Rough Trade

by Hartzmark, Gini

  Once we were safely inside it took us a few minutes to convince the admitting staff that no one was expecting a baby anytime soon. I was eventually able to find a sympathetic orderly who, in exchange for a twenty, was willing to lead us through the series of underground passages that linked the laundry, the cafeteria, and the morgue to the trauma center.

  We took the elevator to the sixth floor, where we had no trouble locating the surgical family waiting area, a space cruelly lacking in both comfort and privacy. It consisted of little more than a group of vinyl chairs bolted to the floor strategically located between a bank of busy elevators and the double doors to the surgical suites.

  Signs directed us to check in with the volunteer at the desk, a disapproving woman with starched hair who took our names, pointed to the alcove where the coffeepot was set up, and handed us a map to the cafeteria. Throughout the entire exchange her demeanor eloquently communicated the fact that while she might not know the exact details of Chrissy’s distress, it was to her mind certainly no less than Chrissy deserved.

  I got Chrissy settled and went to pour us each a cup of coffee. It was too terrible to actually drink, but there was comfort in just being able to wrap our hands around the familiar warmth of the Styrofoam cups. In the corner, mounted high up on the wall so that the volume control and channel changer were out of reach, the TV blared the third quarter of the Monarchs game. Milwaukee was leading Green Bay 27 to 10.

  Time wore on. People came and went. When we first arrived, there had been a young black woman sitting alone, huddled in the corner crying quietly. She was gradually joined by several other members of her family whose family resemblance now extended to the similar expressions of shell-shocked disbelief.

  There was another group that was the center of attention. They were congregated around a middle-aged man dressed as a mechanic in a set of blue overalls that said “Ed” in curly script above the pocket. He had the same kind of impenetrable face as Coach Bennato, hardened by what it had seen. He was with three women, any one of whom might have been his wife, and a gaggle of scraggy teenagers with bad skin and worse teeth. They were all dressed in tight jeans and T-shirts emblazoned with the names of their favorite headbanger bands.

  I was pouring myself a cup of fresh coffee, still trying to keep myself occupied by trying to figure out how the mechanic and the other people were connected, when the double doors of the surgical suite banged open. Two surgeons walked out and scanned the room. We all waited, terrified, collectively holding our breaths, wondering whether they were coming for us.

  “McGyver?” the older of the two surgeons called out wearily. Chrissy and I relaxed.

  The mechanic answered “here” as if responding to roll call at school. The surgeons pulled off their caps and squatted down in front of the family, introducing themselves and launching into a rapid-fire explanation of what was being done for their loved one. When one of them got to “I don’t know what he was despondent about, but from the wound it looks like he must have put the barrel of the gun directly to his chest before pulling the trigger,” Chrissy got up and fled to the most distant corner of the waiting area.

  A few seconds later the double doors burst open again, and this time a trio of surgeons emerged, the V necks of their scrubs ringed with sweat. They did not call out a name but made a beeline for Chrissy. They introduced themselves so fast that there was no way I could catch a name. One, like my roommate Claudia, was apparently the trauma surgeon who’d been on call in the emergency room when they’d brought in Jeff. The other was a vascular surgeon and the third a thoracic specialist. Together they had just spent six hours trying to save Jeffrey Rendell’s life.

  “How is he?” Chrissy blurted desperately.

  “The next twenty-four hours will be critical,” replied the trauma surgeon, drawing us aside and speaking for the others. “He was shot two times. One bullet went through his neck, nicking his trachea before exiting his body. The other bullet entered his chest, ricocheted through his lung, and lodged in his abdomen. Normally, with this kind of injury you’d expect the victim to bleed to death pretty quickly, but apparently the way he fell exerted pressure on the exit wound and slowed the bleeding. Still, by the time he got here, he was in full cardiac arrest and his heart had stopped beating.”

  Chrissy made a sound; it was less a sob than a kind of primal mewing. I put my arm around her shoulder and immediately felt the futility of the gesture.

  The mechanic at my garage gives me the news more kindly when he tells me how much a new transmission will cost. Knowing Claudia for as long as I have, I understand that the qualities that are prized in a surgeon— concentration, a fanaticism about perfecting technical skill, self-confidence, and risk-taking ability in the face of pressure—do not necessarily a compassionate person make. But then, of course, a compassionate person would find it too soul destroying to deliver this kind of news day in and day out.

  “We did our best under the circumstances,” he continued, trying to reassure us. “But even so, we had to remove most of his spleen, and it’s too early to tell whether or not one of his kidneys might need to be repaired. We’ll be watching your husband very carefully for signs of kidney failure over the next few days. Like I said, the next twenty-four hours will be critical.”

  “Will he live?” asked Chrissy softly.

  This, when all was said and done, was the only question that mattered. To her, everything else—the bullets, their trajectories, the damage they had done as they’d ricocheted through his body—was all secondary to whether he was ever going to go home again with Chrissy, with whether he was going to be there to see baby Katharine grow up.

  “Unfortunately there are no promises,” replied the trauma surgeon, not unkindly. “The best we were able to do in the operating room was give him a chance. I’m afraid now we can only wait and see.”

  “Can I see him?” breathed Chrissy.

  “He’s in recovery right now. As soon as he’s stable enough we’ll try moving him over to intensive care. You’ll be able to stay with him there. However, bear in mind that he’ll still be unconscious and intubated. It will be a while before we’ll know whether he’ll be able to breathe on his own.”

  “Ever?” inquired Chrissy, her voice high with fear.

  “Right now I think it’s best if we just take things one step at a time.”

  There is absolutely nothing subtle about the press. They move in like a herd of hyenas and tear at their victim’s flesh until their hunger for a sound bite or a story is satisfied. Then they move on. While what had happened to Jeffrey Rendell was unspeakably tragic, it was also a good story and for that reason had rendered Chrissy a target. In the if-it-bleeds-it-leads school of journalism, the burglar who had tried to kill her husband had turned her into page-one news.

  Fortunately a media spokesperson from the hospital arrived close on the heels of the surgical team and carefully explained the arrangements that the hospital had made to safeguard the Rendells’ privacy. It all went by Chrissy completely. Even though she looked the young woman from the hospital in the eye and made the appropriate noises of polite gratitude, I knew that it was all just a matter of instinct.

  The only time that she was able to really get through to Chrissy was when she asked her for permission to have the surgeons who’d operated on her husband give a press conference.

  A flicker of something like shock passed across Chrissy’s face, but I urged her to say yes. I actually saw the hospital’s request as the first good sign we’d had. As crass as it might sound, I figured they’d be less likely to trot out the docs if they thought that Jeff was going to die. Besides, journalists are usually as lazy as they are venal. Why else would they spend so much time interviewing each other and trying to pass it off as news? I figured that whatever we could spoon-feed them would make them less rabid about coming after Chrissy.

  What followed was the kind of negotiation no one should ever have to enter into, hammering out what could be said about Jeffrey
Rendell as we stood in the corridor outside the surgical suite where he still hovered between life and death. Fortunately, the hospital spokeswoman was too inexperienced to object to the guidelines I set down. Either that or she was being careful not to queer the hospital’s chance at future donations. I had just finished outlining what kind of information could be released when a nurse appeared to take Chrissy to see her husband. As soon as Chrissy was gone, I took the opportunity to do what every lawyer does in a crisis; I asked for a telephone.

  The hospital spokeswoman offered me a desk in an empty office. As soon as I got there I set about dialing the world. As far as I was concerned, the first order of business was to find out what the hell Jeff Rendell was doing in Milwaukee when he was supposed to be in L.A. I tried the number I had for Jack McWhorter at his apartment, but all I got was an answering machine. I fared no better with Ken, who I caught at home watching the postgame wrap-up of the Monarchs’ game on TV.

  He almost had a heart attack when I told him what had happened. Jeff had called Ken early that morning and begged off golf, explaining that he’d woken up with the flu. Ken wasn’t surprised that with all the stress Jeff had been under he’d picked up some kind of virus. Ken had offered to call a doctor, but Jeff had been adamant that he just needed to sleep. After that Ken obliged by rescheduling the day’s appointments and then had taken the opportunity to catch up on his dictation. Until that moment he’d assumed that Jeff was sound asleep in his hotel room.

  What was Jeff Rendell doing in Milwaukee? Why had he lied to Ken? Why the obvious deception? I racked my brain but could come up with no plausible explanation. Frustrated, I called Elliott Abelman. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as soon as he heard that it was me.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I heard about what happened. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Milwaukee at the hospital with Chrissy. Jeff just got out of surgery. They’re moving him to intensive care.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  “Unfortunately I think it’s just wait-and-see time.”

  “That bad?”

  “It’s bad.”

  “I thought you said he was going to L.A.”

  “He did. He went to L.A. on Friday. This morning he told the partner who’s out there with him that he had the flu and was going to bed. Obviously between the time he hung out his Do Not Disturb sign and the time he surprised a burglar in his father’s house in River Hills, he hopped a plane back to Wisconsin.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Any idea who the burglar is?”

  “No, but now that you mention it, I wonder whether it might not have been the Jester.”

  “You mean the guy who roughed up you and Chrissy?”

  “Yeah, only this time he decided to bring a real gun with him. I can’t believe they actually let him out of jail.”

  “Oh, that’s not the best part,” offered Elliott. “You’ll never guess who the lawyer was who paid his bail.”

  “Who?”

  “Your friend, Harald Feiss.”

  I went off in search of a ladies’ room and found the woman from the hospital PR office standing at the mirror carefully lining her lips with a pencil and then filling them in with a brush, getting ready to face the cameras. Chrissy put hers on the same way. I found myself wondering whether I was the only woman in America who just slapped her lipstick on straight out of the tube.

  “Can you show me the way to the ICU?” I asked.

  “I can take you up to the family lounge on the fifth floor. I’m afraid they allow only one family member into the intensive care unit at one time.”

  “No exceptions?” I inquired. I’ve never been any good at wringing extra privileges out of people, especially under these circumstances.

  “I’m afraid not,” she replied. “It’s not an arbitrary rule. There’s so much equipment in the ICU and so many personnel that space is very tight.”

  “Just promise me that Mr. Rendell’s doctors are as conscientious about his care as they will be answering the press’s questions.”

  “They’re very good, especially with a VIP patient. They’ll tell you every time they take his temperature if that’s what the family wants.”

  “And what about your less important patients?” I demanded irritably. My experience with Russell had left me with a long list of issues I still needed to work out about how medical care is delivered.

  “Our hospital policy is to give the same level of high quality care to every single patient without regard to their circumstance or ability to pay,” she replied promptly, spouting the corporate line. “I guarantee you that the man who shot Mr. Rendell is getting the very same level of care that he is.”

  “The man who shot him is here?” I demanded incredulously. “He’s here? In this hospital?”

  “We’re the only level-three trauma center between Madison and Chicago. I understand he was very seriously injured. There’s no place else they could have taken him.”

  “And he was shot?”

  “Yes. Three times. I believe once in the head. As far as I know he’s still in surgery.”

  “What’s his name? Who is he?”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I can give out that information—” she sputtered.

  “It’s a matter of public record,” I declared, taking a step toward her. “I bet you’ve already told the media.”

  “His name is Darius Fredericks,” she said quickly.

  “The wide receiver?”

  She nodded while I grappled with my disbelief.

  Until the day he’d nearly killed a call girl in a hotel room after a game, Darius Fredericks had played football for the Milwaukee Monarchs.

  CHAPTER 21

  Football is a game of violence; a sport where the players hit hard and they hit first, where knocking an opponent unconscious is a badge of honor and breaking bones a treat. Violence isn’t just part of the game. It is the game. I once read an interview with an offensive lineman with the Chicago Bears who calmly explained that he liked to play mad. “Not mad at anyone in particular,” he was quoted as saying, “but mad at the world.”

  But there are some players who can’t distinguish the violence of the game from real life, players who are mad at the world, not just for the three hours they are on the field, but all day long. Couple that kind of rage with the sense of entitlement that comes from being a twenty-three-year-old millionaire sports celebrity and you get Darius Fredericks.

  By the time Darius Fredericks reached the NFL, he was already no stranger to the law, and Amber Cunningham was by no means the first young woman the 220-pound professional athlete had used as a punching bag. However, she was the first one that I ever saw, and let’s just say it left an impression.

  I couldn’t get to the hospital until the early hours of the morning. I’d had to first arrange for representation for Fredericks and then issue a statement to the press. All I really wanted to do was go home. But Jeffrey Rendell had begged me to go and see her. To his credit he was not just terrified of the publicity, but genuinely concerned that whatever could be done for Amber Cunningham and her family be done.

  When I got upstairs to her room the nurse spoke softly, as if the girl already lay dead. She explained that Cunningham was nineteen and, according to her driver’s license photo, very pretty. But there was no way to tell any of that from the mangled lump of flesh in the hospital bed. There were dozens of tubes and lines running in and out of her body, and her face was the color and consistency of raw hamburger.

  Her mother was at her bedside, furious and weeping. When I told her who I was and why I’d come, she’d vented her anger—a cold and hissing stream of hate. I stayed until she was done, asked her if there was anything that she needed, and got out of there as fast as I could, feeling sick at heart and thoroughly ashamed of myself. When I got home I took a shower, but I knew that no amount of water would wash off what it was t
hat clung to me.

  In the weeks that followed, Amber Cunningham did not die. Indeed, according to the truncated metric of the medical world, she got better. Eventually the bruises faded and the fractures healed. The lines were removed and she was sent home. However, she would never again be pretty. Or walk. Or have children.

  For his punishment a jury of twelve sentenced Darius Fredericks to two years in prison. In a separate civil suit Cunningham was also awarded $9 million. From that day on the Monarchs started sending Fredericks’s paychecks to his victim. Amber’s parents would never be able to heal their daughter or erase the reality of what had happened to her, but they were at least able to return Darius Fredericks to the poverty from which he’d started. I never had a chance to ask them whether they considered this enough.

  I remembered seeing that he was out. He’d served something like eleven months and had been released for good behavior or whatever other administrative excuse they use to make room for the influx of fresh felons that keeps pumping through the criminal justice system. His release was a one-day story, covered by the networks and collectively forgotten. The cameras showed Fredericks emerging from the prison downstate, sporting a buff, prison-yard physique and announcing that he was readier than ever to go back and play in the NFL.

  Who knows, perhaps he would have. There were already coaches making noises that Fredericks had paid his debt to society. Besides, isn’t sports all about second chances? But no one counted on Amber’s mother.

  Enraged at the thought of her daughter’s assailant once again playing before a crowd of adoring fans, and committed to preventing what had been done to her daughter from happening to anyone else, Mrs. Cunningham began taking her daughter on the tabloid news shows. After Dateline ran the story contrasting Fredericks, fit and transparently unrepentant, to Amber, drooling and disfigured in her wheelchair, all talk of Fredericks returning to the NFL evaporated.