EXCERPTS:
Stone Babies
Battles of Life
and Death
Loving Touches
A Family of
Doctors
This site created by David
Hellerstein, MD
www.Hellerstein.net
LOVING TOUCHES--A novel about love and duty and madness
BY DAVID HELLERSTEIN
Published by Houghton Mifflin (hardcover), Warner Books (paperback)
AVAILABLE AT:
BACKINPRINT.COM --Autographed copies
AMAZON.COM --Discount price
Below, an excerpt from "Loving Touches," Dr.
Pete Roth comes to work and has a surprise that will change his
life...
(c) DAVID HELLERSTEIN, MD
"WILL Dr. Potanik please fetch the patient?"
Potanik fled.
An oppressive silence grew in the conference room. Pete looked at Whitehouse's bland Pollyanna features and at the conniving Rivkin, and for a moment over at Dr. McGrath, plump and pock-faced, impassive in the corner, who for all his silence was more malignant than Tapir. Tapir just made noise, just toyed with you for pleasure, while McGrath was rumored to go for total destruction. It was also rumored that McGrath, having had his last several research grants "approved but not funded," was close to being exiled to the VA; true or not, this hadn't improved his temperament.
"You, Roth."
"Sorry?"
"Dr. Roth will interview."
The door opened, and Pete, whose mind had been drifting back to the Montauk beach where he had spent a delightful week with his wife Sarah, sat forward. Rotund Potanik led the way, and Mrs. Zimhof followed. She was attractive but not beautiful, with a clear complexion and blond hair that came to her shoulders; her tanned arms were wrapped at the wrists with gauze pads, whose whiteness was a shocking contrast to the dark, healthy glow of her skin. What was underneath them what slices or gouges, Pete didn't want to know.
"Mrs. Zimhof?" He stood. She turned to face him, and simultaneously they started. "I'm Dr. Roth."
Later, he would regret everything from that moment on, but he was so stunned, so amazed, so bewildered and so angry that it was all he could do not to throw his arms around her, asking how on earth she had gotten here to Curtiss's eighth floor, where she had been for the past two years, where she'd disappeared to. All he could do was stand there, gawking, until a rustle of papers reminded him of what was supposed to happen next.
She sat down. He moved his chair a few inches farther away and sank into it.
What could he say? What could he say to Mrs. Zimhof, to Celine Walter--for that was who she was, Celine Walter from across town, Park Avenue and Seventy-ninth, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences--who, when he was a medical student and she an Adams House tutor, he had pursued and slept with and desired infinitely--and who had disappeared. What could he say to her that would not incriminate himself and reveal more of his own pathology than hers?
Dr. Whitehouse was smiling, gaining with each moment of silence. Dr. Potanik stopped shuffling his papers. Dr. Tapir sucked his pipe. And Dr. McGrath slowly twisted in his chair.
What could he say?....What the hell happened to you, Celine Walter? How about that?
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