Damaged Goods (21 page)

The anger she’d been nursing cut through her initial confusion, providing just enough focus to get her moving. She dropped her bag onto the carpet, strode across the room, wheeled to face him.

“Stanley …” Her first impression, that he was crying, passed almost immediately. His collar and hair were soaked; beads of moisture covered his scalp and forehead. Unless teardrops had somehow learned to defy gravity and run upward, something else was happening.

“I mean what was it?” He was staring directly into her eyes now, as if she’d been there all along. “An ego trip, nothing else. Hotshit Stanley Moodrow riding to the rescue. I should’ve paid a price for that, Betty, and maybe I really have, because I can’t get Theresa’s face out of my mind.”

Betty took a step forward, brought her palm and fingers to rest on her lover’s cheek. Even as she spoke, she felt the tears spring into her own eyes.

“Christ, Stanley,” she whispered, “you’re on fire.”

S
TANLEY MOODROW SPENT THE
first thirty-six hours after his admission to Beth Israel Medical Center on First Avenue and Sixteenth Street drifting in and out of consciousness. On the bottom end, when the fever burned throughout his body (when rivulets of sweat ran through the white hospital sheets to lie in small insistent puddles on the plastic-covered mattress) his mind was filled with shifting images. He met friends, enemies, rivals, the living and the dead, as if reviewing his memories without first ordering the internal chaos. Sometimes these images stayed in his mind long enough to offer some piece of advice, to remind him of some forgotten obligation, but just as often they were no more than profiles at the outer edges of his vision, disappearing before he could turn his head.

The landscape shifted as well, from Moodrow’s Lower East Side apartment to a Long Island shrine, to an interrogation room in the old Seventh Precinct on Pitt Street. At one point, he watched himself, at age thirty, questioning a man suspected of rape. (This at a time when confession by way of torture stood up in court.) The young Moodrow had danced around the issue. Bouncing from one foot to another like an enraged gorilla, he smashed the side of his fist into the desk, screamed until his own throat was raw, but never actually touched the man in front of him.

The scene, though it lasted no more than a minute, had nearly perfect clarity, as if the sixty-year-old Moodrow had actually been present, a neutral observer, when it happened. Still, despite this (and despite the histrionics), he continued to maintain a neutrality that bordered on outright indifference. Even when the fever pushed his body temperature above 103 degrees, he watched the unfolding kaleidoscope with equanimity, feeling no emotion greater than mild curiosity.

On the other end, however, when the fever dropped off toward morning and he rose to a vague, exhausted consciousness, Moodrow was overwhelmed by what he saw. A chrome IV pole, framed by a recessed fluorescent light in the ceiling, stood just to his left, its arms extending outward to form an abbreviated cross. In the center of the cross, as if deliberately placed and kept there, a transparent plastic bag filled with a clear fluid slowly emptied into a narrow tube.

Moodrow, lacking both the will and the energy to focus his eyes, saw it all, the light, the bag, the relentless dripping, as a single unit, as the crushed torso of a young child surrounded by an illuminated white blanket. He wasn’t ready for it, not even close, and he jammed his eyes closed, squeezing the lids down as if resisting some misguided physician determined to pry them open.

A few minutes later, he fell into a dreamless sleep, from there back into fever and delirium. Another fourteen hours passed before the antibiotics pouring into his bloodstream overcame the infection. At times he was conscious, or at least awake, but if he recognized Betty as she moved around the bed, soaking towels in cool water, wringing them out, laying them across his forehead, he gave no indication. Instead, he kept his face turned to the right and pressed down into the pillow, tried to pull his tethered hands up to further shield himself.

Inevitably (the only other option being actual death), Moodrow returned to a ragged consciousness, a consciousness predicated on the belief that an IV pole and a bag of saline solution laced with antibiotics and glucose are neither more nor less than they appear to be. He opened his eyes to find Betty standing at the foot of the bed, instinctively tried to reach out to her, only to discover that his hands were tied to the bed rails.

“They were afraid you’d pull out the intravenous line.” Betty’s round face was striped with tears.

“Why are you crying?” His mouth was so dry he could barely get the words out. Nevertheless, he answered his own question. “They already buried her, right?” He stared at Betty’s puzzled face for a minute, then repeated himself. “Ann,” he said. “Ann already buried her.”

“Stanley, you might have died. Do you know that?”

A short black woman carrying a pen and a clipboard entered the room before he could reply. Her starched, white uniform crackled pleasantly as she strode to his bed and calmly took his temperature.

“Fever’s down,” she announced. “Are we ready to return to the land of the living?” She spoke the words in a pronounced singsong, her voice pitched a full octave above its normal range. As if talking to a child. “My name is Nurse Rashad.”

Moodrow, too weak to react with anything more forceful than out-and-out submission, raised his tethered wrists. To her credit, the nurse took a pair of scissors from a voluminous front pocket and began to saw at the gauze binding his hands.

“If the fever returns, I’ll have to tie you again. That IV up there?” She pointed to the nearly empty bag at the top of the pole. “Look at it like it was your life’s blood coming down that tube.”

For a moment, Moodrow thought she’d said, “
Her
life’s blood.” He started visibly, wondered if he was still hallucinating.

“Are you thirsty?” Betty was standing on his right. She held a plastic drinking cup in her hand, offering it, along with its bent, plastic straw, for his inspection.

He started to reach for the cup, but Betty was already lowering the straw to his lips. The cold water helped to clean his mouth, but hit his stomach like a rock. He let his head drop back to the pillow.

“You’ll get something to eat tonight,” the nurse said. “Juice, broth, like that. If everything goes well, the catheter will come out in the morning. Then we’ll get you on your feet, see how strong you are. In the meantime, stay in the bed.”

“What if I need to use the bathroom?”

“That’s what the catheter’s for. Anything else, you call me.”

Moodrow watched her execute a perfect about-face, listened to her uniform crackle as she marched through the open doorway, then took a moment to look around the room. The walls were a dull, faded orange, in deference, Moodrow suspected, to the belief that hospital rooms should be warm and cheery instead of cold and clean. Several shiny-blue plastic chairs, further proof, were scattered about his bed and the empty bed next to the window. Above and behind him, a computer monitor displayed his blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and body temperature.

“Stanley?”

He turned slowly, took her hand. In stark contrast to her normal efficiency, Betty seemed tentative, almost frightened.

“Just the facts, ma’am.” He managed a weak smile, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. “How long have I been here?”

“A day and a half.”

“What happened to me?”

Betty let go of his hand, offered the water again. “You had an infection. From when you got hit.”

Moodrow took a minute to digest the information. “With the trash can? That’s what you’re talking about?” The incident seemed infinitely remote, as if it had happened in another lifetime. To somebody else.

“You let it go too long, Stanley. When they brought you in, you had a fever near 104.”

Moodrow let his eyes close. His shoulders and back ached, the pain dull, but insistent. He managed to shift his weight a bit, but the effort exhausted him and he quickly fell into a dreamless sleep. Two hours later, as he began to wake up, an idea crawled into his drifting consciousness.

Maybe, he thought, I had a fever when I decided to chase Jilly Sappone. Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing.

The idea beckoned to him, as sweetly seductive as his memories of Annabella Sciorio, his first love. If he could somehow make it pass through hope and belief to firm conviction, he’d be all right.

“Stanley?”

He opened his eyes to find Betty leaning over him.

“You’ve got visitors.” She gestured to Jim Tilley and Leonora Higgins standing by the foot of the bed.

“How are you feeling, Stanley?” They said it together, then laughed nervously.

Moodrow took the water from the bedside stand and drank. “I feel like I tried to empty the Hell’s Angels’ clubhouse on Third Street. By myself.”

“He must be doing better,” Leonora observed. “If he’s making jokes.”

It didn’t seem like a joke to Moodrow. He tried to roll onto his side, found it difficult to balance himself.

“Do you want me to raise the bed, Stanley?” Betty pressed the button before he could answer, and the top half of the bed rumbled upward. “Better?”

Moodrow nodded, then turned to Jim Tilley. “They get him yet?”

“Not yet, Stanley. But his face is all over the tube. It’s just a matter of time.” Tilley paused, smiled, then realized that Moodrow wanted more detail. “I don’t know shit,” he finally admitted. “The job’s not in the precinct. I’m out of it.”

Leonora took a step forward. “The NYPD formed a task force, naturally.
After
…”

Higgins stopped abruptly, tried to hide her embarrassment. She and Jim had decided not to mention the child, Theresa Kalkadonis. Without hearing it from Moodrow, they’d simply assumed he’d eventually blame himself. Moodrow, for his part, recognized the assumption and drew the obvious conclusion: If Leonora had made the same decision, the decision to chase Jilly Sappone, she’d hold herself responsible for the child’s death.

Maybe, he thought, maybe I was already infected. I could have been running a fever. It isn’t impossible.

“Anyway,” Leonora finally continued, “if the detectives on the task force have any serious leads, they’re keeping it to themselves. Ditto for the feds. There’s a special agent named Holtzmann who won’t return my calls.”

The nurse came back into the room, accompanied by a small Asian man with a stethoscope draped around his neck.

“I said a minute and a minute’s up,” she declared. “He’ll be out of the ICU tomorrow. Visiting hours are one till eight.”

Moodrow watched Tilley and Higgins wave good-bye, then march out. Tilley, predictably old-fashioned, stepped back to let Higgins go first. Suddenly, Moodrow realized that he both wanted to be alone and was terrified at the prospect. He looked over at Betty. Sooner or later, she’d go, too; sooner or later the staff would turn down the lights and leave him to himself. He decided to ask for a sleeping pill, to keep asking until he was unconscious.

“Mr. Moodrow, how are you feeling? I’m Doctor Chen.”

“All right.” The shorter the answers, the faster he’d be gone. Doctors, in Moodrow’s experience, were always in a hurry.

Chen nodded enthusiastically, then put the metal face of the stethoscope against Moodrow’s chest and listened for a moment. “Can you roll onto your side? I need to get to your back.” He tugged at Moodrow’s shoulder, had the stethoscope against Moodrow’s ribs before he settled onto his stomach. This time Chen moved the scope around and thumped Moodrow’s back several times with his fingertips before standing abruptly.

“You had a serious staphylococcus infection, Mr. Moodrow,” Chen said. “We treated it with antibiotics, and your temperature’s returned to near-normal. We’re going to draw some blood, and culture the wound tissue again. If the test results are favorable, you’ll be out of here the day after tomorrow. Assuming, of course, that your fever doesn’t return.” Finished, he spun on his heel, started toward the door.

“Doctor Chen.” Betty, a trial lawyer for almost thirty years, addressed the doctor in tones usually reserved for hostile witnesses with extensive criminal records. She waited for the doctor to stop and turn around before continuing. “I have a few questions.”

Moodrow watched Chen smile, alert enough to recognize the underlying annoyance. “Doctor,” he said, interrupting Betty, who’d been about to speak. “The fever. Can you tell me when it started?”

“I don’t understand.” Chen ran the fingers of his right hand along the narrow tubes of the stethoscope.

“How long before I was brought into the hospital? When did the fever actually start?”

“There’s no way to know. The infection probably began within forty-eight hours of your receiving the injury. The fever could have started any time after that. It would depend on the strength of your immune system, your general health…” His voice trailed off as he turned to Betty. “You said you had some questions?”

“About his recovery.” Betty was smiling, now that she had his attention. “What can we expect?”

“A week to a month before he’s fully recovered. Remember, he had a general septicemia. His whole body was affected. If we don’t expect miracles, we won’t be disappointed.”

“Will he have to see you again?”

This time Chen’s face actually registered his annoyance. He glanced at his watch before answering. “Does he have a regular doctor?”

“Yeah,” Moodrow said, “but he died two years ago. They’re running a phone-sex operation out of his office now.”

“Well, I’ll give you a referral to our clinic. It won’t hurt to have somebody take a look at the wound in a couple of weeks. Maybe run some bloods.” He stepped back toward the door. “I’ll be in to see you tomorrow morning, of course. In case you have any more questions.” He took another step. “I’m not anticipating a problem here. These kinds of infections, once we get them under control …” He was gone before he completed the sentence.

“They’re always in a hurry,” Betty observed, turning back to Moodrow. “Stanley, is there anything I can get you?”