Chapter 1

It was the end of an era.  Henry Talmadge, the last of the founders, retiring.  He stood before us, a placid, pale little man, smiling at us through a veil of liver spots.  The green plaid blazer that once had cut such a dapper picture now drooped over Henry’s shrunken frame, like a father’s hand-me-down on a little boy.

 

“I won’t be leaving until June, but I wanted to let everyone in the department know well in advance so that there would be plenty of time to find someone to take over my practice.  Of course, there are many of my patients who have met one of you from time to time, and they may ask you to take them on instead of going to a new doctor they don’t know.  I hope you’ll be able to accommodate them.  Most of my patients are very nice, really wonderful people, a pleasure to take care of.  There are only a very few who are” -- he winced and clicked his tongue the way he did when he discovered he’d missed a diagnosis -- “difficult.”

 

He was right, too.  Patients resembled their doctors, like pets and their owners. Henry’s patients were old, congenial, and white.  Mine, on the other hand, were fortyish, temperamental and Asian.

 

“Henry, I know I speak for all of us when I say we will miss you, and your patients will miss you even more,” Bruce said.  “And it’s very thoughtful of you, as always, to give us plenty of lead time.”  Turning away from Henry, he said, “Henry spoke to me about his plans some time ago, and I’ve received inquiries from a few very good candidates.  I’ll be sending out their CV’s and recommendation letters for you to look at, and we’ll set up some interviews.”

 

I gave Henry a fond smile.  I liked the old coot, but it was about time he left.  Who would be next to go?  There was a lot of gray hair in this department; Bruce and I were the only ones under fifty.  It was the fall of 1999, and Y2K was just around the corner.  What better time to start over?

 

Peter Gregson, a patrician sort with a magnificent shock of white hair and a meticulously trimmed white moustache to match, brushed a crumb from the lapel of his navy blue blazer and said, “Henry, it just won’t be the same here without you.  You are a legend, you know.  When I came here twenty-five years ago, Tom Russell would tell stories about the way you used to make house calls.  He said you’d pull up to your patient’s home and leave the motor running while you went in to make your call, and run back out again, hop in your Studebaker and head to the next patient’s home.  And every single one felt better after you’d been there.”

 

We chuckled appreciatively as Henry beamed.

 

“House calls,” he repeated, waggling his wattles.  “It’s so different these days, isn’t it?  We hardly ever visit our patients at home now.  It’s too bad.  Of course, there’s so much more we can do for them here in the clinic now.  In those days, we could bring our office with us.  Not any more.”

 

We raised our eyebrows and shook our heads, imagining toting a CT scanner with us.  We thought about the old and the new and got all wistful.  It was one of those Marcus Welby moments.  Then Henry had to go and ruin it.

 

“Of course, San Vicente was so nice and quiet in those days.  We used to call it a bedroom community.  Just had the one grocery store -- anyone remember Blackie’s? Closed about ten, fifteen years ago.  Hardly any Mexicans lived here then.  No Armenians, no Koreatown.  No Jewish community center -- no Jewish community at all, really.  Everybody knew each other.  It was a wonderful place to live, great place to raise a family.”

 

The warm fuzzy feeling within me turned to bitter ice.  Why don’t you just come out and say it, you fascist old fart?  It was lily white back then, and that’s the way you wish it still was.  The hills were still as white as driven snow, but the once-sleepy downtown now boasted stores and restaurants of every possible ethnicity.  In place of Blackie’s was an Indian grocery and chaat emporium.  Low-riders cruised the streets on weekends and homeless people, never seen when I was growing up here, brandished cardboard signs as they patrolled the traffic medians.

 

Was anyone going to say anything?  Of course not.  I was the only non-white in the room.  When people said s**t like this I was never brave enough or fast enough to respond.  I’d just sit and stew about it, composing scathing retorts hours later that I would never get to deliver.  Nothing had changed since my kindergarten days, when I’d stood helpless and bewildered while boys ran circles around me, pulling their eyelids up with their fingers as they shouted “Ching, Chong, Chinaman!” with incomprehensible glee.

 

“Well, we’re very fortunate that it’s still a wonderful place to live and to practice medicine,” Bruce said.  His eyes scanned mine and moved on, big fishy eyes that always seemed to be trolling back and forth, looking for signs of the things that offended his sensibilities: illogic, inconsistency.  He was the perfect department chair -- tall, quietly intimidating, unfailingly nice.  He was the Spock of middle management.