‘‘Oh, lordy.’’ Angie looked at the rest of us. ‘‘You’d better come, too, Celia. We might need you.’’
The emergency room was off-limits in my job description, I wasn’t on duty yet, and I still had half a milkshake left. We both knew she was simply hauling me away from Dr. McQuirter. I opened my mouth to protest, but Angie grabbed my elbow and dragged me with her.
Rosa called to Dr. Gerstein, ‘‘See you tonight.’’
Dr. Gerstein might be short and squat, but she moved fast. She was already out the door. Soon Angie and Carver were right behind her with me bringing up a reluctant rear.
‘‘Magda and Rosa work at the Overtown free clinic two evenings a week,’’ Angie explained to Carver as we hurried down the hall. ‘‘Poor folks, battered wives, prostitutes-’’
Dr. Gerstein interrupted impatiently. ‘‘You are sure, Carver, it is one of them?’’
‘‘Yes, ma’am. He was left in the emergency room sometime during the night, wearing sweats. As crazy as things were, nobody noticed when he came in. After the place calmed down, they saw him sleeping in the corner, but presumed he was a relative of one of the patients, so they let him sleep. He woke up a little while ago and started yelling that he had been-’’ He looked over his shoulder at me and stopped talking.
‘‘Fixed?’’ I asked bluntly. Angie gave me a chiding look. ‘‘I am an adult,’’ I reminded her. ‘‘I read newspapers and watch the eleven o’clock news.’’
Dr. Gerstein, still in the lead, continued quizzing Carver. ‘‘Both testicles were removed and he does not remember a thing from the time he entered a bar until he woke up here?’’
‘‘Doesn’t remember a thing,’’ Carver agreed. ‘‘Just like the others.’’
I put on speed and came abreast of Angie. ‘‘How many is that?’’
‘‘Three in three weeks. The other two were left at Jackson. I guess it was our turn. Poor guys.’’
We turned the corner by our equal-opportunity chapel, which had icons for the religions of all our patients. I caught the eye of my favorite-a Madonna with dark hair, dimples, and kind plaster eyes-and murmured, ‘‘God knows the first one deserved it.’’
‘‘How do you know?’’ Angie’s eyes flashed I share all my gossip with you.
I wished I could take back my words. Still, fair is fair. ‘‘His girlfriend-or one of them-had a baby here a few weeks ago. Dr. McQuirter delivered it for free.’’ I paused to let that virtue sink in, but the look in Angie’s eye pushed me on. ‘‘I recognized the man’s name, Anthony Miguel Williams, because he named the poor baby Zhivago Miguel and wanted Williams on the birth certificate, even though he refused to marry the baby’s mama. She cried about that the whole time she was here. You remember,’’ I called up to Dr. Gerstein. ‘‘I paged you because she was threatening to kill herself.’’
Dr. Gerstein wasn’t listening. She was heading to emergency like a horse to a barn. Angie claimed the psychiatrist had an internal magnet for people in trouble.
‘‘A guy refusing to marry somebody is no reason to do what they did,’’ Carver argued.
‘‘He’d already had three other babies by different mamas. He bragged about that. Said Zhivago was the second son he’s had this year, but the other baby was born at Jackson and his mama had to get her prenatal care at a clinic, because Anthony hadn’t met Dr. McQuirter yet.’’
‘‘Not a nice person.’’ Carver finally accepted my assessment.
We stepped through the swinging doors into chaos. Somebody had ripped magazines and flung them on the floor, overturned the newspaper box, and broken the glass front of the candy machine. The telephone from the desk decorated a silk ficus in one corner. Housekeeping staff were putting the room to rights while patients and their families huddled on the far side with frightened eyes. From one examining room came curses and shouts. ‘‘… lawyer… police!’’
Dr. Gerstein trotted in that direction. Angie gave me a wave of dismissal. ‘‘There’s nothing you can do here. Go on upstairs and start your rounds.’’
I backed up and stepped on Carver. His eyes were fixed on the examining room curtain while he pressed one hand below his belt. ‘‘Who’d do such a thing to such a nice man?’’
‘‘You know him?’’ I asked.
‘‘Not personally, but I heard it was Lyle Bradford.’’
Lyle Bradford was a big man in town. Important architect. Sat on the Orange Bowl committee. Gave money every year so Jackson Hospital could have Santa Claus for sick kids. He was even a personal friend of the governor.
‘‘Not like that second guy who got taken to Jackson,’’ Carver added in a voice rough with feeling. ‘‘Him, now-’’ He turned and headed out. ‘‘He’s the one who really got what he deserved.’’
I caught up and trotted beside him toward the lobby. ‘‘You knew him?’’
‘‘No, but he was part of a gang that raped a girl in my daughter’s high school. The other guys were nineteen and they went to jail, but because he was seventeen, he only did a few months at juvey. My daughter and her friends were terrified when he got out. They claim he’s been messing with girls all his life and threatening to hurt their brothers and sisters if they told. Well, he ain’t gonna be messing with any more little girls.’’ Carver spoke with a quiet satisfaction that made me uneasy.
‘‘I’ll catch the elevator here and go on up to my office. See you later.’’ I stepped in and pushed the button.
My usual routine was to pick up our department’s peach index cards on new patients and head out to welcome them. Instead I picked up the phone and called a former high school classmate who worked in the admissions office at Jackson. ‘‘We have one of those castrated men here,’’ I reported. ‘‘I heard it was Lyle Bradford, but I don’t know for sure.’’
From her squeal, I deduced I’d given her a top banana for their staff gossip tree. She owed me. ‘‘What do you know about the men who turned up at your place?’’
She snickered. ‘‘They are singing soprano.’’
‘‘Seriously. I’ve read what the papers said-that they went into a bar and didn’t remember anything after that-but is that all you know?’’
‘‘Well’’-her voice dropped a register-‘‘I had to take admissions information from the first one, and he said he remembered talking in the bar with a woman who looked like the Virgin Mary, but he couldn’t remember which bar. He wondered if she’d put something in his drink.’’
‘‘Sounds more like Bloody Mary. How did he get to your emergency room? Nobody saw anyone bring him?’’
‘‘No, he was left in a wheelchair outside. One of the ambulances found him sitting there at three a.m. in a johnny gown with a blanket tucked around his legs. It was a pretty night, so at first they thought he was a patient who had gone outside for a smoke or something and fallen asleep. They mentioned him to a nurse and she wheeled him back in, figuring she’d return him to his room. Then she discovered he didn’t have an ID bracelet. About that time he woke up and started yelling. That’s when they realized he’d had what we were instructed the next morning to call ’unauthorized surgery.’ ’’
‘‘Who was his doctor?’’
‘‘He didn’t have one. Said he’d never been sick. The residents checked him out and said the surgery looked like a professional job, so they let him recuperate a few days and sent him home. Don’t tell anybody I told you this, okay? He’s threatening to sue us, so we aren’t supposed to talk about it.’’
‘‘Of course not.’’
We both knew there is no place more gossipy than a hospital except a police station.
‘‘How did the second one get in? Looks like you’d have been watching the doors pretty carefully after that.’’