Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (24 page)

“I'm not a
tree
doctor,” Ronkers said.

“These men don't even look like they know what they're doing,” Kit said. “They've got ropes all over the tree and they're swinging back and forth on the ropes, and every once in a while they buzz something off with those damn saws.”

“I'll call Bardlong,” Ronkers said.

But his phone light was flashing. He saw three patients in rapid order, gained four minutes on his appointment schedule, peeked through the letter slot, pleaded with his receptionist, took three minutes off to call Bardlong.

“I thought you were hiring
professionals, “
Ronkers said.

“These men are
very
professional,” Bardlong told him.

“Professional
shock-absorber
men,” Ronkers said. “No, no,” Bardlong said. “Dougie used to be a tree man.”

“Specialized in the walnut tree, too, I'll bet.”

“Everything's fine,” Bardlong said.

“I see why it costs me less,” Ronkers said. “I end up paying
you”

“I'm retired,” Bardlong said.

Ronkers's phone light was flashing again; he was about to hang up.

“Please don't worry,” Bardlong said. “Everything is in good hands.” And then there was an ear-splitting disturbance that made Ronkers sweep his desk ashtray into the wastebasket. From Bardlong's end of the phone came a rending sound — glassy, baroque chandeliers falling to a ballroom floor? Mrs. Bard-long, or some equally shrill and elderly woman, hooted and howled.

“Good
Christ I
Bardlong said over the phone. And to Ronkers he hastily added, “Excuse me.” He hung up, but Ronkers had distinctly heard it: a splintering of wood, a shattering of glass, and the yammer of a chain saw “invited in” the house. He tried to imagine the tree man, Dougie, falling with a roped limb through the Bardlongs' bay window, his chain saw still sawing as he snarled his way through the velvet drapes and the chaise longue. Mrs. Bardlong, an ancient cat on her lap, would have been reading the paper, when …

But his receptionist was flashing him with mad regularity, and Ronkers gave in. He saw a four-year-old girl with a urinary infection (little girls are more susceptible to that than little boys); he saw a 48-year-old man with a large and exquisitely tender prostate; he saw a 25-year-old woman who was suffering her first bladder problem. He prescribed some Azo Gantrisin for her; he found a sample packet of the big red choke-a-horse pills and gave it to her. She stared at them, frightened at the size.

“Is there, you know, an
applicator?”
she asked.

“No, no,” Ronkers said. “You take them
orally.
You
swallow
them.”

The phone flashed. Ronkers knew it was Kit.

“What happened?” he asked her. “I
heard
it!”

“Dougie cut right through the limb
and
the rope that was guiding the limb away from the house,” Kit said.

“How exciting!”

“Poked the limb through Bardlong's bathroom window like a great pool cue …”

“Oh,” said Ronkers, disappointed. He had hoped for the bay….

“I think Mrs. Bardlong was in the bathroom,” Kit said.

Shocked at his glee, Ronkers asked, “Was anyone hurt?”

“Dougie sawed into Mike's arm,” Kit said, “and I think Joe broke his ankle jumping out of the tree.”

“God!”

“No one's badly hurt,” Kit said. “But the tree looks
awful;
they didn't even finish it.”

“Bardlong will have to take care of it,” Ronkers said.

“Raunch,” Kit said. “The newspaper photographer was here; he goes out on every ambulance call. He took a picture of the tree and Bardlong's window. Listen, this is
serious
, Raunch: Does Kesler get a newspaper on his breakfast tray? You've got to speak to the floor nurse; don't let him see the picture, Raunch. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

Outside in the waiting room the woman was showing the Azo Gantrisin pills to Ronkers's receptionist. “He wants me to
swallow
them. …” Ronkers let the letter slot close slowly. He buzzed his receptionist.

“Entertain them, please,” he said. “I am taking ten.”

He slipped out of his office through the hospital entrance and crossed through Emergency as the ambulance staff was bringing in a man on a stretcher; he was propped up on his elbows, his ankle unbooted and wrapped in an ice pack. His helmet said
JOE.
The man who walked beside the stretcher carried his helmet in his one good hand. He was
MIKE.
His other hand was held up close to his breast; his forearm was blood-soaked; an ambulance attendant walked alongside with his thumb jammed deep into the crook of Mike's arm. Ronkers intercepted them and took a look at the cut. It was not serious, but it was a messy, ragged thing with a lot of black oil and sawdust in it. About 30 stitches, Ronkers guessed, but the man was not bleeding too badly. A tedious debridement, lots of Xylocaine … but Fowler was covering Emergency this morning, and it wasn't any of Ronkers's business.

He went on to the third floor. Kesler was in 339, a single room; at least a private death awaited him. Ronkers found the floor nurse, but Kesler's door was open and Ronkers stood with the nurse in the hall where the old man could see them; Kesler recognized Ronkers, but didn't seem to know
where
he recognized Ronkers from.

“Kommen Sie hinein, bitte!”
Kesler called. His voice was like speech scraped on a file, sanded down to something scratchier than old records.
“Grass Gott!”
he called.

“I wish I knew some German,” the nurse told Ronkers.

Ronkers knew a little. He went into Kesler's room, made a cursory check on the movable parts now keeping him alive. The rasp in Kesler's voice was due to the Levin tube that ran down his throat to his stomach.

“Hello, Mr. Kesler,” Ronkers said. “Do you remember me?” Kesler stared with wonder at Ronkers; they had taken out his false teeth and his face was curiously turtlelike in its leatheriness — its sagging, cold qualities. Predictably, he had lost about 60 pounds.

“Ach!”
Kesler said suddenly.
“Das house ge-bought?
You …
ja!
How goes it? Your wife the walls down-took?”

“Yes,” Ronkers said, “but you would like it. It's very beautiful. There's more window light now.”

“Und der Bardlong?”
Kesler whispered. “He has not the tree down-chopped?”

“No.”

“Sehr gut!”
Herr Kesler said. That is pronounced
zehr goot. “Gut boy!”
Kesler told Ronkers.
Goot buoy.
Kesler blinked his dull, dry eyes for a second and when they opened it was as if they opened on another scene — another time, somewhere.
“Frühstück?”
he asked politely.

“That means breakfast,” Ronkers told the nurse. They had Kesler on a hundred milligrams of Demerol every four hours; that makes you less than alert.

Ronkers was getting out of the elevator on the first floor when the intercom paged “Dr. Heart.” There was no Dr. Heart at University Hospital. “Dr. Heart” meant that someone's heart had stopped.

“Dr. Heart?” the intercom asked sweetly. “Please come to 304.

Any doctor in the hospital was supposed to hurry to that room. There was an unwritten rule that you looked around and made a slow move to the nearest elevator, hoping another doctor would beat you to the patient. Ronkers hesitated, letting the elevator door close. He pushed the button again, but the elevator was already moving up.

“Dr. Heart, room 304,” the intercom said calmly. It was better than urgently crying, “A doctor! Any doctor to room 304! Oh, my God,
hurryr
That might disturb the other patients and the visitors.

Dr. Hampton was coming down the floor toward the elevator.

“You still having office calls?” Hampton asked Ronkers.

“Yup,” Ronkers said.

“Go back to your office, then,” Hampton said. “I'll get this one.”

The elevator had stopped on the third floor; it was pretty certain that “Dr. Heart” had already arrived in 304. Ronkers went back to his office. It would be nice to take Kit out to dinner, he thought.

At the Route Six Ming Dynasty, Kit ordered the sweet and sour bass; Ronkers chose the beef in lobster sauce. He was distracted. He had seen a sign in the window of the Route Six Ming Dynasty, just as they'd come in the door. It was a sign about two feet long and one foot high — black lettering on white shirt cardboard, perhaps. It looked perfectly natural there in the window, for it was about the expected size — and, Ronkers falsely assumed, about the expected content of a sign like
TWO WAITRESSES WANTED.

Ronkers was distracted only now, as he sipped a drink with Kit, because only now was the
real
content of that sign coming through to him. He thought he was imagining it, so he excused himself from the table and slipped outside the Route Six Ming Dynasty to have another look at the sign.

Appallingly, he had
not
imagined it. There, vividly in a lower corner of the window, plainly in view of every customer approaching the door, was a neatly lettered sign, which read: H
ARLAN BOOTH HAS THE CLAP.

“Well, it's
true
, isn't it?” Kit asked.

“Well, yes, but that's not the point,” Ronkers said. “It's sort of unethical. I mean, it
has
to be Margaret Brant, and I'm responsible for releasing the information. That sort of thing should be confidential, after all.”

“Turds,” said Kit. “Good for Margaret Brant! You must admit, Raunch, if Harlan Booth had played fair with you, the whole thing wouldn't have happened. I think he deserves it.”

“Well, of course he
deserves
it,” Ronkers said, “but I wonder where
else
she put up signs.”

“Really, Raunch, just let it be.

But Ronkers had to see for himself. They drove to the Student Union. Inside the main lobby, Ronkers searched the giant bulletin board for clues.

“My God.”

They went to the auditorium; a play was in progress. They didn't even have to get out of their car to see it: a
NO PARKING
sign had been neatly covered and given the new message. Kit was hysterical.

The Whale Room was where a lot of students drank and played pool and danced to local talent. It was a loud, smoke-filled place; Ronkers had several emergency calls a month involving patients who had begun their emergency in the Whale Room.

Somehow, Margaret Brant had warmed the bartender's heart. Above the bar mirror, above the glowing bottles, above the sign saying
CHECKS CASHED FOR EXACT AMOUNT ONLY
, were the same neat and condemning letters now familiar to Ronkers and Kit. The Whale Room was informed that Harlan Booth was contagious.

Fearing the worst, Ronkers insisted they take a drive past Margaret Brant's dorm — a giant building, a women's dormitory of prison size and structure. Ivy did not grow there.

In the upcast streetlights, above the bicycle racks — seemingly tacked to every sill of every third-floor window — a vast sewn-together bedsheet stretched across the entire front of Catherine Cascomb Dormitory for Women. Margaret Brant had friends. Her friends were upset, too. In a massive sacrifice of linen and labor, every girl in every third-floor, front-window room had done her part. Each letter was about five feet high and single-bed width.

“Fantastic!” Kit shouted. “Well done! Good show! Let him have it!”

“Way to go, Maggie Brant,” whispered Ronkers reverently. But he knew he hadn't seen the end of it.

It was 2:00
A.M.
when the phone rang, and he suspected it was not the hospital.

“Yes?” he said.

“Did I wake you up, Doc?” said Harlan Booth. “I sure
hope
I woke you up.”

“Hello, Booth,” Ronkers said. Kit sat up beside him, looking strong and fit.

“Call off your goons, Doc. I don't have to put up with this. This is harassment. You're supposed to be
ethical
, you crummy doctors.”

“You mean you've seen the signs?” Ronkers asked.

“Signs?”
Booth asked.”
What
signs? What are you talking about?”

“What are
you
talking about?” Ronkers said, genuinely puzzled.

“You know goddamn well what I'm talking about!” Harlan Booth yelled. “Every half-hour a broad calls me up. It's two o'clock in the morning, Doc, and every half-hour a broad calls me up.
A different
broad, every half-hour, you know perfectly well

“What do they say to you?” Ronkers asked.

“Cut it out!” Booth yelled. “You know damn well what they say to me, Doc. They say stuff like ‘How's your clap coming along, Mr. Booth?' and ‘Where are you spreading your clap around, Harlan old baby?' You
know
what they say to me, Doc!”

“Cheer up, Booth,” Ronkers said. “Get out for a breath of air. Take a drive — down by Catherine Cascomb Dormitory for Women, for example. There's a lovely banner unfurled in your honor; you really ought to see it.”

“A
banner?”
Booth said.

“Go get a drink at the Whale Room, Booth,” Ronkers told him. “It will settle you down.”

“Look
, Doc!” Booth screamed. “You call them off!”

“I didn't call them on, Booth.”

“It's that little bitch Maggie Brant, isn't it, Doc?”

“I doubt she's operating alone, Booth.”