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  The cop sat back and rubbed a lock of chestnut hair off his forehead. “Why’s a nurse need to know Karate?”

  Charlie made a show of looking over at the reclining giant. “Really?”

  He waved Charlie off. “Seriously, how often does something like that happen? You a soldier or something before doin’ this? How come you know this stuff?”

  “Number one, this kind of thing happens enough that it comes in handy more often than I’d like. And B, it’s a long story.”

  Julie tipped her head to one side. Charlie noticed that she was kind of tough/pretty when curiosity opened up her face. “Got a short version?”

  Charlie laughed. “Exactly.”

  “Huh?” the cop and Julie said simultaneously.

  Carlos rolled into the room with a gurney and Charlie said, “Another time gang. I’m gonna’ give Charles here a hand with our buddy.” He turned to Carlos. “Okay if I call you Charles?”

  “Only if I can call you Carlito.”

  “Very cool. Like Pacino in Scar Face.”

  Carlos drew out a heavy Colombian accent. “Let me introduce you to my leeetle friend.”

  “That a short joke?” Charlie asked.

  Carlos glanced at the fallen goliath. “Not. Ever.”

  Julie snorted. “First of all, it’s Carlito’s Way not Scar Face. Second, Pacino’s character in Scar Face was Tony Montoya. And the line is ‘say hello to my little friend.’ Not ‘let me introduce you.’” She shook her head as she walked over to the desk. “Amateurs.”

  A man in scrubs with sleep-shattered eyes bustled into the admitting area, shrugging on a crumpled lab-style coat that had most recently seen duty as a pillow. He yawned, “What’s the emerrrr-gennn-ceee?”

  “Didn’t Leeson tell you?” Julie asked.

  The ER doc’s scruffy eyebrows rose.

  “The orderly we sent to get you,” Charlie offered.

  “Oh, sure,” the doc said. “He came in long enough to wake me up, then fainted. I deposited him on a cot.”

  Charlie turned to Carlos. “Charles?”

  “On it.” Carlos trotted of again.

  On the boards, Julie was the nurse in charge, but the doc turned to Charlie. It wasn’t a sexist move but due more to Charlie’s weight as a person. Short or not, he drew the energy in the room. It had been like that his entire life. But this ability to pull attention was a double-edged sword. Charlie received as much attention from assholes as he did from decent people. A life of this necessitated he learn to fight better than the average asshole. He spent a good portion of his adolescence in dim New York gymnasiums and Boys’ Clubs, a student of several schools of martial arts, weight lifting and bruises.

  The doc squinted his wet road maps at Charlie. “So?”

  Charlie opened his palm like a spokesmodel and offered up the sleeping customer.

  “Gigantor here’s got trauma to both ear drums and maybe even a mild concussion.” A concerned frown creased Charlie’s forehead. “You might want to think about checking for a subdural in the rear of the skull, too. But I don’t think he’s got one.”

  The doctor moved over to the snoring giant and pressed a couple of fingers against his throat. He shook his watch out of his sleeve, it flared in the wire tangle of hair at the cuff. “Tell me, doctor,” he said to Charlie. “What makes you think he doesn’t have a subdural hematoma?”

  Charlie paused a beat. “Because I didn’t hit him hard enough for that.”

  The doc glared. “You struck this man?”

  “Had to.”

  The doc straightened as if, by remote control, someone extended a rod that ran from his asshole to his shoulder blades. Charlie could tell right away that the man wasn’t seeing him but projecting some other old bullshit. That’s what most people were about when they tried to hand you negativity that didn’t belong to you. Even still, Charlie was tired too, and it wasn’t fair that this guy was about to dress him down for doing his job. “Listen, doctor,” Charlie started.

  “No,” the doc cut him off. “You listen, nurse.”

  Charlie sighed. His shoulders slumped. Hell with it. This was how the world worked sometimes. It’d be over in a minute, and if he played it cool he could get out of this with little more than a reprimand that Julie would lose out of his file for him later.

  “First of all,” the doctor began and crossed his arms. “I don’t know where you get off making a diagnosis about a patient—my patient—when you’re not even a second year med student. You’re a nurse. You’d do well to remember that.”

  Charlie caught a flicker out of the corner of his eye. No more motion than the beat of a fly’s wing, but his hackles went up.

  “I’m talking to you, nurse!”

  Charlie looked up, muttered, “Sorry, doctor.”

  “Secondly, how dare you strike a patient? We’re here to help people, mister, not give them contusions. Do you know what kind of legal turmoil you place this hospital in with your recklessness?”

  Charlie just looked at him. Legal turmoil and malpractice. The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath. First, do no harm lest some schmuck hire Dewie, Cheatham and Howe.

  Charlie knew that answering the doc’s questions would only make matters worse. Somewhere along the way, someone, probably one of this guy’s parents, had bullied him right into the ground and broke off a part of his soul. The part that knew better than to be mean just for the sake of fear. Now, he’d gotten through medical school, was under a mountain of debt, and by Jehosephat, it was his turn to give some back.

  He had kind of hoped that Julie would have thrown a little defense over his shoulder or something by now, but she had fallen silent.

  “Are you listening to me, pal? You’re in big trouble here.”

  Charlie attempted to look like he cared. “Yes, doctor,” he said. Trouble was: he was a rotten liar. Always had been. And it showed.

  “Oh, you don’t agree with me? You think it’s appropriate to beat a sick man?”

  “Doctor,” Charlie tried. “When this guy came in he—.”

  “When this patient arrived in our emergency room, nurse, he obviously sought medical assistance, but instead you,” he jabbed a finger at Charlie, “took it upon yourself to attack him.” The doc pointed his accusation wand back at the giant, keeping his eyes on Charlie, and that’s when Mama’s Boy leaned forward and bit it off.

  Silence thudded down over the scene. The doctor gazed at his subtracted hand, the red bleached from his huge eyes. Mama’s Boy grinned triumphant, Cro-Magnon, a trillion years from sane. Charlie’s face twisted into pity: for the doctor, for the giant, for himself. A ruby drop of blood shattered on the linoleum. The doctor shrieked.

  And, the emergency room reeled off into the night like a ship in a gale.

  ~~~~~~~~

  From the Journal of Drummond Fine, MD

  Friday, May 12th, 9:45pm

  Interesting morning. No office hours as I was a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School. The board chair at the hospital has a daughter in the MBA program and decided to donate his pet psychiatrist. The class itself is a six-week seminar on executive leadership. My lecture focused on overcoming fear in high-stress environments. In this context the word “interesting” modifies the students not the class, nor my particular contribution. (In all honesty, I could care less about training a bunch of trust fund babies to anally savage the working and middle classes while maintaining an attitude of psychological bliss.) What got my attention in that lecture hall was an almost total lack of fear.

  There was some wariness, but it wasn’t of the subject or of the hypothetical rigors of the business world. These young men and women were suspicious of each other and afraid of nothing else. Normally, when I walk into a room full of people (and this was a large lecture hall) I am struck by the miasma of emotional odor as happens when one enters a flower-filled hot house. There, though, it was as if I’d opened the door on a long unused closet in a dry climate; the scent of dust and perhaps an an
cient rodent dropping or two, but little else—the scent of emptiness.

  I paused only a moment and delivered the lecture well enough. But that sense of reciting to a room full of video projections instead of living, breathing individuals was disquieting. Many of these people will comprise the richest and most influential one percent in our country. These will be the leaders and movers, some more powerful than heads of state. And they were afraid of nothing.

  Not all sociopaths become mass murders. Some become MBAs.

  Dreamed last night that I stood on the Jersey side of the river. A great white cloud (reminded me a bit of the footage of the smoke from the towers on the 11th, but moving in toward the skyline) boiled and rolled up the on the city. It was very quiet and I can remember thinking that I’d never seen a storm like it. The cloud—more a steam if that makes sense; they are the same, after all, but that was the impression—settled over Manhattan. After a moment and through the silence, the first thin screams floated across the water. The cloud was some kind of vaporous acid and was eating the city alive.

  Experienced less than ten distinct emotions from the cloud. Maybe an anomalous low due to special circumstances at Columbia.

  1 bowel movement, deep brown, no blood.

  Urinated 6 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: Grilled chicken Panini, mixed fruit.

  Dinner: Steak salad, blue cheese dressing, 1 glass syrah.

  Water: 64 ounces.

  —DF

  Wednesday, May 17th, 9:51pm

  Ended the day with a sense of mild disgust. Began well enough, easy session Y.J. and am making progress with G.P. I’ve begun standard aversion techniques, insisting that he handle a needless hypodermic. Made him practice filling it from a glass of water then squirting the contents into the African Violet I keep next to the couch. Perhaps, I’ll move him up a notch and include the needle next session. From there, I think I’ll have him inject an orange, etc. I’d like to get him to the point where he can draw his own blood in front of me without terror. He’ll always be afraid, but when I get him at least functional within his phobia, G.P. will make an excellent case study for the new book. The rest of the day was uneventful until the end.

  Today was hospital office hours and they’ve got me in that featureless warren on the same floor as the cardiac specialists. Interesting coincidence, but also something of a tease. I can imagine mining the trove of information on potential “clients” from the offices directly across the hall, but as my father used to say, “Don’t shit where you eat, Drum.” Sessions in a dull, beige box go quickly enough. Perhaps even more quickly than those in my uptown office—the view tends to distract from time to time and the sessions seem to race by when my focus in on the patient. In any event, I was locking the outer door and the damn clasp on my briefcase let go. My notes spilled everywhere and as I stooped to pick them up I almost bumped heads with a man in a dress. Not a dress per se, but clinging, women’s jeans and a mid-drift baring tee-shirt.

  He bent down to help me with my papers and some of the foulest emotions I have ever experienced wafted over me. I’ve never been able to brook the confusion that comes from brushing up against homosexual people. I find it akin to a kind of libidinous vertigo. Usually it’s manageable; most faggots are terrifically uncomfortable with themselves at such a core level that I find my own ego energy dominant, but not with this one. He/she/it (disgusting!) was just as comfy-cozy in his backward skin as any normal person. So thrown I could barely speak when he handed me my papers and wished me a pleasant evening. Felt like screaming.

  I can only hope he was there because of some terminal heart defect. If such is the case, the world will only be improved the moment the time bomb in his shaved chest goes off.

  Woke this morning with the impression that my skull was a house and that I’d only just gotten home in time to chase away some nosey kids who’d broken in to raid the liquor cabinet. Not a full-fledged dream exactly, but a feeling that I’d nearly caught someone else in my mind upon returning to consciousness.

  Experienced thirty-one separate emotions from the cloud, including that horrendous encounter with the homosexual. Seems like a lot this soon. I’ll maintain extra vigilance. Another session may be in order sooner rather than later.

  1 bowel movement, brown, no blood, slightly soft.

  Urinated 5 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: Fruit and yoghurt

  Dinner: Enchilada and rice. 2 light beers.

  Water: 64 ounces.

  —DF

  Saturday, June 1st, 8:01pm

  Had a slow day planned. Had been looking forward to a stroll through Central Park, a visit to the zoo intended climax of the outing. I enjoy the animals; have since I was a boy. The human crowds ooh and ahh, their emotions insipid reminders of how little they actually know of their beast prisoners. Animal emotions are not as nuanced as human and in some ways this is a relief. People spend so much mental energy in the attempted disentangling of their own feelings. It’s arduous. Animals for their part, offer no such confusion. They feel what they are, entirely surface. In all truth, I can choose to screen them out, and do for the most part. The breath off a caged predator’s heart, a natural-born savannah sprinter, can be as foul as the exhalation over a rotting tooth. They’re soul-dead but I’m no necrophile. My interests lie in their reaction to my presence. Animals hate me.

  Animals fear me would be more accurate. There is no hate without fear. (Sidenote: My reaction to the homosexual bordered on hatred, yet I haven’t felt my own fear since late childhood. Could I have been afraid of him? More likely I reacted on a primal level to the biological perversion he represents—a kind of visceral revulsion to a cancerous tumor.) Animals have always shown disquiet under my gaze. I remember a visit to the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo as a small boy: one of the rare outings on which my father took my mother and me when she was able to prize him from his armchair. I stood on the other side of the bars from a small troupe of gibbons. At that stage in my development, the ability to feel others had not yet grown strong. I was aware of a malaise and general restlessness, but that could easily have been either of my parents. After a short time, the lead male took notice of my staring and began to pace. He then took to howling in a strange, deep hooting I could feel in my chest. (Strange to remember the sensation so vividly.) It wasn’t long before the others in the troupe joined in. I remember my mother’s gasp and her pointing, fleshy finger jabbing the air. Off to the side, away from the other monkeys, one of the gibbons had torn it’s own eyes out and lay bleeding on the straw. The one I had been staring at.

  And so it was off to the zoo with me today. Nothing so dramatic to report as the incident from my childhood, but I did send an enclosure full of Canis lupi into a full-throated howling. Several of the pack had explosive diarrhea and fell to snapping at each other. It was a raucous spectacle. So long as I stood there, fixing them with my eyes, they bent their necks and sang at the sky. Eventually, a small cadre of zookeepers shooed away the growing crowd, but not before I spotted one of them loading a tranquilizer pistol. The wolves’ terror smelled of hot rock and pine and shit. A good Saturday.

  Dreamed I held my father’s severed hands in my own but switched: his left in my right and vice versa. Woke sitting up in bed holding my hands in my lap, palms up. Pins and needles in my upturned palms as if the blood flow had been restricted.

  Experienced ninety-one distinct human emotions from the cloud today, and a multiple of animal. The human emotions were, as usual, varied and complex, blurry. The animal, simple but pure: mostly fear. Another session looms, but I have yet to pick a client. Perhaps I’ll take a cue from the wolves and cull an aberration from the herd.

  1 bowel movement, dark brown, no blood, good consistency.

  Urinated 4 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: Hot dog with onions, Pep
si.

  Dinner: Venison stew.

  Water: 64 ounces.

  —DF

  ~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 5

  HAD SAMUELS KNOWN that in ten minutes he would have a heart attack he might have been more direct during their conversation. He and Emily had left the coffee house and were strolling back toward the Morgan. After Emily’s bomb, they’d danced around the topic. In a week, if she wasn’t better, she was going to end her own life—what else could you say to that if you’d just met the person?

  They measured out the sidewalk squares, lit chemical orange by overhanging street lights. Samuels commented on how they resembled the lures of certain undersea fish, a light on a stick designed to attract unwary prey. Emily said she’d never been to an aquarium. He told her she must visit the one on Surf and West 8th Avenue. They spoke like a couple of teenage kids who’d just gone all the way in the back of daddy’s Ford Explorer. They both knew she had a pair of wadded up panties in her purse, but neither of them could deal with it head on.

  As they got farther from the coffee house, Samuels began to speculate on this young woman’s mental stability. Certainly she was a very nice girl, open, had wonderful manners, and had made him laugh at several points in their short time together, but this business with the psychic powers? Samuels shook his head. He didn’t know. He didn’t know.

  “What’re you thinking about?” Emily asked. “You were quiet there for a minute.”

  He looked up, caught. “I was thinking about my wife.” Not a complete lie. He’d been thinking about her several hours earlier. A blush tinted his ashen cheeks.

  Emily cast a sideways glance. “I noticed you’re not wearing a ring but that you used to.” She tipped her chin at his hand. “The dent shows on your finger.”

  “I never wear it on this day.”

  “What’s special about today?”

  “It’s her deathday.”