She nodded. “You’d better forget what I told you about reaching me at the hotel. I’m going to stay in Lexington with my brother-in-law and the children.”

She was infinitely more attractive with her face scrubbed, Meomartino thought.

“We’ll get things started,” he said.

6: Spurgeon Robinson

6

Spurgeon Robinson

Spur existed in the exact center of a familiar desert island and it moved with him wherever he went. Some of the patients seemed grateful for his help but he knew others couldn’t take their eyes from the purple of his hands against their pale skin. One very old Polish lady pushed his fingers from her wrinkled belly three times before she allowed him to press her abdomen.

“You doctor?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Real doctor? Been school, ever’ting?”

“Yes.”

“Well . . . I don’ know . . .”

With the Negro patients most of the time it was easier but not always, a few of them automatically sizing him up as a shufflefoot. If I’m down here in bed nigger-poor and full of pain and being poked and hurt by the man all the time, what are you doing up there in that white suit and living the fine life?

He was never completely at ease in his role as a Negro professional surrounded by ofays, the way, for example, the orientals on the staff were able to take for granted their complete acceptance. One day in the OR he saw Dr. Chin and Dr. Lee waiting to assist Dr. Kender as the Associate Chief of Surgery pushed into his gown. Alice Takayawa, one of the nurse-anesthetists who was nisei, had just pulled a stool close to the patient’s head and sat down. Dr. Chin’s face grew bland as he held open Dr. Tyler’s gloves.

“Sir, you’re familiar with both the Blue Team and the Red Team?”

Dr. Kender waited.

“Meet the Yellow Team.”

It drew a great laugh, was repeated all over the hospital, and served to make the Chinese doctors even more popular than they had been before. It was the kind of thing Spur could never have said while sober to a white superior about his color. Except for his friendship with Adam Silverstone, those first few weeks he never really knew from hour to hour how he stood with the rest of the staff.

Just strolling by himself one morning about three a.m. on his way to a coffee break, he had seen Lew Holtz and Ron Preminger stop a third intern named Jack Moylan in the hallway. They whispered, with much shaking of the shoulders and many covert glances in the direction of Emergency. Moylan made a face at first as if at a bad smell, but then he grinned and walked toward Emergency.

Holtz and Preminger continued down the hall, smiling widely, and both said hello. Holtz looked as though he were going to stop and say something else, but Preminger tugged his sleeve and they kept on walking.