Listening to Billie by Alice Adams Read Free Book Online

say that he was working on a paper, and wanted a specific piece of information. How many ASDs among female patients over forty? Kathleen always understood the question—Eliza often did not, nor did Miriam. And a couple of days later Kathleen would send the list, by Miriam, and often the researcher phoned to express gratitude.
    But the list only took Kathleen half an hour to pull together. Eliza, who contrary to Kathleen’s view was neither lazy nor inefficient (nor was Miriam), had calculated that instead of two and a half people in that office, so to speak, one half-time person could easily do all the work. But Kathleen and Miriam seriously needed their full-time jobs, and Eliza needed her job.
    Eliza had made that same calculation in other offices, at other jobs. What they all needed, of course, was “meaningful work,” and an income. But her own meaningful work, her poetry, provided no income at all, and it was hard to imagine much better solutions for Kathleen or for Miriam.
    She even, sometimes, in moments of paralyzing boredom, imagined complaining that they had not enough to do, but to whom would she complain? Dr. Branner? This, of course, was unthinkable. Her relationship with him was almost nonexistent, but still curious; he addressed Kathleen, the supervisor of that room, as “Kathleen,” whereas he sometimes addressed Eliza, the part-time underling, the Medical Secretary, with a murmured “Mrs. Quarles.” He was never known to show any awareness of Miriam, the File Clerk.
    Kathleen was highly aware of his distinctions. “Social class, that’s all he cares about. He digs your Eastern accent,
Mrs.
Quarles. The fucking old snob.”
    •  •  •
    On Fridays, wearing lab coats and carrying efficient-looking clipboards, on which nothing was ever written, Kathleen and Eliza crossed the street to the hospital; down a maze of halls—sometimes passing white-sheeted patients on gurneys, waiting for something—they came at last to the rear entrance of the amphitheatre. There they found seats, from which to observe what was called the Surgical Conference, a presentation and discussion of patients who were possible candidates for surgery.
    The front seats were traditionally taken by the surgeons, on the right, and on the left were the cardiologists. Behind them sat interns, fellows and med students.
    The surgeons arrived as a group, behind Dr. Branner, who, with his swinging, leisurely, but athletic saunter, always led the rest. They were often spoken of as a team, and Eliza saw that they had indeed that look; they could have been heading for a football bench. And the others seemed to imitate Gilbert Branner’s walk; like him, they all sauntered, with a swing to their gaits. The cardiologists came in separately, or in groups of two or three, and as a group they were less easily defined, except that most of them were Jewish. None of the surgeons was Jewish; to Eliza, a very suspicious fact.
    An intern came up to the lectern, and in a soft Southern voice he began to speak. He reminded Eliza of Evan; lately she had been thinking too much of her dead husband—a part of her unnaturally celibate condition, she had decided. The intern described a white female of fifty-seven, a heavy smoker. Dypsnea on exertion, some angina. A history of rheumatic fever.
    Eliza’s attention to what was being said had gone, and she began to watch gestures instead. Gilbert Branner (Gilbert?) was inattentively stretching his long legs; he already knew that they should operate, and that a woman of fifty-seven had a “pretty fair chance,” as he liked to put it. Dr. Stern, the chief cardiologist, was avidly listening, storing up information to be used inargument; he would want to continue with a course of medication, and to postpone surgery for as long as possible.
    “A young woman, slightly overweight, occasional attacks of anxiety, some insomnia, a smoker, sexually somewhat promiscuous—” They were talking about her, Eliza; she