First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  No response.

  If I needed to drag it out of him, I would. “Did you say Harmony died right after Samuel?”

  Wary nod. “Not long.”

  “While you were still in the hospital yourself? You never got to see her again? Like you never saw Murray after Samuel’s funeral?”

  “Martin…”

  I pulled two papers out of my pocket, laid them on the table in front of my father. “Photocopies, death certificates. Samuel Firestone, July 17, 1943. Harmony Joy Belmont, August 27, 1943. Dad, that’s a month and a half later.”

  He looked slowly from the papers to me, eyes weighted with nearly six decades of suffering.

  “Murray said you practically pitched a tent at Harmony’s bedside that summer. When he wanted to see you to offer help, he went to the hospital. Early morning, late at night, didn’t matter. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  No answer.

  “Sorry Dad. But you really did get a contract offer yourself, didn’t you?.”

  Past the point of no return. Dad’s eyes were those of a man waiting for the trap to be sprung, an instant of exquisite pain, then eternal peace. He sat straight in his chair, voice loud, clear. “All summer in that hospital room… Harmony, cheeks gaunt, more sallow every day. Her hair went to tangled greasy knots on the pillow, so I learned to give bed-shampoos. I brushed her hair, put it in barrettes. Every two hours I turned her so her skin wouldn’t break down. Her pulse and blood pressure stabilized, she started breathing on her own, but never moved a muscle, every brain wave study flat as a ruler-line. One afternoon, Charlie Harrison came to talk to the Belmonts and me, told us what I knew was coming. Beds were tight at Steinberg—war casualties—and Harmony might stay the way she was for months or years. She could get nursing care at County.

  “Poor Mrs. Belmont went completely to pieces. Dr. Belmont took her home, gave her a sedative, stayed with her. I sat with Harmony a while longer, held her hand. Finally I got up, went home, picked up the music box…”

  We both glanced toward the den.

  “And took it to the hospital, up to Harmony’s room, put it on the night-table, turned it on, watched. Nothing, not a twitch. I pushed her eyelids open…oh, Martin. Like the eyes on a fish after you whack its head with a club.”

  I didn’t know how he was getting through this, wasn’t sure how much more I could handle. I pictured Helene, eyes closed, motionless, tubes in every orifice, dripping, draining. Hair framing her face on the pillow, an angel with a black halo.

  “I closed Harmony’s eyes, stood there a minute, maybe two, thought of her at the Passaic County Hospital for the Insane and Mentally Retarded. Feeding tube in one end, catheter in the other, lying in her excrement, becoming a leather-covered skeleton with bedsores. ‘God damn you, Samuel!’ I think I actually shouted it out loud. ‘How could you leave her like this?’ Weeping, bawling… I glanced back toward the doorway, then I pinched Harmony’s nose with one hand, covered her mouth with the other. She didn’t struggle, didn’t even move. I counted to a hundred, then felt at her neck. No pulse.”

  “Dad…”

  “‘There, Samuel,’ I said. ‘I’ve cleaned up your mess.’ I shut off the music box, sat for a few minutes, then went out to the nurse and told her Harmony died. She said, ‘Thank God.’”

  And a few days later, you…broke down.”

  Eyes like pie dishes. “How—”

  “Murray.”

  “Should’ve known. Christ!” He pounded one fist into the other, twice, three times, then looked hard at me. “Six weeks in that hospital room with nurses, doctors, techs, everyone, looking at Harmony and murmuring, ‘If only Samuel were here.’ Like prayer, past any logic, but they believed, every goddamn one of them, Samuel would’ve saved her. After she died, I couldn’t sleep, three whole nights, just lay in the bed listening to Lily shout at me, over and over and over, ‘You don’t deserve to be a doctor.’ The morning of Harmony’s funeral, I….” He set his chin. “I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry, Martin. If I had to, I’d do it again.”

  Sixty years of wrath and fury in paint, each canvas a crumpled license fired back to the Writer. Dad’s face was terrible, but I couldn’t stop, not after coming this far. “One thing to bend a rule to benefit a patient…”

  Eyes narrowed, corners of his mouth pulled tight. He looked away, then back to me, spoke so softly I could barely hear. “Poor Charlie Harrison couldn’t pronounce death, but Harmony really was dead, wasn’t she?” He tapped a finger on the arm of his chair, slowly took my measure. “What would you have done?”

  I could almost hear my grandfather’s voice. “You never know what you’re going to do ’til you’re there—and sometimes you surprise yourself.” Would I have pinched that girl’s nose and covered her mouth? Decided she was better off under ground than at the Passaic County Hospital for the Insane and Mentally Retarded? My mind’s eye saw Helene, strapped for the rest of her life into a wheelchair, making incoherent sounds, purposeless movements, and something in my throat cut loose. Words poured out, I couldn’t have stopped them to save my life. “Dad, I didn’t meet Helene at a party. I met her at Bellevue. They brought her in unconscious, intubated, boyfriend babbling sixteen to the dozen, terrified she’d die. He’d slipped angel dust into her drink, a little love potion. I was the aide on the ward that shift. Seizures, coma, brain activity so abnormal… About four A.M., we got her stabilized. I was cleaning up, went into the bathroom, and when I came out, there was her father, bending over, just about to pull the plug on the respirator. I hit him with a flying tackle. He started shouting about how he didn’t want a vegetable on his hands for the rest of his life. I pulled him away, chased him the hell out, and then stayed in that room almost five days, called in sick to work. I made sure Helene got every medication, right on schedule. I washed her, dried her, brushed her hair, changed her catheter. Cleaned her up when she… Nurses brought me food. I used the bathroom right there, even left the door open while I was inside. Didn’t put a foot out of that room ’til Helene woke up and got completely off life support.” I paused, as short of breath as if I’d run a mile. “Afterward, of course, I still spent all the time I could there, and when she was discharged, she came home with me. Call it continuing care. Any time I was away from her more than a few hours, I had to call, check up. A little fatigue, some stress at work, she’d be screaming, no control, then afterward, depressed as hell. Mother wondered why we wanted such a small wedding? That’s why.”

  I thought Dad’s smile might break my heart. “Well, tit-tat, boyo. I tell my secret, you tell yours. So you’d have let Harmony go to County?”

  What had he just said, a few minutes before? “She really was dead, wasn’t she?” Professor Skeptikos, he used to call me, and those two words, “wasn’t she?” invoked the one commandment a skeptic is bound to obey, his faith grounded in the inexplicable. When nothing’s taken on faith, everything is possible.

  “Unconscious patient gets the benefit of my doubt, Dad. With just maintenance treatment, no heroics, Harmony probably would’ve gotten pneumonia….”

  Fierce scorn on Dad’s face ground me to a stop. Oscar Wilde, who could resist anything except temptation, also said that all men kill the thing they love. “The coward does it with a kiss,” Wilde wrote. “The brave man with a sword.”

  “Go on,” Dad said.

  Quick-step from Wilde to Waller, cue from Fats. I think I smiled. “One never knows, Dad, do one?”

  He looked as if I’d offered him a week-old chunk of liverwurst. “Martin, Martin… What if Helene never did wake up?”

  I came within a hair of saying, “I always knew she would,” caught myself, but it didn’t matter. The look in Dad’s eyes said he’d gotten my king into a corner square, absolutely nowhere to go.

  “Twenty-five years, I’ve been waiting.” Dad’s voice was like far-off thunder, rumbling behind a distant hilltop. “Knew this was going to happen. He’d have heard that story I told y
ou Saturday, then gone meddling with Murray Fleischmann—and all for my good, of course.” Dad pounded his chest so hard I was afraid I’d hear bones crack. “So Sleeping Beauty was going to wake up because you said she would. And now you think your contract’s signed and sealed—well, think again, kid. You didn’t even know her. What would you have lost if Helene’s old man did pull that plug? A dream? Every goddamn night we go to sleep, and have another dream.” Most wicked chuckle I’ve ever heard. “Those five days in her room were just your teaser, the old come-on. God’s little lead card. Sucker-bait. There’ll be more Helenes, and one day, I promise, a worse-than-Helene. God help you, son, if she—or he—doesn’t make it.”

  He’d never called me son. Our eyes met. Black double-wall opened, an instant. Dad was right. If those moments lasted longer they’d burn us to cinders.

  I cleared my throat. “Dad, you pleaded guilty nearly sixty years ago, got life without pardon from the sternest judge in the courthouse. But now you’re up for parole, time off for good behavior. Take it. Tell Mother—”

  Bang! The little worktable cracked and fell apart under the blow from Dad’s fist. On his feet, standing over me. “Your mother and I have been married almost thirty years, Martin, been together close to thirty-five. I’m warning you, don’t go meddling there. Don’t even think about it.”

  I tried to sound calm. “She can take it, Dad.”

  “‘She can take it.’ Oh, Martin, you mooncalf. You fucking gold-plated double-dog-damn idiot.” Again, he pounded his breastbone, enraged penitent. “I know good and goddamned well she can take it. It’s me who couldn’t. Let me just start talking to your mother about Harmony… Martin, I have all the respect in the world for your mother, a ton of affection—don’t look at me like that. It’s worked for thirty-five years. We have a good thing going.” He laughed, hollow; Dad faked humor about as well as he faked anything. “I’ve never lifted a hand to your mother.”

  “I’ve never seen you lift a hand to any woman.”

  “I haven’t been married to any of them.” Another chuckle, this one real. “You mean well, Martin,” he said, gruff, but almost a whisper. “At least I didn’t have to bleed myself dry for you. But stay the hell out of what’s none of your business and all of mine.” He paused, chewed his lip, then his face relaxed ever so slightly. “I shouldn’t have tried to keep you away from medicine. Wrong for Samuel to try to push me into it, just as wrong for me to push you the other way.” He saw me about to speak, held up a hand. “I’ll give you that. No more.”

  I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder. “Dad, at least finish that damn painting before it finishes you.”

  He stretched his hands high over his head, rocked back on his heels. By degrees, his face arranged itself into an expression of mild amusement. Fleshy lips curved ever so slightly at the corners, black eyes gleamed like polished ebony. Then he jumped to his feet, shot over to his easel, lifted the canvas, pushed it into my hands. “Here, Martin. I can’t finish it, but I’m finished with it. Take it home.”

  I opened my mouth to object, but Dad, pokerfaced, slipped me a sucker punch. “Play your cards right, some day it’ll be worth a chunk of change.”

  Under ordinary conditions I’d’ve laughed. Sun streamed through the window across Dad’s face, highlighting his pebbly cheek. “Murray Fleischmann…” As if the words were being dragged forcefully from his throat. “You said he’s at Wapping Ridge…”

  “Residence for Seniors.”

  “I‘d like to go see him. Thank him for helping me through my tough times. If he hadn’t paid my way…” Dad paused, then added, “You want to do something for me, Martin? How about you run a little interference? Ask Murray whether he’d mind if I come?”

  “Sure. Even go with you, if you’d like.”

  Dad’s face brightened. “Would you?”

  Would I miss the chance to see the Junkman and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice face to face? Not for anything. “Sure.”

  Grim smile. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

  I lifted the painting, took a step toward the door, then remembered. “Dad…”

  Picture a man just through a root canal, who sees the dentist staring at another tooth. “What, Martin? What the fuck is it now?”

  I pointed toward the hall. “Dad, I’m sorry. I…kicked it in. The door.”

  “Kicked in the door? What in holy hell are you talking about, Martin? You forgot your key? You don’t believe in doorbells, they’re against your religion?”

  Hands on hips, wide-eyed as a buzzard on a tree limb, watching a bit of roadkill wriggle. I pulled myself to full height, eyes level with his. “Not the front door.” I willed evenness to my voice, no shouting, no cracking. “The door to your den.”

  “The door to my… Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Out of the studio as if shot from a cannon. I followed him at full pace, trying not to bang his painting against walls. Through the kitchen, down the hall, to the splintered door at the end. Dad wheeled around to face me. Not a sound, but his three-letter question was clear.

  “I knocked. You didn’t answer.”

  He dueled with a smile, back and forth across his face. “You knocked, I didn’t answer. So you kicked in the door?”

  I nodded.

  The smile overran all disputed territory.

  “I didn’t want Mother to come home and find it.” I pointed into the room, at Harmony. “Your basement project that summer?”

  Smile suddenly in full retreat. “Only one I kept.”

  He ducked through the smashed door panel, and in an instant had Harmony off the wall, into the closet, closet door closed. Then over to the desk, opening a drawer. A moment later he was back, holding a small piece of paper, which he waved toward his shattered door. “Don’t worry—your mother’s come home to a lot worse than this,” he growled. “Go on home, Sleeping Beauty’s waiting.” He put the paper into my free hand. “Here’s something else, goes with your painting.”

  All the way back to New York, those two death certificates were like a bonfire in my shirt pocket. When the young copy-machine girl at the Hobart Vital Statistics Office saw the name on the first certificate, she sucked in a sharp mouthful of air. “Oh—do you know about him?” Rhetorical question, she ripped right on, told me how Dr. Samuel Firestone once cured her gramma who was that far from dying, knew just what was the matter and gave Gramma some special medicine that only he knew about. The copy machine spat out its work; the girl laid the warm sheet of paper in my hand. “But y’know, it’s like…” Red cheeks, embarrassed giggle. “Well, kinda dumb. Gramma sometimes says she thinks Dr. Firestone didn’t really die, he just, like went into hiding or something. ‘He knew what to do for everybody in Hobart,’ Gramma says. ‘How could he not know for himself?’”

  Near-dark by the time I got home, apartment pot roast-fragrant. Helene dogeyed me, stared at the painting under my arm. “Martin…”

  I put my arms around her, hugged her long, hard. As we moved apart, she said, “Martin, something’s the matter. Your dad…?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Something’s not fine. Or someone.” She motioned toward the table, sit down. “I’ll pour you a glass of wine, and you can tell me.”

  Bad hearing it, worse knowing I had to tell it, especially to Helene. But I’d learned at Bellevue, the longer you wait to drain an abscess, the worse it gets, and at some point it’s just too late. Thirty or more years of my father’s good thing, I didn’t want.

  Helene couldn’t take her eyes off the painting. “Your dad’s work is weird, but this? No faces at all?”

  “Makes sense, trust me.”

  By the time I finished my story, Helene’s thin, delicate skin looked painted with chalk, Harlequin gone cheerless and tragic. She drummed a spoon on the table top, chewed her lip. Finally, she managed one word. “Heartbreaking.”

  I looked across the room at the Firestone on the wall, jagged, blood-tinged blades of grass.

  Hel
ene pointed the spoon at the faceless painting. “Are you going to hang it?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Well, no…” She rallied. “Of course not.” Then she paused, just a moment. “Don’t you feel at least a little sorry you never knew your grandpa? He sounds so… I think I wish I could’ve met him, maybe once.”

  I fumbled in my pocket, pulled out the photograph Dad gave me before I left, handed it to Helene. “Next best thing.”

  She studied the picture, then me, back to the photo, back to me. Her hand crept up, covered her mouth. “My God,” a whisper. “Except for the hair—”

  My silver mane. “From Mother’s side.”

  “Only thing you got from her.” Helene made a little noise, the half-choked gasp you might hear from a person sitting next to you in a movie theater, as the killer, unseen behind his victim, draws up just close enough to raise his weapon. Her face went dead-grim, lips drained. “Oh, Martin, I’m scared—because I don’t think you are.”

  I wiped at a bead of sweat running down my cheek. “Why should I be—”

  “You didn’t call me today, why not? You’re always calling to make sure I’m all right. You called Saturday from the restaurant, why didn’t you call today? To tell me you were going out to see your father? That you’d be so late.”

  I didn’t answer, couldn’t.

  Which infuriated her. “You knew how late you’d be.” Up on her feet. “Didn’t you think I’d be concerned? Worried? Scared?” Fists balled over her head, slim body rigid, shuddering. “Martin, why didn’t you call?”

  Because I never even thought of calling.

  Against my will, I saw my sixteen-year-old father, sitting in the kitchen with Samuel, storm about to break, Samuel’s face aglow. “Yes,” Samuel said. “Yes. I love it.”

  “I’m sorry, Helene,” I murmured. “Sorry. Really, really sorry.”

  After I got Helene cooled off and under the covers, I put our uneaten dinner into the fridge, dragged myself into the living room, flopped on my back on the couch. That was hours ago. I doze, come around, doze again. A Mobius-strip movie runs on the ceiling above my head, story without end. There’s my young father, Murray Fleischmann, Lily. Oscar, George, Harmony. Ramona and Samuel…or is that me? I snap awake, pull the photo from my pocket, play stare-down with my grinning mirror-image. Don’t ask who blinks.