moonlike? He got on the phone and said, "I want to tell you that I know what you said to my wife. You wouldn't say it to a man." The doctor repeated what he had said, and Stern choked, "It's a shame."

They called a second man, Dr. Cavalucci, hesitant because of his home remedies. When Stern's chest had been inflamed or his wife's fingers had curled in shock, Cavalucci, the doctor, a soft, youthful man, wary of pills, had chuckled and begun, "Now I know this is going to sound funny, but you know those shopping bags you get at the supermarket? If you take one of them and breathe deeply into it for half an hour, you'll get to feeling better." His treatments always involved shopping bags or typewriter ribbons or old shoe polish cans, "the kind you open with a penny, brown, preferably." And he would always begin[Pg 44] his instructions by saying, "This is going to make you feel silly, but...." That night he touched the heavy side of the boy's face and said, "I don't have one for his case. I'm taking him in." In the ambulance, Stern held the child, but now he kissed the good side of the face, afraid of what was inside the bad one, and ashamed of himself for feeling that way, and finally kissing lightly the bad side, too. He said to the doctor, "Anything I've got. Anything I own. Just make him better." But he felt as though he were giving a performance and wondered how many other men had said the same thing. The hospital had long corridors and Stern had heard it was good but needed grants. Inside, a cluster of young men gathered round the child, and when Cavalucci said they were all fine specialists, Stern wondered if he should be calling in men from Europe. When Stern was a child, a cousin of his had once fallen in love with a dying girl, and Stern remembered hearing that he had done everything for her, even to the point of "bringing in men from Europe." The phrase "men from Europe" had stuck with Stern, and he wondered how you went about getting them. It seemed so hopeless, standing in the children's ward now, just to go to the phone and get some of them over, and yet he felt that if he were a real father he would stop at nothing and bring several across. The doctors talked near the child, and when Stern asked what they were doing, Cavalucci said that two of them didn't want to go in and disturb the area and one did. Stern asked which one wanted to disturb it, and Cavalucci pointed him out. He was the surgeon. When the conference broke up, Stern glared at him but was afraid that now the man would push home his view and not only disturb the area but also try risky, tradition-breaking techniques. They waited round the clock while the live part of the face took food, and then Stern[Pg 45] and his wife went home 

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