Flight from a Firing Wall

by Baynard Kendrick

  “I’ve already told you …”

  “Not enough. Mr. Harrington claims you picked him up adrift in a rowboat, and that you gave him a shot to keep him quiet when you were boarded by the Coast Guard.”

  “He was yelling, and seemed to be in pain.”

  “So he must have talked some. Now, how much Demerol did you give him, and what did he say?”

  He wigwagged with his eyes to the boss for another all-clear before he felt it was safe to come through. “He claimed that he had malaria—Plasmodium vivax—at least that’s what he told Captain Edwards. He said he had run out of Atabrine and couldn’t get any in Cuba. That’s why he tried to make a getaway. Maybe he was off his rocker, but judging by that yellow-stained skin, I agreed with Captain Edwards that his story might be true.”

  “Oh? Is Captain Edwards a medic, too?”

  “As much as I am. Both of us have had a little studying to do.”

  “Did you get all this in Spanish or English?”

  “A mixture of both,” he said. “It was while we were getting him bunked down. Once we had him in bed, Mrs. Harrington came in, too. Neither Captain Edwards nor I have much Spanish, so Mrs. Harrington had to pass on part of what I’m telling you.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, he complained about having chills, fever and a headache, and bad pains in the calves of his legs and his stomach. When we gave him a little water to drink, he couldn’t hold it down. He started vomiting, and it was then I gave him the Demerol, and in no time it had settled him down.”

  “And out,” I said, “but not up until now. Come on, Dr. Shannon, you’re doing fine. Let’s have it all.”

  The “Dr. Shannon” seemed to tickle him. He gave a wry smile and went on, “He came around again while the Coast Guard had us stopped and were busy peering into cracks for roaches. He started yelling that his head, legs, and belly were really killing him. Then the vomiting started again—going to town.”

  Harrington said, “I told Mr. Shannon to shut him up if he had to sit on his head with a pillow.”

  “It’s effective,” I said, “but a garrote is quicker, except that it leaves such nasty marks on the neck for the cops to find. Go on, Mr. Shannon, go on.”

  “I gave him another one hundred mg’s of the Demerol.”

  “That was how long ago?”

  “Four or five hours. He went back to sleep and there he is, that’s all.”

  I said, “You may be a trifle fast with the needle for the modern school, but the next time I start screaming for a fix you can rest assured I’ll give you a call.”

  Machine-gun García stirred in the bed and favored us with a doleful Cuban groan. I bent over him quickly before Shannon could get there with his needle and finish the job I so badly wanted to do. My sympathetic fingers, trained so long to minister to the ill, reached out eagerly, but before they could close on that scrawny throat I forced them firmly to change their course and rest tenderly on his burning forehead.

  At my touch he opened his falcon eyes and fixed them on me dully and with no sign of recognition. His muttered Spanish was almost too low to be heard, but I did catch something that sounded like, “Who are you?” and “Where am I?”

  “No se apure Ud. Tomemos las cosas con calma.”— “Don’t worry. Take it easy.” I whispered soothingly, my lips close to his ear. Then added a small white lie of my own: “Ud. está entre amigos”— “You’re among friends.” Could be they were his friends. I didn’t know.

  I felt better when his hot eyes closed. A telephone tinkled beside the bed and Orvie answered. He hung up and said, “That’s Edwards calling down from the bridge. The ambulance is here and two men are on their way aboard with a stretcher. We haven’t even got his clothes on. What are we going to do?”

  “Have you wrapped up that Cuban uniform?”

  Shannon said, “It’s in this package beside the locker here.”

  “Good. They can pick him up here just as he is. They’ll have blankets with them. Give them the sailor suit and the rest of his things to take along. I’ll take the package. My car’s parked up at the end of the dock. They can follow me out to the hospital.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Money,” I said. “Fifty dollars. If there’s anything left, which I doubt although they have no hidden meters ticking, I’ll send it back. I’d hate to be accused of a shakedown.”

  Harrington reached in his pocket and stripped five tens off of a wrist-sized roll, handed them to me and said, “Keep the change. It’s worth it to be rid of both of you forever.” Then he hesitated and turned to look at the patient. “What about my pajamas?” he asked. “He’s got them on. Are you going to take them too?”

  I said, “My apologies to Señora Soledad Medina de Harrington, and I trust that she won’t feel insulted, but from now on I fear that her husband will have to sleep desnudo, or as they put it so nicely in English—in the raw!”

  8

  In any country in the world an ambulance is a harbinger of disaster and a guarantee of vicarious thrills. It carries a built-in broadcasting system tuned to a buzzard’s wave length that summons the birds of prey from their offices or homes at any hour of the night or day. Ernesto’s trip down the gangplank, up the dock, and into the hearse was watched by the usual gallery of ghouls assembled out of the nowhere.

  One couple, who had obviously caught the flash in the middle of their dinner in the dock restaurant, had been smart enough to bring the remainder of their sandwiches with them. They were watching happily as they busily munched and washed the residue of each mouthful down with copious drafts from cans of beer. Still, there wasn’t any blood, and I was certain they felt they had been cheated.

  As the doors closed on the stretcher, shutting him in, a woman said, “Well, anyhow, he’s probably dead from what I could see!” I went to confer with the driver extremely heartened by that note of cheer.

  Coral Gables, which half a century before had been the home of a retired minister set in an orange grove, had been developed by George E. Merrick, the minister’s son. The homestead was built of coral rock and its architecture was gabled, and from it came the name of that ideal city, supposedly located on the outskirts of Miami during the Florida boom.

  Today its founder, who died in 1942, might have been shocked to find that his hundred-million dollar enterprise covering some fifteen square miles had been swallowed whole by that monster metropolis known as Miami. The VA Hospital where I worked now occupied the ten-million-dollar Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel, which had opened to a great fanfare of name bands in January, 1926, almost forty years before.

  If anyone thought that the hospital, housed in what Merrick had called “one of the most stupendous edifices of its kind the world had ever seen,” was easy to find while driving at night or by day, they had the wrong idea.

  Unlike Gaul, greater Miami is divided into four parts: Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest. This was an excellent plan before the city became “Magic” and was forced to discard its rompers, but today the casual visitor who has only been there for a short stay of twenty years can find it confusing.

  The dividing thoroughfares are Flagler Street and Miami Avenue. Once one learns by experience that in crossing either of these principal arteries in any direction the house numbers start running up instead of down locating an address becomes the comparatively simple task of a few tries and an hour or more.

  In contrast, Coral Gables was laid out with an eye to flowing curves of beauty, rather than being plotted to some strict mathematical scale. The maze of streets, roads, courts and circles seen on the map resemble nothing so much as a chart of the human nervous system exposed to view. Furnish any driver with a map, spyglass and compass, and the VA Hospital can be located with all the ease of finding an underground hide-out in the middle of the Escambray Mountains.

  My offer to pilot the ambulance driver out to this lair by the shortest route was heatedly turned down.

  He said, “Keep your shirt o
n, bud, and I’ll be waiting for you at the Ambulance Entrance.” Before I had a chance to argue, he’d hopped in, started his red blinker flashing, and taken off on his own.

  Keeping my shirt on, as per instructions, I locked the package containing Ernesto’s uniform in the trunk of the LeSabre and got in behind the wheel. It was then I first became aware of the man with white hair.

  He was seated in the driver’s seat of the car to my right, a black Chevrolet sedan of the quite unnoticeable breed since it was neither too old nor too new. Its driver would have been just as inconspicuous to me if it hadn’t been for a flame that flared up brightly as he used his pocket lighter on a cigar giving me a snapshot of his shrewd chiseled features topped by that head of well-cut snow-white hair. I remembered then that he had been one of the crowd gathered to watch Ernesto’s departure. Somehow the nice combination of man and automobile impressed me as being not only efficient but hinting at the official. Still, when I pulled out behind him and looked at the tag, it bore only the standard 1W- and figures of Dade County.

  The ambulance must have caught the green light for the left turn on to Biscayne Boulevard for it was out of sight. I caught my usual red, and for the moment sat there staring at the bulk of Freedom Tower across the Boulevard. It housed the offices of the Cuban Refugee Center where nearly 180,000 of my fellow countrymen, fleeing from Communism, had registered and found sanctuary since January, 1961.

  It was heartening to think that of these, 879 Cuban doctors were active in their profession in forty-one states of the United States, Florida heading the list with 179. In several states not requiring citizenship for medical practice, some doctors had already been licensed. Assisting in placing others, such as myself, on a solidly professional standing in hospitals, Public Health programs, and the teaching staffs of medical schools, the Cuban Medical Association in Exile had worked with the Cuban Refugee Center to good ends.

  That I had consistently refused resettlement in some other city, and elected for the time to stay where I was, was due entirely to my firm belief in Luis Martínez and his possibly quixotic idea of the AFAO, plus the hope in my heart that Milagros was still in the land of the living. Now, with the arrival of my father-in-law, I knew that my stubborn wait had been justified. Somewhere inside of Comandante García lay the answers to years of cruel silence, answers that in order to live I had to know. Resettlement and security in private practice might be wonderful, but I didn’t feel that I could face it alone.

  At least, in Miami, I never seemed to lack company. When the light turned green and I set my teeth and drove across the Boulevard to make a left turn, the Chevy was practically tailgating me and in it was my pal with white hair. He certainly wasn’t as pretty as Liliana who had accompanied me in town by remote control in the morning, but since Luis hadn’t provided me with machine guns under my tail lights, I could think of no method of shaking him if he really was on my trail.

  Six blocks south, when I turned west on Southwest First Street, in the slot which carries the right-hand lane around the corner de buena o mala gana—or willy-nilly, as you might say—while I still couldn’t spot the flasher on the ambulance ahead, my rear-view mirror kindly revealed that my white-haired boy was still hot on my tail.

  For a few blocks more I debated with myself about showing him a few tricks that I’d learned in Cuba when it became obvious that someone in Havana was following me instead of just accidentally going my way. But this was Miami and not Havana. This was five years later when it wasn’t a matter of life and death if someone wanted to play. García’s arrival was not only robbing me of my dinner but threatening to unbalance me completely. The combination of Liliana, Luis, Slade, and Harrington was proving too much for a single day. My bullet holes were aching again. If I didn’t get some food in me quickly I’d find myself trying to climb the Berlin wall.

  Out around Southwest Twenty-second Avenue, which is actually a road angling off in a southwesterly direction from Southwest First Street to Southwest Eighth Street, another artery which helps you locate yourself by also being at the same time US 41 and the Tamiami Trail, I stopped in an all night lunchroom to try to settle my heaving insides with a bowl of chili. The traffic was light and I patted myself for my sound common sense and practical intelligence when my alter ego in his Chevy went steaming on by without so much as a parting wave of his hand.

  The chili was hot but not as hot as the peppers in it, and it took a quart of buttermilk to save my tonsils from a fiery grave. Nevertheless, I felt better once I’d gotten it down. I paid my check and got back in the LeSabre feeling free as a bird on the wing.

  The VA Hospital has 450 beds, usually occupied through some medical legerdemain by 460 now-almost-forgotten veterans of World War I. Fully aware of this overcrowding, I had been lucky enough through my call from the dock to Dr. Chris Shaw, my Chief of Staff, to secure for the Comandante a private room. This was a really big deal, since only three or four were available for emergencies or isolation. Visiting hours were just over and cars were moving out from the parking lot in a steady stream. As I drove on by to the space reserved for doctors, I spotted my ambulance waiting for me at the Ambulance Entrance. I was very much annoyed at the driver’s skill that enabled him to find Anastasia Avenue by night when half the time I couldn’t find it by day.

  Comandante García lay soundless and motionless as we transferred him from the ambulance to another stretcher. I paid off the charges on the “hidden meter” with all of Orvie’s fifty, signed him in at Admissions, and two night orderlies took him up to Room A3 on the third floor.

  Miss Langley, the nurse usually on daytime duty was catching a trick as night supervisor. She was a starched motherly blonde with adequate feet, a square jaw, and a modulated Southern accent that added barbs to her often expressed opinions dispensed by a vinegar tongue. It hadn’t taken me very long to learn that Miss Langley’s opinions were usually well worth listening to, for she was experienced enough to have been trained by Florence Nightingale and, although she didn’t look it, probably old enough too.

  Several years of working with Miss Langley had taught me that her formidable attributes were all on the surface, designed to cover a sense of humor that kept a twinkle in her eye, a deep sincere sympathy, and a heart as soft as a cotton swab. I admit, without shame, that from the day I started in the hospital, Miss Langley had taken me under her wing and mothered me, and it had certainly made the going easier for me.

  She and Samson, the Negro night orderly, were waiting for me in the room, and once we had the Comandante tucked in bed, I sent Samson off for a liter of D5S—5% dextrose to 95% saline—to be administered by an intravenous drip. Paludismo, malaria or Plasmodium vivax, call it what you want to—before the Comandante could be made to talk I had to get that fever down.

  I took a look at the chart that had come up with the stretcher. They had his right name down, but the rank was missing, just DPH Case, and the address: Yacht Kerritack, City Yacht Basin. I didn’t care now that I had him ashore what Orvie learned about our relationship. Public Health would be stuck for the bill. I marked the chart P. vivax (?) and added orders for a thick and thin smear to go to the lab first thing in the morning. Then remembering his pains and my duties, I tacked on orders for codeine, if needed, and a sleeping pill, which I felt I was going to need worse than he did. I couldn’t have cared less if his legs dropped off, but I wanted him bright for the morning.

  Samson came back with the liter of D5S and bustled off to one of the wards again. Miss Langley took a look at the chart and said, “Malaria?”

  “That’s what he said.” I shrugged. “Could be.”

  She eyed the sailor suit hung in the locker, then did a bit of mental measuring on the patient. “Is that his?”

  “Temporarily. It’s a loan.”

  “Oh. I’m glad of that. I thought he had some wasting disease that had pulled his weight down. Where did you get him?”

  I told her just enough of the truth so that she didn’t believe me
.

  “Ernesto García?” She read his name aloud and it was her turn to shrug. “He’s a Cuban, isn’t he?”

  “Si.”

  “See what?” she asked irreverently. “Don’t try to go Spanish on me, Dr. Tony Carrillo! What sort of a mess have you gotten into now? I thought at first, from the private room, that you’d latched on to Che Guevara, and I’m not sure that you haven’t right now. His first name is ‘Ernesto’ too, and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him for the past six months in Cuba from what I hear.”

  I said, “Nurse, you simply have to lay off reading those lurid spy stories and watching them on TV.”

  “And don’t try to touché with a cliché.” She turned her back on me and busied herself getting the tube ready for me to insert in his arm.

  “No spika da francés!” I said.

  “Nor the truth in any language.” She rolled up the oversize sleeve of Orvie’s pajamas so I could snap the tourniquet on Ernesto’s thin but muscular arm, and muttered, “Emaciated! I’ll say! Why he must have lost a hundred pounds. I’d better get him a hospital gown.”

  “Yes, do that,” I said with a frown as I found a vein and inserted the needle, “and meantime hang a no visitors sign on the door, please.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that,” she said, and as I straightened up she closed a capable hand on my arm. “You’d better give me the low-down, Tony. I’ve had to stretch the truth a few times in the past few years to save your neck with all your running around. I may have to do it again. I can smell questions coming. Give me some anwsers for the Chief and that registrar girl from the DPH. I’m back on day duty tomorrow afternoon.”

  She was perfectly right, and I knew it. “Un millón de gracias, Miss Langley,” I said, “and you know enough Spanish to know that means a million thanks, for now and everything else you have done. What do you want to know?”

  “Merely, do you know this man, and if there’s anything wrong, what do you want me to do?”