“Anything else?” I asked with forced patience.
“Well,” he said, “there’s something I’m curious about. It’s about him, uh, about Amburgey. Uh, isn’t he an antismoker and makes a lot of noise about it, or have I got him mixed up with somebody else?”
My eyes lingered on his grave face. I couldn’t imagine why it mattered as I replied, “He’s strongly opposed to smoking and frequently takes public stands on the issue.”
“Thought so. Seems like I’ve read stuff about it on the editorial page, heard him on TV, too. As I understand it, he plans to ban smoking from all HHSD buildings by next year.”
“That’s right,” I replied, my irritation flaring. “By this time next year, your chief will be standing outside in the rain and cold to smoke—like some guilt-ridden teenager.” Then I looked quizzically at him and asked, “Why?”
A shrug. “Just curious.” Another shrug. “I take it he used to smoke and got converted or something.”
“To my knowledge, he has never smoked,” I told him.
My telephone rang again, and when I glanced up from my call sheet, Wingo was gone.
* * *
If nothing else, Marino was right about the weather. That afternoon I drove to Charlottesville beneath a dazzling blue sky, the only evidence of this morning’s storm the mist rising from the rolling pastureland on the roadsides.
Amburgey’s accusations continued to gnaw at me, so I intended to hear for myself what he had actually discussed with Dr. Spiro Fortosis. At least this was my rationale when I had made an appointment with the forensic psychiatrist. Actually, it wasn’t my only reason. We’d known each other from the beginning of my career, and I’d never forgotten he had befriended me during those chilly days when I attended national forensic meetings and scarcely knew a soul. Talking to him was the closest I could comfortably get to un-burdening myself without going to a shrink.
He was in the hallway of the dimly lit fourth floor of the brick building where his department was located. His face broke into a smile, and he gave me a fatherly hug, planting a light peck on the top of my head.
Professor of medicine and psychiatry at UVA, he was older by fifteen years, his hair white wings over his ears, his eyes kindly behind rimless glasses. Typically, he was dressed in a dark suit, a white shirt and a narrow striped tie that had been out of fashion long enough to come into vogue again. I’d always thought he could be a Norman Rockwell painting of the “town doctor.”
“My office is being repainted,” he explained, opening a dark wooden door halfway down the hall. “So if it won’t bother you being treated like a patient, we’ll go in here.”
“Right now I feel like one of your patients,” I said as he shut the door behind us.
The spacious room had all the comforts of a living room, albeit a somewhat neutral, emotionally de-fused one.
I settled into a tan leather couch. Scattered about were pale abstract watercolors and several nonflowering potted plants. Absent were magazines, books and a telephone. The lamps on end tables were switched off, the white designer blinds drawn just enough to allow sunlight to seep peacefully into the room.
“How’s your mother, Kay?” Fortosis said as he pulled up a beige wing chair.
“Surviving. I think she’ll outlive all of us.”
He smiled. “We always think that of our mothers, and unfortunately it’s rarely true.”
“Your wife and daughters?”
“Doing quite well.” His eyes were steady on me. “You look very tired.”
“I suppose I am.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“You’re on the faculty of VMC,” he began, in his mild unthreatening way. “I’ve been wondering if you might have known Lori Petersen in life.”
With no further prompting, I found myself telling him what I had not admitted to anyone else. My need to verbalize it was overwhelming.
“I met her once,” I said. “Or at least I’m fairly sure of it.”
I had probed my memory exhaustively, especially during those quiet, introspective times when I was driving to or from work, or when I was out in my yard, tending to my roses. I would see Lori Petersen’s face and try to superimpose it on the vague image of one of the countless VMC students gathered around me at labs, or in the audiences at lectures. By now, I’d convinced myself that when I studied the photographs of her inside her house, something clicked. She looked familiar.
Last month I had given a Grand Rounds lecture, “Women in Medicine.” I remembered standing behind the podium and looking out over a sea of young faces lining the tiers rising up to the back of the medical college auditorium. The students had brought their lunches and were sitting comfortably in the red-cushioned seats as they ate and sipped their soft drinks. The occasion was like all others before it, nothing extraordinary or particularly memorable about it, except retrospectively.