter nodded, his mouth drawing down in a thoughtful frown. "As physicians, when confronted with someone like this assailant, we're instinctively drawn to explanations involving psychopathology or mental illness. But we shouldn't fool ourselves." He raised his fork, coiled with linguini, and pointed it at David. Something in the gesture gave it monumental weight. "Odds are, he's a malicious, sadistic bastard, whether he's sick or not."

"I know that," David said.

Peter twirled his fork, capturing more linguini. "Do you?"

They ate in silence for a while. David stifled a yawn with his napkin.

"You look like hell," Peter said. "Burning it at both ends?"

David nodded wearily. "I can't work the way I used to."

"You're getting old." Peter's eyes twinkled when he laughed. "When I used to work the Air Force base down in Riverside, I'd get these young macho pilots in for vasectomies. Married a few years, knocked out a few kids, didn't want to worry about impregnating their wife or anyone else with whom they happened to be sleeping. I'd get them done, and afterward I'd tell them to be careful and use protection because they were still shooting live rounds for another thirty ejaculations. And they'd just smile and say, 'Thirty squirts? I'll get that taken care of this weekend, Doc.' "

David laughed.

"Do you know what the moral of that story is?" Peter asked. He drew out the pause dramatically. "You can't go like you used to."

An attractive middle-aged woman walked past their table, adjusting a satin spaghetti strap on her dress. David felt a rush of melancholy. There was no wine to blame it on. "If I ever lost this, my work, I'd. .. I don't know."

"Lose your work? You're at the height of your career."

"I can't work ninety-hour weeks anymore."

"I never could."

"But I could. I could."

Peter leaned back in his chair, as if that provided a better vantage from which to regard him. "You inherited your mother's vanity."

David rubbed the bridge of his nose with a knuckle. "I inherited the runoff."

"She was a great woman, your mother, but she was cruel in the way great people are cruel. You have none of that." Peter picked at a prawn with his fork, but did not spear it. "Do you know why great people are cruel? They have so much of themselves to protect." He reached down and adjusted one of his leg braces. David caught a flicker of a grimace before Peter replaced it with a smile. "We all have our limitations," Peter said.

Peter insisted, despite David's protestations, on picking up the check-a habit he'd developed when David had been a penniless intern and persisted in, David believed, to perpetuate an air of affectionate condescension.

David folded Peter's jacket over his arm and waited patiently for him to rise. It took them nearly five minutes to make it down the stairs and to the lobby.

Chapter 16

BRONNER scooped the wedge of tobacco dip from his lower lip with a curled finger and flicked it out the window. Jenkins sat rigidly in the passenger seat, watching the sun dip to the horizon. They headed up Veteran, the rolling hills of the cemetery sprawling to their left. The white posts of the soldiers' graves rose like glowing pickets into the dusk.