A Case of Need

“Good. Continue.”

  That was harder. It needed a new piece of paper.

  I had to tear the old one off the pad before I could begin with a new piece. And when I had torn the old one off, I had forgotten what was on it. Complicated. Confusing.

  “Go on, John. Ninety-three.”

  “Ninety-three minus seven.” I paused. “Eighty-five. No. Eighty-six.”

  “Go on.”

  “Seventy-nine.”

  “Yes.”

  “Seventy-three. No. Seventy-four. No, no. Wait a minute.”

  I was tearing off pieces of paper. So hard. And so very confusing. It was so much work to concentrate.

  “Eighty-seven.”

  “No.”

  “Eighty-five.”

  “John, what day is this?”

  “Day?”

  What a silly question. Norton was full of silly questions today. What day is this?

  “Today,” I said.

  “What is the date?”

  “The date?”

  “Yes, the date.”

  “May,” I said. It was the date of May.

  “John, where are you?”

  “I am in the hospital,” I said, looking down at my whites. I opened my eyes a fraction, because they were heavy and I was groggy and the light hurt my eyes. I wished he would keep quiet and let me sleep. I wanted to sleep. I needed the sleep. I was very, very tired.

  “What hospital?”

  “The hospital.”

  “What hospital?”

  “The—” I started to say something, but couldn’t remember what I intended to say. My headache was fierce now, pounding on the right eye, on the front of my head on the right side, a terrible pounding headache.

  “Raise your left hand, John.”

  “What?”

  “Raise your left hand, John.”

  I heard him, heard the words, but they were foolish. No one would pay attention to those words. No one would bother.

  “What?”

  The next thing I felt was a vibration, on the right side of my head. A funny rumbling vibration. I opened my eyes and saw a girl. She was pretty, but she was doing strange things to me. Brown fluffy things were falling off my head. Drifting down. Norton was watching and calling for something, but I did not understand the words. I was nearly asleep, it was all very strange. After the fluff came a lather.

  And the razor. I looked at it, and the lather, and I was suddenly sick, no warning, no nothing, but vomit all over and Norton was saying, “Hurry it up, let’s go.”

  And then they brought in the drill. I could barely see it, my eyes kept closing, and I was sick again.

  The last thing I said was “No holes in my head.”

  I said it very clearly and slowly and distinctly.

  I think.

  Genitourinary.

  A liter and a half.

  Actually a partial agonist, meaning that in low doses it has a morphine-like effect, but in high doses in an addict, it induces withdrawal symptoms.

  FRIDAY, SATURDAY & SUNDAY

  OCTOBER 14, 15 & 16

  ONE

  IT FELT LIKE SOMEBODY had tried to cut off my head and hadn’t done a very good job. When I woke up I buzzed for the nurse and demanded more morphine. She said I couldn’t have it in a smiling, difficult-patient way and I suggested she go to hell. She didn’t much like that but I didn’t much like her. I reached up and felt the bandages on the side of my skull and made a few comments. She didn’t like those any better so she left. Pretty soon Norton Hammond came in.

  “You’re a hell of a barber,” I said, touching my head.

  “I thought we did pretty well.”

  “How many holes?”

  “Three. Right parietal. We took out quite a bit of blood. You remember any of that?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You were sleepy, vomiting, and one pupil was dilated. We didn’t wait for the X rays; we put the bun-holes right in.”

  “Oh,” I said. ” When do I get out of here?”

  “Three or four days, at most.”

  “Are you kidding? Three or four days?”

  “An epidural,” he said, “is a rugged thing. We want to be sure you rest.”

  “Do I have any choice?”

  “They always say,” he said, “that doctors make the worst patients.”

  “More morphine,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Darvon.”

  “No.”

  “Aspirin?”

  “All right,” he said. “You can have some aspirin.”

  “Real aspirin? Not sugar pills?”

  “Watch it,” he said, “or we’ll call a psychiatric consult.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  He just laughed and left the room.

  I slept for a while, and then Judith came in to see me. She acted annoyed with me for a while, but not too long. I explained to her that it wasn’t my fault and she said I was a damned fool and kissed me.

  Then the police came, and I pretended to be asleep until they left.

  In the evening, the nurse got me some newspapers and I searched for news about Art. There wasn’t any. Some lurid stories about Angela Harding and Roman Jones, but nothing else. Judith came again during evening visiting hours and told me that Betty and the kids were fine and that Art would be released the next day.

  I said that was great news and she just smiled.

  THERE IS NO SENSE OF TIME IN A HOSPITAL. One day blends into the next; the routine—temperatures, meals, doctors’ rounds, more temperatures, more meals—was everything. Sanderson came to see me, and Fritz, and some other people. And the police, only this time I couldn’t fake sleep. I told them everything I knew and they listened and made notes. Toward the end of the second day I felt better. I was stronger, my head was clearer, and I was sleeping less.

  I told Hammond and he just grunted and said to wait another day.

  Art Lee came to see me in the afternoon. He had the old, wry grin on his face but he looked tired. And older.

  “Hi,” I said. “How’s it feel to be out?”

  “Good,” he said.

  He looked at me from the foot of the bed and shook his head. “Hurt much?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Sorry it happened,” he said.

  “It’s all right. It was interesting, in a way. My first epidural hematoma.”

  I paused. There was a question I wanted to ask him. I had been thinking about a lot of things and kicking myself for my foolish mistakes. The worst had been calling that reporter into the Lees’ house that night. That had been very bad. But there were other bad things. So I wanted to ask him.

  Instead, I said, “The police have things wrapped up now, I imagine.”

  He nodded. “Roman Jones was supplying Angela. He made her do the abortion. When it failed—and you got curious—he went over to Angela’s house, probably to kill her. He decided he was being followed and caught you. Then he went to her place and went after her with a razor. That was what happened to your forehead.”

  “Nice.”

  “Angela fought him with a kitchen knife. Slashed him up a little. It must have been a pleasant scene, him with the razor and her with the knife. Finally she managed to hit him with a chair and knock him out the window.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yes, apparently.”

  I nodded.

  We looked at each other for a while.

  “I appreciate your help,” he said, “in all this.”

  “Any time. You sure it was help?”

  He smiled. “I’m a free man.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said.

  He shrugged and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “The publicity wasn’t your fault,” he said. “Besides, I was getting tired of this town. Ready for a change.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Back to California, I guess. I’d like to live in Los Angeles. Maybe I’ll deliver babies for movie
stars.”

  “Movie stars don’t have babies. They have agents.”

  He laughed. For a moment, it was the old laugh, the momentary self-pleasure that came when he had just heard something that amused him and had hit upon an amusing response. He was about to speak, then closed his mouth and stared at the floor. He stopped laughing.

  I said, “Have you been back to the office?”

  “Just to close it up. I’m making arrangements for the movers.”

  “When will you go?”

  “Next week.”

  “So soon?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not eager to stay.”

  “No,” I said, “I imagine you’re not.”

  I SUPPOSE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED afterward was the result of my anger. It was already a rotten business, stinking rotten, and I should have left it alone. There was no need to continue anything. I could let it go and forget about it. Judith wanted to have a farewell party for Art; I told her no, that he wouldn’t like it, not really.

  That made me angry, too.

  On the third hospital day I bitched to Hammond until he finally agreed to discharge me. I guess the nurses had been complaining to him as well. So they let me go at 3:10 in the afternoon, and Judith brought me clothes and drove me home. On the way, I said, “Turn right at the next corner.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to make a stop.”

  “John—”

  “Come on, Judith. A quick stop.”

  She frowned, but turned right at the corner. I directed her across Beacon Hill, to Angela Harding’s street. A police car was parked in front of her apartment. I got out and went up to the second floor. A cop stood outside the door.

  “Dr. Berry, Mallory Lab,” I said in an official tone. “Have the blood samples been taken yet?”

  The cop looked confused. “Blood samples?”

  “Yes. The scrapings from the room. Dried samples. For twenty-six factor determinations. You know.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t know.

  “Dr. Lazare is worried about them,” I said. “Wanted me to check.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” the cop said. “There were some medical guys here yesterday. Those the ones?”

  “No,” I said, “they were the dermatology people.”

  “Uh. Oh. Well, you better check for yourself.” He opened the door for me. “Just don’t touch anything. They’re dusting.”

  I entered the apartment. It was a shambles, furniture overturned, blood spattered on couches and tables. Three men were working on a glass, dusting powder onto it and blowing it off, then photographing the fingerprints. One looked up, “Help you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The chair—”

  “Over there,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the chair in the corner. “But don’t touch it.”

  I went over and stared at the chair. It was not very heavy, a cheap wood kitchen chair, rather nondescript. But it was sturdily made. There was some blood on one leg.

  I looked back at the three men. “You dusted this one yet?”

  “Yeah. Funny thing. There’s hundreds of prints in this room. Dozens of people. It’s going to take us years to unravel it all. But there were two things we couldn’t get prints from. That chair and the doorknob to the outside door.”

  “How’s that?”

  The man shrugged. “Been wiped.”

  “Wiped?”

  “Yeah. Somebody cleaned up the chair and the doorknob. Anyhow, that’s the way it looks. Damned funny. Nothing else was wiped, not even the knife she used on her wrists.”

  I nodded. “The blood boys been here yet?”

  “Yeah. Came and went.”

  “O.K.,” I said. “Can I make a call? I want to check back with the lab.”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  I went to the phone, picked it up, and dialed the weather bureau. When the voice came on, I said, “Give me Dr. Lazare.”

  “—sunny and cool, with a high in the mid-fifties. Partly cloudly in late afternoon—”

  “Fred? John Berry. I’m over at the room now.”

  “—with fifty-percent chance of showers—”

  “Yeah, they say the samples were taken. You sure you haven’t gotten them yet?”

  “—tomorrow, fair and colder with a high in the forties—”

  “Oh. I see. O.K. Good. Right. See you.”

  “—wind from the east at fifteen miles per hour—”

  I hung up and turned to the three men. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  Nobody paid any attention to me as I left. Nobody really cared. The men who were there were doing routine duty. They’d done things like this before, dozens of times. It was just routine.

  POSTSCRIPT: MONDAY

  OCTOBER 17

  I WAS IN A BAD MOOD MONDAY. I sat around for most of the morning drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and tasting a lousy sour taste in my mouth. I kept telling myself that I could drop it and nobody would care. It was over. I couldn’t help Art and I couldn’t undo anything. I could only make things worse.

  Besides, none of this was Weston’s fault, not really. Even though I wanted to blame somebody, I couldn’t blame him. And he was an old man.

  It as a waste of time. I drank coffee and told myself that, over and over. A waste of time.

  I did it anyway.

  Shortly before noon I drove over to the Mallory and walked into Weston’s office. He was going over some microscopic slides and dictating his findings into a small desk recorder. He stopped when I came in.

  “Hello, John. What brings you over here?”

  I said, “How do you feel?”

  “Me?” He laughed. “I feel fine. How do you feel?” He nodded to the bandages on my head. “I heard what happened.”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  I looked at his hands. They were under the table, in his lap. He had dropped them down as soon as I had come into the room.

  I said, “Hurt much?”

  “What?”

  “Your hands.”

  He gave me a puzzled look or tried to. It didn’t work. I nodded to his hands and he brought them out. Two fingers of his left hand were bandaged.

  “Accident?”

  “Yes. Clumsy of me. I was chopping an onion at home—helping out in the kitchen—and I cut myself. Just a superficial wound, but embarrassing. You’d think after all these years I’d know how to handle a knife.”

  “You bandaged it yourself?”

  “Yes. It was just a small cut.”

  I sat down in the chair opposite his desk and lit a cigarette, aware that he was watching me carefully. I blew a stream of smoke out, toward the ceiling. He kept his face calm and blank; he was making it hard for me. But that was his right, I guess. I’d probably do the same.

  “Was there something you wanted to see me about?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  We stared at each other for a moment, and then Weston pushed his microscope to one side and turned off the recorder.

  “Was it about the path diagnosis on Karen Randall? I’d heard you were concerned.”

  “I was,” I said.

  “Would you feel better if someone else looked them over? Sanderson?”

  “Not now,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter now. Not legally, anyway.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said.

  We stared at each other again, a long silence falling. I didn’t know how to bring it up, but the silence was killing me.

  “The chair,” I said, “was wiped. Did you know that?”

  For a moment, he frowned, and I thought he was going to play dumb. But he didn’t; instead, he nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “She told me she’d wipe it.”

  “And the doorknob.”

  “Yes. And the doorknob.”

  “When did you show up?”

  He sighed. “It was late,” he said. “I had worked late at the labs and was on my way home. I stopped
by Angela’s apartment to see how she was. I often did. Just stopped in. Looked in on her.”

  “Were you treating her addiction?”

  “You mean, was I supplying her?”

  “I mean, were you treating her?”

  “No,” he said. “I knew it was beyond me. I considered it, of course, but I knew that I couldn’t handle it, and I might make things worse. I urged her to go for treatment, but…”

  He shrugged.

  “So instead, you visited her frequently.”

  “Just to try and help her over the rough time. It was the least I could do.”

  “And Thursday night?”

  “He was already there when I arrived. I heard scuffling and shouts, so I opened the door, and found him chasing her with a razor. She had a kitchen knife—a long one, the kind you use for bread—and she was fighting back. He was trying to kill her because she was a witness. He said that, over and over. ‘You’re a witness, baby,’ in a low voice. I don’t remember exactly what happened next. I had always been fond of Angela. He said something to me, some words, and started at me with the razor. He looked terrible; Angela had already cut him with the knife, or at least, his clothes…”

  “So you picked up the chair.”

  “No. I backed off. He went after Angela. He was facing her, away from me. That was when…I picked up the chair.”

  I pointed to his fingers. “And your cuts?”

  “I don’t remember. I guess he did it. There was a little slash on the sleeve of my coat, too, when I got home. But I don’t remember.”

  “After the chair—”

  “He fell down. Unconscious. Just fell.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Angela was afraid for me. She told me to leave immediately, that she could take care of everything. She was terrified that I would be involved. And I…”

  “You left,” I said.

  He looked at his hands. “Yes.”

  “Was Roman dead when you left?”

  “I don’t really know. He had fallen near the window. I guess she just pushed him out and then wiped up. But I don’t know for sure. I don’t know for sure.”

  I looked at his face, at the lines in the skin and the white of the hair, and remembered how he had been as a teacher, how he had prodded and pushed and cajoled, how I had respected him, how he had taken the residents every Thursday afternoon to a nearby bar for drinks and talk, how he used to bring a big birthday cake in every year on his birthday and share it with everyone on the floor. It all came back, the jokes, the good times, the bad times, the questions and explanations, the long hours in the dissecting room, the points of fact and the matters of uncertainty.