The Sins of Philip Fleming by Irving Wallace

Author:Irving Wallace [Wallace, Irving]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, adult fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2018-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

5

Wednesday Night

“Mr. Fleming—Dr. McGrath will see you now.” Miss Hanson, the blond receptionist, was speaking to Philip, and several of the other waiting patients looked from her to Philip. He lay down his copy of Fortune Magazine and started into the doctor’s suite.

“Sorry to have kept you this long,” Miss Hanson added, as he passed her desk.

“It’s all right,” said Philip.

He had made the appointment earlier in the morning, on impulse, and he was not surprised that he had had to wait half an hour. Dr. Leo McGrath was much in demand. Though only in his early fifties, the doctor had already acquired an overflow practice, consisting largely of producers, directors, writers, and Beverly Hills matrons. This he had achieved, Philip had long ago decided, less for his competence as an internist than for an accident of manner. Dr. McGrath was tall, angular, and nearsighted. He wore a perpetually bemused expression, the absent air of one who has made too many promises. It gave him an appearance of profundity and assurance. He spoke distinctly, unhurriedly, and was devoted to quoting advanced medical research and speculation. He called patients by their first names, and he knew all that there was to know about hypertension.

Philip had been referred to Dr. McGrath several years before by a successful director, who spoke glowingly of McGrath as the reincarnation of Hippocrates. Philip was less sure of the doctor’s superior medical wisdom. He doubted that, after a certain point, one doctor could know much more than another about salvaging the human anatomy. But there were some doctors who made you feel less frightened, less mortal, and Dr. McGrath was one of these. Philip always felt better when he left the doctor, and that was worth the ten or fifteen dollars.

He made his way through the corridor, past the small laboratory where the pretty nurse, Miss Radford, was giving a little girl a shot, and then past the closed doors of two examination rooms, and finally into the doctor’s office. Dr. McGrath was not there. As usual, Philip examined the framed diplomas and certificates of healing on the walls, and then he studied the manila folder bearing his name on the doctor’s desk. At last, he sat down to wait.

The decision to visit Dr. McGrath had come to him before breakfast. He had awakened with a tight band of pressure across his chest. This was not unfamiliar. A number of times before, he had seen the doctor about it and had learned it was tension, and afterward, the band had relaxed and gone away. This morning, when the old pressure recurred, Philip weighed the possibility of its being tension against a heart attack. Experience and instinct told him that it was the former, but he had wanted to believe that it was more serious. Somehow a heart attack would explain away to Peggy his poor performances of the last few nights. Too, it would resolve his immediate future and automatically release him from a situation with which he could not cope.

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