Authors: Gen LaGreca
“David,” Randy asked tentatively, as if afraid to hear the answer, “what happened to . . . the . . . aneurysm?”
“It’s clipped.”
Randy and Mrs. Trimbell marveled at David.
“Nicole, dear, are you okay?” asked Mrs. Trimbell.
“I’m fine,” said a cheerful little voice beneath a tunnel of linen.
“You’re a good sleeping princess, Nicole. You’re doing very well in your role!” said David. Then he looked at his team proudly: “We all did very well.”
Triumphant laughter puffed out all three surgical masks, and there were smile lines above them. Randy, Mrs. Trimbell, and David looked at one another, a mutual salute apparent in their vibrant eyes.
“The rest of this is going to be a walk in the park,” the surgeon said, relieved.
In disposing of the intruder, Randy and Mrs. Trimbell had broken the sterile field, so the operation had to be halted. After changing their clothing, removing contaminated instruments, and replacing them with sterile ones, the two rejoined David and Nicole to resume their tasks. The rest of the surgery proceeded just as David had hoped—uneventfully. The inspector awakened, but only after Nicole had been wheeled into the recovery room.
*
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At 4:00 in the morning, a bleary-eyed, barely awake, but supremely happy surgeon sat at the edge of his patient’s bed in the recovery room. He performed various tests to ensure that Nicole was in good condition, with no neurological deficits following the surgery. Despite her head being wrapped in a gauze turban and her eyes being patched, the sublime beauty of her face still resembled a princess in repose.
“With the manipulation of the surgery, the optic nerves swelled. I want you to keep the eye patches on for now. I’ll remove them later in the morning when the swelling subsides. Then we’ll know the outcome.”
As he spoke, long, graceful fingers stroked his face with the lingering joy of one touching a favorite sculpture. The fingers found their favorite spots: the smooth arc of the eyebrow, the warm lips, the elusive dimple on the cheek that vanished and reappeared as he spoke. In a departure from classical ballet, it was the reposing princess who raised her head to kiss the leading man. His head slowly followed hers back to the pillow, the bond of their lips unbroken. Exhaustion softened the urgency of her kiss and claimed her. A moment later, she was asleep.
*
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*
Pajamas, disheveled hair, and yawns greeted Randy in the dining room of his home that morning. A grandfather clock in the corner chimed to announce 4:30. The weary father sat at the head of the oblong dinner table. His suit jacket was flung haphazardly over the back of his chair, his shirtsleeves rolled, his tie loosened. The way a soldier ignores a bullet wound to finish a battle, Randy had tried not to think about this moment during the tumultuous events of the past fourteen hours. Now he faced the confused, sleepy eyes of his wife and three children, whom he had awakened for an emergency meeting. They waited while he struggled to choose his words.
“Honey, you’re so pale,” his wife said finally. “When you called to say you would be detained at the hospital, I never imagined you’d be out all night. What’s wrong, dear? What’ve you been doing?”
“I’ve been changing our lives, Beth. Now I owe you and the kids an explanation.”
Thirteen-year-old Stephen shot a questioning glance at his twin sister, Victoria, as if to say,
What’s up?
She raised her shoulders in bewilderment. Seven-year-old Michelle, the diminutive figure sitting on an adult’s chair, stretched sleepily.
“Today I quit my job and broke the law.”
Four sets of sleepy eyes suddenly sprang open.
“After what I did, no other hospital will hire me, and I could be arrested at any time.”
The family listened, stunned, as Randy related the astonishing story of his deal with the governor, his brother’s arrest, his resignation, the illegal surgery, and the incident with the inspector.
“I know you kids are at critical stages in your lives,” Randy continued. “You’re accustomed to having important things to groom you for your futures. Victoria, I know you want to be a champion figure skater, because you told us so when you were five years old. You work very hard at it, and you need costumes, competitions, travel, and coaches to develop your talent.
“Stephen, your gift is the piano, and you need the best teachers and the finest opportunities to develop that. When I see the thrill on your face while you’re giving a recital, I imagine you looking that same inspired way in the concert halls of the world.
“And Michelle, my baby, there’s something special sprouting inside you, too. You love your microscope, and you devour children’s science books the way other kids read nursery rhymes. You need a special school to nourish your talents.
“And Beth, honey, I know that you’re a serious painter, but you work in commercial art for the money to help fuel our kids’ futures. You’d rather be doing the fine art that you’re talented at and enjoy more.”
Each family member listened intently when addressed but did not interrupt. Even Michelle, the most talkative one of the group, seemed to sense that this was a time to listen.
“One talented child would be rare enough for a family, but having three of you very special and very expensive kids is more than your mother and I ever imagined. My job, especially my recent raise and bonus, provided a good share of what you kids need and of what we want you to have.
“But that money is tainted. To get it, I have to betray everything I believe in. I have to support people and causes I disapprove of. My job requires that I feed not only your uncle to the wolves but also every doctor and patient who want something different for themselves than the system forces on them.
“And there’s no making deals about it, either. I thought so, but I was wrong. The deal I made meant only that if I followed their course, they’d throw me a few crumbs. The deal didn’t mean that I could oppose their course and choose my own. My deal is what put your uncle in jail.”
Widened eyes and dropped jaws faced Randy.
“You see, kids, while you’re getting your special training, I’m doing something that makes me feel ashamed. But yesterday I felt different. I told the board members what I really thought of them. I felt as if I had crawled out of a cave and could breathe fresh air. And the air smelled even sweeter when I let David do his surgery. I felt like Victoria when she does a triple jump or Stephen when he plays Chopin or Michelle when David takes her to the lab. Kids, I felt excited about doing something I really wanted to do! My own dream flashed before my eyes, the dream of running an unusual kind of business in which great medical innovations would be made and brought to market. It’s one thing to manufacture a new carpet or car or television. But to produce new discoveries that restore health and life to very ill people, well, that’s the concerto that’s been playing in my mind for years. Last night I saw my music
performed
, instead of only hearing it in my head. For the first time in years, I can’t wait to go to the hospital. I can’t wait for David to remove Nicole’s eye patches and find out the result. I can’t wait to go to work and not get paid for a job I no longer have.
“I lost everything, but I feel great about what I did. I only regret what it’s going to do to you. We now need to live on just a fraction of the money we had before. I don’t know how long I’ll be unemployed or what disasters this will cause for you. I only know that I had to do what I did . . . because it was right.”
At first, no one spoke. Everyone seemed to be chewing the large bite they had just been fed. No one looked at anyone else; everyone seemed to be judging the matter privately.
Stephen was the first to break the silence. “Give ’em hell, Dad.”
Victoria followed. “I’m glad you quit that awful job, Daddy. It was making you mopey.”
Then Michelle chimed in. “I want Uncle David to do a new operation.”
“I don’t need a new number for my next competition,” added Victoria. “I’ll skate to my old number, with my old costume and choreography. And I’ll be fantastic!”
“And I can take a job working in a band on the weekends,” said Stephen. “It’ll be good practice for me, and the money will pay for my lessons.”
“Daddy, I can go to public school with Betty and Sarah. Then my tuition won’t a-salt you. Is that the word you use, Daddy?” said Michelle.
“Honey,” said Beth, with all eyes turning to her, “if we’re as gifted as you say we are, then we should be able to use our talents to find a way to manage. We want you to do what’s right. Don’t we, kids?”
“Yeah, Dad!”
“We’re with you, Daddy.”
“Hey, guys, let’s hear it for Dad and Uncle David,” said Stephen.
Then Randy’s family did what it had always done when one of them reached a new milestone. They cheered and they embraced.
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The final day of October began with a deliciously nippy fall morning. Hanging in a cloudless blue sky was its only daytime ornament, a fireball burning in the eastern horizon. Like Venus on the first morning of her life, the island of Manhattan seemed to be rising on a seashell amid sun-streaked silver waters. Skyscrapers stretched horizontally in long angular shadows across the avenues of the city. The east windows of Riverview Hospital, like mirrors, shot the sun into the windows of the building across the street so that the west, too, could share the abundant light of a new day. A patient with patched eyes lay inside the hospital, warming her face in the early morning sun and wondering if she would ever see its light again.
By midmorning, the shocking news of David’s arrest and illegal surgery, along with Randy’s resignation, rocked the hospital and the city. In the hallways, locker rooms, and nursing stations and even over unconscious patients in the OR, staff members talked of nothing else. The board of directors waited for CareFree to make a statement before preparing its own. CareFree waited for the governor to speak first. Reporters hovered outside, wondering whether David Lang would be thrown in jail or declared a national hero. As he ate breakfast six days before the election, Malcolm Burrow waited, also. He waited for two small patches to be removed from someone’s eyes by a man he cursed between bites.
Without having had general anesthesia, Nicole was wide awake. Publicity about her case had necessitated her move to a secluded room, leaving her alone with her thoughts . . . and hopes. Members of the hospital staff visited to wish her well. Whenever footsteps sounded outside her room, she lifted her head from her pillow, hoping it was her doctor. Her dainty body, a robe wrapped twice around it, barely made an impression in the bed. As a tube dripped liquid into her arm, she waited for the man who could infuse life back into her soul.
Finally, two familiar warm hands reached for hers.
“David, you’re here! You weren’t . . . arrested again?”
“They wouldn’t dare. Not yet, anyway. But we weren’t going to worry about that, were we?” His voice was lighter, happier, as if being an outlaw agreed with him. He squeezed her hands. “How are you feeling?”
Ignoring the raw, throbbing wound that was her head, she smiled softly. “I feel fine.”
“You’re doing fine, very fine. The surgery went well.”
“And now, is it . . . time?”
“Yes.”
The muscles of her face tightened.
“It’s almost time. First, someone gave me this for you.” He reached for something that he had set on her bed stand. He held it before her as she sat up in bed.
“It’s a vase,” she said, her hands circling a glass hexagon, her fingers stopping at the sharp, pointed corners that told her it was crystal. “This feels beautiful. Did you say someone
gave
this to you?”
“Yes.”
“You mean the Phantom?”
“Yes.”
“He’s
here
?”
“Oh, yes.”
“In the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Is he
really
?”
“Yes, really.”
“Why doesn’t he come to see me?”
“He’s coming.”
Her dainty lips pursed in puzzlement, but David said no more.
“What kind of flowers did he send?” Her fingers touched the arrangement in the vase. “There are lots of flowers! One blossom on top of another. They’re in tall clusters on stalks that feel stiff and tapered, like swords.” She stretched an arm high to reach the top of the arrangement. “There are twenty stalks and each one has about ten blooms on it. That’s two hundred flowers, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Could they be gladiolas?”
“They could indeed.”
“After we’ve already had the first frost?”
“The Phantom apparently thinks it’s summer.”
She laughed with a child’s delight.
“The flowers are a mixture of whites, pinks, yellows, and lavenders, Nicole. All pastels.”
“The Phantom is out of sync with the season.”
“He’s in a season of his own.”