Deathbed fk-8

by William X. Kienzle

  Ethel was holding a cup of very hot coffee near her mouth, absently blowing over its surface, attempting to cool it. But she was paying little attention to it. The cup had tipped over so slightly and the coffee began dripping ever so slowly into Ethel’s lap. The old water torture with caffeine overtones.

  “I think I may have a plan that would surprise you,” Ethel continued. “It’s just kind of hard to talk about it, especially with you. I don’t understand it all that well myself. It’s something that’s going on in my head. Like maybe there are two persons there. One of them is the usual bonehead me. The other one seems much more clever. I guess I just don’t know how to explain it very well . . . do you know what I’m talking about, Bruce?”

  “What?”

  Ethel began, again, to explain her conundrum, trying to find clearer language. All the while, Whitaker tried to catch the doctors’ conversation.

  “Are there really that many people in here with pneumonia, do you think?” said one doctor.

  “Oh, yeah,” said the other. “At least enough for the study. Don’t need that many.”

  “What’re you using?”

  “One group gets penicillin, the other tobrimycin.”

  “What are the protocol numbers?”

  “Ouch!” Ethel cried.

  “Not now!” Whitaker warned.

  “Whaddya mean, ‘not now’?” Ethel almost shouted. “I burned myself with coffee. It’s scalding. Look! It’s been dripping in my lap. It hurts! Whaddya mean, ‘not now’!”

  “Sorry, Ethel.” Whitaker strained to hear the doctors. Fortunately, the doctor who was to respond with the protocol numbers had taken a bite of food and was chewing. And fortunately, his social code did not countenance talking with a full mouth.

  Thus, Ethel was well done complaining about the burn, the stain, and Whitaker’s failure to offer solace when the doctor replied.

  “Odds and evens. Odds get tobrimycin. Evens get penicillin.”

  “Sounds good to me. Got your ass well covered?”

  “God, I hope so. We’ve checked out the stickers as carefully as possible.”

  “Check out the crew, too?”

  “Yeah. Pretty good, at least for this place. There shouldn’t be any slipups.”

  “’samatter, you don’t believe in Murphy’s Law?”

  “Oh, yeah, I believe in it like hell. I just think we’re gonna get through this study in one piece.”

  “Well, good luck. Lemme know how it goes.”

  “Sure. Right.”

  The two doctors picked up their trays with the used crockery, deposited them, and left the cafeteria.

  Whitaker hoped against hope that he could remember what he had just overheard. He would have a difficult enough time carrying out his plan even if he had all this information accurately recorded. It would be doomed if but one detail were incorrect.

  But he would get it right this time and he would confound his colleagues back at Van’s Can. They thought he couldn’t do it. But with the help of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, by God, he would!

  The most crucial bit of information he had just learned was the protocol numbers. As it happened, it was the easiest to forget. He would jot the numbers on his paper napkin. And, he was pleased to submit, for this very necessity he had planned ahead. He removed a number two pencil from his breast pocket and pressed the point to the napkin. The point broke.

  “Quick, Ethel, do you have a pen or a pencil?”

  “What is this with a pen when I’ve been burned half to death?”

  “Please, Ethel, I’ve got to write something down. It’s an emergency.”

  “Oh, all right already.” She offered him her pen. It was a fountain pen. One seldom saw such an instrument in these days of throwaway plastic ball-points.

  Frequently fountain pens tend to leak. Ethel’s did.

  When Whitaker finished, the figures were barely legible. The rest of the napkin was saturated with blue ink.

  Ethel had watched the process with interest. “Here,” she said, offering her napkin. “Wipe your fingers.”

  He accepted her napkin and wiped vigorously. It didn’t do much good. It never did, not since his days in parochial school, when, over the months, ink had gradually become the finish for his desk and chair.

  “What’s with that?” Ethel asked. “‘Odd tobrimycin, even penicillin’ . . . what does that mean?”

  “It’s just a project I’ve got to do. It’s not important.”

  “But you said it was an emergency.”

  Whitaker despaired of ever getting his hands clean with a paper napkin. He crushed it into a ball and dropped it on the table. Whence Ethel retrieved it and began dabbing at her coffee-stained white skirt, thus dying it a light blue. The blue ink dabs, together with the brown coffee stains, gave her uniform the appearance of a painful bruise.

  “What was it you were saying, Ethel?”

  “You should listen more careful, Bruce. It isn’t like you not to listen.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am. But I just had to hear what those doctors were talking about.”

  “Whyever for?”

  “It’s just this project I’ve got. Now, please: What were you telling me?”

  “Well, I was just telling you not to feel bad if you can’t help me.”

  “If I can’t help you!” Whitaker sounded offended.

  “I mean with my job here and my problem with Sister Eileen.”

  “Oh, but Ethel, I am going to help you. That’s why I had to pay such special attention to those doctors. They don’t know it, but they’re helping me help you. Help us.”

  “Bruce . . .” Ethel’s brow was furrowed. “I don’t understand you. I really don’t.”

  “Ethel, you said that if Sister Eileen were gone from here, your job would be secure, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes. It’s Sister Eileen who’s threatening me. If she weren’t here, there’d be no one to fire me . . . far as I can see.”

  “Well, that’s it. Just trust me and I’ll get you through this.”

  “Gee, Bruce, I’ve never had anyone take care of me like you do. Not even my parents. It’s a funny feeling . . . but I kind of like it.”

  It was a bit of a magic moment for them. They leaned closer across the table, both spilling their coffee. Fortunately, by now there was very little left to spill.

  Ethel’s nose wrinkled. “Bruce what is that smell?” She glanced under the table. “Did something die?”

  Whitaker sniffed. He did not detect any particular odor. But then the sensory perception of smell does tend to neutralize itself over a period of time. “I don’t get any smell, Ethel.”

  “Oh, yes, Bruce. If you don’t mind me saying so, it seems to be you.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  Whitaker sniffed again, more intently.

  “I believe you may be right, Ethel.” Gradually, he was remembering. He reached into his trouser pocket. It was there, all right. It blended into his hand and fingers the way the handle of a good golf club should. Very carefully he removed it, keeping it close to his side so onlookers couldn’t see it. Ethel, of course could.

  “Oh, my God, Bruce, what is it? Is that a fetus, Bruce? Oh, my God, Bruce, why would you carry a fetus around in your pocket? Oh, my God, Bruce, that is gross!”

  “Quiet, Ethel. It’s not a fetus.” But Whitaker was studying the object as if it might be something akin to a fetus. “Ethel, do you know if penicillin can grow on baloney?”

  “Baloney! Do you mean to tell me that is baloney?”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact ... at least it was baloney.”

  “Where in the world did you get it? And why would you carry baloney around in your pocket?” For the first time in their relationship, Ethel began to seriously wonder about Bruce. After all, she began to reason, how far can you trust someone who carries a slice of baloney around in his pants’ pocket until the meat begins to grow a culture?

  “Ethel, you’ll jus
t have to trust me on this. I did somebody a favor by taking this baloney. Honest. Then I forgot all about it until now. Honest, Ethel, it is just a fluke. Forgive me?”

  Ethel thought about that one for a while. “Well . . . okay, I guess. But I still think this is a bit strange.”

  They continued to sit across from each other but the magic moment had been somewhat spoiled. Not unlike the baloney.

  Ethel had to think things through once more. It was a new and wonderful feeling being protected and looked after by someone for the first time in her life. But when that someone carried dead baloney around in his pocket, the rapture becomes somewhat modified.

  * * *

  “That is almost unbelievable: The entire riot was caused by inferior marijuana?” Inspector Walter Koznicki observed.

  “Yup,” Lieutenant Ned Harris replied. “One kid bought a bad joint from another kid. The trouble was the one kid was Hell’s Kitchen and the other guy was Devil Drivers. And both gangs were at Cobo in force.”

  “So what began as a war between two gangs grew into a full-scale riot.” Koznicki frowned. “It makes me wonder whether everything that goes wrong in this city is caused by drugs or dope.”

  “Kinda seems that way don’t it,” Harris agreed. “Even muggers usually go through a pawnshop to support a habit. I guess some of the domestic disturbances are just bad blood between a couple or a triangle. But even some of them start when somebody is snorting . . . or drinking.”

  “What are the damages for the other night?”

  Harris consulted his note pad. “Let’s see . . . seventy-three injured—twelve still hospitalized—luckily no one killed.”

  Koznicki shook his head.

  “And all over a lousy joint!” Harris added.

  “Do the media have the complete story yet? Including the marijuana?”

  “As far as I’ve been able to tell, so far only Cox of the Free Press has it.”

  Koznicki smiled. “Ah, yes, Cox of the Free Press.”

  “He got it about the same time we did, I think. So far, it’s his exclusive.”

  “There is no reason to hold it any longer. You might as well hold a news conference. Mr. Cox will still have his scoop.”

  Harris was about to leave the office. He hesitated. “Is there something else, Walt? You’ve been sort of glum the last day or so.”

  Harris, tall, handsome, black, had moved through the Detroit Police Department virtually in Koznicki’s shadow. Koznicki, almost ten years Harris’s senior, had gone rather quickly from patrol to homicide, from sergeant to lieutenant to inspector. Harris had followed suit and everyone believed that one day he too would be an inspector. In the homicide department, Koznicki and Harris had been partners at one time. They remained close friends. They were sensitive to one another.

  Koznicki waved a hand, as if brushing away Harris’s concern. “It’s nothing.”

  “Something.”

  “Oh, I’ve been a bit concerned about Father Koesler.”

  “Koesler! What’s he been up to?”

  The priest’s involvement in several homicide investigations over the past few years had never set well with Harris. He was a strong believer that murder was a matter for professionals to investigate. There was no room for amateurs in something so serious.

  The fact that Koesler would have agreed wholeheartedly with Harris made no difference. With Harris it was an emotional reaction. Intellectually, Harris would admit that the relatively few times Koesler had been involved in police business, he had been practically dragged in because he was a natural source for consultation on religious matters, or because he was simply there on the scene and thus involved. Intellectually, too, Harris would have had to admit that when drawn into an investigation, Koesler had proven helpful. Sometimes to the point of actually solving the case. And this, emotionally, was Harris’s complaint.

  If there were a reasonable aspect to Harris’s standpoint, it would be that the department might be mesmerized by Koesler’s luck and grow somewhat dependent on him. Down that road, Harris was certain, lay disaster. Thus he was not overjoyed when Walt Koznicki dropped Koesler’s name.

  “Is your Father Koesler ill or something?” Harris inquired with no noticeable concern.

  “No; nothing like that. He is substituting as a chaplain in St. Vincent’s Hospital.”

  “Right in our backyard,” Harris commented, not happily. “But why should that give you concern? Nothing wrong with being a chaplain, is there? I mean, he’s qualified; he is a priest, after all.”

  “No, no. It’s just that he has a premonition that something bad is about to happen at St. Vincent’s.”

  “A premonition! Really, Walt!”

  “You do not know him as I do, Ned. Father is not one to cry wolf. And when it comes to an intuitive sense, he has been right more often than anyone else I know. So if he has a premonition of evil, I tend to pay attention.”

  “But, Walt, that’s something like saying that things come to a conclusion at a mortuary. Things like that happen in a hospital. People are sick. People die. It happens whether Father Koesler is there or not.”

  “He is not concerned with the ordinary, expected occurrences of hospital routine. He is worried that something extraordinary might happen at St. Vincent’s.”

  “‘Something extraordinary,’ Walt? You’re talking about murder, aren’t you?”

  “That was the ultimate concern.”

  “Even then—even if he’s right—there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re not in the business of preventing homicide; we just investigate it.”

  “I am well aware of that. I am concerned mainly because if he is proven correct, he is there in the midst of it. He could be drawn into it innocently.”

  “There is always another possibility, Walt.”

  “What?”

  “That he’s wrong.”

  “I hope you are right.”

  “I have a premonition. It’s that Father Koesler is wrong. And I’ll match my premonition against his any day. Make you feel any better?”

  Koznicki sighed deeply. He wanted to argue the point no more. “You win, Ned. All is well.”

  * * *

  Sister Rosamunda was making her rounds. She was trying not to be bitter. It was not easy. Her bones seemed to ache clear through to the marrow. She was feeling her years and trying not to show it.

  Put her on the shelf, would they? Well! We’ll see about that!

  She had checked the Crawford woman and her neighbor, Millie Power. All appeared normal there. Power’s pneumonia seemed stabilized and Crawford was just scared, as well she might be, being operated on tomorrow. Rosamunda promised herself and Crawford a visit tonight to try to quiet and reassure the patient into a decent night’s sleep.

  The next patient on her list was an Alice Walker in 2218-A, who had been admitted earlier this day.

  Rosamunda entered the room, her practiced eye catching all the essentials at a glance. The bed nearest the door was vacant. Too much of that going on at St. Vincent’s. A hospital’s financial situation is not helped by empty beds.

  Obviously, Alice Walker was very elderly and very ill. She seemed to be sleeping, but you could never tell just by looking. Her wispy white hair was matted from perspiration. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken. She lay perfectly still. Only the merest periodic rise and fall of her chest indicated she was breathing.

  There was nothing on her bedstand next to the window but a bare tray on which was a water pitcher and an empty glass. No card, no flower, no personal effect. Likely, Alice Walker’s friends and relations were gone before her or were unable to visit her. Rosamunda had seen it hundreds of times. An old person, usually a woman, who had outlived her contemporaries. There is no one as alone as one who reaches the end of life without anyone left who cares. Well, Rosamunda would be the one who cared.

  The nun made a conscious effort to see not a barely animated relic, but a total woman. She had been a child, a young woman, a mother, a grandmother. Once
she had given life to others, cared for them. Now she was in desperate need of care for herself. Everyone she might have depended on was gone. If help came now, and that was not likely, it would have to come from some stranger.

  Rosamunda stood at the bedside. She could tell the patient was resting and not in deep sleep.

  “How do you feel, dear?” Rosamunda touched the woman’s shoulder.

  Alice Walker opened her eyes and seemed startled to see someone in a traditional religious habit. “All right, I guess. Tired. Sister . . .”

  “Rosamunda. We’re about the same age; why don’t you call me Rosey. Other people do, but mostly behind my back. “

  Alice Walker smiled weakly.

  “What’s ailing you, Alice?”

  “Oh, gall bladder. Been acting up. I guess they’re going to take it out. Another part of me in the grave ahead of time.”

  It was Rosamunda’s turn to smile. “Cheer up, Sweetie, gall bladder’s the in operation these days. All the swells have it. You’re just being fashionable. Says here on the chart that you’re a Catholic. Would you like Communion tomorrow morning?”

  “That would be nice. Can I go to confession first?”

  “Uh-huh. We’ve got a priest for that. I’ll ask him to see you before Communion. I can bring you Communion but we’ve got to hunt up a priest to absolve you. Just as well! Give them something to do.” It was said only partially in jest. She still smarted from what she considered Koesler’s meddling. “In the meantime, let me leave this little brochure with you. Explains the pastoral care department. Got some handy prayers, too. Read it once if you get a chance. Then I’ll be back later on and we’ll have a nice chat.”

  “That would be good.” Alice, sensing she had found a friend, was grateful.

  Rosamunda was about to leave but hesitated. There was something . . . something unspoken, but something wrong. Her extensive experience suggested there was something more that needed attention. She returned to the bedside.

  “Alice, something else is wrong, isn’t it? Something besides your gall bladder.”

  “I’m an old lady. There’s lots wrong with me.”

  “No, there’s something you want to tell me about. What is it? Are you ashamed or embarrassed? Don’t be. By now, you and I have heard everything.”