Pulse (16 page)

“I wanted to see you, Frank. We’re all concerned.”

“About what? My regular checkups have been fine.”

“We’ve invested a lot of time and care in you, Frank. Everybody’s pleased about what a success story you’ve been. So it’s crucial to address any problems quickly before they become serious.”

“I’m really all right,” he said earnestly. The heart was sound, he knew it.

The doctor looked dubious, peered over his spectacles, then glanced at Kathleen. “How have you been sleeping?”

“I don’t seem to need a lot since the surgery. My donor must have been a light sleeper,” he joked, his grin weak. He was not willing to discuss what happened when he did sleep.

“Your medication can sometimes result in unusual or inappropriate behavior, hyperactivity, even risk taking.” Lassiter slowly closed the file folder in front of him. “What we’re going to do, Frank, is hospitalize you for a few days, for a total evaluation.”

Frank kept his voice calm. “I think it would be a mistake to tinker with my dosages now that I’m doing so well.”

The doctor rose, rounded the desk, and gave Frank’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Well, let us just have a look at you for a few days, maybe have you talk to some people, get things back on an even keel. I’ve arranged for you to beadmitted this afternoon.” He smiled reassuringly at Kathleen, who pushed back her chair.

“I’ve packed a bag for you, toiletries, all the things you’ll need,” she said brightly. “It’s outside with the receptionist. Brought that new novel you’ve been wanting to read. I got a ride over here. We can drive your car to the hospital and I can take it home.”

“I am not going into the hospital,” he said flatly. The doctor and Kathleen exchanged glances. “This is ridiculous. I’ve spent enough time in hospitals. You don’t try to fix something that ain’t broke. I’m fine. I’m on an even keel.”

“The mind is as important as the body, sweetheart.”

“I’m fine,” Frank said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I strongly advise it,” the doctor said sternly. “Just a few days.”

“I refuse to discuss this.” He got up and walked out.

“Frank, please,” Kathleen called after him. He did not stop.

He was waiting for the elevator when she came trotting down the hall, lugging the bag she had packed. “Wait, Frank,” she said, breathless. “I need a ride home. I don’t have my car.”

He didn’t answer on the way down to the lobby. Tampering with his medications could be dangerous, even send him into rejection. She nearly ran to keep pace with his angry stride.

“How could you try to railroad me into the hospital?” he asked as he drove her home.

“It’s for your own good,” she protested. “I’m worried sick about you, sweetheart. You’ve become obsessed with this Alexander woman to the point where it’s endangering your life and your reputation. Your family has become low priority. That is totally out of character for you, Frank. Seeking her out was a dreadful, terrible mistake.”

“How can you be so selfish?” He suddenly remembered one of the many small apartments he and his mother had shared, the one with rats, and the bathroom in the hall.

“Me?” she yelped indignantly. “Selfish?”

“Yes, you. Remember all the planning I did when I was sick, to ensure the future for you and the girls if I died? I had that luxury. Nobody did that for her. They cut out her husband’s heart and gave her back the shell, an empty container. She saved my life, and others who also received his organs. If you remember, I know firsthand what widowhood and poverty can do to a woman. I saw it kill my own mother. I could never rest if that happened to you. Why do you begrudge what little I can do for them? The peace of mind, the redemption it would bring me? Are you that self-absorbed, that selfish?”

He felt her smoldering silence.

“You and the girls mean everything to me,” he said, his voice shaky, “and I promise you, once this thing is wrapped up, we can all go away, relax and spend some time together.”

“What thing? What the hell is it that you’re ‘wrapping up'? What has this woman got you into? At this rate we’ll
have
to leave town before you’re finished. What are you doing to our reputations? If wanting our family to mean more to you than a stranger is selfish, then I confess. I’m guilty. I’m selfish, even though I serve on a number of important civic and community boards. I’ve worked very hard and I’m about to be appointed to a prestigious position. How do we face people, how can we hold our heads up? You’ve changed so …”

“I’ve done nothing wrong, Kath. I haven’t changed. I’m the same man you married.”

“The man I married was a CPA, for God’s sake.”

Back at the house he took the valise, marched upstairs and angrily unpacked it. Kathleen was on the phone when he went back downstairs. She quickly hung up and disappeared into the kitchen.

He picked it up and hit redial.

It rang twice. “Grayson, Hoberman and Adams. Law offices,” a chirpy young voice sang out.

He hung up, stalked out the front door, got in his car and drove out the front gate.

He used his car phone to call the office and check his messages. Sue Ann sounded surprised, caught off guard. “Where are you? How did your doctor’s appointment go?”

She knew, he realized. She was in on it.

“Fine,” he said casually. “Couldn’t be better. I’ll be in soon.”

Expecting him momentarily would take some fun out of her afternoon of soap operas. Twice since his return to work, he had surprised her glued to a tiny Watchman in her top drawer. Maybe his daughters had been neglected when he worked too hard, then was sick too long. Maybe the family unit had closed seamlessly around them and their mother, excluding him. He could understand, but he felt genuinely betrayed by Sue Ann.

He found himself driving toward Twin Palms. He called. It rang half a dozen times and a strange voice answered.

“Pelican Harbor Seabird Station.”

“I must have the wrong number. I was calling Mrs. Alexander.”

“Hold on, she’s right outside.”

She came on the line sounding breathless. She’d had her calls forwarded. “Come on by,” she said, and gave him directions.

He had passed the place a thousand times but had never turned off the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway, past the Marine Patrol Station down behind the radio tower on a narrow spit of land jutting out into the water.

She waved as he parked. She wore a simple white blouse and carried a metal bucket. A playful bay breeze ruffled her long hair, the dampness tightening ringlets around her face. The patter of little feet sounded behind her. She was trailed by two pelicans, a cormorant, a tall white egret and two cats followed by a flock of squawking seagulls.

He smiled for the first time that day.

An odd-looking bird staggered after her, attempting to nibble at the hem of her cotton slacks. “What the heck is that?”

“We call him Lurch. Isn’t he beautiful? You can see how he got his name by the way he walks. He’s a black-bellied whistling tree duck. S’posed to live in Texas, along the Rio Grande. At least that’s what all the bird books say. Apparently he can’t read.

“Look.” An incoming formation of pelicans wheeled in wind drafts over the bay. “They have hors d’oeuvres at the seafood restaurant west a here at two o’clock, that’s when the kitchen help tosses out their fish scraps. Then they come here for dinner. We feed the needy and chase away the greedy. The adults can gobble up to four pounds of fish a day.”

Some two dozen pelicans, many minus a wing, hobbled about, eying her pail. “We have about thirty-five permanent pedestrians.

“The surgical patients are in that pen over there,” she said, “bein’ rehabilitated. They’ll be released when they’re strong enough. Those others …” She squinted curiously at him. “How much do you know about pelicans?”

“Only that their beaks can hold more than their bellies can.”

She laughed, and led him past a row of pens. The door to one hung open, inside were several nests fashioned from dried twigs. “They’re ancient creatures. Haven’t changed in forty million years. They mate for life,” she said. “Like people. Both parents build the nests, tend the eggs and feed the little ones.”

Two fluffy, blue-eyed white chicks stared up greedily from separate nests, their rosy pink beaks opening and closing in anticipation of being fed.

“The babies each need up to a hundred and fifty pounds of fish during the three months they’re in the nest. The parents come back with their bellies full and feed the babies by regurgitating. To make ‘em do that, the babies snap at the parents, at themselves, at each other and at us. They just bite and bite unmercifully at our ankles, ‘Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!’ Anything for attention. Anything to make their parents barf. Just like human children, at least mine anyhow.”

“Mine too,” he sighed. “Can’t tell you how often I’ve wanted to throw up lately.”

“They just want you to feed ‘em.” She smiled engagingly.

He wished it were that easy.

An older woman, a volunteer, emerged from the office to report a distress call. “They’ve got a pelican in trouble over by the restaurant, in the water, all tangled up in fishhooks and lines.”

“Harry and Darlene, who operate the station, are up at Haulover on another rescue,” Rory said. “I’ll go,” she told the woman.

“Maybe I can help,” Frank said. “We can take my car.”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “As if you want that fancy set of wheels smelling like a fish market.”

They loaded gloves, a long-handled net, a bucket of fish and what resembled a large cat carrier into her station wagon and drove across the bridge.

A young couple, a busboy and a waitress, were throwing fish fillets off a wooden dock behind a house near the restaurant, trying to keep the injured pelican close to shore. He was handsome, with a long white neck and yellow head, but definitely in trouble. A large metal hook deeply embedded in his wing was connected by leader wire to a treble hook that pinned the sides of his pouch together. Unable to eat, impossible to fly.

“How the hell did he get into that mess?” Frank asked.

“Fishermen,” Rory muttered. She stretched out flat on the dock, and extended the net, hoping to scoop up the bird as the couple lured him closer with fish. He was ravenously hungry but unable to swallow because of the hook. Frank crouched beside Rory.

“If we get him,” she warned, “whatever you do, don’t grab his wing, they snap so easy. Never, never grab a bird by the wing. We don’t wanna hurt him worse than he is. Jist hold the carrier and let me handle him.” She expertly maneuvered the dip net, but the bird eluded her at the last moment, paddling just out of reach.

Suddenly a huge dark shadow materialized in the blue-green water, two, then three. Everyone gasped, including the people who had gathered to watch.

“What the hell are they?” Frank said.

“Tarpon.” She shoved her hair back, still clutching the net. Nearly six feet long, the marauders were in a feeding frenzy, fighting each other for the free fish being tossed to bait the wounded bird. “Well.” Rory sat up on the dock. “Ain’t this a revolting development.”

Frank enjoyed the irony. Sportsmen with expensive gearhire high-priced professional guides, charter deep-sea fishing boats, cast off before dawn, endure sunburn and seasickness and rarely sight such fish.

The pelican, now more spectator than participant, had paddled even farther away.

Rory slipped off her sandals. “I’ll go in after ‘im and try to git him back over here so you can net him.”

“With these huge fish? Wait a minute.”

“They’re no problem, that’s the problem,” she said, indicating the spectators. “Nothing like a pack a strangers rushing you when you’re trying to get an injured wild thing into a carrier.” She asked the restaurant workers to keep people back and handed Frank the net. “Don’t let nobody steal my shoes.”

“Wait, you can’t …”

She dove off the dock in a perfect arc.

The tarpon scattered as she surfaced, bright hair feathered like the sun in blue water around her. She swam with strong strokes, trying to circle out beyond the pelican to shepherd him toward shore. But the bird was a hell of a swimmer and both moved out into the dark blue open bay.

Frank thrust the net toward the wide-eyed young restaurant worker. “Here. If we get him, don’t grab his wing. Understand?”

“Sí,
yes,” he said.

Frank peeled off his shirt, kicked off his shoes and hit the water. The chill stunned him for a moment. Then he swam toward them. This was the first time Frank had been in the water since surgery, except for lazy laps in the heated pool at home. But after the initial shock he felt invigorated. Rory watched him, treading water.

“Okay,” he called as he got closer. “I’m gonna dive, come up out beyond him and try to steer you both back in. Howabout those shallows south of the dock? Maybe we can get him ashore there.”

“Let’s do it,” she sang out.

He swam beneath the bird, who had stopped and was floating, watching Rory. When Frank surfaced and flicked the water from his eyes, he was about fifteen feet from the pelican, facing west, toward the one-story seafood restaurant, a woodsy shore with mangroves and scattered houses against a distant backdrop of silver cityscape, brilliant blue sky and blazing sun. Behind him lay the shimmering bay, Miami Beach’s pastel towers and the blue-green Atlantic stretching east to Africa. For a moment he felt that he, too, was part of it all. Earth, water and sky.

He splashed noisily. The bird fluttered in alarm and began to move toward Rory. She angled away, arms open wide in the water, and they slowly steered him toward a shallow, stony beach.

“I’ll get ‘im. I’ll get ‘im.” Her dripping clothes clung to the sleek curve of her hips and her long legs, the wet cotton of her shirt hugging her breasts as she emerged from the water. She snatched a floating green stalk and thrust it toward the bird. As the creature lunged for it, she grasped his upper beak, held it closed, reached around and drew him close. Her body pressed against a closed wing, the other cradled in her arm, she lifted him from the water.

“Watch the fishhooks! Watch the hooks.” Frank summoned the busboy with the carrier and borrowed the boy’s pocket knife to slash the wire binding the bird.