left behind in the room.
I snagged it off Housekeeping's cart. On its way to the elephant's graveyard, otherwise."
Pulling it from her lab coat—pockets bulging with stethoscope, hemostats, treatment regimens, a ruler to lay along EKG tracings,
prescription forms—she handed me the notebook I'd left with our mysterious departed patient. I glanced quickly through it.
Page after page, top to bottom, margin to margin, in a neat, close hand. Written straight out with almost no corrections.
Her beeper sounded again. She punched the button, knocked back the last of her coffee and stood.
"Richard said it was important to you. No problem. Things can get lost in the shuffle around here. Hell, peopfe get lost in
the shuffle around here."
"Thanks, Lola."
"For what?"
"For caring, I guess."
"Yeah. Well. I think I did at first, anyway. Now I talk to you down here, go back up there and save a life: what's the difference?
I sew one guy's heart back together, another one's just going to roll in the door ten minutes later with an EMT'sfinger jammed
into his ventricle."
"I'm not sure I believe that."
"That I don't care?"
I nodded.
"I'm sure you don't want to."
Her beeper sounded again. Insistent, shrill, this time. Simultaneously there came an overhead page: Stat to ER-2, stat to ER-2. Code blue. Code blue.
"We're all little Dutch boys, Lewis. And the dikes are giving way all around us."
She grinned.
"No pun intended."
14
THREE CALLS THAT morning, beginning as I came in the door from the hospital, points on a line pulling together discontinuous
events and years.
"Lewis, that you, man?"
Since I had never heaitl his voice before, I didn't recognize it.
"I'm out."
So I said something noncommittal.
"They threw me out. Whoa, I told them. Wait a minute, I wanta see my lawyer. You are your lawyer, they said. Hard to defeat that kind of logic."
"Zeke?"
"The same. Well, not the same, truth be told. Actually, quite different right now. Gola's the only home I can remember, you know? Damn there's a lot of stuff going on all the time out here. Traffic shooting by, people walking straight at you from ever' which
direction, shouting at each other from two blocks away. Some kind of siren screaming past ever' couple minutes. Always like
this, huh?"
"Pretty much."
"You |>eople could do with some peace and quiet"
"I'm sure we could. On the other hand, we can make a trip to the bathroom or eat a meal without getting a ground-down spoon
handle shoved up our ribs."
"Lewis. Hey, I read the Times-Picayune first thing this morning, see 'bout the competition, find out what I'm getting myself into out here. Twenty-one murders in
seven days, am I right? Way things look to me, most of the city, you so much as step out to get your mail you're taking your
life in your hands."
"You're right."
"You know I am."
"And here you are now, out here with the rest and the best of us."
"Five hours, twenty-nine minutes and some-odd seconds. Very odd. Wearing this fine blue suit, hard shoes, worried look and the People of Louisiana's best wishes. Damn you got some fine women walking the streets. Good behavior, they told me back at Gola. Now, we both know better than that, don't we?"
"So what's going to happen to the paper?"
"Boy name of Hog taken it over. Worked with him some, boy could jus' be all right. Way past time for a change, everybody knew that. Last few years, you read the paper and you might as well be watching some rerun
from nineteen sixty-two. Who the hell are these guys in leisure suits and these long-ass shirt collars up there, they look realto you? Old men ought to shut up once
you done heard all their stories."
Ezekiel was my age. We'd "met" when I published Mole, a novel starting off with a killer's release from prison and going on to document the cobbling together and collapse of his
life outside, and received a letter from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Ezekiel had been at Angola over
I snagged it off Housekeeping's cart. On its way to the elephant's graveyard, otherwise."
Pulling it from her lab coat—pockets bulging with stethoscope, hemostats, treatment regimens, a ruler to lay along EKG tracings,
prescription forms—she handed me the notebook I'd left with our mysterious departed patient. I glanced quickly through it.
Page after page, top to bottom, margin to margin, in a neat, close hand. Written straight out with almost no corrections.
Her beeper sounded again. She punched the button, knocked back the last of her coffee and stood.
"Richard said it was important to you. No problem. Things can get lost in the shuffle around here. Hell, peopfe get lost in
the shuffle around here."
"Thanks, Lola."
"For what?"
"For caring, I guess."
"Yeah. Well. I think I did at first, anyway. Now I talk to you down here, go back up there and save a life: what's the difference?
I sew one guy's heart back together, another one's just going to roll in the door ten minutes later with an EMT'sfinger jammed
into his ventricle."
"I'm not sure I believe that."
"That I don't care?"
I nodded.
"I'm sure you don't want to."
Her beeper sounded again. Insistent, shrill, this time. Simultaneously there came an overhead page: Stat to ER-2, stat to ER-2. Code blue. Code blue.
"We're all little Dutch boys, Lewis. And the dikes are giving way all around us."
She grinned.
"No pun intended."
14
THREE CALLS THAT morning, beginning as I came in the door from the hospital, points on a line pulling together discontinuous
events and years.
"Lewis, that you, man?"
Since I had never heaitl his voice before, I didn't recognize it.
"I'm out."
So I said something noncommittal.
"They threw me out. Whoa, I told them. Wait a minute, I wanta see my lawyer. You are your lawyer, they said. Hard to defeat that kind of logic."
"Zeke?"
"The same. Well, not the same, truth be told. Actually, quite different right now. Gola's the only home I can remember, you know? Damn there's a lot of stuff going on all the time out here. Traffic shooting by, people walking straight at you from ever' which
direction, shouting at each other from two blocks away. Some kind of siren screaming past ever' couple minutes. Always like
this, huh?"
"Pretty much."
"You |>eople could do with some peace and quiet"
"I'm sure we could. On the other hand, we can make a trip to the bathroom or eat a meal without getting a ground-down spoon
handle shoved up our ribs."
"Lewis. Hey, I read the Times-Picayune first thing this morning, see 'bout the competition, find out what I'm getting myself into out here. Twenty-one murders in
seven days, am I right? Way things look to me, most of the city, you so much as step out to get your mail you're taking your
life in your hands."
"You're right."
"You know I am."
"And here you are now, out here with the rest and the best of us."
"Five hours, twenty-nine minutes and some-odd seconds. Very odd. Wearing this fine blue suit, hard shoes, worried look and the People of Louisiana's best wishes. Damn you got some fine women walking the streets. Good behavior, they told me back at Gola. Now, we both know better than that, don't we?"
"So what's going to happen to the paper?"
"Boy name of Hog taken it over. Worked with him some, boy could jus' be all right. Way past time for a change, everybody knew that. Last few years, you read the paper and you might as well be watching some rerun
from nineteen sixty-two. Who the hell are these guys in leisure suits and these long-ass shirt collars up there, they look realto you? Old men ought to shut up once
you done heard all their stories."
Ezekiel was my age. We'd "met" when I published Mole, a novel starting off with a killer's release from prison and going on to document the cobbling together and collapse of his
life outside, and received a letter from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Ezekiel had been at Angola over
Similar Books
