Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

CHAPTER THIRTY

At noon, Dr. Kantrovitz stuck his head into his colleague's office and asked. "Lunch?"

"Right." said Muntz. "Let's get hold of Dan. How about John?"

"He's not back from the hospital yet."

Dr. Kantrovitz walked the short distance to Dr. Cohen's office and called, "How about lunch, Dan?"

And Cohen, who had spent the last ten minutes in his office wondering if they would ask him, answered with alacrity, "Yeah, I'm starved."

It was not until the three men were dawdling over their coffee that Muntz asked about the retreat.

Dan Cohen smiled broadly. "It was okay. You know, a kind of change of pace, all this prayer and meditation they go in for, well, that was all right, too, after a while, you kind of get into the spirit of the thing and it's kind of relaxing."

"Relaxing?" Muntz asked. "Is that all? According to Chet Kaplan— he said he bumped into you after you got back— you were practically euphoric."

"Oh, that!" Dr. Cohen chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I was. You see, this Kestler business had got me down, even though I was sure I had given the old man the right medication. Still, I was worried because, well, because Kestler is Kestler, and also because of the way you guys reacted about his suing me, as a matter of fact, that's why I decided to go on this retreat. I'm not religious, but I thought it would be a good excuse to get away from it all, well, I'd just come home, and I get this call from Chief Lanigan."

He went on to tell of his meeting with Lanigan and finished with, "So it was right after that I saw Kaplan, and he asks me how I enjoyed the weekend, well, naturally, I was feeling pretty good."

"Then Kestler didn't get the medication you prescribed?" Muntz asked.

"No, he got a pencillin tablet instead." "And he was sensitive to penicillin?"

"Uh-huh, that's why I prescribed Limpidine."

"So he probably did get a reaction, and it could easily account for his death," said Kantrovitz.

"Yeah, but it was not from Dan's prescription," Muntz pointed out.

"So what did you do about it?" demanded Kantrovitz.

"Naturally, I was going to see Aptaker and have it out with him, but Lanigan said since the police were involved, he wanted to check it out first, so I didn't do anything. I expected he'd get on it right away. But when I didn't hear from him. I thought I'd stop by the drugstore on my way home yesterday—"

"And?"

"And nothing," Cohen said. "When I got there, Aptaker was having a heart attack, so I rushed him to the hospital."

"Aptaker is in the hospital with a heart attack?"

"That's right, he's my patient now. I certainly can't say anything to him now. It would kill him. Set him back anyway."

"But look here, you've got to do something about it." Muntz said. "You can't let Kestler go on shooting off his mouth about you, not when you've got the perfect answer. It won't do your practice any good, and it won't help the rest of us either."

"Do you know what you've got to do?" Kantrovitz said solemnly. "You've got to take yourself out of this case. You tell Aptaker you feel he ought to have a regular heart man, that you don't feel—"

"Competent?" asked Cohen. "Believe me, if I thought that, I'd turn him over to a cardiologist right away. But there have been no complications. I’ve got him on a lowfat, high-protein diet. I'm watching his daily EKG's and enzyme tests and—"

"I don't mean that you can't handle it." Kantrovitz said. "I mean that you could tell him that so you can get out from under, then he's no longer your patient and you're free to act."

Cohen shook his head stubbornly. "Even if he were no longer my patient, I couldn't do it. If you took him over,

Ed,” he challenged, "would you let me tell him he'd made a mistake on a prescription and someone had died from it?"

"No, but—"

"So what do you intend to do?" Muntz asked.

"I don't know. Just sweat it out, I guess."

Al Muntz leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, he shook his head slowly in a kind of wonderment. "You know what, Dan? You’ve done it again."

"Done what?"

"Got yourself a patient that you're emotionally involved with."

But later, when he was alone with Kantrovitz, Muntz said. "You know, Ed, he's a damn fool but I can't help admiring Dan, here he is, taking a chance on wrecking his practice to avoid hurting one of his patients, maybe that's been his trouble all along, he believes all that stuff med school deans dish out at commencement."

"But look here, if you were in Dan's position, would you tell Aptaker?"

"Of course not." Muntz said, "but I wouldn't have let myself get in that position in the first place."