38
Ruth and I walked into the hospital on Tuesday loaded with flowers.
“Dr. Harper wants to see you,” Gloria said, taking the flowers from my arms.
I reached into my handbag for my car keys. “Be a dear and bring in the rest of the flowers, will you?” I asked her. “Ruth’s new boyfriend is a little overzealous, and we thought these could cheer up some lonely patients.”
Ruth bristled at the term boyfriend , but Gloria hesitated. “Of course,” she said slowly. “But, Barbara ... something seemed ... off ... with Dr. Harper.”
I noticed a worried crease between her eyebrows. “Off how?”
Gloria shook her head and crossed herself. “I don’t know. But there was something ominous in how he said to send you to him.”
Ominous, I thought. The nurses must be actually threatening to quit over Dr. Howe this time . “Don’t worry,” I said, patting her arm comfortingly. “I’ll take care of it.”
As I walked down the hall, I heard Ruth saying, “He’s not my boyfriend . Good heavens, he’s a grown man with gray hair.”
I reached Dr. Harper’s office on the third floor and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” he said through the heavy oak door.
I opened it, and Dr. Harper stood.
“Gloria said you wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” Dr. Harper said, gesturing for me to take the seat across from his desk.
Then he sat back down and steepled his fingers.
I sat in the seat he had indicated and crossed my ankles, waiting for him to speak, which took him a few moments, as he opened his mouth and closed it, looking strangely like a fish.
When he still hadn’t gotten words out, I gently asked, “Is something the matter?”
He swallowed and then said, “Yes, Mrs. Feldman, I’m afraid something is the matter.”
He had called me Barbara since I made the move from volunteer to employee. He wasn’t meeting my eye either. And a little warning bell went off in my head.
“I understand there was an ... altercation ... between you and one of our doctors a little over a week ago.”
“An altercation?” I repeated. Had I overstepped somewhere?
“With ... Dr. Howe,” he said and pressed his lips together.
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s certainly one way to put it.”
“I know that the two of you have had some ... friction ... in the past ...”
He would like there to be a whole lot more “friction,” I thought.
But I couldn’t say that to Dr. Harper. “Dr. Harper,” I said measuredly.
“I have spent half of my time at this hospital protecting nurses from his attention. I was naturally shocked to find that he had convinced my mother-in-law to help turn that attention to me.”
A brief look of confusion crossed Dr. Harper’s face, but he set it resolutely. “Mrs. Feldman, a hospital runs on a tight budget. And pretending your mother-in-law is ill to get time alone with a doctor, whose services are desperately in demand, is a grave offense indeed.”
“I agree wholeheart—wait, what did you just say?”
“While I know that doctors and nurses sometimes find love at work, I really thought that your status as a widow would have prevented such lapses in judgment.”
“Lapses in—I’m sorry, are you saying that I tried to seduce him ?”
Dr. Harper swallowed again and then nodded.
“Dr. Harper, how many times have I sat in this very office complaining about him to you? He is the absolute last man—no, cad —on the planet whom I would agree to have dinner with, let alone anything else.”
He cleared his throat. “Dr. Howe said that he has been rebuffing your advances for some time. Mrs. Feldman, you’ve been invaluable in your work here, but I cannot have my doctors feeling harassed.
And Dr. Howe was too uncomfortable to return to work last week.
He wasn’t going to come in this week either unless I . .. handled ... the situation.”
What I wouldn’t have said to both of them if I were a man.
A man could have asked them to step outside over such accusations.
But as it was, I had to sit there, silently fuming in a polyurethane chair while these two doctors dragged my good name through the mud entirely because I was a woman and therefore disposable.
I counted to ten inside my head and then through gritted teeth said, “So I’ve been disciplined, then. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” I stood from the chair and turned to leave.
“Actually,” Dr. Harper said, the scraping sound of his chair against the linoleum floor telling me he had risen as well. “I’m sorry. He’s refusing to work here if you do.”
My knees threatened to buckle, and I gripped the back of the chair for support. Once I was sure I could stand on my own, I squared my shoulders without turning around. “That’s it, then?”
Dr. Harper came around his desk and put his hand on top of mine. “I’m sorry, Barbara. I am. I know—”
I shook his hand off. “Please don’t patronize me further,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. And I forced myself out of his office without looking back.
Several nurses tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t. Ruth was in the lobby, placing a bouquet of flowers at the intake desk, and I almost walked past her without seeing her until she called my name.
“Barbara,” she repeated. But I couldn’t talk to her either.
She had done this. Dr. Howe would never have done such a thing without her encouragement.
And no one else in the hospital would have helped him.
She followed me out the main entrance and to the car.
“What’s wrong? Is it one of the children? ”
Finally I looked at her. “He fired me,” I said, my rage threatening to boil into ugly tears. “Dr. Howe lied and said I used you to get him to go out with me. ”
She processed this for a moment. “Well, that’s just a misunderstanding, then,” she said resolutely. “I’ll go talk to him and—”
I shook my head, a fat tear spilling out of my eye and down my right cheek. “You don’t understand,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. It was Dr. Howe or me. And they don’t need me like they need him.”
“But—”
I opened the car door. “I’m going home. I’ve had enough humiliation for one day. You can come with me, or you can stay. Gloria can call you a taxi home.”
She opened the passenger door and got in without a word. I wiped at my eyes angrily as she handed me a Kleenex.
“I’ll figure out how to fix this,” she said, her mouth set in a firm line.
“You did enough,” I said, and we rode home in silence except for an occasional sniffle as I fought back the flood of tears that threatened to wash me away.