First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  He loosened his hold; I pulled my hand away. People like Oscar Fleischmann have a genius for drawing bad behavior out of anyone near them, then feeding on it. “That reminds me,” I said. “My father asked me to tell you thanks for putting him through med school. He was still laughing the morning after I told him what you said.”

  Oscar’s face darkened. His blubbery lips twisted, went purple. I leaned over the table, ready to clout him if he moved toward the music box. “So Sammy thought that was funny, huh?” Oscar shook his fist high over his head, calling down divine wrath on his enemy. “He’s gonna be laughin’ out the other side of his mouth when I start tellin’ people what I know about him.” The filthy old man jerked his head toward the office shack, then nodded sharply for emphasis. “I got it, all right, Chapter A to Z, and everything in between. So far I ain’t said nothin’ on account a Murray, but one a these days your ol’ man’s gonna push me a little bit too far, and he’s gonna find himself sittin’ in the slammer with no more medical license.”

  I started after him, but he held up a palm, then waggled a finger from the other hand toward the table. “Finish up that music box, then outa here.” Voice like a robot’s. “I don’t never want to see your face or hear your voice, not one time ever again in my life.” With that, he turned around and walked away. Like a hurricane, the calm at its eye more intimidating than its wind blasts.

  I sat down, picked up music box pieces, tried to fit them together, but they jumped apart in my hands. I struggled for two hours before I finally finished basic reassembly, all components together, ready to go back onto the bedplate. Murray looked pleased when I showed him. He picked up the governor, eyed it critically. “Gotta be sure of that governor, Dockie. If it don’t hold when you wind up the box, then wham! Teeth from the comb, pins offa the cylinder, flyin’ all over the room. Put it all back together now, we’ll see how it sounds.”

  I didn’t want to use up my excuse to be in the junkyard, especially not after what Oscar said. Did he have some of Samuel’s faked medical documents? Incriminating material about Jonas’ death? I needed to get into that office when no one was around. “Tomorrow,” I said.

  Murray put down the governor, looked closely at me. “Something, Dockie?”

  I told him about my wrangle with Oscar.

  He shook his head, looked more sad than angry. “Pop’s like a bad dog, gotta be barking every goddamn minute. Walk away, he shuts right up. But start barking back, you just might get bit.” Murray shook his head again. “Him and your old man, they got a thing goes all the way back. Samuel never would take any shit, not from anybody, and every time Pop tried giving him some, Samuel shoved it right back in his face. I ain’t got the faintest idea what’s Pop’s Chapters A and Z, but I wouldn’t worry a whole lot. Guys like Pop think everybody in the world’s as big a prick as them. Way he’d figure is if he ever tries nailing Samuel, Samuel’ll go and spill dirt all over Hobart about some thing or other Pop might want to keep behind a closed door. Kapeesh?”

  “Yes.”

  Murray laughed, flung one of his thick arms around me. He smelled of sweat and Vitalis, very different from Oscar’s nauseating cigarette-garlic aura. “Hey, Dockie, come on, smile. Flash the pearls, grab the girls. Harmony, that’s her name, right?”

  I think I smiled. I tried. Murray laughed again, then disappeared back around the corner of the office. I covered my project, hopped onto my bike, rode home. Half a block away I heard the siren sax, “Mean to Me,” brassy, passionate, almost wrathful. As I ducked though the cellar door Harmony lowered her horn, looked up.

  “Red Cross okay today?” I asked.

  She looked about to slam the saxophone to the cement floor. “Damn, Leo! When I think about what you get to do…my father’d drop dead before he’d take me along to see his patients. ‘Being a doctah would nawt be a good life for a girl, brmmm…brmmmm…brmmmmmm.’ I spent the whole damn day winding gauze bandages and packing suture kits for doctors to use on soldiers. What’d you do?”

  I tried to make it sound as unexciting as I could. “Hospital rounds with Samuel, house calls. Then I went to the junkyard.”

  Her face lit. “You worked on the music box?”

  “Yes. But more.” I told her about the heaps of metal I’d helped sort into piles, and where they came from. Surprise, she jumped to her feet. “Do you know his name? The scrap-man who died?”

  I had to think. “George mentioned it yesterday…Broomall.”

  “Be right back.”

  Harmony ran upstairs into the kitchen, then I heard footsteps above my head. Living room. A couple of minutes later she was back, shoving a folded newspaper into my face. “Look at this obituary.” She jabbed a finger at the paper.

  “Broomall, Newton B.,” I read. “Age 46. In Hobart, July 11, 1943, beloved husband of Wanda, devoted father of Lester and Sally, son of Edwina and the late Milton Broomall of Hobart. Owner of Broomall Scrapyard. I.O.O.F., Rotary, Lions Club. Services at Grunstra’s Funeral Home, 3 pm, July 14.”

  I looked at Harmony. “That’s tomorrow. So?”

  “Leo, are you dense? It doesn’t say what he died of, does it?”

  “No.”

  “Obituaries always say what the person died of, like a stroke or an accident or a heart attack. Or ‘a long illness’ when it’s cancer.”

  “All right. So?”

  “So I’m going to his funeral. You said you thought he might’ve been killed. People talk at funerals, and maybe I can find out what he died of.”

  “But you’ve got to go to Red Cross.”

  “I’m a volunteer. If a volunteer needs to leave early to go to a funeral, no one says a word. Suppose Mr. Broomall died of strychnine poisoning? You said maybe he didn’t want to sell scrap on the black market, like Jonas Fleischmann. If someone’s killing junkmen for their scrap, there’re going to be more. We’ve got to find out.”

  “We could tell the police.”

  “Oh, sure. And they’d really listen. To a couple of kids with a story but no proof. If anybody’s going to dope this game, it’s got to be us. You and me.”

  “All right,” I muttered. “Guess tomorrow’s going to be a big funeral day. Erskine Crosbie’s is in the morning—not looking forward to that.”

  When I walked into our kitchen, Ramona pointed me back to the door. “Leo, get over to the Fleischmanns’. Samuel waited as long as he could. He said to tell you…” Expression on her face like she had gas, didn’t want to pass it, couldn’t hold it in. “Your girlfriend’s going to have her baby.”

  “Teresa?”

  “I don’t know; he didn’t mention a name. Go on now, Leo, or you’ll miss it and he’ll be upset.”

  I ran back outside, onto my bike, raced down Roosevelt. At the Fleischmanns’, I didn’t bother to knock or ring the bell, just pushed the screen door open and ran upstairs into the labor room. Teresa lay in bed, moaning softly, throwing her head one way, then the other. Lily sat at her left, gently patting her shoulder. Another woman stood like a guardian angel at Teresa’s right, holding her hand. Samuel sat in a padded chair off to the side, eyes capturing every detail. He greeted me with a casual, “Oh, good, Leo, you made it. She’s doing great, has her twilight sleep.” He glanced toward the guardian angel. “That’s Emily Ronstadt, the adopting mother. Emily, my son, Leo. My extern for the summer.”

  Emily was a tall angular woman with long sandy hair framing a face shaped like a pickle jar. Mild brown eyes. She smiled at me. “You’re the apprentice.”

  Samuel moved to the edge of the bed. “Shouldn’t be long—let’s check her cervix.” He put on a glove, slipped his hand beneath the sheet. His face brightened. “Ah! Good.” He pulled a second examining glove out of his bag, gave it to me; I worked it onto my hand. Samuel raised the sheet, moved his gloved hand forward. “Cervix’s all gone, head’s right there. You’ll feel the sagittal suture running up and down, which means the baby’s head is coming out straight. Up top you’ll
feel something like a Y, the small fontanel at the crown of the head, so the baby’s looking downward, the way it should.” He pulled back his hand; blood and mucus dripped onto the sheet. “Go on, check.”

  As I slid in two fingers I tried to mold my face into a professional expression. Slippery, very warm. An inch and a half inside, my fingers slithered over a smooth, round object, and yes, running straight up the middle was the suture line ending at the Y-fontanel. I nodded to Samuel. “I feel it all, just the way you said.”

  “Good. If she were awake we’d have her push, but with twilight sleep…” He shook his head. “When the head comes a little further down, I’ll pull it out with forceps.”

  Lily slipped a fetoscope onto her head, which made her look like a unicorn with a metal band running along her own sagittal suture. She bent to lower the bell of the instrument onto Teresa’s abdomen, then tapped with an index finger, timing the fetal heart rate. “One thirty-six.”

  “Good.” Samuel smiled at Emily Ronstadt. “Won’t be long now, you’ll see your baby.” Emily looked like a bobbysoxer suddenly come face-to-face with Frankie.

  It wasn’t long, less than an hour. Curly black hair stretched, then parted the labia during contractions, receded between. Samuel and I washed our hands, put on gloves, and after Lily and Emily moved Teresa to the edge of the bed, Lily pulled open the drawer of a little night-table, took out an oblong package, unwrapped forceps into Samuel’s hands. Emily gasped.

  Samuel shook off her concern. “Don’t worry. They’re made to fit along the baby’s cheeks, just like an extension of my hands.”

  I wondered how much money those heavy-looking forceps would bring on the steel pile at Fleischmann Scrap.

  Samuel slid in the blades, locked the handles together, pulled once, and out came the baby’s head, damp crop of hair, round puffy cheeks. As shoulders and body slipped through, Emily cried, “A boy!” Lily handed Samuel clamps and scissors, gave me a red rubber bulb, and as Samuel cut the cord, I sucked secretions out of the baby’s nose and throat. The baby cried lustily. So did Emily. Samuel wrapped the baby in a blanket, laid the bundle in Emily’s outstretched arms. She cooed into the child’s face while we cleaned the bed and slid fresh sheets under Teresa. Then Emily leaned over the girl, rested the baby on her chest and whispered something I couldn’t hear into her ear. In her twilight sleep, Teresa smiled.

  Samuel took me down to the living room, introduced me to Joe Ronstadt, a ruddy-faced beanpole of about forty with a hook of a nose, jughandle ears, thick red mustache, and thin red hair in retreat from a tidal wave of freckles. Baggy brown suit, white shirt, yellow tie loosened at the neck. I had no trouble seeing him in striped overalls and a flannel shirt, milking a cow. Samuel put his arm around the man, herded him upstairs. Joe’s eyes filled as he looked at the baby in Emily’s arms. He clutched Samuel’s shoulders, practically fell over his own feet trying to show gratitude. “I’ll be back in the morning,” Samuel said quietly. “We’ll go from there.”

  On the way out something occurred to me. “Samuel,” I said. “Everyone knowing everyone else? Couldn’t that make for problems later?”

  Samuel smiled like the Sphinx. He kept walking, then paused at the door of the Plymouth. “I don’t think so,” he said, as if choosing words from a thesaurus. “Joe and Emily know Teresa only by her first name. But why might that be a problem, anyway?”

  “I was thinking the other way around,” I said. “If Teresa decided she wanted—”

  “Joe and Emily live out past Harrisburg,” Samuel said. “But their names really aren’t Joe and Emily. Or Ronstadt, for that matter. I’m the only one who knows their real names, or where they live. Which actually isn’t anywhere near Harrisburg. And oh, by the way…”

  Flash in his eye, I went on guard. Samuel laughed. “Leo, relax. You take everything so seriously. Teresa’s not that girl’s real name, either. Or Shannon, the other one’s. Or Angela. Not even Lily knows any of these people by their real names. Only I do. I’ll fill out the birth certificate with Joe and Emily’s real names and address, file it with the county clerk, the clerk will send them a copy, and that’ll be that. Nothing else in writing.”

  Whenever I thought I’d seen the limit, the horizon expanded. “But Samuel, that’s…”

  “What?”

  “A crime.”

  “It’s a crime not to help someone because of a law that doesn’t allow for reasonable exceptions.” Samuel was smiling now, but tightly, his I-dare-you-smile. He tossed his bag onto the back seat of the Plymouth, then climbed in behind the wheel. The motor roared, he was gone.

  I walked back to the house, got my bike, rode across Twenty-second Street to Roosevelt. Pedaling seemed to take unusual effort. The air felt heavy, storm on the way.

  Dinner was quick and quiet, chicken salad and Jell-O out of the refrigerator. Ramona wasn’t there. “She’s sleeping,” Samuel told me. “I looked in on her when I got here. She probably got tired and ate earlier.”

  “Why does she need to take…what she does?” I asked.

  Samuel took a long time to chew his mouthful. “Hasn’t been easy on her nerves for years now, Leo. The Depression, this war…me.” He pointed at the kitchen clock over the sink. “Close to nine o’clock. Most people like some regularity to their lives, but there’s none in this house. From one day to the next, nothing’s ever the same. Very hard for her.”

  “But you love it.”

  I’m still not sure whether I intended that as an accusation, but Samuel didn’t take it as one. “Yes,” he said, and in the mounting darkness his eyes shone. “Yes, I love it.”

  A brilliant flash lit the sky, then a majestic boom of thunder. Samuel grinned. “Hendrick Hudson’s men playing at ninepins. Better watch out you don’t fall asleep right now, or you might not wake up for twenty years.” Rain began to pelt the window. The room lit again; another deafening thunderbolt rattled the glass in the pane. “Good Jersey storm, clears the air,” Samuel murmured. “We just might be able to sleep tonight.”

  He sounded as if the storm had been sent according to his order. But no electrical storm was going to clear the air between us, and the way my mind was racing, I wasn’t at all sure I’d sleep that night.

  Chapter 11

  Next morning, unremitting humidity, unrelenting heat, the storm’s short respite already a memory. An hour before Erskine Crosbie’s funeral, Ramona and Samuel sat silent and jittery at the breakfast table, nibbling toast, sipping coffee. I prepared for a tough morning. But then they went to their bedroom to dress and came out transformed, serene. Four pinpoint pupils.

  Services at the Park Avenue Episcopalian Church were brief, uninspired. Men sat quietly in black Victory Suits, no lapels, no cuffs. Women covered their low-cut blouses with black jackets, but their black skirts rode at mid-thigh. All that fabric saved so honest mill owners like Erskine could sell it low to the Armed Forces. When the minister said Erskine was not a religious man but a good man nevertheless, Samuel’s body tensed, fists clenched. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Daisy, Erskine’s sister, sniveling in a front-row seat next to Rollie, her round, grease-haired, black-marketeer husband. “Let me have men about me that are fat; sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights.” Rollie didn’t look at all drowsy.

  Riding home in the Plymouth afterward, silence, but the closer we came, the brighter grew Samuel’s eyes. His pupils widened, morphine wearing off. He stopped the car in the driveway, was out before Ramona or I had a foot on the ground. “Let’s get rid of these funeral clothes.” Samuel pointed at his black suit and mine. “We need to look in on Teresa, at the Fleischmanns’.”

  I glanced at Ramona, then looked away even more quickly.

  Samuel was halfway across the front lawn to the porch. “So much for Erskine Crosbie,” my mother said quietly. The acerbity in her voice appalled me. “Go on, Leo,” she added. “Don’t keep your father waiting.”

  By the time Samuel and I walked into the F
leischmanns’, he was his usual self and then some. Lily, all smiles, greeted us at the door, then led us up to the labor room. Teresa held the baby in bed, one Ronstadt in a chair to her left, one to the right. As we walked in, Joe and Emily leaped to their feet as if they’d suddenly and unexpectedly caught sight of Old Glory. “Everything go all right last night?” Samuel asked.

  I looked him up and down, tried to find a vestige of the savage grief he’d shown at Erskine’s death, or a trace of the desolation I’d seen just a few hours before at the breakfast table. But there was none. His face was incandescent. Ramona was right—so much, no more. Samuel Firestone, M.D., was back.

  Teresa rocked the baby. “He was so good all night,” she said. “Hardly even cried. We took turns holding him.” She inclined her head toward Emily, who smiled maternally at her. “And we talked to each other, you know, the way you told us to. I said what I hoped for him, and they said how they’re going to bring him up.” Teresa smiled down on her son. I swallowed hard. “I gave him his first bottle, then Emily gave him the second—I’ll always remember that.” A tear ran down her cheek, dropped onto the baby’s face; he quivered. Teresa’s smile flickered. Joe threw his arms around the girl, looked sheepishly at Samuel. “I feel like she’s my daughter and he’s my grandson.” Not hard to understand. Teresa was sixteen, Joe easily forty.

  Samuel looked like a balloon close to exploding. “Let’s do a quick check,” he said, and pulled a small stethoscope from his bag. He unwrapped the blanket from around the baby. I stared at the withered, browning stump of umbilical cord. The baby came to the edge of crying, but responded to the soothing of his mother’s hand on his head, and a half-whispered, “It’s all right.”