Terminal

Peter stepped into the room. “You’ve been making it with Reardon?” It was part question, part stunned realization. It had been almost two months ago at the outset of Peter’s and Sean’s rotation on third-year medicine that Sean had spotted Janet and had asked Peter about her.

“Who the hell is that?” Sean had demanded. His mouth had gone slack. In front of him was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. She was climbing down from the counter after retrieving something from the inaccessible top shelf of a wall cabinet. He could tell she had a figure that could have graced any magazine.

“She’s not your type,” Peter had said. “So close your mouth. Compared to you she’s royalty. I know some guys who have tried to date her. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Sean had said, watching Janet with stunned appreciation.

“A townie like you could never get to first base,” Peter had said. “Much less hit a home run.”

“Want to bet?” Sean had challenged. “Five bucks says you are wrong. I’ll have her thirsting for my body by the time we finish medicine.”

At the time, Peter had just laughed. Now he appraised his partner with renewed respect. He thought he’d gotten to know Sean over the last two months of grueling work, and yet here he was on the last day of medicine surprising him.

“Open the door a crack and see if she’s gone,” Sean said.

“This is ridiculous,” Peter said, but he opened the door several inches nonetheless. Janet was at the counter talking to Carla Valentine, the head nurse. Peter let the door shut.

“She’s right outside,” he said.

“Damn!” Sean exclaimed. “I don’t want to talk to her right now. I’ve got too much to do, and I don’t want a scene. She doesn’t know I’m leaving for Miami for that elective at the Forbes Cancer Center. I don’t want to tell her until Saturday night. I know she’s going to be pissed.”

“So you have been dating her?”

“Yeah, we’ve gotten pretty hot and heavy,” Sean said. “Which reminds me: you owe me five bucks. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. At first she’d barely talk to me. But eventually, utter charm and persistence paid off. My guess is that it was mostly the persistence.”

“Did you bag her?” Peter asked.

“Don’t be crude,” Sean said.

Peter laughed. “Me crude? That’s the best example of the pot calling the kettle black that I’ve ever heard.”

“The problem is she’s getting serious,” Sean said. “She thinks because we slept together a couple of times, it’s leading to something permanent.”

“Am I hearing marriage here?” Peter asked.

“Not from me,” Sean said. “But I think that’s what she has in mind. It’s insane, especially since her parents hate my guts. And hell, I’m only twenty-six.”

Peter opened the door again. “She’s still there talking with one of the other nurses. She must be on break or something.”

“Great!” Sean said sarcastically. “I guess I can work in here. I’ve got to get these off-service notes written before I get another admission.”

“I’ll keep you company,” Peter said. He went out and returned with several of his own charts.

They worked in silence, using the three-by-five index cards they carried in their pockets bearing the latest laboratory work on each of their assigned patients. The idea was to summarize each case for the medical students rotating on service come March 1.

“This one has been my most interesting case,” Sean said after about half an hour. He held the massive chart aloft. “If it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t even have heard about the Forbes Cancer Center.”

“You talking about Helen Cabot?” Peter asked.

“None other,” Sean said.

“You got all the interesting cases, you dog. And Helen’s a looker, too. Hell, on her case consults were pleading to be called.”

“Yeah, but this looker turned out to have multiple brain tumors,” Sean said. He opened the chart and glanced through some of its two hundred pages. “It’s sad. She’s only twenty-one and she’s obviously terminal. Her only hope is that she gets accepted by the Forbes. They have been having phenomenal luck with the kind of tumor she has.”

“Did her final pathology report come back?”

“Yesterday,” Sean said. “She’s got medulloblastoma. It’s fairly rare; only about two percent of all brain tumors are this type. I did some reading on it so I could shine on rounds this afternoon. It’s usually seen in young children.”

“So she’s an unfortunate exception,” Peter commented.

“Not really an exception,” Sean said. “Twenty percent of medulloblastomas are seen in patients over the age of twenty. What surprised everyone and why no one even came close to guessing the cell type was because she had multiple growths. Originally her attending thought she had metastatic cancer, probably from an ovary. But he was wrong. Now he’s planning an article for the New England Journal of Medicine.”

“Someone said she was not only beautiful but wealthy,” Peter said, lamenting anew he’d not gotten her as a patient.