The Carlton Club Read Free

week.
    As Mark recalled the events of the past week he resisted any attempt to put meaning to them. He was still reeling from Janet’s angry words, still trying to make sense of Janet’s condemnation of their marriage. Her condemnation of him. For the past month Mark lay awake at night, tired but unable to sleep, wondering how to save his marriage and what he would do if it wasn’t salvageable.
    For the past month Mark had taken his life one day at a time. In the few moments he had that weren’t of necessity focused on his patients, he tried to make sense of what happened. He tried to understand the venom of Janet’s words.
    One day at a time.
    And now there was Kathleen and the wonderful feeling that, for the moment, obliterated the anguish and turmoil about Janet.
    One day at a time.
    Kathleen.
    One night at a time.
    Mark met Kathleen on Halloween. Mark was on call on Halloween.
    “You are always on call on Halloween,” Janet might have said if they hadn’t separated three weeks before.
    Just as she said that he was always “on” on Thanksgiving or Christmas, which was also her birthday, or their anniversary or his birthday. It wasn’t true of course. It was the luck of the schedule. He was always on call every third night, at least. Sometimes every other night. Sometimes those on call nights coincided with real world events like holidays and birthdays and anniversaries.
    “Besides,” he would have asked Janet, “what would we do if I was off on Halloween? Go to a party with my friends most of whom you detest?”
    That—the way Janet felt about his friends, about medicine—was part of the news she had given him three weeks before.
    “I hate your friends and I hate medicine,” Janet had said. Then she added quietly, “And I think you do, too.”
    By Halloween there was no Janet, and Mark didn’t care whether he was “on” or “off” on Halloween. Or any other time for that matter. Except that Halloween meant craziness. Halloween was like a full-moon night, only worse. But since Mark was on call for the critical care units at University Hospital, he would probably feel very little of the Halloween impact.
    The emergency room, particularly at San Francisco General Hospital, would be hit the hardest by the Halloween phenomenon. There they would see lacerations that were unusually long and deep and old and dirty because of the blood alcohol level of the victim. They would see broken bones, the result of the inevitable conflicts as the traditional Halloween Gay Pride Parade made its way along Castro Street to the jeers and taunts of macho straights. They would see the drug fallout from parties: angel dust freakouts, cocaine-induced headaches and palpitations, and the age-old marijuana death paranoia made worse by the ghoulish costumes on fellow partygoers.
    Halloween in the ER was the stuff anecdotes were made of. Anecdotes to tell at parties. To your friends. Medical anecdotes to tell medical friends. Everything Janet hated.
    Mark was quite content to be on call for the critical care units instead of the emergency room. His admissions would be legitimately sick, uncostumed, undrugged and uncrazed by the Halloween spirit.
    Mark was paged to the emergency room at ten P.M. on Halloween.
    “We have a fifty-six year old woman with substernal chest pain,” the harried resident told him, “radiating to her left arm, lasting maybe five minutes. Responded to nitro. Has chronic angina but this lasted longer. No EKG changes. Painfree now. Probably just angina, but I’d like to bring her in as a rule out. It’s a soft hit,” the voice trailed off apologetically.
    A hit was an admission, any admission. A night with no admissions was a no hitter. A soft hit meant it might be safe to send the patient home, but . . .
    Soft hits were fine with Mark. He believed in erring on the side of the patient. It was safest to admit the woman. Just in case.
    “Sounds appropriate to me. I’ll be right down to get her. Is it a