CV

31

McNulty finished out his workday, went home, took a couple of Nembutals and went to sleep. He woke up in the morning with the clear recollection of what had happened and the knowledge that he could no longer call himself fit to practice medicine. He had broken the oldest rule in the book: “The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgment, and not for their hurt or any wrong.”

He discovered that the knowledge of his guilt was only what he had always suspected. If this had been Santa Barbara, he could have walked out the door, but it wasn’t. For better or worse, McNulty was the only medical doctor on Sea Venture, and there were still things he had to do. He made up his mind that he would do them to the best of his ability— brilliantly, if possible—and then he would try to figure out what, if anything, was left of his life.

Cooke’s body was on ice down in a comer of the freezer section. His family had been notified. They had been offered the option of a burial at sea, if they so desired, but they wanted the body shipped home. By rights there would be an inquiry. He was guilty of malpractice, or of murder if you looked at it that way, but the worst thing he was guilty of, the thing he could not forgive himself, was stupidity.

On the following day he began a systematic effort to locate and interview all the recovered patients. Jamal A. Marashi, the man who had struck his wife, was a Malaysian living in the United States. He seemed to McNulty an entirely selfish person; his grievances against his wife took up most of the conversation. McNulty put him down as inconclusive; for all he knew, Marashi had been exactly the same before his illness.

Luis Padilla, the steward, was another matter. At first he seemed very much at ease; he denied that he had taken any jewelry from Mr. and Mrs. Emerton, and pointed out that his record was unblemished.

“Mr. Padilla,” McNulty said, “I’m a medical man, not a policeman. I don’t care whether you took that stuff or not. What I’m trying to find out is, what does this disease do to people? Could you just tell me, did you feel any different after you got well? We won’t talk about the jewels at all.”

Padilla shifted uneasily. “Different? Well, maybe a little different.”

“Could you tell me how?”

“Well, you know, how I think about things.”

“Yes?”

Padilla seemed to make up his mind. “Doctor, you know, I am a Filipino. Our country was conquered by your country a hundred years ago. First your country says after they drive the Spaniards away, they will give us our independence. Then they change their minds, no, the Philippines is our country now. Our national hero, Aguinaldo, you have heard of him?”

“No,” said McNulty. “I’m sorry.”

Padilla smiled. “He was the leader of the independence movement. He fought many battles. The U.S. government defeated him only by treachery.”

“I see,” McNulty said. “So you feel differently now about Americans?”

“Not about you, Doctor,” said Padilla politely. “I think you are a good man. But I know what Americans did to my country, and I think it is important for us to have pride.”

“And you started thinking this way after you got well?”

“Yes.” Padilla shrugged and smiled. “You want to know, why not before? I don’t know why. I think maybe I listened too long to people who say, keep in your place. Remember the Americans are the boss. I don’t know, but I believe the way I think now is better.”

Mrs. Morton Tring turned up with the friend, Alice Gortmacher, with whom she had been staying since she left her husband. Mrs. Tring was a handsome woman in her early fifties; Ms. Gortmacher was smaller, darker and more intense. “If you think," she said, “you’re going to get Susan to go back to that man, you’re very much mistaken.”

“No, no,” said McNulty, “that isn’t it at all. Believe me, Mrs. Tring—”

“Ms. Coleman,” she said; “I’m taking my maiden name back.”

“Ms. Coleman, then. I’m just interested to know if you experienced any change of feelings after you were ill. Did your outlook change, the way you look at things?”

“It certainly did,” put in Ms. Gortmacher. “She saw for the first time what a monster she was married to.”

“Is that right, Ms. Coleman?”

“Yes, well— It’s not exactly that, Alice. I mean, I knew what Mort was like, but suddenly it just seemed to me that I was staying with him for all the wrong reasons.”

“What sort of reasons?” McNulty asked.

“Well, you know, the usual things. The children. Mort’s career. What would people say, et cetera. And then, I suppose, I was afraid, too. What would happen if I divorced Mort and went off on my own? I still don’t know.”

"Yes, you do,” said Ms. Gortmacher, patting her hand. “Yes, you do.”

Ms. Coleman put her hand on her friend’s. “Alice is going to take me into her business,” she said. “She’s the dearest friend I ever had, and I don’t know what I’d do without her. But even if I didn’t have Alice, I’d do the same thing—I’d leave Mort.”

“Can you tell me what it was that changed your mind about that?”

She hesitated. “Well, this may sound silly, but I woke up one morning, a few days after I got well, and Mort was snoring, and I just asked myself, what am I doing here? And I looked at all the reasons, and they weren’t good enough. So I got up and got dressed, and called Alice, and just went.”

“Ms. Coleman,” said McNulty, “how many married women do you suppose there are who would feel the way you do, if they just thought it over?”

She glanced away for a moment. “Four out of five,” she said.

“More,” said Ms. Gortmacher firmly.

And, McNulty thought, she might well be right. He sympathized entirely, but what would happen to the world if the divorce rate climbed to ninety percent? If only couples who liked being together stayed together? Or if only those who knew themselves to be fitted for the practice of medicine ever became doctors?