by Robert Ward
“No, I want you to tell me,” he said. “I want you to, because I like you. I knew it from the first moment we met. I really did.”
They moved toward each other on the couch and he took her in his arms. When they kissed, he felt as though he were in a cheap movie. It was that thrilling, all the more so because it seemed so innocent, so touching. Underneath that woman’s body she was a little girl really. He would teach her. He held her to him, his heart beating wildly, and he kissed her again. This time she opened her mouth, tentatively, and he felt shocked, surprised. Now she was suddenly a woman and he wanted her, wanted her terribly, but even as he thrust his tongue into her mouth, he felt the fear coming over him. But now she was moaning softly, and he felt his hand rubbing her large, firm breasts, felt the nipples sticking straight out, and she started calling to him, again and again, “Peter … Oh, Peter …” and he was terribly excited, but afraid. What if she was an experienced woman? What if he disappointed her? God, he hated his long stringy body. He hated it. When he shut his eyes, he tried to imagine that he was someone else, someone with a body like a movie star, strong, with good muscle definition. He had gone soft. He should have worked out more often. She’d be turned off when he took off his clothes.
He rubbed her and felt his cock harden, and then his hand went under her and he felt her thighs, and she was gasping and heaving and saying his name over and over again. He felt like he was going to burst, but he also felt afraid, terribly afraid. He shouldn’t have let it go this far. No, God, no, he shouldn’t have let it. He didn’t even know her. She could destroy him. And so, suddenly, he was unable to control himself. He pulled away.
“My God, Peter, honey, let’s go into the bedroom,” she said, still panting, her jeans pulled half down. He saw her hard, bronzed thighs, and he began to tremble. He felt as if he were going to cry.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “Is there anything wrong?”
“No,” he said too loudly. He sounded as if he were angry with her.
“Then come on to the bedroom with me. Please, Peter.”
She was leaning over on him now, and pulling up his shirt, licking his stomach. He began to feel like he was going to be sick.
“I just don’t feel well,” he said. He hated the sound of his voice. Why couldn’t he take her? God, she was beautiful, and she did like him.
“Relax,” she said, lifting her head and staring at him. “You know you’re a very sexy man. You just need to relax. I think you’ve worked so hard that you’ve forgotten how to relax.”
“Maybe,” he said, but he felt miserable. He had lost his erection and had almost convinced himself he was sick to his stomach.
But she was holding out her hand and he took it, and, as if in a dream, they were walking into the bedroom. She sat him down on the end of the bed, knelt below him, took off his shoes and socks, then rubbed his feet. She began unbuttoning his pants, all the while repeating his name, “Peter, Peter.” He felt his ass lift and he lay back on the bed, staring into the darkness. She told him to relax, to just think of anything, and he felt her mouth close on his cock and he felt himself harden, and her head was going back and forth, and he gripped the sides of the bed. She was making murmuring noises of joy.
He lay there, feeling the sensation coming from his groin into his stomach. Oh, God, it felt good, so very good. Then he pulled her up to him and she straddled him. Now her jeans and panties were off. She came down on top of him, and as he went into her, she screamed out his name. Together, they began to rock to and fro. She was crying and holding him, and once again he was struck by how warm and giving she was, by how much this meant to her, not merely the physical sensation, but how much she wanted and needed him. Though the voice inside him whispered, “It’s cheap. She’s just hungry for it, anyone would have done,” he knew it wasn’t so. She could have been here with anyone—a girl with breasts like hers and that flat, tanned stomach and the golden pubic hairs and her pussy riding him, sending shuddery wave after wave of pleasure through him—she could have been here with cocksman Harry, who undoubtedly was far superior to Peter, who knew all the little tricks, but she wasn’t. She was here with him, Peter Cross. So in spite of the voices inside him hissing away, he was enjoying it and giving it to her as she gave it to him, until neither one of them was thinking about anything any more. They both burst forth with a scream of elation and joy.
“That was so nice,” she said. “Oh, God, that sounds ridiculous. That was good, no, that’s not it. It was beautiful.”
Peter held her to him in the dark.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
“And you are.”
“No,” he said, “I’m out of shape.”
“Uh, uh,” she whispered.
She put her leg over his and kissed him on the head.
“I like you very, very much,” she said. “Maybe I like you too much.”
He stroked her hair, ran his hand down her perfect back and over her ass. In a second she had fallen asleep, and he lay there waiting to join her. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the voices started again, the fears and the doubts. “So you had an orgasm, you felt something in your body. Is that all it takes to make you forget? Is that what you can be bought for? Is that all it takes?”
He tried not to listen. He tried to pretend he was a happy, satiated lover, which in part he was, but there was the other part, like teeth inside of him. When he looked down on her sleeping figure, he saw her differently—once again like a sleeping animal. She had hungered. She had eaten. And now she slept. He shut his eyes, felt the Space moving inside of him, starting to whirl about … then he touched her ass, laid his hand on the base of her spine. He sighed deeply. He felt inordinately tired, exhausted, fading out. But still, he did not sleep.
10
“Listen to me,” Esther Goldstein said. “I’m telling you it’s nothing.”
“I’m sure it isn’t, Ma,” Barty said, as the cab sped across town toward Eastern. “I’m sure it isn’t, but you’ve been having those pains for two days now and you know about your heart condition.”
“I don’t believe this,” Esther said, knocking the peacock feather away from her face. “I get to Bloomingdale’s twice a year and my worrywart son is rushing me off to the emergency room of a hospital. I mean, oy—”
She didn’t finish the last sentence. The pain had intensified and was shooting up and down her left arm. She felt short-circuited.
But mostly, even as she suffered from her heart, Esther Goldstein’s main sensation was one of embarrassment. She had come to show them how she had survived, by God. She had come to be an object lesson for Barty who was prematurely aging and had started to play it safe full time. And now, oh God, the pain was getting worse. Perhaps she should have listened to Dr. Benson in Cincinnati, when he suggested that she not try to get in shape too quickly. But no matter what it was, no matter how bad the pain became (and there was no let-up), she was going to pull through this. She knew it. She was dead certain.
“We’re here, driver,” Barty said. “Don’t get out, Ma. I’m getting a stretcher.”
Esther tried to get up, but she was beyond that stage now. She stared out the window of the cab and made out the name Eastern Medical. In less than two minutes they had wheeled her through the crowded halls of the Eastern Emergency Room. Her nervous son and shell-shocked daughter-in-law tried to keep up with the residents who rushed her along.
“To think,” Esther said, “twenty minutes ago I was in Bloomies.”
“Mrs. Goldstein,” said a fat nurse, “you must try and keep quiet.”
“Keep quiet?” Esther said. “Keep quiet? I might be dying. And if that’s the case, I’ll have years to keep quiet.”
But the pain hit her again, a great nauseating wave of it, and for the moment she wasn’t able to speak.
They wheeled her quickly by the nurses’ station and then by the anesthesiologist’s Ready Room.
“Some ride,” Esther Gol
dstein said, as the pain cut back a bit.
A couple of the residents even laughed at that one. Their voices caught Peter Cross’s attention as he was checking out his armamentarium. He looked up and saw the frizzy-haired lady staring at him, with enormous eyes. He smiled at her and snapped shut his case and headed off to the cafeteria for lunch.
They wheeled Esther Goldstein into X-Ray, and then into the Cardiac Monitoring Room, and two doctors attached the electrocardiograph machine to her. She looked down at the electrodes on her chest.
“Look, Barty,” she said, “I’m the bionic yenta.”
Above her, a round doctor named Tompkins, with a nose that made him look like Mr. Potato Head, began talking to another doctor, a short man with small, slit eyes.
“This woman needs a coronary bypass operation,” Tompkins said. “I think it’s as simple as bypass, two months in bed, and she’s as good as new.”
But the shorter man, Dr. Snyder, waved a small, eloquent finger in the air. He looked as though he was conducting an orchestra.
“Not a chance,” he said. “Her color is good. She’s awake, and her pulse isn’t too bad. I’m not at all sure we can’t treat her medically.”
Tompkins turned and pulled out some X-rays they had just worked up on Esther.
“Look at these, will you?”
“Forget it,” said the short man. He stared at his own fingers as if he were transfixed.
“That’s right, Doc,” Esther gasped. “Forget it. I’ve seen better acts than yours on the Gong Show.”
“Good,” said the little man, patting the fading Barty on the arm. “We’ll get you into the Cardiac Monitoring Unit … work up some tests. We’ll get her ready for the angiogram. There’s nothing to really worry about. We’ve caught this in plenty of time.”
“You’re sure she’s going to be all right?” Barty said.
“Absolutely. It’s the best unit on the floor. We’ve got around-the-clock nurses and closed-circuit TV. Any problems arise, we nail them down in a minute. Nothing will go wrong.”
Barty took out a handkerchief and rubbed his head.
“Trust me,” the doctor said.
11
At precisely 3:00 A.M. Harry Gardner began to feel the urge come over him. It was always that way with Harry. Go out, snort a little coke (and what was that stuff cut with?—Drano?), have a few drinks and maybe smoke a joint, and see if he could score … If not, he would try and go to bed, but by that time he would be too jacked up to sleep … and he would feel a great, gaping horniness … a need … for something … anyone to keep him going. Now he stood outside of the nurses’ station, watching June Boswell walking toward him, holding her patient’s chart and a tray of pills in Dixie cups.
“Hi,” he said.
“Harry … I told you … I don’t want to see you.”
He stared at her large breasts, her thick hips, her full, sensual lips. He usually went for thinner women, but there was something very ripe about her … at least now. He remembered an old country song, “When I’m half shot, you’re not half bad.”
“Harry … I’m very busy.”
“Come on, June … You already made your rounds. Everybody is sleeping like a baby.”
“Harry …”
Her voice was small, pleading. He knew she couldn’t resist him. She loved it … the sex and the risk of being caught.
He leaned on the glass wall and looked in at the cardiac monitors.
The tapes with the EKG readings of the patients were folded neatly out into trays. Harry walked over and picked up one of the pieces of tape and ran it across his lips.
“June,” he said, “you know I’ve really been wanting to fix some of those old anesthesiology machines in Room Two-twenty-two. Why don’t you come down with me?”
“Harry,” she said, smiling, “I can’t. Yvonne is helping Dr. Frost with a cut-down, and Rodgers and Hargrove are out taking a break. Somebody has got to be here to check on the EKG readings. What if one of the patients had a problem?”
“Come on,” Harry said, moving behind her and kneading her back muscles with his strong fingers. “How likely is that to happen? Besides, if anything does go wrong, we’ll hear the squawk box. And we’ll come right back. And what’s more … if we don’t do it now, we blow it for the entire night, because as soon as they come back … well, you know it wouldn’t be good if anybody saw me here.”
“What’s the matter?” June said. “Worried about your professional reputation?”
She patted his hand and then gave out a long, self-satisfied sigh, and got up from her chair.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose I should send you down there to fix those machines all by yourself.”
As June and Harry walked down the hall, Peter Cross walked quickly from the broom closet where he had sat for the last hour. He stood outside Esther Goldstein’s room and then turned and looked back at the central monitoring desk. He must hurry. The two aides were liable to come back any minute, and if they looked across the hall, they could see him through the cheap, pale blue curtains in Esther Goldstein’s window. Either that, or they might check the EKG printouts and see that she was indeed “having a problem.”
He moved inside and stared down at her sleeping figure. He had to do something about the oscilloscope. He looked at it, as her EKG reading bleeped across. On top of it was the warning squawk box with the volume knob. This would be easy—very easy indeed. He reached for the knob, turning it to the right, to the spot marked Off, smiling as he stared down at Esther. He twisted again, but it didn’t seem to click off. He tried turning it again, but it was stuck. Christ … now what? He stared down at the knob, twisting it to the left, just to make sure.
Harry opened the door, groped around for the light, and banged his shin on something solid. A sharp pain shot up his leg and he cursed and reached down, this time banging his head.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit. Come on, June, help me find the light.”
“Here,” she said. She turned it on and looked around. They were surrounded by old anesthesia machines, rubber tubing, ancient oxygen masks, and other paraphernalia no longer used by the hospital.
“Why don’t they get rid of this junk?” June said, walking across the room. “It’s just useless garbage.”
Harry rubbed his head and gave her his best simian smile.
“It’s not all useless,” he said. “Look at this old table.”
He walked to the end of the room, took some equipment off an old operating table, and jumped up.
“Turn off the light,” he said, “and come over here.”
“Harry,” she said. “I don’t know …”
But she was already walking toward the wall. The lights went out and Harry heard her coming toward him, bumping into things, cursing softly.
In the canteen, just ten feet down from the central monitoring desk, Rodgers and Hargrove, the two nurse’s aides, sat having Cokes. Rodgers, a plain-looking girl with acne scars, sipped philosophically and stared down at the table. Hargrove, a very tall woman nicknamed Stilts, shook her head.
“I know just how it is,” she said, “I know just how it is. All the bastards are alike. They say there was a sexual revolution. I say bullshit.”
“You can say that again,” said Sally Rodgers. “I mean it.” She reached down in her tote bag and pulled out a half-pint of Jim Beam.
“We should be getting back,” Stilts said.
“Ah, hell … I know, but June is handling it. Let’s have one quick one, and …”
“Okay, you twisted my arm,” Hargrove said. “But a quick one. Besides, I’ve got a special toast in mind.”
“Right,” Sally Rodgers said.
She ran her hand across her acne scars.
“Screw men,” Hargrove said. “Screw ‘em all.”
“Amen,” Sally said.
They drank with relish, then set down their cups.
“Back to the grind,” Hargrove said.
Peter felt panic
ky. Jesus, the knob … He stared down at it. He couldn’t tell if it was on or off. It seemed to be stuck. The oscilloscope still worked, but he had no idea what the volume was set at now that he had monkeyed with it. He looked across the room, toward the nurses’ station. Maybe he should just leave. But no … he had come this far …
He couldn’t just quit. But there was no way to unplug the damned thing. If you even tried to take it out of the wall, the alarm would raise all hell in the nurses’ station … No, there was only one solution.
Quickly, he took out his nail clippers and opened up the ‘scope by removing the repair plate on the back. He stuck his nail file into the Philips head screw on the plate. There were four of them and he had to hurry. He twisted and the screw turned, twisted again and again, then the first one was in his pocket. Beneath him, Esther Goldstein stirred … and he stopped and moved back into the shadows. Then she settled down, and he was at it again. The second came out more easily, and the third and fourth seemed to fall out in his hands. He pulled off the plate, looked inside at the maze of wires and springs, and found the red wire which connected to the buzzer. He reached in, tried pulling it out, but it put pressure on the entire circuit. He had to be careful … If there was anything that upset the EKG readings, he was through.
Suddenly there was a loud noise. But it was only Esther snoring. There had to be another way to get to that wire. He looked down at his nail clippers. There was no choice. Swiftly, he edged them inside, being careful not to touch any other part of the machinery. Then he found the wire and clipped it cleanly. Finally, he realigned the wire, just off center, so that from the outside the plastic insulation seemed to match perfectly with the other end, but inside the copper coils were no longer in contact. Quickly, he picked up the repair plate and began working with the screws. In a few minutes he had all four of them back in. He checked the wall clock in the nurses’ station. Three fourteen—he had to hurry. Then he looked down at Esther Goldstein, who was staring at him, wide awake.
