A Brain Read Online Free Page B

took a moment for the comment to register. When it did, she almost laughed. “Martin, you caught me off-guard. You sounded so severe I thought I’d done something wrong.”
    â€œYou have. You’ve worn this sexy outfit purely to inhibit my powers of concentration.”
    â€œSexy. I’m buttoned up to my larynx.”
    â€œOn you, anything looks sexy.”
    â€œThat’s your dirty mind, old man!”
    Martin had to laugh. Denise was right. Whenever he saw her he inadvertently remembered how wonderful she looked naked. He’d been dating DeniseSanger for over six months, and he still felt like an excited teenager. At first they’d taken every precaution to keep the rest of the hospital from getting wind of their affair, but as they’d become more and more confident that their relationship was serious, they’d become less concerned with secrecy, especially since the more they got to know each other, the narrower the difference in their ages became. And the fact that Martin was the Assistant Chief of Neuroradiology while Denise was a second-year resident in Radiology was a source of professional stimulus to them both, particularly after she began her rotation on his service, three weeks previously. Already Denise could match performance with the two fellows who had already finished their radiology residencies. And on top of that it was fun.
    â€œOld man, huh?” whispered Martin. “For that comment, you’re going to be punished. I’m leaving these medical students in your hands. If they start to get bored, send them over to the angiography room. We’ll give them an overdose of the clinical before the theoretical.”
    Sanger nodded in resigned agreement.
    â€œAnd when you finish the morning CAT schedule,” continued Philips, still whispering, “come over to my office. Maybe we can steal away to the coffee shop!”
    Before she could answer he took his long white coat, and left.
    The surgical suites were on the same floor as Radiology, and Philips headed in that direction. Dodging a traffic jam of gurneys laden with patients waiting for fluoroscopy, Philips cut through the X-ray reading room. It was a large area with partitions formed by banks of X-ray viewing boxes, populated currently by a dozen or so residents chatting and having coffee.The daily avalanche of X ray had yet to arrive, although the X-ray machines had been busy for about half an hour. First it would be a trickle of films, then a flood. Philips remembered all too well from his days as a resident. He’d trained at the Med Center and, responding to the tough atmosphere of one of the biggest and best radiology departments in the country, he had passed many twelve-hour days in that very room.
    His reward for his effort had been an invitation to stay on for his fellowship in neuroradiology. When he’d finished, his performance had been so outstanding, he’d been offered a staff position with a joint appointment with the medical school. From that fledgling position he’d risen rapidly to his present status, Assistant Chief of Neuroradiology.
    Philips stopped momentarily in the very center of the X-ray reading room. Its unique, low-level illumination, coming from the fluorescent bulbs behind the frosted glass of the X-ray viewing boxes, cast an eerie light over the people in the room. For a moment the residents looked like corpses with dead white skin and empty eye sockets. Philips wondered why he had never noticed this before. He looked down at his own hand. Its color was the same pasty hue.
    He walked on feeling strangely unsettled. It was not the first time in the last year he had seen some familiar hospital scene through jaundiced eyes. Perhaps the reason was a slight but fomenting dissatisfaction with his job. His work was becoming progressively more administrative and, on top of that, he felt stagnated by circumstance. The Chief of Neuroradiology, Tom Brockton, was