![]() But more than a telephone call, that unnerving conversation was a call to arms. When Slevin phoned back a few hours later, he told Pretorius what the tests had shown: explosive bleeding inside Drake's skull, and a coma-like state of unconsciousness from which he might never emerge. Shaken and frustrated at being an ocean away, Pretorius gave Slevin his beeper number and told him to call the moment the scan was done. Using the medical jargon they shared, Slevin told Pretorius that Drake's condition was grave. In that context, affairs of the heart were the least they would have to deal with. His limp body had been found inside a flat so blood-slickened it looked more like a slaughterhouse. ![]() ![]() Drake had been the victim of a vicious attack. And Pretorius and Slevin, both physicians, were trained to focus on the facts. In any triangle there is tension: jealousy, conflict and the sting of loss. And an emotional and bittersweet alliance was forged under fire by two men who loved Robert Drake and were determined to save his life. At that instant, three lives were changed forever. ![]() Slevin, having had some time to absorb the horror, was calmer on his end of the line. Standing in his kitchen, he burst into tears. "Ciaran told me he had come back to the apartment and found Robert lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen, that they took him to the hospital, and they were about to do a CT scan," Pretorius, 32, recalled. Had he heard right? Amid the murk of an early morning, why was Slevin calling? What business did they have together? Pretorius was confused, but this much was clear: The news from Ireland was very bad. There's a problem with Robert." Pretorius dove for the receiver. He half expected to hear Drake's familiar baritone but instead he heard the frightened words of Ciaran Slevin, Drake's new boyfriend, a man Pretorius had never spoken to before. Rushing to get to work, Pretorius heard the phone ring and decided to let the answering machine get it. Yeats, and Pretorius' news and gossip from the City of Brotherly Love. They shared Drake's impressions of the coal-smoke-scented streets of Sligo, famous for its celebrations of the poet W.B. Despite their recent separation after six years as housemates, best friends and lovers, and despite the fact that Drake had announced he was in love with another man, he and Pretorius spoke by phone or e-mail almost every day. And before walking out the door to begin his rounds as chief resident in radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he always checked his computer for e-mail from Drake, who was in Ireland working on a novel.Ī prominent literary figure in Philadelphia's gay community, Drake was living in Sligo, a busy town of 23,000 on a plain below limestone hills on Ireland's shore. ![]() It was a practiced ritual: Punch the alarm clock, pad to the bathroom, slip on a sports coat and tie. That winter morning in Center City, inside the Iseminger Street house he had once shared with Robert Drake, Pretorius was alone, getting ready for work. Scott Pretorius was already awake when a transatlantic phone call pierced the quiet of his home at 6 a.m. ![]()
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