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  “Wilma?”

  “Yeah,” Galen replied, “Edison likes to name things. It’s the RV we drove down in. He named it after a hurricane that hit the day he got it. It’s a great old RV. Sometimes I think it understands us, the way it handles on the road.”

  Edison had braced himself for insults but now beamed at his friend’s compliment.

  “I thought I was the only one who felt that way about Wilma.”

  Nancy quickly changed the subject.

  “Come on, let’s get moving. After we’re done we’ll come back here. Maybe the kids will want to go out for a late snack.”

  The old doctors turned back momentarily to watch Tonio and Sarah standing in line at the registration office. They wondered if the kids would be as lucky as they had been with the toss-of-the-dice roommate selection.

  3. Seven Come Eleven

  The little silver music box sat on the white pine bookshelf above his desk.

  Betty, please forgive me. I’d like to see Sarah again, maybe take her out .

  Antonio Hidalgo sat on the bare mattress in his small dorm room. He stared at the pale-green-painted cinder block walls.

  He felt guilty, just as he had when he had dated in college, but this girl was special. What was it about Sarah Knowlton?

  He picked up the music box and opened it. “Lara’s Theme” filled the room but so did something else.

  Tonio, go with her. It was meant to be .

  He lay on the bare gray mattress, clutching the little box to his chest, overwhelmed by thoughts of Betty Orth. He wanted to cry but couldn’t. Even now, Betty had given him everything.

  “When did she die?”

  “Holy shit! Don’t you knock?”

  Tonio jumped up from the bed, startled by the quiet New York City accent. In the open doorway stood a muscular young man, ocean-blue eyes peering at him from behind thick-framed glasses. He was dressed for the tennis court in white jersey and shorts, cased racket under his left arm, a captain’s hat topping russet-brown hair.

  He held out his right hand. “Julius Petrie, but call me JP.”

  Tonio put the music box back on the shelf and shook the young man’s hand.

  “Antonio Hidalgo. I go by Tonio, or Tony, or ‘hey, you.’ Sorry I snapped at you, JP. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Their grips both strong, the two first-year med students took the measure of each other—blue eyes peering into brown and vice versa. Each held the same, unspoken thought:

  This could be a worthy opponent .

  The young Cuban immigrant sensed the presence of family money and position in his roommate, and the wealthy New Yorker felt a hidden strength and something else, something strangely spiritual, in Tonio. Both recognized a high level of intelligence.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, Tony.”

  “It’s okay, but how did you know?”

  Julius Petrie took on a didactic tone as he dragged his suitcases into the room and tossed them on the other bed.

  “Elementary, my dear Hidalgo.”

  The comment brought a harrumphing smile.

  “Okay, I’ll be serious. There you were, a young guy, lying on an unmade bed, holding a music box and looking down in the dumps. Several possibilities crossed my mind. First, it had to be a gift from someone else, but whom?

  “Mom? No, not the type of gift a mother would give.

  “Sis? Ditto and it’s definitely not a guy gift, so that lets out father, brothers, male relatives and friends.

  “What do we have left? The girlfriend—or maybe the fiancée. But why’s he on the verge of tears? He just broke up with her? No, usually a guy would just toss a gift if he’d been dumped. Did he leave the girl behind to go to school? That’s obvious, but he could always keep in touch and travel is easy. So, the girl is gone, but in a permanent sense. That’s the type of sadness I saw in you.”

  Tonio stared at him then slowly stretched his lips out tightly in sad acknowledgment.

  “Yeah, you nailed it.”

  “What happened?”

  Even now, Tonio couldn’t form the word easily.

  “L ... eukemia.”

  “That’s awful, Tony. I didn’t mean to be so glib.”

  Tonio forgave him by changing the subject.

  “So, what’s your story? What brings you to this revered institution?”

  “Someday I want to do forensic pathology.”

  “JP, that’s a foregone conclusion, and I think you’ll be great at it.”

  So it began, two bright, driven young men thrown together for the first great cycle of their careers. They sat on their respective beds, talking about family, school, girls, goals and girls.

  “So, why did she dump you, JP?”

  “Ah, well, that gets to what my life has been like. Father and Mother both came from the crème de la crème of society. My sister and I were attending cotillions by the time we were 12. God help us if we committed any social faux pas.

  “Dad went to Harvard Med and became a society doc. He treats all the neuroses of our social class, you know, the ones with more money than common sense. He validates their empty lives.

  “Mother is … well … mother. She enjoys her parties and getaways at the Hamptons; loves all of the big dinners for major campaign contributors and charity types.”

  “I figured as much. So what happened to you? You don’t look like the black sheep type. And what about your sister?”

  “Sis joined the Peace Corps, which really ticked off the parents. And when I wanted to go somewhere besides Daddy’s alma mater you can guess what hit the fan. Good thing Grandma left me a trust fund.

  “Then Tiffany decided I wasn’t good husband material, so ‘sayonara, JP.’”

  As Tonio listened his stare grew harder.

  “So how about we cut the crap.”

  Startled by the clarity, he stared back then looked down and sighed.

  “It goes back to my high school days. I saved the life of a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. We became best friends and even went to Cornell together.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Just that was a slap in the face to my father. He wanted me to attend his alma mater. During our time at Cornell my friend, Seymour, aka Pumper, wrote a book. It was listed as fiction but you could tell who the characters really were. It was a penetrating commentary on wealthy people and how they behaved toward those they considered inferior. It became a bestseller. He named the hero of his book Julian Patterson.”

  “My God, that was you? Wow, I read that book, The Prince of Poverty . Damned good writing but really biting.

  “Uh ... does Seymour really look like his press photo?”

  “You noticed? Yeah, he does look like a monkey, even acts like one.”

  “Geez!”

  “My father got wind of the book and raised holy hell. He called me a traitor to my class. All my friends, including Tiffany, decided I wasn’t their type. That’s when I decided to follow a different path.

  “But you know what galled me the most, Tony? I was the real hypocrite. I used the same power I despised to save Pumper’s life. If I had been John Smith, or even, forgive me, Tony Hidalgo, would anyone have paid any attention to me?”

  Tonio remembered what had happened when Betty was taken to the hospital that last time.

  No, they wouldn’t have listened to me .

  “Wasn’t it Robert Frost who spoke of ‘The Road Less Traveled?’”

  His phone rang.

  “Tonio, we’re going to have dinner. We’ll pick you up in front of the dorm in half an hour. See if you can find Sarah and bring her along, okay?”

  He found Galen’s voice strangely comforting.

  “Tio, can I bring my roommate, too?”

  “Of course, boy. We’d all like to meet him.”

  “Okay, bye.”

  “Better change into something different, JP. You’re invited to dinner by my tios and tia.”

  4. Auld Lang Syne

  “
Just call me Edison, like old bear breath does.”

  “You call him bear?”

  Sandy McDevitt laughed as Galen turned beet red. She sat next to him in Wilma’s second-row seats while Edison and Nancy occupied the captain’s chairs in front.

  Nancy turned around to her.

  “What’s so funny, Sandy?”

  “It’s just happenstance, Nancy. Did Galen ever tell you what we nicknamed him in school?”

  “Sandy, they don’t need to…”

  “We called him The Bear.”

  Edison kept his eyes on the road but a mischievous gleam appeared in them.

  “Tell us more, Sandy.”

  “Uh ... I think Sandy wants to see the White House of the Confederacy, right Sandy?”

  He nudged her and she gave him the look Galen used to dread. All women know how to give it, and all men know the game’s over when it appears. Not even prayer helps.

  “Yes, Galen’s right. Let’s go see the White House of the Confederacy. I think it’s just two blocks over.”

  Another look: You owe me, Bob Galen.

  It was hard to find among the modern buildings, and it offered precious few places to park. It also seemed out of place. Jefferson Davis’s home during the Civil War was surrounded by a giant hospital complex. Even the neighboring, brown-and-red-stone, post-bellum homes had been demolished. It sat alone in a canyon of manmade darkness.

  Edison drove back around on Marshall Street and valet-parked Wilma in the hospital complex parking garage. A quick walk brought the four to the entryway of the historic home.

  When the guard saw the four he shook his head.

  “Sorry, folks, we’re closing. Come back tomorrow.”

  Sandy became the young imp Galen once knew.

  “Please, we only have today. My late husband proposed to me in the garden 60 years ago.”

  The guard hesitated so Galen quickly slipped him a twenty.

  It worked—he opened the gate.

  “Josh did propose to me, right over there.”

  She walked slowly toward a garden bench and sat down. Her eyes beheld a past only she remembered.

  Galen followed and sat next to her.

  “We all had some great times here, didn’t we?”

  She looked up, gently dabbed at her eyes with an Alice-blue handkerchief then whispered, “Bob, do you remember when Dave and Connie, you and June, and Josh and I made out here that evening?”

  He did.

  “Yes, Sandy, but some things are best left unsaid. Capisca? ”

  “You were naughty, Bear.”

  “It’s good to hear that name again.”

  They stood up and headed back. Nancy and Edison were pretending not to be watching. Edison broke the silence.

  “Where do you want to go next?”

  They answered almost in unison: “The three bears!”

  The Edisons followed the couple toward the old West Hospital. Another short walk brought them to the Broad Street side—but they didn’t find what they expected to see.

  “I want to go inside,” Sandy said.

  She and Galen walked through the front doors and approached the security guard.

  “We’re looking for the three bears,” she said, smiling.

  The guard raised an eyebrow.

  Hope I don’t need to have these two geezers dragged in for psych evaluation.

  “Uh, ma’am, you don’t look like Goldilocks, but the guy next to you sure looks like a bear.”

  “We went to school here a long time ago and there used to be a statue of three bear cubs in a little garden just outside this door. Does the school still have it?”

  “Oh, yeah, they’re over in the Gateway Building, next to the Three Bears Gift Shop. Easiest thing is to cut through the hospital to Marshall Street. You’ll see it. They moved it there ’bout twenty years ago. Guess that was after your time.”

  “Yes, guess it was,” Sandy said.

  She and Galen moved at warp speed for their age, imitating what they used to do when they were students.

  “Slow down, you two,” Nancy called to them. “I don’t want you, or me, winding up with another heart attack.”

  Edison was getting a little winded as well.

  “Sorry,” Galen said. “We just naturally revert to hospital walk sometimes. When you’re a student or house staff doc, you move like the devil is on your tail.”

  Sandy nodded. ”And maybe Old Ketch was.”

  She took his hand and squeezed it, which slowed him down.

  Maybe I am being chased, chased by my own personal demons of time and memory.

  They crossed Marshall once more and entered the Gateway Building. Up the escalator and a short walk down the bustling hospital corridor, then a turn to the left there stood Anna Huntington’s stone copy of her bronze statue of three playful bear cubs. It seemed incongruous at first.

  The cubs were posed cavorting and licking themselves, though exposure to decades of the elements made them seem worn. Now they were a side thought to the left of a gift shop entrance.

  Sandy and Galen stood before them, worshippers in a cathedral of healthcare. To the old pair it was an icon.

  The legend of the bear as healer and giver of strength pervades many cultures, and this particular statue of the bears had been a source of comfort when patients went sour despite their best efforts.

  Maybe, on some primitive level, the cubs were Galen’s totem against the Bone Man, that personification of Death introduced to him by Aunt Hattie, the “conjer lady,” so many years ago.

  Even Edison refrained from speaking as his two friends gazed silently.

  Then Galen realized that Sandy had once more slipped her hand into his, and she was looking at him.

  “Guess we’d better get back to the dorms. I wonder how that granddaughter of mine is doing.”

  5. The Weaker Sex?

  Sarah Knowlton had just unpacked her things when the dorm room swung open and a pretty young woman loaded down with tote bags and a huge suitcase on wheels breezed in.

  “Hi, are you my roommate?”

  “I am if you got room 603,” Sarah responded.

  The other girl dropped all the bags at once and extended a hand.

  “Judy Hicks.”

  “Sarah Knowlton.”

  They liked each other instantly.

  “Are your parents doctors, Sarah?”

  “Mom and Dad were killed in the World Trade Center attack when I was just a baby. But Grandma Sandy’s an MD. She and Grandpa Josh raised me. They were missionaries. I grew up in Kenya. What about you?”

  “Mom was a school teacher and Dad sold life insurance in Canton, Ohio, where I’m from.”

  Sarah caught the past tense in the response.

  “What happened?”

  Judy hesitated.

  “They ... they were all killed; Mom, Dad, my little brother Dave and my sister Cathy. A drunk driver ... the day after I got my med-school acceptance letter.”

  “Oh Judy, that’s horrible. So you’re...?”

  “I’m the only one left now.”

  She said it quietly, almost matter-of-factly.

  She’s got a lot going on beneath the surface .

  “I hope you don’t mind, I went ahead and picked my bunk and dresser.”

  “Of course not,” Judy said.

  She started unpacking, silently for a few moments, until Sarah started talking about her experiences in Kenya.

  “You know how arguments were settled? The guys would carry this club with a ball-like swelling on the end. If they didn’t like someone they’d bash their brains in. It’s called rungee .”

  “I could’ve used something like that with a few of the guys I’ve dated.”

  “I didn’t need a club. I had a pet cheetah. It almost took the you-know-whats off this one guy when it thought he was getting fresh. I swear his voice sounded an octave higher for weeks.”

  That did it. Soon the new roomies were engaged in the typical, non-stop
gab fest that only females can sustain.

  “Let’s get out of here. We’ll be spending enough time cooped up once school starts.”

  They changed into shorts and tops, two young lionesses ready to prowl the savanna that was the dorm complex. With those eyes, faces and forms they had no trouble stopping traffic, so to speak, and both were accustomed to it.

  They ended up in the central lounge. That’s where she spotted him again, standing by the entrance with another newcomer.

  Let me guess—his roommate?

  Both young men wore light khakis and torso-conforming tee shirts. Both were good looking but one stood out.

  What was his name? Antonio Hidalgo!

  Sarah noticed Judy looking at the other one and nudged her.

  “Why do you suppose they’re holding up the door post?”

  They both giggled as they moved in for the kill, smiling broadly.

  “Yo, spaghetti-sauce boy. You eaten yet?”

  Tonio batted his eyelids in his own practiced move.

  “Sarah, hey, I’ve been trying to call you. We’re all going out to dinner with my folks and your grandma.”

  She slowly patted the pockets in her top and shorts. Tonio’s eyes reflexively widened.

  “Tsk, I must have left the phone in my room. Mind if I use yours?”

  Before he could answer she snatched his out of his pants pocket, smiling as she keyed in the number.

  “Hi, Grandma. We’re all here. Where we going?”

  She licked her lips and gazed directly into Tonio’s eyes.

  Meanwhile, JP was being mesmerized by Judy Hicks’s long auburn hair and hazel eyes.

  What’s that on her top, a tennis emblem? Yowzah!

  JP nudged Tonio.

  “Oh ... uh ... yeah, this is my roommate, Julius Petrie. Call him JP.”

  Sarah shook his hand and pushed Judy forward.

  “This is my roommate, Judy Hicks.”

  The RV named Wilma pulled up to the dorm entrance, and Edison spotted the four young people laughing and talking a mile a minute. He turned around to Galen and Sandy.

  “I would say Tonio and Sarah have adapted rather well.”

  They all stared wistfully at the scene of youthful exuberance; each of them sighed.Four young adults crowded into the back of Edison’s RV and Tonio began a rapid-fire introduction. And by the time they had finished the first course at the little restaurant that bragged about its pancake menu, everyone knew everyone else’s name. The four oldsters had learned that Judy Hicks was from Ohio and interested in rehabilitation medicine. They found out that Sarah expressed an interest in cardiology, and JP would be pursuing forensics.