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What did they tell you about Dylar?” “Never heard of it.” “Did you ask them to look it up? They must have lists of the most recent medications. Supplements, updates.” “They looked. It’s not on any list.” “Unlisted,” I said. “We’ll have to call her doctor.” “I’ll call him now. I’ll call him at home.” “Surprise him,” she said, with a certain ruthlessness. “If I get him at home, he won’t be screened by an answering service, a receptionist, a nurse, the young and good-humored doctor who shares his suite of offices and whose role in life is to treat the established doctor’s rejects. Once you’re shunted from the older doctor to the younger doctor, it means that you and your disease are second-rate.” “Call him at home,” she said. “Wake him up. Trick him into telling us what we want to know.” The only phone was in the kitchen. I ambled down the hall, glancing into our bedroom to make sure Babette was still there, ironing blouses and listening to a call-in show on the radio, a form of entertainment she’d recently become addicted to. I went down to the kitchen, found the doctor’s name in the phone book and dialed his home number.
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