The Carlton Club Read Free Page A

zoo down there?”
    “An unbelievable zoo.”
    “Listen, after I get her tucked in, if it’s quiet up here, I’ll be happy to come help.”
    “Thanks, Mark. That would be great.”
    Mark found that his patient, although sick, sane and undrugged, was in costume. At least her head was. The rest of her was already clad in a bland, standard issue hospital gown. She wore a white wig with perfectly curled ringlets and a diamond tiara. Marie Antoinette, or someone, Mark thought idly, noticing at the same time how lovely, gracious and regal-looking she was. She extended a beautifully manicured and lavishly jeweled hand to him.
    “Hello, Dr. Collinsworth,” she said, as if meeting him at a party.
    “Hello, Mrs. Jordaine. How are you feeling?”
    “Fine, now. Really. No pain. I probably could go home,” she said, but frowned. It was obvious that Mark’s elegant, gracious patient felt uneasy about going home. She was worried. She felt sicker than she looked. The pain must have been worse than she described. The soft hit became a hard one.
    “No,” Mark said firmly, “we want you to stay. You’re completely pain free now?”
    She nodded and smiled. A voice reached them from behind.
    “Mother, I just spoke to Father. Oh, hello! Sorry!” she exclaimed, startled as she opened the curtain surrounding her mother’s monitored bed to find that her mother was not alone.
    She was completely in costume. She wore a gray and mauve, floor-length velvet gown studded with tiny pearls and cut low in front, revealing her round, full breasts. Her dark black hair was piled on her head and draped with pearls. Her dark-lashed violet eyes sparkled with surprise and pleasure when she saw Mark.
    “Kathleen, this is Dr. Collinsworth, the CCU doctor. Dr. Collinsworth, this is my daughter Kathleen.”
    “Hi,” Mark said. She is so beautiful, he thought.
    “Hi,” Kathleen said. She glanced at her mother and was relieved enough by how comfortable she looked to spend a moment noticing her mother’s doctor.
    The usual clichés, Kathleen thought: tall, dark, handsome. Clichés, she mused. Tall . That was easy, a statement of fact. Kathleen embellished it a little. Mark was a perfect height. Dark . Completely inadequate to describe the dark brown hair that curled sensuously over his ears and onto his neck or the intense, thoughtful, serious dark brown eyes made darker by the blue-black half circles under them. Handsome . Unbelievably, indescribably handsome, Kathleen thought. The whole dark, earnest, strong, romantic package.
    Tall, dark and handsome. It didn’t begin to do him justice.
    “How’s Mother?” Kathleen asked after a moment.
    “Fine,” Mark and Virginia Jordaine answered in unison.
    “No evidence of any damage, but we’re going to admit her for two or three days, just to be certain,” Mark explained.
    “As a rule out,” Virginia Jordaine explained to her daughter.
    Mark looked from beautiful mother to beautiful daughter and arched an eyebrow. A rule out was medical jargon, short for r ule o ut m yocardial i nfarction, or heart attack. At some centers such an admission was called a ROMI. During the daily morning report at such centers the resident would say, “We admitted two ROMIs last night.” In San Francisco the resident would say, “We admitted two rule outs.”
    Clearly Virginia and Kathleen Jordaine had been to centers favoring the rule out jargon and were familiar with it.
    “Dr. Collinsworth walked in just moments before you did, Kathleen, so I haven’t had the chance to give him my past history. I do have legitimate coronary artery disease,” she explained to Mark, “confirmed by angiogram. It’s not severe enough to bypass. Yet. I’m followed at the Atherton Clinic by Dr. Brown. Occasionally my chronic stable angina acts up, and I get admitted as a rule out. Fortunately, I always have ruled out,” she added firmly, a trace of worry in her voice.
    Tonight’s episode of pain was different, Mark thought.