First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  Or so he thought. I’d figured to take his car keys out of his pants pocket in the locker, then deal with him after I settled matters with Oscar Fleischmann, but all right, Plan B. I yanked the photographs from my pocket, sailed them past his head. As he ducked, I grabbed into the locker, came away with his trousers. “Leo, what’s with you?” he shouted, but I was out of the aisle, flying toward the door. “Come back here.”

  No way. No more cock and bull stories. I snatched his key ring out of his pocket, charged into the corridor outside the operating suite, heaved the pants as far as I could in the opposite direction. Then I took off for the parking lot. Get the Plymouth, drive to the junkyard. Settle Oscar’s hash once and for all time.

  I tried to start the car, forgot the choke. On the second shot the engine caught. White smoke blanketed the lot. I threw the car into reverse, sped out of the parking space. As I turned onto the street, I caught sight of Samuel, trousers on but shoeless, running along the sidewalk in front of the hospital. He reacted as only Samuel could’ve—dashed directly into the street in front of an oncoming black Ford, holding up his hand like a traffic cop, stop! I thought he was a goner, but the Ford screeched to a halt inches from him. Samuel didn’t even break pace.

  I was onto Roosevelt, accelerating. Samuel lunged for the door handle, but I slammed the lock shut just in time. In doing that, though, I let up on the accelerator enough for him to grab the handle and leap onto the running board. If the car stalled, I’d be finished. I floored the accelerator; we took off with a roar.

  Down we sailed along Roosevelt, my mind racing as fast as that car’s engine, trying to figure the route with the fewest stops. Samuel banged on the window, shouted, but I couldn’t make out words. He may have been trying to break the glass, but clinging to the car as he was, he couldn’t generate much force. The window clattered but held.

  Greens were with me all the way down Roosevelt to Eighteenth Street, where I turned right. Just thirteen blocks to Fifth, a left there, then straight to the junkyard. But as I crossed Eleventh, I saw a red light a block ahead at Tenth. If I stopped at that light, Samuel might be able to smash the window. Or run to the other side of the car—I hadn’t locked the passenger door, didn’t dare reach over far enough to do it. I leaned on the horn. A Cadillac going north on Tenth slammed to a stop, and I breezed through the red light. Samuel rattled the door handle.

  I turned onto Fifth, clear shot now to Fleischmann Scrap. Past the railroad trestle…Harmony…to the open gate. Quick turn inside, hit the brake, cut the motor. I unlocked the door, pushed it open, jumped out. Samuel stumbled backward but kept his feet. Two people angry past reason, but one of them knowing what was happening and the other not, so any advantage was mine. Samuel took a step toward me, managed one word, “What—” before I decked him.

  The last thing Samuel must’ve expected from his son was a sharp right, straight from the shoulder, direct to the side of his jaw. I was ready to deliver a second shot, but he went down like a poleaxed steer. Good. Save that second K.O. hit for Oscar, then call the cops. Let Oscar try to explain why he was in his junkyard at one o’clock in the morning, and why he’d beaten a girl bloody, then dumped her on the riverbank. Any whistle he wanted to blow on Samuel would be fine with me. Let the two of them squirm in chairs on the other side of a desk from a police detective.

  I left Samuel in the dirt, ran to the office, looked around the yard. No one in sight, which figured. Oscar would be inside, waiting for Samuel.

  I was barely through the doorway when a hulk moved from behind the door, blue and white striped overalls, red neckerchief. Flash of wild gray hair. He threw a hammerlock onto my right arm, put a blade to my throat. “Don’t move, you little fucker,” a growl. Voice tight, strained. Stench as if he hadn’t taken a shower in thirty years. I tried ducking out of the lock, grabbed backward with my left arm, but he pulled harder, hurt like hell. He pressed the blade tight across my throat. “The hell you doin’ here, Miss Pussy? Your ol’ man didn’t send you with the dough, did he?”

  If I was scared, I was too angry to admit it. I wiggled again, shouted, “No money, Oscar, and you’d better let go. I’ve got something you need to hear.”

  “Oh, Miss Pussy wants to talk?” Mocking, vicious. “So, talk.” He yanked my arm straight upward. I tried not to scream but couldn’t hold back.

  Noise at the door. Samuel, in his socks, pulled up short. Low rumble behind me, “Fuck!” Then Oscar twisted and pulled at my arm. I ducked under the knife, but Oscar slashed, blood everywhere. Oscar shoved me toward Samuel, then lumbered out the door.

  I remember being on the floor, looking at my hemorrhaging wrist as though it were some strange new form of entertainment. Samuel grabbed my hand, pressed a handkerchief over the red spurts, snapped, “Hold this, Leo. Tight.” As I took over from him, he pulled off one of his socks, tried to tie it around my arm, muttered, “No good,” and put fingers to my left wrist. As he looked at his watch, his lips tightened. He sprang up, ran to the phone, dialed. As if from far away I heard, “Dr. Firestone—got a nasty hemorrhage, knife attack. Fleischmann Scrap, Fifth Av past Eleventh Street. Right. Just come in through the gate.” He slammed down the receiver, then ran back past me toward the door. “Keep that pressed hard,” he called over his shoulder.

  The radio on the window ledge must’ve been playing all the time I was there, but I didn’t hear it ’til right then. Judy Garland, “That Old Black Magic.” Like listening through a sound tunnel. I don’t know how much blood I’d lost to that point, but it must’ve been a fair amount, even as fast as Samuel got pressure on. I raised my head, looked around, saw my blood splattered halfway up the wall beside me, puddles on the dirty office floor. Fear surged into my throat, anguish over Harmony, rage at Oscar and Samuel. I retched, four or five heavy heaves, must’ve let go of the handkerchief. Scarlet jets from my wrist, miniature geyser. Blood slimy under my right arm.

  Hazy…Samuel rushing in with the emergency bag from the Plymouth. Ninety degrees, but I was freezing. All so curious. I couldn’t understand why Samuel seemed disturbed. He charged over, tossed supplies and equipment out of his bag onto the floor, came up with a tourniquet, threw it around my arm. His hand went to my neck, then I heard a faint “God damn!”…no, other way around, I think. Foggy, a dream…

  I woke up in Steinberg Hospital, pitch-black outside, night. I.V. in my left arm, blood dripping slowly, right wrist bandaged. My head hurt, fingers throbbed, mouth felt full of cotton. I pulled the call string. A moment, then a nurse materialized just inside the doorway. Young, blonde, didn’t look a whole lot older than me. “Well, you’re awake…” she said. “I’ll call Dr. Harrison.” Then she was gone, just like that.

  I scanned the room. Why weren’t my father and mother there? Maybe Ramona heard about me, took a walloping slug of morphine, was sleeping it off. Samuel? He was in the operating room or the delivery room or a sickroom in a mansion facing Hamilton Park or a squalid bedroom in a coldwater shack Down-river. Charlie Harrison was on call, available in case I happened to wake up before Samuel returned.

  But when Charlie walked in a few minutes later, trouble was all over his face. He was a big man, six-four, two-fifty, ruddy, freckled, sandy hair. One of those men who always sweats, even on the coldest days. His cheeks were like beets; water poured down his forehead. He said hello, worked up a smile, felt at my neck, murmured, “Mmm. Pulse’s getting slower, stronger. You’re going to be all right.”

  “Charlie, where are Samuel and Ramona?”

  His eyes filled. He cleared his throat, but didn’t speak. Right then, I knew, past doubt. “You’re going to have to tell me sometime,” I said. “Do it now.”

  He made a sound somewhere between a croak and a crow, coughed violently, wiped a sleeve across his face. “You’re Samuel’s kid, all right.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “You lost a ton of blood, Leo, would never have made it to the hospital without emergency replacement. You got a transfusion there at the
junkyard.”

  “A direct transfusion,” I said. “Samuel.”

  Nod. “When the ambulance came, they found you and him hooked up vessel to vessel. You were alive. He…wasn’t.”

  “No,” I said. Automatic rejection, invalid information. I couldn’t even picture Samuel disabled.

  “He did that pretty often, didn’t he, Leo? Gave patients direct transfusions.”

  “I saw him give one a few days ago.”

  “He may’ve given one or two more since, so he probably started on you with a low red cell count. The heat didn’t help, or all that excitement. Maybe he had an arrhythmia, or a heart attack. Knowing Samuel, he might’ve put his artery to your vein, just to make sure he kept pumping as long as his heart held out.”

  “Ramona?”

  At some point, misery becomes anesthetic. Charlie’s face was near-blank. He began to mumble, monotone. “She heard about him and you, went to her room, took a dose of morphine, maybe bigger than she intended. Leo, I’m sorry.”

  I nodded, all I could manage.

  Next few days were tough. Visitors came, everyone looking shocked, embarrassed. Murray Fleischmann sidled in, all cleaned up, white shirt and tie, incongruous. By his face you’d’ve thought he was afraid of spreading germs. “Hey, Dockie, you ain’t looking so bad as I thought. Jeez, I’m sorry, what else can I say?” Nothing, I thought. Not after telling Oscar to run instead of turning him in. More than I could forgive, especially when Murray went on to tell me Oscar did run. A couple of people saw him charge down Fifth after he slashed me; a neighbor saw him dash into his house, then back out a couple of minutes later. The cops would catch him for sure, Murray said, but they never did. After a while, leads went cold and people began to forget. Like a rock thrown into a lake, huge splash, ripples, then finally quiet again.

  One of the hospital chaplains came by to offer condolences and ask about funeral arrangements. We decided on a graveside service, light on religion. “Samuel always told Ramona if she had a preacher at his funeral he was going to stand up in the coffin and pee on him,” I said. The chaplain smiled. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Harmony?” The word flew out of my mouth.

  “Only Samuel could’ve kept her alive.”

  “Dad…”

  I had no relatives, so the Belmonts took me in. Before I left the hospital, Charlie Harrison came by to check me over. When I thanked him, he shook his head. “No way I was going to let you die, then have to face your father on Judgment Day.” Anemic smile, a grimace. “He’s the one who really got you through. There was only enough blood between the two of you for one, and Samuel made sure you got it. Don’t ever forget that, Leo.” Then slowly, reluctantly, Charlie pulled a bunch of photographs from his shirt pocket. “I picked these up the other day, in the locker room. No one’s looked at them, myself included.”

  Fine until the last two words. Sure, Charlie looked. But he wouldn’t have told anyone what was on those photos if they pulled out his fingernails with pliers. I thanked him one more time, stuffed the evidence into my own shirt pocket. That night, when the Belmonts were asleep, I tiptoed down to the kitchen, found a box of matches, burned the pictures in the sink.

  Next day, the funeral. Six rows of chairs set up in front of double graves, maybe seventy seats altogether, but easily six or seven hundred people in that cemetery. A sea of black Victory Suits, cuffs and lapels gone to be made into soldiers’ uniforms. Women with black skirts cut so high they’d’ve been considered inappropriate two years earlier at a bar, let alone a funeral. School was out for the day, flags at half-staff. Mourners craned necks, pushed, jostled, jigged and sidestepped so as not to stand on graves. The mayor and his wife were there, the entire City Council. Nearly every member of Steinberg’s medical staff. Samuel’s patients, the wealthy, the poor. I caught a glimpse of Lou and Lena, carefully keeping little Bub between them. Off to the left, Murray and Lily, gray-faced, formed a human barrier around four hysterically weeping girls in different stages of pregnancy. As the pastor was about to begin, a man standing near the gravesite nudged his small son. “Pay attention—this was the greatest man in the history of Hobart.”

  The service was short, the chaplain true to his word. Both coffins were open. I couldn’t help staring at Samuel on the light blue pleated silk, determination and defiance as clear as ever in the line of his mouth and set of his jaw. Ramona looked serene, more at peace than I’d ever seen her in life. “God show mercy to their souls,” said the chaplain. Attendants closed the coffins, then moved them onto cloth stretcher-straps above the open graves, and cranked them down. From everywhere in the cemetery, crying, snuffling, wailing. I kept feeling as if I was going to cry, but didn’t. There I was at the graveside, the chaplain and I the only dry-eyed people in the cemetery.

  Late that afternoon, I was sitting with a book in the little study at the front of the Belmonts’ house, when Lissa Belmont walked in with Lily Fleischmann. Lily looked like the end of the world. Red eyes, skin tight over her cheekbones, thick blue veins over her temples and the backs of her hands. Hair hanging limp, unbrushed, dark roots uncamouflaged. Mrs. Belmont offered to bring a pitcher of iced tea, but Lily shook her head. “I just want to talk to him.”

  Poor fussy Mrs. Belmont dithered, then said, “Well, I guess I’ll let you talk, then,” and hurried out, making a show of closing the door. Lily didn’t seem to notice or care that the poor woman was going through all kinds of hell. Just flashed me a long hot-eye, and said, “You look pretty good,” as if that were more than I deserved.

  “I’m getting better.”

  I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but she turned up the eye-heat. “I sure do wonder what in hell you and your girlfriend were up to—why she was poking around that junkyard in the middle of the night. Wasn’t for the two of you little busybodies, your father’d still be alive.” Lily ripped a folded brown envelope from her purse, slapped it into my lap. “Look inside,” she said without moving her lips.

  The envelope was full of money, hundreds, fifties, twenties. I glanced up at Lily. “What’s left from the business,” she snapped. “Your father’s and mine.”

  “But this is thousands of dol—”

  “A little more than six thousand. What’re you looking so goddamn surprised about? You saw what was in that envelope you steamed open.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Sure.” Maybe the most savage word I’ve ever heard. “You thought him and me were making a bundle, right? Soaking suckers for every buck we could get? Well, every buck, every penny, went to the girls. To feed them, buy them medicines and clothes. Give them something for a start when they left, money to go to school or get job training, so they wouldn’t have to go whoring on the street when their families didn’t let them back in the house. Your father and me never took a nickel. Did he ever tell you how we got started?”

  I shook my head.

  “Figures. ’Cause of how it involved me. Well, I don’t mind telling you. I got a heart condition, congenital something or other. I do all right, but if I got pregnant, fifty percent chance I’d die, least that for the baby. I always took precautions, but a few years back, I missed a monthly and the rabbit died. Would my doctor give me an abortion? Don’t make me laugh. But Samuel came to the house, did the job under a local, even tied my tubes. Couple months later, he calls me, got a problem, can I help? Some young girl needs an abortion and a place to stay for a few days afterwards. I say sure, so he brings her over, does it, and tells me what I got to do for her and when I oughta call him. Everything goes jake-O.K. Then, after the girl’s gone, I actually miss having the kid around. So I tell Samuel I’d do it again if he wants. But the next girl says she really ain’t hot for an abortion, her boyfriend’s pushing her. What she wants is to have the baby and put it up for adoption. Samuel doesn’t bat an eye. Murray and I fix up the dorm in the attic…” She pointed at the envelope in my lap. “So now, I figure that belongs to you. Knowing Samuel like
I did, I bet you’re going to need it.”

  I nodded. Samuel left only a savings account with under a thousand dollars. No insurance—that would’ve been playing it too safe for comfort. “But it just doesn’t seem right.”

  “Oh, you!” She spat contempt in my face. “‘Doesn’t seem right.’ Your father got the money, you’re going to need the money, I’m giving you the money. Murray and I are okay, thank you very much. If the money makes you feel not right, flush it down the toilet.”

  I put down the envelope, said, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Still sarcastic. Then she said, very softly, “You got a goddamn long ways to go before you could ever measure up to your old man, and you know what? I think maybe you shouldn’t even try.” She chewed at her lip, then all of a sudden slapped me, right across the cheek. “I say you don’t deserve to be a doctor.” Before I could open my mouth, she was out the door. I never saw her again.

  Then a few days later, an amazing thing happened. Money started coming in through the mail. Dollar bills, fives, tens, even hundreds. Sometimes a note saying, “Good luck,” or “God bless you,” but never a signature or a return address. The president of the bank that held our mortgage called me in, told me how Samuel saved his son’s life after the boy had been hit by a car, then went on to say the bank directors had voted to retire Samuel’s loan. So I never did have money problems. I closed up Samuel’s office… Reminds me. Going through his mail one day, I found an envelope from the phone company, monthly statement for Lou and Lena Bukowski. I’d never stopped to ask myself how those two could ever have afforded a telephone? No idea why Samuel footed that tab. Maybe Bub had epilepsy, or maybe Lou knocked Lena around when he got drunk. No idea. I paid the bill, just a few dollars, and the two or three that came after. When I realized they’d stopped, I went Down-river to check, but Lou and Lena were gone. At least they cut off phone service before they left.