The Third Personality: A Novel (3)

LAUDERDALE ISLES, Florida - Once seated in the car and her passenger-side door closed, Sadie Mendelson's stoic expression virtually cracked - and her eyes released wet rivulets of tears.

Don Mendelson held her hand and looked at his wife warmly.

"C'mon, Sade, don't do this - jury's not in yet."

"I could tell by Horton's voice over the phone that it's not going to be good," she grieved. "They've got the lab reports, and if it'd been good, the bastard would've said so. He would have said something - but he didn't. Just, �Come in.'"

"That still doesn't mean it's leukemia," Don said softly.

Sadie started to turn on him angrily, unable to suppress her rage any longer. But she just sobbed some more instead.

Halfway to Doctor Horton's office, Sadie at last broke the silence that had overtaken the couple since Don had backed their car out of the driveway.

"Tommy's been real tired lately," she said, almost absently.

"He has not been real tired lately," her husband countered.

Sadie said nothing. The couple reverted back to silence.

The remainder of the ten-minute drive seemed longer.

It wasn't just the prospect of getting bad news from Horton that troubled Sadie so - it was his demeanor. He had been a good family doctor for the most part (and Tommy seemed to like him, well enough), but his bedside manner always left something to be desired, in her view. Kids apparently trusted him (and that was no small feat, actually) - but Horton didn't always successfully transfer that trustworthiness over to relationships with the kids' parents - especially those of her son.

Fact was - Sadie found Horton smug, aloof, and insensitive.

It didn't help that she continued to feel that way, either, after a nurse had seated her and Don in Horton's fancy office.

Horton then entered the room and closed the door behind him. Predictably enough, he got right down to business. No niceties.

"Mr. And Mrs. Mendelson," he began, while slipping into the plush chair behind his mahogany desk. "As I may have told you earlier - we've got the results back on Tommy's last tests taken here. I'm sorry, but I must inform you…"

Sadie broke into a wounded hysterical outburst, interrupting the physician's sentence. Don quickly left his chair and dazedly stepped over to Sadie to comfort her. His face, too, was pale.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you… We're ninety-nine percent sure - Tommy's tests have turned up positive for ANLL."

(Why was it, Don wondered, while tightly grasping Sadie's perspiration-soaked palms..; her crying was now so intense that she was lurching back and forth in her chair - …why was it when doctors told you that you or someone you loved had come down with something just unbelievable, unbelievably awful, that your tests had come back "positive?")

"What is that?" Don asked with a nervous cough.

"It stands for childhood �acute nonlymphocytic leukemia,'" Horton said uncomfortably. "It's not the most common form of childhood leukemia, but it's far from unusual. Your son has a high white-blood-cell count but low red-blood-cell and platelet counts, which, in addition to his recently-reported incidents of abnormal bruising and general listlessness…"

"What it means is, my Tommy's going to die!" screamed Sadie, the words spitting out of her mouth. "Why can't you just say that, doctor? - have you forgotten how to speak English?!"

She then fell back into her chair and covered her sobbing face with her hands.

Horton took a deep breath. "'Acute' leukemia, unlike the chronic types of childhood cancers, means that the progression of Tommy's particular illness is apt to be very rapid."

Sadie again responded to Horton's words by wailing louder, and then wrenching herself harder into her chair, as if she were trying to curl up and hide away inside the upholstery.

"And as you both seem to be aware," Horton determinedly continued, "the chances for recovery aren't very good - although with leukemia, you just can't always tell. There's still so much we don't know about this disease."

Silence.

Don cleared his throat. "You say the chances aren't good, doctor - just what are the chances that our son will die?"

Horton visibly stiffened.

"About ninety-nine percent," he said.

For a short time, then, the only sound in Horton's office was Sadie's regurgitative sniffling.

It was Don, this time, who broke the unspoken silence.

"Honestly, doctor," he said. "Tommy just doesn't look that tired to me."

Once she'd collected herself, Sadie apologized over and over to Horton before she and Don finally left his office - although part of her suspected she may have already said too much. In any event, the Mendelsons agreed that once the fluids were drained from Tommy's water-on-the-knee and the swelling had been reduced, they'd bring him back in to Horton for a second series of tests.

It couldn't hurt, was the unanimous sentiment expressed.

For now, though, Sadie told Don she could really settle for a good, stiff Manhattan before heading home; and Don had figured, ahead of time, that if the news wasn't good (an understatement, here) he'd have a nice quiet lounge in mind for them to stop in, where they could talk over their options, and rest. And he did.

Don soon pulled into the parking lot of Dan Dowd's, his lounge-of-choice - but Sadie scarcely noticed or apparently cared.

"We're not going to tell him," she abruptly announced, before Don even turned off the ignition.

Don looked over at Sadie as he removed the key. He sighed.

This was the biggest single decision they had to make. They both knew it. In effect, Sadie was saying that Tommy would live out the balance of his days, however long that might be, unaware his future would be flowing out of his silently suffocating body. And if he asked questions - well, they'd deal with that, then.

"Okay," Don said softly, nodding. "We're agreed. It's done."

* * * * *

When doctor Horton got the tests back on Thomas Harold G. Mendelson the second time, he was livid - there was no other word for it.

The people at the lab had real balls to send him this kind of crap..; Jesus. Horton leaned forward in his chair and dialed.

Someone picked up the phone at the testing laboratory.

"This is Horton," the doctor announced evenly into his receiver. "Put your boss on. I've got a bone to pick with him."

Horton then listened. But not for long.

"Well, that's just too bad - you go find him. Right now."

There was no putting anyone on hold in 1960. Horton could hear whoever it was who answered the phone scurrying around the room asking for the whereabouts of Barker, the senior technician who'd sent Horton both reports on the Mendelson youngster.

(You don't just ship off a death sentence on a damned lab report, and then a few weeks later say, whoops, sorry �bout that - we made a mistake...)

"This is Barker," came a fresh voice at the other end of the line.

"What kind of crap is this, Barker," Horton curtly demanded.

"Ah - Doctor Horton," the voice responded sweetly. "You must be back from your morning round of golf."

"I want to know how you could possibly screw up these lab reports! How dare you send me a follow-up diagnosis like this!"

The voice at the other end paused - and then hardened.

"Your first concern should be for your patient, Doctor Horton - who doesn't look as if he's going to die from leukemia anytime soon, after all. To most physicians, that would be wonderful news."

"How dare you!" Horton hissed. "That's way out of line, Barker. You screwed up, and I'll see to it that you're brought up on…"

"We didn't screw up, Horton," the voice interrupted. "You did."

Horton was so shocked by this response, he found himself temporarily speechless.

The voice continued - again with a forced reserve.

"I took over this case personally the moment our preliminary indications from your initial samples started coming in. Hell, man, the last instance of leukemia anyone's ever heard of in these parts was probably on some episode of 'Doctor Kildare.'

"My instincts proved right. If anyone screwed up it was you."

Horton paused. "That's not even remotely possible, Barker," he said, his voice now appreciably duller. "These are the only tests of this kind I've handled in six months."

"Then it sounds to me like you've got a miracle on your hands, doctor," the voice responded flippantly.

"Children just don't heal themselves!" Horton protested.

"Maybe they do, and maybe they don't," Barker replied, now with clear contempt. "In any event, I'm going to say this to you once, Horton: that boy's first sample had enough immature blasts, enough leukemic cells in it, to bring down a rhinoceros. But the second sample you sent me, just two weeks later, showed only a mild shortage of red blood cells - and that was it. Your boy's a little anemic, but that's all. Me, I didn't like what I was seeing. So I brought in an independent agent to verify both sets of results."

"You did what?!" Horton gasped.

"The word's out on you now, Horton, you pompous ass. What's more - the next time you call here and treat any of my people like something the cat dragged in again, I'll personally come over there and see to it that the �physician' gets an opportunity to �heal himself' - if you catch my drift!"

Horton then heard a click, followed shortly by a dial tone.

He returned the receiver to the cradle, and stared at his wall, cluttered with university degrees and letters, in disbelief.

"...Your boy's a little anemic, but that's all..."

What in God's name was going on here? Worse - what would he tell the Mendelsons now … What could he say to them?

"...Well, Mrs. Mendelson, we'll load Tommy up on some good rare-to-medium-rare steaks to raise the old red-blood-cell count, and he'll be racing around those bases again (well, okay, figuratively-speaking) in no time. I'm sorry if you got the wrong idea about his, you know, illness. I never meant to suggest leukemia was ninety-nine percent incurable, per se …"

Horton dropped his head into his hands, and rubbed his eyes.

Damn.

This was already one of those days. He had, in fact, shot a 7-over-par earlier that morning.

Jesus H. Christ.

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