Dante's Dilemma Read online

  I proceeded to outline some of the highlights of Sep’s career: his decorated service as a trauma specialist in a MASH unit during the Vietnam War; the dozens of cutting-edge studies he authored upon his return; his participation in not one, but three of the committees charged with revamping the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual; his numerous awards and recognitions, including the Miriam H. Taub Chair in Clinical Psychiatry at the hospital where we both worked; and last, but not least, the decades spent overseeing, developing, and raising our department to its present status as a leader in the field.

  “I know I speak for all of us in praising these accomplishments as the life’s work of both a brilliant physician and a great humanitarian. But I would also be remiss in not mentioning what I know for Sep was, and always will be, his greatest achievement: his thirty-year marriage to his beloved wife, Edna, who passed away a few years ago after a long battle with cancer. During her illness, and despite his overwhelming professional obligations, Sep was never absent from her side.”

  I ended on a personal note. “In closing—because I can hear Sep harrumphing at me to get on with it—let me say that I have ‘neither wit, nor words, nor worth’ to express what Sep has meant to me personally. Rarely have I had the privilege of working under a superior with such a temperate disposition”—very loud laughter—“or, one who, when confronted with extreme provocation, if not outright mutiny, was so capable of keeping a lid on his emotions. I have Sep to thank for the profound wisdom—some might say, rampant foolhardiness—that led to my finding a home here, and I will be forever grateful to him for the gentle scolding”—Sep, only a few feet away, nearly choked on this—“that prodded me back to work with my friends and . . . er, colleagues.” Gales of laughter this time. “Sep has been a true friend and mentor, and I hope you will all join me in toasting this outstanding leader and the finest human being it has been my privilege to know.”

  The room erupted into thunderous applause.

  “Good job,” Josh said, coming up to press a glass of bourbon into my hand. I downed it in a single gulp.

  “Yes, very,” Sep said, announcing his presence with a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, my boy. I’ll be red-faced for the rest of the party.”

  “I meant every word of it,” I said. “You’ll be sorely missed.” By me, most of all, I thought morosely.

  “Perhaps. However, while I shouldn’t quibble with such unrestrained encomium, the references to Julius Caesar were a tad unsubtle.”

  “You think he picked up on it?”

  Sep lowered his voice. “I doubt it. He’s too busy basking in the imagined glory of his new position. But if you’ll take my advice, it’s time to start mending your fences with him.”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “No arguing,” Sep said. “Go over there right now and congratulate him. He’s standing ten feet to your left.”

  “Sep, I . . .”

  “Just do it,” he commanded.

  I followed his order—the last he would ever be in a formal position to give me—and went over to shake the hand of my new boss.

  My archenemy, Jonathan Frain.

  TWO

  My father didn’t hate me, but he didn’t know what to do with me, either: a scrawny, rebellious child who reminded him all too painfully of the wife he had lost to childbirth. In those days, nobody gave any thought to spankings, and we weren’t the only warring family in our Queens neighborhood, where the small houses stood so close together that the daily soap operas were as hard to ignore as the smell of ragù emanating from a neighbor’s kitchen. Especially among Catholics, it was considered a parental virtue to give snot-nosed children their due, and I was far from unique in the number of times I showed up at school with a blackened eye or a swollen lip. Unlike other children, however, I had no mother to wipe away my tears, no siblings to blunt the rage of my father’s bitter disappointments. From the time I was small, I was at the mercy of his fists, and it taught me well how to run.

  Over the years, this developed into an emotional armor I’m not proud of. It prevented me from ever really knowing him, and later enabled the selfish act that left my own family in ruins. Oddly, though, the same trait that kept me at a distance from my loved ones also proved an asset in my job. If I couldn’t look clearly into my own heart, I was nonetheless very good at looking into the hearts of others. Perhaps it was this talent that Sep had instinctively recognized when he took a chance on hiring me. Maybe only the walking wounded are capable of seeing the pain experienced by their fellows. As the old saying goes, it takes one to know one. And on that score, I was as good a psychiatrist as they come.

  All of this is a long way of saying that my troubled relationship with Jonathan Frain didn’t spring from an absence of skill, much less professionalism, on my part. True, in my self-destructive fashion I often went out of my way to get his goat. Pompous, small-minded people always bring out the worst in me, and I wasn’t above reacting negatively when he was trying to impose yet another one of his asinine preferences on the entire department. If there were a prize for making a workplace as joyless as a North Korean labor camp, Jonathan would have taken it every time. But the real problem for me was his elevation of form over substance, his attention to the letter of every rule, and his inability to grasp the conditions under which creativity flourishes and breakthroughs occur.

  Exactly the qualities, I figured, that had led to his selection as our new administrator.

  Ever since the announcement, I’d been torturing myself with all the ways he could make my life as miserable as a post-downpour slog through the Chicago Deep Tunnel. They weren’t difficult to imagine. Assign me to the hospital’s diversity committee—a posting I’d only narrowly avoided thus far and that had roughly the same appeal as being named Differently Abled Employee of the Year. Nitpick my grant proposals until they appeared as fresh and enticing as the salad bar on offer in the basement cafeteria. Require me to remove all traces of my personality from my office. (Jonathan’s was all glass and steel, and about as welcoming to visitors as the Fortress of Solitude.) The list went on and on.

  As it turned out, I had grossly underestimated him.

  When I arrived back at my office the following Monday, I was already in a poor mood. The alarm-company representative had proved to be one of those well-meaning but clueless people who equate low vision with a corresponding deficit in brain cells, and it had taken longer than necessary to convince him that all I needed was a keypad with larger buttons I could stick some Braille labels on. On the walk to work, I’d also been accosted by members of a group handing out Bibles, who were keen on me knowing that my blindness would be cured if only I would accept Jesus into my heart. (“Thanks for the tip,” I said to the one who insisted on following me halfway down the block. “I’ll be sure to try it on my next visit to Lourdes.”) To top things off, there was a package waiting for me when I walked in the door of my suite.

  “This just came for you,” Carol, our receptionist, informed me. “It’s from a law office.”

  “Which one?” I asked, expecting it to be related to one of the cases I was working on.

  “Nobody local. Some firm with a fancy-sounding name in Connecticut. And marked confidential.”

  My insides immediately clenched up. I’d been waiting to hear from Annie, my ex-wife, about an issue concerning our son, and the fact that she’d chosen to communicate through legal channels wasn’t a positive sign. My heart sank even further when Carol handed me the envelope and I could judge its thickness—half an inch, at least. Where lawyers are concerned, I’d learned that bad things usually come in big packages.

  “Do you need help with it?” Carol asked. “Yelena’s downstairs getting a hot wax.”

  It figured. Yelena’s beauty breaks tended to fill the better part of the working day. This time, however, I was relieved to find her AWOL, which prevented the whole office from hearing immediately about the package. Though most of my colleagues were now aware I had a child named Loui
s, I tried to keep gossip about him to a minimum.

  “That’s OK,” I said. “I . . . was expecting it. It’s just some tax forms I need to sign. I’ll get to them myself later.” And back at home, where I didn’t have to worry about the presence of prying eyes.

  I slipped the package into my backpack and trudged down the hall to my office, holding my rigid, nonfoldable cane—the one I used for extended travel—in a stationary position a little out in front and to my side. It was different grip than I commonly used outdoors, where I swung the cane from side to side just ahead of my feet. The cane’s nearly five feet of length gave me ample time to react to drop-offs without falling and alerted even the dimmest of drivers to the fact I might have trouble spotting them. Indoors, however, I either dispensed with the cane entirely, or employed it as I was then doing, in a mildly defensive capacity.

  Which may explain why, just before the door, I collided with something that shouldn’t have been there. The hard surface, jutting out some inches above the floor, sent shock waves through my tibia and pitched my upper body onto what initially felt like an oversized punching bag. “What the—?” I swore as I pulled back and righted myself. No one answered, so I moved in to inspect, discovering from a cane and manual exploration that it was the well-worn leather sofa from my office. I’d purchased it and two matching armchairs shortly after my residency and held on to them out of nostalgia throughout the years. Now, for some cryptic reason, they were sitting on top of a dolly.

  I maneuvered around the obstruction and headed over to the central administrative station, discovering several similar items—some belonging to me and some not—along the way.

  “Would someone be good enough to explain why my sofa is sitting in the middle of the hall?” I called out upon arrival. “You know how I hate it when the furniture gets rearranged.”

  Lori, Sep’s former assistant, answered me apologetically. “I’m sorry. I meant to phone to warn you. Dr. Frain has me running in so many different directions I can’t even find time to visit the restroom.”

  “I’m not blaming you. But what the hell is going on?”

  “Office makeover. If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one. New furniture for all the doctors is being delivered tomorrow.”

  “You’re saying everyone’s stuff is being replaced?”

  “Uh-huh. But not until the new carpeting is installed.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. The rugs are being torn up, too?”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it? But Dr. Frain felt the current decorating scheme didn’t project his image for the department.”

  I could only guess at what image that might be. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “We’re going for the frozen-tundra look.”

  “Not bad,” Lori said. “Pretty much white on white all over.”

  “I’m surprised we’re not repainting the walls, too. Wait, I remember. They’re already white.”

  Lori laughed. “There wasn’t enough money for painting left over after the commissioned artwork. The one going over your credenza is against the wall. It’s not that bad, actually. Like a Jackson Pollock, but more monochrome.”

  I wouldn’t be missing anything, then. “But how’d he push this through without anyone voting on it? I thought we were all supposed to agree on things like office accents.”

  Lori lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but rumor has it that he landed a big donor who agreed to fund the project if his wife got the commission.” Lori named a name I recognized as the sole proprietor of a Gold Coast firm that had recently been lauded—or excoriated, depending on your point of view—for a costly renovation of the mayor’s office. “Dr. Frain also got the powers that be to agree to the redo as part of his contract. By the way, he wants to speak to you.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No. But he said, and I quote, ‘Kindly inform Dr. Angelotti that I expect to see him in my office the moment he gets in.’ I left you a voicemail.”

  “Did he allow for the possibility that I might have a patient or two to keep me occupied this morning?”

  “Yes, but I checked your appointments first. You’re clear until two.”

  “How’d you—” As far as I was aware, Yelena was the only one privy to my schedule, and she was as zealous about guarding her turf as an NFL linebacker. It was one of her better attributes.

  “Another change,” Lori said. “All personnel calendars have to be uploaded to an executive database twice daily. For keeping track of productivity and so forth. The IT crew was here all weekend getting it set up.”

  And I thought maybe I’d gone too far in likening Jonathan’s takeover to Julius Caesar. 1984 was starting to seem more like it.

  I ignored the summons and went straight to the coffee lounge, still holding on to my cane, coat, and backpack. It was too early in the day for a real drink, but I was reeling from all the sudden upsets. I didn’t particularly feel like surveying the wreckage of my office and thought a cup of tea might steady my nerves.

  Alison and Josh were already waiting for me at a table in the corner.

  “I guess you heard,” Alison said when she saw my face.

  Josh got up heavily from his seat and guided me to an empty one. I sat down and put my things on the floor beside me. “‘Heard’ is putting it mildly. I walked into my sofa just as it was being hauled off to storage.”

  Josh chuckled. “That’s where you think it’s headed? Funny, I never took you for an optimist.”

  “We’re talking about my personal property. The last I knew, taking it from me against my will is called theft.”

  “That’s because you couldn’t see the memo. It was tacked to our doors this morning. Unless you object in writing, it’s all being donated to charity. As a gesture of the institution’s commitment to serving the needy. And if you don’t mind my saying so, your stuff was looking pretty needy, too.”

  Alison slipped a cup of something warm into my hand. “Chamomile,” she said. “I think you should stay away from caffeine this morning. You look enough on edge as it is.”

  I shook my head. “This is worse than a horror movie. What’s next—The Stepford Doctors?”

  “Cheer up,” Josh said patting me on the back. “Most of the department is as upset about the Stasi tactics as you are. Alison and I are already organizing the loyal resistance.”

  “I want in,” I said.

  “Not a chance,” Josh said. “This needs to be done on the q.t., and you getting involved would be on a par with Che massing his troops to storm the presidential palace without anyone noticing.”

  “You two seem awfully blasé about this,” I said. “How’s Debbie going to feel when you can’t even hang pictures of the family ski trip on the wall?”

  Josh was as unruffled as always. “I’m not worried. If this keeps up, I figure it’s only a matter of time before Jonathan hangs himself.”

  “If so, I want to be there to kick the chair out from under him.”

  “Like I said, buddy, no dice.”

  “You’re not even going to let me in on what you two are plotting?”

  “Your aura, like Brutus’s, would betray you.”

  Just then Lori reappeared out of the mist with a summons. “Dr. Angelotti? I’m so sorry to interrupt, but Dr. Frain insisted I come get you. He said . . . well, I’m not going to repeat what he said. I thought it was uncalled for.”

  “Go ahead,” Josh said. “Might as well get it over with. We’ll be here waiting with the triage kit when you’re through.”

  “If not with the defibrillator,” Alison said merrily.

  I got to my feet. “Thanks, guys. I’m glad someone else is finding this as hilarious as I am. ‘My master calls me, I must not say no,’ to quote a different play. But do me a favor. Keep the funeral arrangements simple. I wouldn’t want to give the bastard the pleasure.”

  THREE

  Fifteen minutes later, after an unnecessary trip to the men’s room and as
much additional dawdling as I thought I could get away with, I was seated on an uncomfortably hard chair in Jonathan’s office.

  “You’re not going to offer me a cigar?”

  “Filthy habit,” Jonathan said. “They ought to be banned. Along with fast food and soft drinks.”

  I had a momentary vision of him marching in a modern Christian Temperance Union rally, filled with righteous indignation over the unhealthy habits of his fellow citizens—a soft, undisciplined, and therefore despicable lot. It made me wonder why he’d chosen medicine as a career in the first place. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes. I’ve been reviewing your personnel file. There are certain items I need clarified.”

  I could have predicted this would be the first order of business. I visualized him on the other side of his vacuum-tidy desk, gloating over his newfound license to interrogate me. He was one of those tall people whose heads are too small for their midsections, giving him the appearance of a flesh-colored Michelin Man. A bad hair transplant, tight white jacket, and tortoise-framed glasses completed the picture.

  “Which items, exactly?”

  “How you came to join us, for instance. I’ve always wondered what prompted the career move.”

  “I was getting stale where I was.” My stock explanation.

  He ruffled some papers on his desk. “Really? According to your file, you were making high six-figures, and on the eve of another promotion. Some might find it unbelievable that you departed out of boredom.”

  “As you point out, I wasn’t fired. So what’s the issue?”

  “Only that I have the department’s interests to consider now. If there’s a skeleton in your closet—one that might emerge to cause us embarrassment—I have a responsibility to find out what it is.”

  A skeleton. My thoughts immediately flashed to the small, white headstone resting in a Hudson River estate near Poughkeepsie. But this was no time for wrestling with my demons. “Are you questioning Sep’s judgment? Because I’m sure he’d be interested to hear about it.”