Occasionally an advertisement would cause him to read it several times.

TEN MAN MULTISPECIALTY CLINIC,

corporation, needs general surgeon. Northern Michigan location in the heart of the fishing and hunting country. New clinic building, and profit-sharing plan. Beginning salary $20,000. Ownership participation after two years. Ownership income range $30,000 to $50,000. Address F-213, New Eng. J. Med. 13-2t

He understood that what he would need one year from now was a region far away from the heady medical atmosphere of the teaching hospitals, away from established competition. The ideal situation would be an ailing or aging surgeon in a remote environment, who was willing to take a gradual profit while phasing out his practice by turning it over little by little to a young associate. That kind of thing would be worth thirty-five thousand from the very beginning, with seventy-five thousand a year not impossible down the road.

On the rare occasions when he had stopped to analyze his feelings about medicine he knew that he wanted to be both a healer and a capitalist, Jesus Christ and the moneychangers all rolled into one. Well, why not? People who could afford to pay their bills got just as sick as the indigent poor. Nobody had asked him to take a vow of poverty. He had had enough of that without vows.

2

Spurgeon Robinson

Baby! Spurgeon’s Momma whispered, her voice a feather.

Spurgeon, baby, she said again, her voice heavier but rising, a bird that crowded the room with its fluttering.

His eyes were closed but he could see her. She was leaning over his bed like a peach tree heavy with fruit, her body in the fuzzless flannel nightgown all ripe sags and hard planes, her bare toes gnarled like roots beneath the ruined tree trunk legs. He felt ashamed that Momma should come upon him like this, because he knew that under the thin blanket he had a hard on, the result of dreams. Perhaps, he thought, if I pretend to sleep she will go away, but at that instant sleep became impossible due to a thin metallic slap as the timing mechanism in his alarm clock engaged. The clock jangled, a familiar, almost comforting sound that had been rousing him faithfully for years, and he awoke immediately although it took him a moment to remember that he was a grown man, and what he was.

Doctor Robinson, he remembered.

And where—a banged-up bitch of a hospital in Boston. His first day as an intern.

In the john at the end of the hall someone was standing on tiptoes before the speckled mirror, scraping at his chin with a razor.

“Morning. I’m Spurgeon Robinson.”

The white boy used his towel carefully and then stuck out a good surgeon’s hand, not large but strong, with a firm but easy grip. “Adam Silverstone,” he said. “I’m only about three strokes away from a clean shave.”

“No hurry,” Spurgeon said, although they both knew that there was. The bathroom had wooden floors and the paint on the walls was peeling. On the door of one of the two booths a philanthropist had written Rita Leary is a nurse who does it like a tender bunny ASpinwall 7-9910. It was the only reading matter in the room and he finished it quickly, from reflex casting a glance to see if the white boy had noticed him reading it.