The Americans

by John Jakes

  He reminded himself that he’d have to cleanse the cavity of material that had escaped from the small intestine. He’d nearly forgotten that. With a human life in his hands— literally in his hands, as it was now—nothing could be forgotten. Bungl—

  No.

  The past was reaching out to snare him, to drag him to failure. He wouldn’t permit it. He meant to save Jo’s life so they’d have time together—

  Drew was staring at him with a strange, questioning expression. Will’s jaw set.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “How does she look to you?”

  “Her breathing is satisfactory. So is her heart rate. I’d say so far, so good.”

  “All right. Just a little while longer, Mrs. Grimaldi.”

  “I’m fine, just fine,” she said in a hoarse voice, her eyes fixed on the strands of exposed gut. Will turned the intestine so the first section to be repaired was directly in front of him. The first puncture began to ooze a little more material that hadn’t been expressed away. Quickly he positioned a sponge so the material wouldn’t drain back into the cavity.

  His right leg started to ache and throb. From tension, he was sure. It was worrisome. A severe spasm could throw his hand awry at a critical moment. He bent the leg slightly, alleviating the strain, and gently picked up the torn gut to decide how best to suture it.

  The first and second punctures had to be treated as one, he decided. They were quite close together because the bullet had passed through both gut walls while they were folded against one another. Visually, he measured the distance between the two punctures. Only a fraction of an inch of tissue separated them when the gut was extended.

  He cut out the tissue between the punctures, thus forming a single elliptical opening more easily sutured. Carefully he trimmed away the opening’s ragged edge, leaving a new and smooth one.

  Next he took a narrow section of each of the two long edges and tucked them inward, so that the gut’s outer sheathing on one side of the opening touched similar sheathing on the other. Drew passed him a curved needle with a long, twisted strand of carbolated black silk attached. Mrs. Grimaldi had prepared the needles after Drew had chosen them from the collection in the office, to be sure they weren’t too sharp.

  He intended to use the Lembert suture, standard in intestinal procedures. He’d seen it demonstrated in the operating theater, but had only tried it on inert laboratory material, never on a living patient. When correctly placed, the suture passed through the two outer layers of intestinal tissue—the very thin, membranous serosa, and the muscularis—to the next layer, the submucosa, which carried the blood vessels. The Lembert suture was an inverting stitch, pulling all outside tissue to the inside without penetrating the mucosa, the intestine’s inmost layer. If penetration accidentally occurred, the contents of the intestine could touch the suture, perhaps cause infection, and even disrupt the entire suture line.

  Drew was clearly nervous over the procedure Will was about to attempt. “You mustn’t go too deep—but if you don’t go deep enough, the sutures will tear out.”

  “I’m worried about hitting the blood vessels in the submucosa.”

  “Go under them. Miss them. You’re a doctor—you’re supposed to be able to do that.”

  Slowly, Will pushed the needle into the tucked-together edges of the opening, kept pushing it with no difficulty, then felt a slightly increased resistance which told him he was into the third layer of tissue. He turned the needle to point it outward again. Following Drew’s instructions proved a hellishly difficult and time-consuming process. But once the sutures were set, they were firm, and he was positive they’d hold.

  Three other punctures, one hardly more than a nick, had to be closed before he could consider that phase of the work complete. Finally he stepped away from the table, his right leg hurting so fiercely he wished he could anesthetize it.

  Drew watched him in silence. An hour had passed, or a little more. At least another hour remained—even assuming he could locate the spent bullet.

  Mrs. Grimaldi looked exhausted, her face so pale, her mustache stood out with great prominence. She stared at Will, then at the strands of intestine draped over the bloodsmeared towels like so much sausage.

  To buoy her, Will said, “You’ve done wonderfully, Mrs. Grimaldi—better than many professional assistants.”

  Her voice was strained. “Don’t talk. Just get done with it.”

  Once more he introduced his hand, probing through the viscera with great care while trying to remember the Gray’s memorized so laboriously as part of his first-class studies. Suddenly he touched something foreign and hard against the posterior mesentery near the lumbo-sacral area.

  He lost it just as suddenly. But now he knew the bullet was free. It hadn’t struck major blood vessels, the aorta nor the iliacs, and it hadn’t lodged in the bones of the spine. If he could just find it again—!

  His mouth opened in a kind of ghastly parody of a smile. Barely breathing, he shifted his hand downward, searching.

  Stiff with tension, his right leg began to shake. The trembling became a violent spasm. God, not now!

  The rod loomed in his mind, whipping toward his shoulders—

  Bungler.

  BUNGLER.

  Drew stared, fear on his face; Will had a remote, lost look in his eyes.

  Drew started to move toward his friend, as if prepared to take over using only his left hand. Will clenched his teeth, struggling with the inner enemy.

  No.

  Not this time.

  NOT EVER AGAIN.

  “Will?” Drew asked in an anxious voice, moving to his side.

  Will thumped his right heel on the floor, hard. He did it again. A moment later the peculiar glint faded from his eyes. They seemed to refocus on his surroundings. His reddened hand came slowly back up into sight. In his palm lay a mashed bit of lead.

  With a sudden sag of his shoulders he said, “That’s all of it.” He flung the bullet behind him. It struck the floor. He closed his eyes and smiled a brief, tired smile.

  iv

  Drew wiped the back of his bandaged hand across his upper lip, his relief evident. “Congratulations.”

  “Not time for that yet,” Will countered. “We’re a long way from finished.”

  But he knew they’d make if. He would make it and, more important, so would Jo. Sometime during those last moments of intense concentration, as he’d located and withdrawn the spent lead, he had found comfort in a sudden image, and a very faint sound within the confines of his mind.

  A single sharp crack: a rod of punishment breaking.

  No, being broken. By his own hand.

  Forever.

  v

  An hour and fifty-eight minutes after he’d first probed the wound, Will finished the final suture and stepped back.

  He’d carefully cleansed the abdominal cavity with sponges attached to long holders, then repaired the incisions one by one. Now the girl on the table was changed again; she was no longer a patient he was required to think about in a narrow professional way, but a woman with a name, a unique appearance, and a set of traits that had become dear to him.

  He put his freshly scrubbed left hand against Jo’s cool cheek. Despite his good intentions, his control broke. He burst out laughing.

  Drew and Mrs. Grimaldi were thunderstruck. He couldn’t stop. He laughed so hard, tears streaked his cheeks. He laughed because the strain of the operation was behind him, and because he was happy, and because he’d won a victory.

  When the laughter diminished, he thought about that victory—and about his mother.

  I don’t know why you thought so little of me. Maybe you couldn’t help it. I don’t know. I only know that to save her, I had to prove you were wrong.

  vi

  “Will?”

  He was leaning against the wall near the window where the curtains had been torn down. He wiped his cheeks with his palms as Drew spoke again.

  “You did a splendid job. Just sple
ndid.”

  Will shrugged, as if to minimize the compliment. He looked past Drew to the girl sleeping peacefully beneath fresh sheets. Mrs. Grimaldi sat beside her, keeping watch.

  Then he took note of the admiration and affection on his friend’s face, and he knew he needn’t be afraid to believe Drew’s compliment.

  To realize that—to grant that to himself—opened him to a new emotion he hadn’t experienced for years. Pride. He had done the job he had been trained to do. He had done it well.

  Most important, he’d saved the life of the one person he loved above all others.

  I’m sorry, Carter, he thought as he gazed at Jo’s calm, lovely face. The promise you asked me to give you was the wrong promise, for the wrong purpose. As long as I have work that matters, and a woman I love, I don’t need anything else. I certainly don’t need a mansion in Newport or a ball invitation from some arrogant old woman. I don’t have to show anything, prove anything, to anyone except myself. It’s taken me all this time to learn that.

  He didn’t know whether he could ever explain his change of heart to his stepbrother. He’d certainly have to try. He owed Carter that much, even if the result was a painful confrontation. Of course it might be years before he saw Carter again; his stepbrother might never come home from San Francisco now that he’d found some success there.

  Well, that confrontation could wait. The confrontation with Laura could not.

  CHAPTER XV

  LAURA’S CONFESSION

  i

  ON SUNDAY, WHILE BELLS rang the call to church, Tomaso Grimaldi brought a wagon to the mouth of the passage leading to Bayard Court. Mrs. Grimaldi had padded the back of the wagon with clean blankets. Drew and Will carried Jo out to the street and lifted her into the wagon with great care.

  Will took over the reins. Drew sat beside him. Tomaso rode in back with the half-conscious girl. The wagon completed a turn in the street and headed east along Bayard.

  Will and Drew had stayed awake all night watching Jo. One or the other of them had administered an opiate when she needed it, and both of them had spent a lot of time answering questions from several police inspectors.

  The two young men had also discussed the question of Jo’s care. They’d decided the best place for her was Nevsky’s tenement. Some member of the Nevsky family was usually on the premises and could see to her needs. She would also have a room to herself, as opposed to a bed in a ward at a public hospital. The constant presence of a doctor wasn’t necessary; she’d come through the operation splendidly, and all she needed now was rest.

  “Out of the way, out of the way!” Nevsky shouted as the wagon drove up. He had cleared a section of curb in front of his building. He elbowed a peddler with many pairs of suspenders draped over his shoulder, and motioned the wagon to the curb. Soon Jo was settled upstairs.

  Will packed his valise. When he was done, he returned to her room. He pulled a small wooden box up next to her cot and sat down.

  He gazed at her silently for a minute or so. Her red-gold hair was neatly tied behind her head; Nevsky’s wife had gotten her into a nightgown and used a comb and brush on her hair while Drew held her up, loudly disapproving of the whole business. Jo’s eyes were closed now, and she was still abnormally pale. But Will didn’t think he had ever seen a woman half so beautiful.

  Presently he took her right hand in his. “Jo? Can you hear me at all?”

  Her eyelids moved slightly. Her tongue brushed across her lower lip. She almost smiled. She heard him.

  “I have to leave for a few days.” The words brought a tightness to his face. “But I’ll be back.”

  She murmured something—a small, pleased sound.

  Drew had walked in a moment earlier. He reacted to what he’d just heard. “Great day in the morning! That’s wonderful news.”

  Will chuckled as he stood up. “Don’t sound so surprised. Do you think I saved your sister solely for humanitarian reasons? I wanted to keep her around so we could see each other. Maybe even discuss plans for the future—”

  Drew’s smile faded a little. “Maybe? You mean you’re not sure?”

  “I am. I don’t know about Jo.”

  “I don’t know why you say that. She’s had her cap set for you ever since that night we dined at the oyster house.”

  “Then she and I will have a lot to talk about. As soon as I get my diploma”—he didn’t hesitate; he knew what he wanted, and where he belonged—“I’d like to take Dr. Clem’s place, if you’ll have me.”

  “If?” With a roar of delight, Drew clapped his friend into a clumsy embrace and waltzed him into the corridor, where Nevsky was fuming over a broken sewing machine belt. “Nevsky, meet my new partner—Dr. Kent.”

  Nevsky wasn’t impressed; he waved the belt. “Can he repair this? Of course he can’t. What good is he?”

  Dr. Kent. It had a very good sound.

  As the two young men walked down to the street, Will thought of Drew’s partner. Vlandingham’s body had been removed to a local undertaker’s. “Is there going to be a service for Dr. Clem?” he asked.

  Drew shrugged. “I suppose so. I doubt we’ll be invited.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, just a feeling. Last night I sent a boy uptown to find Dr. Clem’s brother, Cyrus. The undertaker said he showed up with an expensive hearse and took the body away as fast as he could. I don’t suppose he’ll be anxious to see any of Dr. Clem’s downtown acquaintances at the funeral.”

  Will shook his head. Once, he’d admired the younger Vlandingham. And he’d come close to being the same sort of doctor. Drew and Jo had saved him from it. Laura too had played a role, though an unintentional one. In a way, he owed her thanks for that. But he knew he’d never utter them. When he saw her again—tomorrow, if he were lucky—he’d have all he could do just to keep his temper.

  ii

  They emerged from the tenement. The weather had changed dramatically during the night. The sky was bright blue and cloudless. A refreshing breeze carried a cool foretaste of autumn.

  The two young men discovered Mrs. Grimaldi waiting on the stoop. She was dressed in her Sunday finery. She said she’d prayed for Jo in church, and she wanted to know whether those prayers and all the others said during the long night had been answered. Gravely, Drew told her they had.

  The three walked to Mulberry Street, whose curbs and sidewalks were beginning to overflow with the usual Sunday crowds. Suddenly Will spied some loungers on a stoop just ahead. He recognized one—Rocco Amato, the man who had joined Corso in the attempt to rob him.

  Will’s hand tightened on the handle of his valise. He anticipated trouble. And indeed, Amato stared fixedly at the trio as they approached. Mrs. Grimaldi glared right back.

  Amato smiled nervously, then raised his hand to his forehead and pulled it away in a kind of salute. To Will he called, “Eh—Dottore Pistol.”

  Will frowned and said to Mrs. Grimaldi, “What the devil does that mean?”

  “It’s a nickname. Dr. Pistol. Ever since you dispatched Corso, I’ve been hearing it all over the neighborhood.” She beamed at him. “It’s a compliment.”

  “A compliment for killing a man?”

  “Life down here is not so refined as it is where you come from,” she told him cheerfully as they walked on. The loafers went back to talking and joking. “People in the Bend didn’t like ’Sep Corso. Even his own relatives feared and detested him. You have earned widespread respect whether you want it or not.”

  Will was about to say something when Drew exclaimed, “Police!” They watched a horse-drawn wagon clatter around the corner, race past them and stop in front of an establishment whose gaudy signboard said Ristorante Napoli. A plainclothes detective opened barred doors at the back of the wagon and jumped out. Three uniformed men with locust sticks and handcuffs leaped out after him. The men ran inside the restaurant. The policeman driving the wagon watched the entrance warily. A crowd gathered, murmuring questions. Sounds of commotion issued from the
café: a table overturning, crockery breaking. A familiar voice cursed in fluent Italian.

  The man was shouted down by others who spoke English—the police, presumably. People gasped and pointed as the policemen emerged into the sunlight with an elderly man in tow.

  Don Andreas Belsario’s face was dark red. He held his handcuffed wrists close to his vest, as if hoping to hide the most evident sign of his downfall. The moment people recognized him, they stopped talking. The fear the padrone generated was all too evident.

  Don Andreas saw Mrs. Grimaldi and her companions at the back of the crowd. He stopped and addressed Will and Drew. “Ah—what a surprise. The young gentlemen responsible for my predicament. Did you come here to enjoy my humiliation?”

  One of the policemen pushed him. “Shut up and move along. The magistrate’s waiting.”

  Don Andreas wrenched away. His defiance was carried off with such arrogance, the officers were more amused than angered.

  The padrone’s white hair blew fitfully in the cool breeze. Again he fixed his eyes on Drew, then on Will. The venom in that gaze made Will catch his breath. When the padrone spoke, his voice was pitched low. But it carried clearly through the hushed crowd.

  “These ufficiales have informed me that someone named McCauley”—he mispronounced the name; intentionally, Will suspected—“a person of whom I have never heard— is accusing me of misdemeanors I have not committed. As soon .as I have cleared up the misunderstanding—”

  “In about twenty years,” said the plainclothes detective standing behind him.

  “—you will see me again. This is my district.”

  He meant it as a warning. His eyes were on Drew. But it was Will who replied, “It’s ours, too. When you get back, we’ll be here.”