Berto's World_Stories

by R. A. Comunale M. D.

  I introduced myself to her, but she just kept staring at the wall in front of her. She remained silent, as I looked over her head, neck, and chest, making lines on the body diagram on the clipboard to locate her bruises and cuts.

  I examined her eyes. Large shiners encircled both sides and the whites of her eyeballs were hemorrhaging. Her chest was a sheet of purple.

  Luann gently attempted to roll her onto her back to allow me to check the abdomen and nether regions. But she resisted and suddenly seemed to be in distress. So I palpated her as she lay. I felt the early changes of heavy alcohol consumption in the size and firmness of her liver. Then my hand moved just below her umbilicus. I felt something hard—much too hard for human tissue.

  Luann, bless her, had gloved up and was about to try again to roll Ruby onto her back, while I put on gloves and opened the rape kit.

  Suddenly the patient jerked and screamed in agony, and as the sheet dropped from her body Luann let out an “omigod!” Then we both saw what was protruding from her front and back.

  Someone had inserted empty brown beer bottles deeply into her vagina and anus.

  They were lodged so tightly it took both hands to remove them.

  I ordered stat (immediate) X-rays of Ruby’s abdomen, chest, and head. Ultrasound was still in its infancy, so X-rays were the only way to go. And, yes, we did run a pregnancy test.

  We also carefully put the two bottles in evidence bags.

  Luann shook her head.

  “She’s going to need a gynecologist to repair her.”

  “If she survives,” I replied, as we both removed our gloves. Then we heard it:

  “Code blue! Code blue! Radiology department.”

  The loudspeaker squawked the come-hither words that all medical personnel dread. I had a gut feeling, as Luann and I began our inevitable hospital walk, a corridor-eating run to the X-ray department, just behind the intern and surgical resident.

  The radiology resident and his student were already pounding on Ruby Joseph’s chest. Hard to believe but her face was even bluer than before, and her bruised chest no longer moved in breathing time.

  The surgical resident shined his penlight in the patient’s eyes. They didn’t constrict. Her pupils were dilated. He and the radiology resident both nodded, as the intern said, “Massive PE, probably air.”

  Whoever had thrust those bottles inside Ruby’s rectum and vagina had somehow forced some air inside the large vein in her belly. All it takes is about a quarter cup, and even though it’s gaseous, it acts like a solid plug, as it moves up the blood vessels to the right side of the heart—stopping it.

  They tried fluoroscope-guided needle aspiration (drainage) of her heart, but Ruby Joseph was gone. Those glass bottles, complete with fingerprints, later served to convict her pimp of manslaughter.

  Luann and I were pretty shaken as we returned to the ER. The old charge nurse—her name was Mabel if I recall correctly—took us both aside. She was crusty, but she was also kind. She saw two novices just bludgeoned by the process of sudden death. No amount of training blunts the effect the first time you confront it, and Mabel knew it. I later learned she had served in the army in World War II and had been captured and held by the Japanese in one of their infamous POW camps when the Philippines were invaded.

  And about Luann, yes, I started to entertain thoughts of dating her, but I was going steady with my classmate, June, and she was a newlywed.

  Time passes, even when you’re not having fun. My roommate Dave and I had settled into our townhouse apartment up on Church Hill. It was just a quick walk from the hospital complex over an ancient bridge called the Marshall Street Viaduct. Its rickety structure shuddered even in the slightest breeze, but it had spanned the valley between two of the seven hills of Richmond for many years.

  I felt tired, as I walked up the driveway to the federally subsidized housing complex and unlocked the front door. Dave had already arrived and had strategically ensconced himself in his favorite room, the bathroom.

  “Finish up in there, Country Boy. A better man needs to use the john.”

  I almost laughed out loud as Mabel’s word came to mind.

  Then the door knocker sounded.

  “Bob, answer the door. I’m not done yet.”

  I had already taken off my shoes, so I padded down the stairs and looked through the peephole. Mrs. Bailey, our next-door neighbor, stood there.

  I opened the door, but she didn’t wait for an invitation. She stepped in, dragging a familiar young boy by the arm.

  “Now, Marcus Bailey, you tell them doctahs what’s wrong!”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Marcus and his younger brother Jeremiah were good kids, but they sure could get themselves into trouble. Dave and I had to rescue Jeremiah from being entombed inside the upper end of the Chimborazo train tunnel that ran under Church Hill shortly after we moved there.

  I squatted down, more because I was tired than needing to go eye to eye with the boy. But that told me what was wrong before Marcus even began to speak. His eyes were tearing and the white parts were puffy and red.

  I stood up and asked his mother the key question.

  “Is anyone doing any metal work around here—cutting or welding metal?”

  She looked astonished.

  “Yeah, coupla blocks over. They’s cuttin’ rods fer a new buildin’.”

  I took the boy’s right hand in mine.

  “Marcus, were you watching a man using a really bright electric light?”

  “Yessuh.”

  I heard the toilet flush, and Dave bounded down the stairs behind me in his stocking feet.

  “Dave, we got us a young man with UV conjunctivitis.”

  I turned to Mrs. Bailey.

  “Marcus looked too long at the electrical light of an arc-welding machine. It’s so hot it generates ultraviolet light, and that can burn the eyes. Marcus, you’re pretty lucky. You could’ve really gotten hurt. Didn't you see how the man holding the torch wore a big metal mask?”

  Dave chimed in.

  “Just keep Marcus in a dark room and put cold packs on his eyes. If we’re lucky, he should be okay by tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Bailey pulled a wrinkled, old dollar bill from the upper part of her dress. Before she could hand it to us, we both said "No, thank you.”

  She laughed and said to Dave, “Now, honey, you don’ need me, not frum wha’ I heard comin’ through the walls. She's a screamer, ain’t she?”

  Dave turned beet red, and I was thinking, “What the hell is she talking about?”

  Then she looked me up and down.

  “Betcha I could help ya. Jes’ knock on ma door.”

  She dragged Marcus into the hall by his ear, and as they returned to their apartment, we heard him yell, “But Mama, I didn’ mean ta go look theah.”

  I closed the door.

  “What’s going on, Country Boy? What did she mean about me stopping by her place?”

  “City Boy, for someone who knows everything, you are awfully dumb! She’s what my mama used to call a wanton woman.”

  Then I understood.

  “Point taken. Now, what about the ‘screamer?’”

  His face turned crimson.

  “Uh … well … uh … sometimes Connie stops by when you’re on night duty and we … uh…”

  “Don’t say another word.”

  Whatever our neighbor was, she was also an angel. She helped save our necks weeks later, when a mob arrived on our doorstep to lynch us. As she so eloquently put it, “Ya’ll risked yo’ necks ta save Jeremiah. No sense havin’ ’em stretched out by a rope. ’Sides, you the wrong color fer lynchin’ ’roun’ heah.”

  Mrs. Bailey, I wish you had lived to see the first African American president.

  That night my thoughts once more took me back to my childhood and my neighborhood.

  When I was about seven, Papa spent some wonderful times with me. We would walk and walk together. Papa pointed out different shops and buildings an
d told me what secrets they held. But some establishments—even as I grew older—Papa never seemed to acknowledge.

  Che cosa è quello, Papa?

  “What are those, Papa?”

  He would put his head down and not answer.

  As I became a teenager, I stayed out later and later with my friends. I noticed that, unlike our homes—our little rats' nests of apartments—some of those mystery buildings would keep their lights on all night.

  “Come on, Berto, move those legs.”

  When I reached seventeen, I became a lord of creation, full of spit and vinegar. Everybody knew me, and I knew everybody—at least I thought so. But my friend Sal, as always, surprised me.

  In our final year of high school, I had received early acceptance to university, while Sal had gained early admittance into the mob. We both felt on top of the world.

  Back then I spent most of my free time with my high school friend Edison, fooling around with electronics. When I would leave his home, I’d go directly to Dr. Agnelli’s clinic. But one weekend, Edison and his parents were away, and Dr. Agnelli was having some much-needed renovation done to his examining rooms.

  So, as I joked with Sal, I was stuck with him.

  Sal rewarded me with a friendly punch to the gut that knocked the wind out of me. As always, he never intended to hurt me. It’s just that he was just too damned strong.

  After the nerve endings in my solar plexus let me breathe again, Sal helped me up and promised a real treat. He was going to show me things I had never seen before.

  Whenever Sal talked like that, it was usually about something one didn’t talk about with one’s mama.

  He didn’t disappoint me.

  “Here ya go, Berto. Yer gonna meet the sweetest girl this side of New York.”

  Sal was excited, more so than I had seen him in a long time. The last was when he ran to tell me that the beautiful chair he had coveted the day we helped Giuseppe load his wagon had been mysteriously left at his apartment door. I thought he had probably stolen it from the old junk man, but my mind did a one-eighty when I found the small desk, chair, and bookcase I had desired placed on my own stoop.

  “Is she in your class at school, big guy?”

  He laughed.

  “Berto, Crystal is in a class by herself. You’ll see.”

  I noticed we were approaching one of those buildings—the ones Papa never wanted to talk about. But as we crossed the street, Sal suddenly grabbed my arm and steered me into a shop doorway.

  “Hey, what gives?”

  His grip hurt my arm.

  “Look who just got outta that ’56 De Soto!”

  It was Sammy Welch and his dad, the defrocked cop. Sam’s old man looked proud, as he put his arm on Sammy’s shoulder. We could hear the guy’s voice loud and clear.

  “Now, kid, yer gonna be a man.”

  Sammy Welch had matured into a tall, fairly decent-looking young man, but he was still his father’s son. He let out a nervous laugh as Samuel Welch Sr. steered him inside the apartment with the light in the window.

  “Damn, he’s gonna see Crystal!”

  “Sal, what the hell is going on?”

  He turned and grinned at me.

  “Geez, Berto, don’t you get it?”

  He made a motion with his hands, and I turned red. I got it.

  We stood in the doorway and waited. It wasn't more than five minutes before a scream shook the walls. We peered out and saw the older Welch dragging his son out of the building. Sammy was trying to button his pants.

  “I told you, no rough stuff, least not ’til you’re finished! You didn’t even make it, did you?”

  “Pop, you didn’t need to punch her lights out!”

  “Don’t smart-talk me, you little bastard!”

  He struck his son.

  “Ow, don’t hit me Pa!”

  Welch Sr. literally threw Sammy into the car and peeled out from the curb. We waited until it rolled around the corner then, Sal leading the way, ran into the apartment on the first-floor, its door wide open.

  She sat on a beat-up sofa holding her face. She was one of those women who could be twenty-five or forty. She was tiny, the couch a wide canyon to her petite body, her black hair spotted with blood. I could see bruising around both eyes. When they opened, dark-brown, Levantine irises peered through swollen lids. Her jaw was off kilter, like a child trying hard not to swallow a disliked food. All she had on was a torn and bloodied petticoat.

  “Crystal, Crystal, are you okay?”

  Sal knelt by her side and tried to pull her hands away from her face. I moved next to him and attempted something Dr. Agnelli had taught me.

  “Miss Crystal, let me help you.”

  She lowered her hands, and Sal and I both gasped, as we saw the blood on her mouth and the jagged, broken ends of her teeth.

  “Come on, Sal, she needs help right now.”

  He cradled her in his arms, lifting her as if she were a feather, and carried her out the door.

  I took them to Lyman.

  It was Saturday—Shabbat—but I knew Lyman Lipschutz would be in his dental office. He lived where he worked. I just didn’t know whether he would be willing to see Crystal on his Sabbath.

  We climbed the stairs to the second-floor suite, Sal not even breaking a sweat as he carried the beaten-up and barely conscious woman.

  I knocked. No answer. I knocked again, and still no answer.

  “Dr. Lipschutz, it’s me, Berto Galen. My friend is badly hurt. Please…”

  I heard the slow, limping shuffle of the Auschwitz death-camp survivor. The door opened.

  “Berto, you know it’s Shabbat.”

  Then he saw Sal holding the woman. He saw her face and the ruined teeth and jaw.

  “Gott in himmel!”

  His own ruined face tried to smile.

  “Yes, Berto, I know—German.”

  He waved us in and guided Sal with his burden to the examining room in back. He pointed to a dental chair, and Sal gently set Crystal down in it. Then he picked up the black, Bakelite handset of a phone that had seen its best days and fingered the dial.

  Click-whir, click, click-whir.

  Seven times that rotary dial spun. I heard the distinctive trill of a number ringing at the other end and then the familiar voice of my mentor.

  “Agnelli here. Who’s calling?”

  “Corrado, it’s me, Lyman. Your Berto is here with a young lady. She is in bad shape. Can you help?”

  “I’ll be right there,” the phone voice said, and ended the connection with a click.

  Dr. Lipschutz was gently cleaning up the victim’s face in preparation for dental X-rays, when the door opened and Dr. Agnelli entered.

  “Berto, I’m amazed. You managed to get me to work even when I was closed.”

  He looked at Sal and glared.

  “Did you do this?”

  Sal stuttered, “N-n-o, sir. Ask Berto.”

  As the doctor and dentist examined Crystal, Sal and I took turns describing what we had seen and heard. Both men were muttering imprecations against the Welches as they assessed the damage.

  Except for wincing and uttering an occasional “Ow!” Crystal remained mute. At first I assumed it was because her jaw had been fractured, but as I watched her eyes, I realized that her silence was a response to conflict. Even when Dr. Lipschutz palpated her jaw, she kept her eyes fixed on the wall.

  “Young woman, I must do a painful thing now. Your jaw, it is out of joint. I must put it back in place. I will give you something to take the pain away. You will sleep, not feel anything. Hokay?”

  Her response surprised us all. Even with an immovable jaw her meaning was clear. She shook her head violently from side to side and made guttural noises close enough to “no!” to be understood.

  “Yah, yah, I know. I say same to Nazis. Hokay, hold onto chair.”

  Dr. Agnelli motioned to me and Sal. We each took places behind the dental chair and held Crystal’s hands. Sal put one arm
around her chest to steady her.

  Dr. Lipschutz gloved his hands.

  “Hokay, here we go.”

  Beads of sweat dotted her forehead. Sal’s and mine matched hers, as Dr. Lipschutz stuck both gloved thumbs into her mouth, pushed down, and simultaneously pulled to one side. The intensity of the “snap-click” punctuated Crystal’s crescendoing scream. Then she passed out.

  “Corrado, quick, hand me the syringe!”

  Dr. Agnelli passed the glass tube with its four-inch needle to the dentist who, in turn, quickly injected both sides of Crystals gums, upper and lower.

  Then we all waited.

  I forgot to mention: At the sight of the needle Sal passed out. We let him lie there. None of us was strong enough to lift him.

  In a few moments Crystal moaned as she came to. She coughed a few times.

  Dr. Agnelli smiled.

  “The pain should be gone—at least for now. Our fine dentist is going to see what he can do for your teeth.”

  He and I stood by, as the little man climbed on his step stool. Again he palpated, examining and making profound “hmms” and “ahhs.” He wiggled some teeth. Others he lightly smoothed with a file to remove the rough edges.

  “Young lady, you are lucky. I see no major problems. Your teeth not too bad—some gum lacerations. You will be sore coupla weeks.”

  She tried to thank him, but the numbing medicine made it near impossible. As you know, I had suffered the same experience—and worse—in medical school when Pat Tilden used me as his guinea pig.

  “Corrado, she cannot go back to her apartment. God only knows what might happen.”

  Dr. Agnelli frowned.

  “Lyman, you’ve got those two spare rooms upstairs, don’t you?”

  “Yah, yah, good idea. Young lady, you will be my guest, right?”

  She shook her head. Dr. Agnelli turned to us.

  “Guys, go back to her place. I’ll call Giuseppe. I think his wagon could get her stuff here. Probably not much anyway.”

  He turned back to Crystal.

  “Do you want to press charges against those two bastards?”

  She shook her head again, and Sal answered for her.

  “No one would believe her or two kids like Berto and me, Doc. You know that.” He was getting angry.