Bernard sneered, his jaw muscles flexing in fury. Karen was alarmed to see he had gone from forlorn to ferocious in the blink of an eye. She had miscalculated. Maybe he had doubts himself about his fitness to be a doctor. Or maybe he just had a problem enduring defiance from a woman. In any case, Karen’s instincts told her Bernard’s face and posture signaled violence.
He still held the crystal paperweight in his hand. He tossed it a few inches in the air and caught it.
“You know what Shakespeare said, Hayes? The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’ He was right.”
Dr. Bernard drew the paperweight back, as if it were a baseball, a manic look in his eyes. Karen backed away until she bumped into the monitor of her computer terminal, then turned, her body against the front of the monitor.
Half of the monitor screen remained exposed. Bernard stepped forward and hurled the sphere into the glass.
Inside the picture tube of the computer monitor was a powerful vacuum. The instant the crystal paperweight broke the glass envelope of the picture tube, it imploded with prodigious force. A blinding flash of light appeared in the center of the picture tube, followed instantly by a boom that split the still, dry air of the small office like the report from a cannon. Massively thick chunks of glass were sucked into the center of the picture tube, passed through it, and kept moving with the implosion momentum. Pieces of glass from the back of the picture tube launched themselves directly into the room outside the monitor. Pieces from the front of the tube ricocheted off the inside of the monitor and sprayed out like a geyser. The office and its occupants were peppered with flying glass, which spattered against the desk, pelted the walls and window and, after a long second and a half of bouncing around, settled with a clatter to the floor. A bluish-white puff of smoke hung in the shell of the monitor, as an acrid smell permeated the office.
The room was silent for a few seconds. Karen saw Dr. Bernard, a surprised look on his face, reach down to check his genitals. Then he looked at the palms and backs of his hands. A small, red trickle appeared on his forehead. A piece of glass had glanced off it, opening a small cut. He reached up and touched it, then looked at his fingertips.
“Oh my God,” he said. “I’m bleeding.” He turned and ran out of the room. Karen heard his heavy footsteps receding down the hall.
Karen stood motionless as Bernard’s footsteps faded away. She hesitated to look at herself, afraid of what she might see. She felt no pain; that was good. Her vision was intact. She raised her hands slowly to her face and explored it with her fingertips; no apparent cuts, no embedded slivers—good. She looked at the backs of her hands, then turned them over and looked at her palms. Other than the fingertip injured when Bernard demolished her telephone, her hands were fine. Then she felt a trickle running down the inside of her thigh, and a slight burning sensation on the surface of her belly. She looked down. Five small spots of blood were growing rapidly on the front of her white yoga garment, blossoming like crimson roses on her abdomen. Two of the blooms had long glass pistils protruding from them. The other three had breaches in the cotton cloth at their centers, but no visible glass. Within seconds, the trickle on Karen’s thigh became a rivulet, then a stream. The inseam of her white pants was soaked with blood.
In her lifetime, Karen had experienced fear, even terror. Panic, once. But never had she experienced the primordial sensation that came racing from her lower brain like a freight train when she realized she was seriously injured.
Shock. Shock, in the medical sense. She knew what it was, and she knew she had to resist it.
Can’t lose consciousness, she thought, I’ll bleed to death before anybody finds me. She lowered herself slowly into her desk chair, trying to avoid any movement that might cause the shards of glass she suspected were penetrating her peritoneum from slicing her viscera. She reached for her telephone, only to realize it was smashed and useless. The nearest telephone was at Margaret’s desk. About twenty-five feet away. An impossible distance.
Try.
Karen rotated her desk chair with tiny movements of her feet until her back was to the door of her office. It was a straight shot between her desk and credenza. She pushed with small, walking movements of her feet, avoiding as much as possible engaging her abdominal muscles. She felt a wet sloppy sensation at her anus and wondered if she had lost control of her bowels. When she realized it was blood puddling in her chair, she moaned and shock bore down on her. She fought it back.
The distance to the door of her office was covered in seconds, but a raised strip of wood at the threshold stopped the casters of her swivel chair. Her little foot movements would not budge it. She would have to risk one sudden flexion of her muscles. She walked the chair forward a couple of feet, moved it forth and back by bending and straightening her knees, then forth again, then pushed back with all her strength. The back wheels hopped over the threshold, but the front wheels were stopped. She could move neither backward nor forward.
“Operator,” said Jake, “I’ve been trying to reach a number for a long time, but I keep getting a busy signal. Could you break in on the conversation for me?”
“Is this an emergency, sir?”
“Well, that’s sort of what I’m trying to find out.”
“Hmph,” said the operator. “I’ll check the line for you.” Jake waited several seconds.
“The telephone you are calling is out of order, sir.”
“Thanks.” Jake hung up, ran to the closet, grabbed his jacket, and ran out the front door without stopping to put on the jacket. When he reached the icy top step, his feet went out from under him and he sat down hard. “Man,” he commented. “Concrete is a lot harder now than it was twenty years ago.” He got up, walked carefully to the Mustang, and peeled out of the driveway.
Karen finally gave up on pushing the chair over the threshold. She decided she would do herself less harm by standing briefly, taking a few steps to Margaret’s desk chair, and sitting back down before her compromised blood pressure caused her to pass out. She felt weak, but was reasonably confident she could make it. She rotated around to face Margaret’s desk. She stood up and almost immediately the blood drained from her head and her field of vision got dark and full of purple splotches and little glowing dots. Three quick steps and she rolled onto the top of Margaret’s desk, knocking to the floor a small vase, a stapler, and a pencil holder. She caught the telephone just before it slid off the edge of the desk. Lying on her back, she picked up the receiver with her left hand and set it down on her chest. Then her fingers found the keypad and felt around for the place where the “O” would be located.
“May I see your driver’s license, sir?”
Jake promised to pay any ticket the officer wrote, if he would please let Jake get to the hospital to check on his wife, but the cop would have none of it. After what Jake considered a long enough time to write a dozen tickets, the cop was still sitting in his squad car, red and blue lights flashing like a major bust was going down.
“Aw, screw this,” said Jake, as he popped the clutch and sent the Mustang squealing away.
Karen lay motionless on her back, her eyes open, whispering Jake’s name. A face appeared above her, a male, African-American face, with a mustache. He was wearing blue hospital scrubs. It had been less than three minutes since she had spoken by telephone to the emergency room receptionist. The young man spoke to someone Karen could not see.
“She’s conscious. Get the gurney ready. I’ll get a pulse.”
Karen felt the young man’s fingers press on her throat. He looked at his watch briefly, then looked over his shoulder. “Pulse is weak and irregular,” he said. “Start a line, stat. Add an amp of Levophed to the IV.” Karen concluded that the guy was an emergency room physician. A female nurse appeared at Karen’s right side and swabbed the underside of her forearm with an antiseptic-soaked cotton ball. The nurse deftly located a vein in Karen’s arm and plunged a thick needle into it with quick, efficient movements.
&n
bsp; The ER doctor looked down at Karen with an expression of gentle concern. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs. Hayes. Everything’s going to be all right. Just hang in there.” Karen felt several hands slide under her back, head, hips and knees, heard the doctor count to three, and in an instant she was on a moving cart, clattering down the hallway. The nurse walked along briskly at Karen’s left side, pushing a vertical stainless steel pole on wheels with a plastic IV bag hanging from it. The ER physician walked at Karen’s right side, pushing the gurney with the aid of persons Karen could not see. The gurney bounced onto a waiting elevator car and stopped.
Karen spoke in a raspy whisper. “Where are you taking me?”
“Try to stay calm, Mrs. Hayes,” said the doctor. “We’re taking you right up to surgery. It will only be a few minutes.” He put his fingers lightly on Karen’s wrist, monitoring her pulse.
“Take me to St. Peter’s,” ordered Karen weakly. A Jefferson Clinic surgeon might be waiting for her in the OR at Shoreview. “If I need surgery, I want to go to St. Pete’s!”
His eyes moved down to Karen’s feet and back to her face. She appeared to be dressed in scarlet from the bottom of her rib cage down. He placed his warm hand on hers. “No, Mrs. Hayes, you don’t want to go to St. Pete’s,” he said kindly.
“Why not?” she queried.
“Because at St. Pete’s,” he explained, “you’d be DOA.”
Jake took the steps to the basement of Shoreview Memorial three at a time and sprinted to the freight elevator. He pushed the call button seven times and cursed the slowness with which the old gunmetal gray elevator door opened. The elevator creaked as it rose imperceptibly to the second floor, while Jake paced frantically. As soon as the door opened a crack, he squeezed through it sideways and ran down the hall to Karen’s office door. The doorway was blocked by Karen’s black leather swivel chair, with what appeared to be a pint of limpid blood pooled in the seat. Margaret’s desk looked like it had been finger-painted in red. Jake looked into the office. The telephone and computer monitor were smashed. The floor was covered with blood and broken glass. He turned away from the door and bent over at the waist as if he had been hit in the stomach, his anguished outcry echoing down the deserted hallway.
“Karen!”
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Karen recognized the distinctive smell of the surgical suite. Dread passed through her, draining all of her remaining strength. She could feel herself slipping into unconsciousness. She noticed the doctor’s name badge.
“Dr. Covington,” she whispered. “Who is the surgeon on call tonight?”
He smiled reassuringly and squeezed her hand. “The best,” he said. “The big chief. Dr. Herwitz.”
As if through a dark fog, Karen recollected her last conversation with Dr. Herwitz. She had hung up on him. For all Herwitz knew, the report to the Inspector General that would destroy the clinic had not yet been sent. Oh no, Karen thought, as her eyes rolled back in her head and she lost consciousness.
“No pulse. I’ve lost the pulse. Nurse, call a code.”
The nurse who had been in command of the IV cart ran to a wall-mounted telephone and pressed O. She spoke rapidly to the hospital operator. The operator switched on the hospital PA system and made an announcement that was heard all over the hospital campus. Edward Bernard and Carson Weber heard it. Leonard Herwitz, reading in the doctor’s lounge, heard it, as did Jake Hayes, standing, bewildered, in the hallway on the second floor.
“Code Blue,” declared the operator. “Fourth floor, surgical suite one. Code Blue.”
CHAPTER
32
By May of Jake’s senior year at college, the engagement at The Mineshaft had been winding down for some time. The crowds had thinned out. Blues was going through one of its regular down-cycles in popularity. Jake’s bass player, a college classmate, had announced he would be returning home after graduation to work in his father’s lumber business. Jake had decided the act had become shopworn and tedious, including the gravelly-voiced alcoholic club owner’s not-very-funny introduction:
“Good evening, ladies and gents, and welcome to The Mineshaft. I want to remind you cats to tip the waitresses generously, because they have children to support, and most of them are mine. Now, let’s get it together for the best blues in the middle west. Ladies and gentlemen, The Mineshaft is proud to present… Buddha and the Lowdown Polecats!”
As Jake waited behind the tattered velvet curtain to make his entrance, the club owner had walked by, remarking slyly, “Check out front row center. Real fox.” The words had rolled off Jake like water off waxed paper. He had not had female companionship since Karen’s visit home from England at Christmas, but he was not looking for any, either. Karen was nearing the end of the first year of her two-year fellowship. He had made it this long, he could make it another year. He had gotten serious about meditation.
The band finished its introductory instrumental, and Jake dutifully delivered his opening vocal.
“Gonna rock this joint.
Yeah, gonna rock this joint.
Now I know we can do it,
So let’s get down to it.”
Jake had changed his leap-with-slide approach to the microphone to a less strenuous moonwalk. He arrived at the mike stand, spun one and a quarter revolutions on his heels to face the audience, and lifted the blues harp to his mouth. As he blew his first note, he observed a woman across the empty dance floor, at the front row center table. She was dressed in black and wearing a beret. It was Karen. Jake had spoken to her by long-distance telephone three days before and she had not mentioned a visit home.
Jake dropped his harp to the floor and did a seven-foot standing broad jump off the stage. Although he had lost thirty pounds in the previous nine months, the one hundred seventy pounds he still carried shook the dance floor when he landed. Karen bounded out of her chair, took one step, and jumped, spread-eagled. Jake caught her in midair, her arms around his neck, her legs around his torso. Their mouths locked. Jake spun in a circle, got down to his knees, and rolled onto his back. The audience gave them a standing ovation.
Karen ended the kiss and put her lips to Jake’s ear. “I quit my fellowship,” she stated. “I’m not going back.”
“Thank God,” said Jake. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
“Don’t worry,” Karen had said, “I won’t. That’s a promise.”
Eighteen years hence, had Drs. Covington and Herwitz taken a minute longer to restore Karen’s heartbeat, she would have broken that promise. Instead, after more than three hours of surgery and four transfusions, she woke up in the surgical intensive care unit of Shoreview Memorial. She was breathing on her own, but otherwise felt like she had been the victim of either a shark attack or a buffalo stampede, or both. She hurt everywhere, some places worse than others. Her neck screamed at her, she had a blinding headache, and someone was apparently using her belly as a pincushion. The middle finger of her left hand was throbbing. From what? Then she remembered Bernard slamming the crystal paperweight down on her phone and clipping the tip of her finger. Amazing she could feel that, with all the other pain competing for her attention. The headache was probably from the anesthesia. But what was with the neck? God, it was worse than the pain from the surgical site. Karen had observed enough surgery to know that anesthetized patients were often heaved around in a pretty rough fashion. Had the OR staff given her whiplash? Maybe she hurt her neck when she threw herself on Margaret’s desk.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Jake’s face hovering over her protectively, his brown eyes rheumy and haggard. He smiled.
“Hey, Alto,” he said softly. “The doctors did everything they could, but you pulled through anyway.”
Karen grimaced, letting Jake know that she was in no condition to appreciate humor. She looked around, moving only her eyes, having a sense that any slight movement would make the agony even worse. The room was dim and windowless. It reeked of antiseptic, and something foul and visceral
Karen could not identify, but guessed was emanating from her wounds. A bag of intravenous fluid dripped steadily through a needle into her arm, and a heart monitor blipped out her cardiac status on a glowing screen. For some reason a uniformed policeman was seated by the door. Cripes, was she in that much danger? They had to post a cop to guard her? She opened her eyes wide, showing Jake her alarm at the policeman’s presence.
“Oh, sweetheart,” said Jake sheepishly, “this is Officer Sprague. Uh, technically I’m in police custody right now for fleeing a traffic stop. No biggie, I’ve got your friend Emerson on it.”
“Please…” whispered Karen. Uttering the word cost her a stab of abdominal pain.
“What? What do you want?” Jake said, eagerly.
“Tell them …” Again, the pain stopped her words.
“What? What should I tell them?”
“Tell them…” She paused, drew a shallow breath and clenched her teeth, determined to get the sentence out regardless of how much it hurt.
“Tell them I need morphine right now.”
Two days later, Karen was out of intensive care and into a regular patient bed. Her room looked and smelled like the inside of a hothouse, with fragrant blossoming plants and elaborate floral arrangements on every available surface, including the floor. The largest and gaudiest display was from Joe Grimes, followed by a huge but slightly more tasteful one from the law firm of Winslow & Shaughnessy. Karen expected the flowers from her parents and sister, but was astonished and a little embarrassed at the number of friends, business acquaintances, and hospital employees who had sent them. Even the sidemen in Jake’s band had kicked in to send her a phallic cactus.
Karen had her first postsurgical chuckle at the card that accompanied a small wicker basket of daisies: “I don’t know you, but I certainly feel like I do. You’ve kept me very busy this week.” It was signed by the proprietor of the Jefferson Flower Shop.
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