Intuition by Allegra Goodman Read Free Book Online

pop open. He loved to get up early. At five in the morning, he slipped from bed while Ann still slept, dressed in running clothes, and padded downstairs. Then off he ran. Up and over the hilly streets, breathing hard, watching for ice, he took his route past brick houses and treacherously steep driveways. He ran and ran, drinking in the cold air. This was his preparation for Monday clinic. Up earlier than anyone, fueled by morning energy, this was Sandy's secret time before he went to see his patients. He was girding himself with all his skill and cunning and humor. As he ran, he wrapped himself in his cloak of invincibility.
    By the time he arrived at the hospital, he had showered and shaved, breakfasted and dressed, donned his dazzling white coat. Presidentially, then, Glass strode down the wide polished corridors while his residents briefed him on the crises of the day. Interns tried to keep up, while a medical student scampered here and there, pushing the wall buttons for the automatic doors so that Sandy could sweep along without breaking stride.
    “Lucia Fiorelli is going home today,” a tiny resident named Asha told Sandy.
    “No she's not,” Sandy said. “She needs her biopsy.”
    “She wants to be discharged,” Asha said nervously.
    “She's got something like fifteen family members here,” another resident piped up.
    “And they're very angry,” said Asha.
    Sandy looked at her quizzically.
    “They are insisting she go home,” Asha said, increasingly agitated.
    Sandy snorted. “Where are they? The lounge?”
    The relatives, arrayed on chairs, had a pallor Sandy recognized, a particular shade of gray that came of desperate fear and too many hours under sickening fluorescent lights. They'd been up all night.
    Sandy saw this, but revealed nothing. He ambushed the family with smiles and handshakes all around. “Mr. Fiorelli! Mrs. Fiorelli! How are you?”
    They had been crying. Their daughter was just twenty-one.
    “And you're Lucia's aunt? Nice to meet you . . . You're Nana! I've heard about you.”
    His warmth threw them off guard; the family roused themselves from the peach upholstered chairs. Brothers, cousins—they all shook off sleep and bagel crumbs. Still, Lucia's father turned on Sandy. “I want my daughter home,” he said. He'd been waiting all night to say his piece. “She's been poked and prodded. . . . She's suffering here. She's in pain from the procedures. She wants to go home, and she needs to go home.”
    “I understand, Mr. Fiorelli. I know exactly what you mean,” Sandy murmured. “She needs to rest.”
    “That's right.”
    “She needs to live without needles. You know, there is nothing like a hospital to make you feel worse. You just come in the door and you feel ten times worse. And you can't get a decent meal here. I'll bet there is nothing Lucia needs more right now than some of Nana's good home cooking. . . .”
    Behind his back, Sandy's residents cringed at the familiarity in his voice. In the hospital Sandy could walk from room to room and pull out language tailored for every ethnic or socioeconomic background. Like the magician's endless chain of knotted handkerchiefs, he could evoke Italian meatballs, baseball statistics, sailing stories, even sentimental childhood memories of the High Holidays. No one could Jew a patient like Sandy Glass.
    “No one can take good care like Nana . . .”
    The Fiorellis were already softening. They were angry, but they were also vulnerable: desperate to do something for Lucia; desperate as well, after their long vigil, for some human contact with a doctor—some normal words, a message from the everyday world.
    “Let's talk about getting Lucia some of Nana's cooking,” said Sandy. “Some pasta, some meatballs, some soup. Red bean soup. Minestrone. What does she like? What does she love?”
    And the family laughed a little. They knew that Dr. Glass had changed the subject, shifting the issue from discharging Lucia to how they'd manage