Natural Causes

CHAPTER 7

SARAH BOUGHT A STICKY BUN AND COFFEE AND TOOK them to the corner of the expansive cafeteria reserved for physicians. Two staff internists were chatting at one Formica-topped table, but the other four tables were unoccupied-no surprise, given that this was the busiest time of day in the hospital. Andrew was already five minutes late, but Sarah had long ago learned that most surgeons showed up late for everything, assuming they showed up at all.

She had been able to make rounds on three of her patients, one of whom had already heard about her performance the previous day. And as Alma Young had predicted, her dramatic and successful use of nontraditional therapy did seem to be the talk of the hospital. In the few minutes she'd spent on the OB/Gyn floor, she had gotten calls from the director of medical education asking her to present grand rounds and from Glenn Paris's secretary, requesting that she stop by his office later in the afternoon. Nurses shook her hand or pumped their fists as she came by, and the chief resident on the OB/Gyn service asked her to lunch so that he might hear the details of the "save" firsthand.

Just as Sarah was wondering whether it would be gauche to sit somewhere other than with the two internists, they gathered their things and stood up. One of them, a scholarly endocrinologist named Wittenberg, came over and shook her hand.

"George Wittenberg," he said.

"I know. We met at Glenn Paris's reception last year. Calcium metabolism and parathyroid disease, yes?"

"You have an excellent memory."

"I read some of your papers for a research project when I was in medical school. They were very interesting."

"Why, thank you. I came over to congratulate you, but I'll take the compliment just the same. From what I hear, you pulled off a miracle yesterday."

"Lisa had a number of people working on her. What I did was only one of the reasons she made it."

Sarah felt relieved that she sensed only a passing urge to point out the negative aspects of the "miracle."

"Well put," Wittenberg said. "But if what the hospital drums are pounding out is true, you were a most significant reason. The story made both the Globe and the Herald. And whoever has been leaking all those negative MCB stories to Axel Devlin really blew it this time. Devlin happened to have written another of his Down with MCB columns for today. So page three has this glowing article about East meets West to save a life at the Medical Center of Boston, and Devlin sounds like a fool for not at least acknowledging the event. Have you seen the paper?"

"No. No, I haven't."

"Here," Wittenberg said, handing over his copy. "I'm done reading this, and I just changed my parakeet's cage, so I have no further use for it."

"Thanks."

"No problem. You know, I'm not exactly on Devlin's wavelength, but I am one of those who's been skeptical of being associated with a place that tenures an Indian Ayurvedic physician and has a chiropractor working in the orthopedic clinic. But after what you accomplished yesterday, I've resolved to keep a more open mind and to learn more about alternative medicine."

He shook her hand warmly and headed off. Sarah spread the paper on her table and skimmed the sensationalized, but reasonably factual, account on page three. A pro-MCB article in the Herald-maybe there had been a miracle after all. Then she folded the paper open to Axel Devlin's column.