Just like his father, and it had killed him. But Sam already knew he wasn't going to let this kill him. He couldn't let her do that to him. His eyes filled with tears as he forced himself not to think of her body the way it had been, and the way it would look now. The words were all so ugly …reconstructive surgery …prosthesis … he didn't even want to see it.
“Your wife will be in the recovery room for the rest of the afternoon, I'd say. I think she should be back here by about six or seven. I think she might do well with private nurses for the first few days. Would you like me to arrange that?”
“That would be fine.” Sam looked at him coldly. The man had destroyed his life in a single moment. It was impossible for Sam to accept the fact that the doctor hadn't given her the cancer, he had tried to cure it. “How long will she have to be here?”
“I'd say until Friday. Possibly sooner, if she does well. A lot will depend on her attitude, and her recovery. It's actually a fairly simple operation, and there's less pain than one would expect, especially in a case like hers where the involvement was mainly ductal. That's more the ‘plumbing' of the breast, and there aren't a great many nerves there.” Sam felt sick hearing about it. He'd already heard a lot more than he wanted.
“Get her round-the-clock nurses, please. When can I see her?”
“Not until she comes back from the recovery room, early this evening.”
“I'll be back then.” He stood looking at the doctor for a long moment, unable to thank him for what he'd done. He might as well have killed her. “Will you be seeing Alex again today?”
“This evening, when she's a little more awake. If there's any problem before that, we'll call you. But I don't anticipate any complications. The operation went remarkably smoothly.” Sam's stomach turned over as he heard the words. To him, the only thing that was remarkable was that they had butchered Alex.
The doctor left the room then, well aware of Sam's hostility, and Sam left his office number and the number at La Grenouille at the nursing desk, and then he hurried out of the hospital, feeling frantic. He needed air, he needed room, he needed to see people who hadn't lost anything, who weren't sick, or dying of cancer. He couldn't stand being there for one more moment. He felt like a drowning man as he gulped the cool October air, and by the time he found a cab, he felt slightly more human.
He gave the driver the address of La Grenouille, and tried not to think of anything Peter Herman had said about Alex, about how little they knew, and how much they hoped, and nodes, and tumors, and tests and biopsies, and metastasis, and chemo. He didn't want to hear another word about it. Ever.
The lunch crowd at La Grenouille was in full swing, and it was almost two o'clock when he got there. He felt as though he had just returned from another planet.
“Sam, my boy, where have you been? We got drunk as skunks waiting for you, and finally, just so we didn't fall out of our chairs, we had to order.” Generally, their Arab clients didn't drink, but there were a few less religious, more sophisticated Moslems who did when they weren't in Arab countries. The men Simon had brought with him today were all dramatic-looking, handsome men, who had lived in Paris and London for years, and had enormous oil fortunes they'd invested in the world markets. Simon himself was roughly Sam's age, though heavier built, with wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and if you were tall enough you could see that he was slightly balding. But he had a very aristocratic British air, he was given to tweeds, handmade shoes, and impeccably starched shirts, and remarkably important clients. Sam had finally even decided that he liked him. He had a great sense of humor, and he was anxious to become friends. He had a wife he'd left “at home,” they were separated, though they vacationed together frequently and seemed to have an interestingly open arrangement. And he had three kids, all boys, at Eton.
And sitting next to him was the young woman he had mentioned to Sam. The Oxford graduate in economics. Her name was Daphne. She was a striking-looking young woman in her