Your Heart Belongs to Me

high-rise.
     

     
    Dr. Dougal Hobb did not maintain his offices in one of the gleaming skyscrapers that lined Wilshire Boulevard, as did many other physicians. His practice occupied an entire three-story building on a quiet street on the edge of the Beverly Hills business district.
    This elegant neoclassic structure—white with a black slate roof, embraced by old magnolia trees that fanned their giant spade-leaf shadows onto its walls—looked more like a private residence than like a place of business. Only a discreet brass plaque beside the front door identified the premises: D . HOBB , M.D .
    Three doors opened off the foyer, and the one on the right was labeled APPOINTMENTS .
    This proved to be a waiting room with a Santos mahogany floor on which floated an antique Persian carpet, a nineteenth-century Tabriz, which glowed as if woven from gold. The comfortable chairs and stylish end tables suggested that patients here were treated like guests.
    Ryan could not identify the classical music that played at low volume, but he found it soothing.
    The receptionist, an attractive woman in her forties, was not wearing the surgical scrubs or the shapeless exercise suits that were all but standard in most medical offices these days, but a beige knit suit of designer quality.
    Both the receptionist and the nurse, Laura, who took Ryan’s preliminary medical history in a small conference room, were well-spoken, professional, efficient, and warm in their manner.
    Ryan felt that he had sailed out of a storm into a sunny harbor.
    Laura, in her twenties, wore an oval locket suspended from an intricately braided gold chain. The enameled medallion on the front of the locket featured a stylized gold-and-red bird with spread wings, rising.
    When Ryan complimented her on the beauty of the locket, the nurse said, “It’s a phoenix. Early nineteenth century. Dr. Hobb gave it to me for my third anniversary.” She registered his surprise, and her fair cheeks pinked as she quickly corrected the impression that she had given him. “The doctor is my father-in-law. And Andrea—Mrs. Barnett, the receptionist—she’s his sister.”
    “You don’t think of a medical practice as a family business,” Ryan said.
    “They’re a close family,” she said, “and quite wonderful. Blake, my husband, graduated Harvard Medical.”
    “Cardiology?”
    “Cardiovascular surgery. When he finishes his residency, he’ll join Dougal—Dr. Hobb—in the practice.”
    Given the indifference to the idea of family and tradition that characterized both of Ryan’s parents, he envied the Hobb clan.
    Instead of taking Ryan directly to an examination room, Laura led him first to Dougal Hobb’s study. “He’ll be with you in just a minute, Mr. Perry.”
    Again, he felt as if he were in a private home rather than in a medical office, even though on one wall were displayed the surgeon’s medical degrees and numerous honors.
    Because Wilson Mott had provided a thorough file on the surgeon, Ryan did not bother to review the framed items on the wall.
    Instead, when Dr. Hobb entered, Ryan stood admiring the cherry-veneer Biedermeier desk with ebony inlays.
    Under six feet tall, fit and trim but not pumped, dressed in black loafers, gray wool slacks, a cranberry-red cardigan, and a white shirt without tie, Hobb did not cultivate a power look, yet Ryan felt that a force of nature had entered the study.
    Although he had a clear baritone voice, Hobb spoke softly, with the trace of an ingratiating accent that might have been Carolinian. He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, but not a leonine silver mane; his brown eyes were direct, though not striking; his features were pleasant, though not handsome. Yet he seemed to fill the room with his presence.
    They sat in armchairs that faced each other across a Biedermeier pedestal table with magnificently figured walnut veneer, in order to, as Dr. Hobb put it, “get to know each other.”
    Within a few minutes, Ryan understood that Dr. Hobb made such a powerful impression because he seemed, from the first encounter, to be self-effacing, even humble, although his great surgical skills and his success prepared you to expect a fulsome pride if not arrogance, and because he seemed genuinely to care about you, to be motivated by compassion that he could convey without ever sounding either as if he were selling himself or coddling his patient.
    “These past three months,” Ryan said, “have been frightening, of