Night-Bloom

by Herbert Lieberman

  Her scrubbed, girlish features appeared suddenly hard and pinched. “Tonight, Charley. That’s it. Tomorrow, out. And for God’s sake, stay out of Edgar’s way.”

  She started out, then turned abruptly. “Charley. Edgar knows all about those pills you take. What the hell are they for anyway?”

  “For my headaches. They’re pain-killers.”

  “I realize that. But why so many? Every day, like that? And what in God’s name are you doing with that doctor’s bag with all those instruments?”

  “Things.” He looked away evasively. “It’s for my medications. Would you prefer I live with this hammer banging around in my skull all day?”

  “No. Of course not.” She was suddenly contrite. “If you need it, you need it. It’s only that Edgar …”

  “Disapproves.”

  “Of course he disapproves of things like that. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Things like what?”

  “Like that. You know. Pills. Drugs. Things like that. Edgar doesn’t like that.”

  9

  E. K. SHAVERS, UROLOGY, M.D., P.C., F.A.C.S., DIPLOMATE AMERICAN BOARD OF UROLOGY, the directory in front of the building read. Along with it were listed the names of a dozen other physicians all with interminable rows of letters following their names.

  Above the directory on a thin plaque of marble and indited in imposing typography was a sign reading GRAMERCY MEDICAL ARTS BUILDING. Watford had found the place in the Yellow Pages. Though it was seven o’clock of a Saturday evening and at that hour no self-respecting physician could expect to be found there, he had still made a point of coming personally to the address. He wanted to be certain that it was a medical group he had not had recourse to in the past. And he’d had recourse to many.

  One block from the Medical Arts Building he found precisely what he needed—a large, late-night pharmacy. The Gramercy Drug Mart’s proximity to the Medical Arts Building virtually assured him that the group there wrote many prescriptions and consequently enjoyed special privileges with the pharmacy.

  The place was crowded. People at the soda fountain were drinking coffee and malteds; shoppers moved up and down the crowded aisles purchasing cosmetics and toiletries. In a corner of the store, not far from where the pharmacists worked behind a large glass counter, Watford found a public phone booth and quickly let himself in.

  Closing the accordion glass doors behind him, he thumbed deftly through a badly frayed Manhattan directory and found the telephone number of the Gramercy Drug Mart. He dialed the number and asked to be connected to the pharmacy. With a small shiver of delight he watched the young pharmacist, no more than thirty feet from where he stood, reach for the phone.

  “Hello—This is Dr. Shavers—”

  “Good evening, Doctor.”

  “I’m calling from out of town. On a fishing trip. I’m sending over a patient of mine. Mr. Charles Watford. I’m admitting him to N.Y.U. Medical Center tonight with a renal colic. He’ll be needing something for the pain until we can do urine stains and a blood workup. I think about seven hundred milligrams of meperidine ought to do him till I get back.”

  “Tablets, or the liquid, Doctor?”

  “Liquid, I should think. Much faster. Get him through the night more comfortably. Dr. Rashower will be at the hospital tomorrow to do tests. He’ll send over the prescription for you first thing in the morning.”

  “Very good, Doctor. What was the name again?”

  “Watford. Charles Watford. He ought to be along any minute. He’s not far from you. Started out, I believe, about twenty minutes ago.”

  “I’ll see to it that he gets it. Good fishing, Doctor.” Watford hung up the phone, watching the pharmacist as he did so. He lingered an additional three minutes in the booth, then checked the directory again, this time for the telephone number of the admitting office at New York University Medical Center.

  “Hello,” he barked into the phone a moment later. “Dr. Shavers here. I’m calling from out of town. A patient of mine, Charles Watford, will be admitting himself in the next half hour. He has recurrent renal colic, and I suspect he may require catheterization. I’d like him admitted as an outpatient and put right to bed. My associate, Dr. Rashower, will be up first thing in the morning to do the blood work. The patient will be bringing in urine samples. Poor chap’s in a great deal of pain so he’ll require analgesics over the next forty-eight hours. Until I get back. I’d like him started on meperidine—seven hundred milligrams, liquid, limit his fluids and sodium; no coffee, tea or other stimulants. I’d like an IVN too, and we ought to set him up with radiology for a series of KVR scans. He’s quite important. Diplomatic. State Department. That sort of thing. Please see to it that every step is taken to make him as comfortable as—”

  “What did you say your name was, Doctor?” a nurse inquired politely on the other side.

  “Shavers,” Watford snapped at once, but his heart skipped a beat. “Dr. E. K. Shavers.”

  He realized suddenly that if she asked him what the E stood for, he couldn’t say. But she never did.

  “I’m sorry. We have no Dr. Shavers affiliated here. Could you please—”

  “Sorry,” Watford murmured—

  “Wait. Don’t hang up,” he heard the voice say, but by that time he had judiciously clicked off.

  In the next moment, he was scanning the directory for Beth Israel, another hospital he knew to be in the vicinity, and a likely candidate for affiliation with Dr. E. K. Shavers, Urology, M.D., P.C., F.A.C.S. In no time, he was on the phone with the admitting office of Beth Israel, recounting almost word for word the same scenario he had used a few moments before with N.Y.U. Medical Center. This time it worked like a charm.

  He stepped out of the phone booth and wended his way slowly toward the counter. The pharmacist standing there was adding a column of figures. He looked up as Watford reached the counter.

  “Hello—I’m Charles Watford.”

  “Ah, yes. Mr. Watford. Dr. Shavers called in your prescription a few minutes ago. It’s waiting right here for you.”

  10

  “Come up.”

  “It’s too high.”

  “It’s not high. You’re being ridiculous. Come up here, I said.”

  “I’m going down.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “I’m dizzy. I’m—”

  “Don’t you dare go down.”

  In the empty steeple, the voices had a terrifying metallic resonance. A sharp brutal jolt from above. The boy looked up at the stern, gray presence on the stair—an august figure in his late sixties with a mane of flowing white hair and an eye that gave his gaze a beady, slightly walleyed cast.

  “Come up, I tell you,” the man fumed through clenched teeth, struggling to yank the boy bodily up the spiral stair that corkscrewed its way up through the center of the steeple. Against that force, the boy sank to his knees and pulled down hard against the upward drag.

  “You’re coming up, I said.”

  “No, I’m not,” the boy bawled. He had a sinking sense of all defiance oozing out of him. They hung there that way in midair, as it were, locked to each other by the grasp of hands, unable to resolve their struggle one way or another. Gasping and grunting, the man hauled and tugged the boy inchingly upward. His terrified gaze caught sight of the upward reaches of the steeple, beyond the shoulder of the man, the high dark place where he was being dragged. There were beams, rafters and thick hanging ropes surrounding a labyrinth of immense mechanisms where the clock and the great chimes were housed. It was very high up there, and blindingly bright. Mote-filled sunbeams poured through the clerestory windows encircling the steeple.

  The boy had already reached a height above the ground that had paralyzed his ability to look either up or down. Instead, he clamped his eyes shut and struggled against the powerful, ironlike tug of the hand.

  “Up. Up.”

  “No. Please. I can’t. I can’t.”

  “You will.”

  “I can’t.”
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  “You will, damn you.”

  The boy felt his shoulder being torn from its socket. He struggled to dig his fingers and heels into the hard, unyielding oak of the stair. But, inch by inch, he could see himself losing ground, drawn irresistibly into the heights of the tower. There were no more words between the two adversaries. Only the panting and grunting of a grim struggle. Then the boy heard the loud ratcheting click-clack of the tower clock flywheel rotating slowly round above them.

  Suddenly the hot dusty air in the steeple appeared to shudder, to break outward like some huge cloth rending. A pigeon fluttered wildly upward and something enormous exploded inside the boy’s head as the chimes of noon began to bong.

  “Wake up. Wake up, Mr. Watford.”

  Watford sat bolt upright in bed shaking his head. “My gosh. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. You must’ve been dreaming.” The stout lady in the starched white uniform pushed him gently back down onto his pillows. “Just a dream, Mr. Watford. Nothing more.”

  “S’funny. I can’t recall a blessed thing about it.” Watford started to sit back up, then clutched his head.

  “Still that headache?” the nurse asked, speaking in her warm Gaelic lilt.

  “I wish you could let me have a bit more medication.”

  “I really can’t, Mr. Watford. Not until either Dr. Shavers or Dr. Rashower sees you.”

  “But Dr. Shavers left instructions about my medication.”

  “Yes, he did. But we really can’t give you any more Demerol without your physician first seeing you and approving it. Now if you’re good, perhaps I can let you have some Empirin with a wee bit of codeine.”

  Watford groaned and held his head.

  “Hush.” The nurse pressed a finger to his lips and gestured with her head to the bed beside him. It was the first time he’d noticed someone else was there.

  Momentarily distracted from his own discomfort, Watford peered hard at the pale shape slumbering there beneath white sheets. In profile he could discern sharply defined features, surmounted by a wreath of white hair. Except for an occasional flutter of eyelids, the expression on the pallid, waxen face was one of peaceful repose. Staring at the new patient, Watford felt a pang of resentment.

  “Who’s he?”

  The nurse shrugged. “Name’s Boyd, I think. He came in last night. Some kind of accident. Hurt his leg. They put twenty stitches in his thigh. Quite a mess, I hear. Ought to be coming out of the anesthesia any time now. Be nice company for you, I should think.” She handed Watford an empty jar. “We’ll be needing a specimen from you. No rush. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  “Won’t you please just see if you can’t find me a bit more medication?”

  “Absolutely not.” The nurse beamed benevolently. “Not another drop until Dr. Rashower sees you. Now be sure to give your supper order to the nurse, like a good fellow.”

  She departed on a wave of rattling trays and the odor of starch and antiseptics. Watford turned and stared disapprovingly at the sallow, waxen mask lying on the pillow across the way. Several rubber tubes had been inserted in the man’s nostrils and coiled upward like ivy tendrils into large hanging glassine bags of fluid nutriment.

  Watford stared at the man, following with his eye the rhythm of his respiration. His sleep appeared to be deep. In the next moment Watford picked up the phone by his bedside and asked to be connected with the hospital dispensary.

  “Dispensary,” he snapped smartly into the phone. “This is Dr. Rashower in 418. Would you please send up a seven-hundred-milligram packet of meperidine? Patient’s name is Charles Watford. If you don’t have the liquid, the tablets will do fine. Soon as possible, please. He’s experiencing a great deal of discomfort.”

  Watford hung up the phone and glanced across once more at his neighbor. The gentleman’s head moved on the pillow, rolling slowly from side to side, dry lips sucking air, mumbling sounds; he appeared to be regaining consciousness.

  Watford leaned over the better to hear the mumbling. “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right now.”

  Again the man mumbled.

  “What? What’s that?”

  More indecipherable garble.

  “I’m sorry. You’ll have to speak more clearly. I can’t—” Just then his eye caught sight of the jar the nurse had left behind. In the next moment he rose, took the jar, plus a breakfast fork left behind on his night table and went directly to the lavatory in the corner of the room and closed the door. Once there he urinated freely into the jar, set it down on the sink top, then taking the fork up, unhesitatingly punched one of the prongs into his thumb. Instantly a bubble of red swelled outward from the wound, followed by a steady flow of blood.

  Watford permitted a number of droplets to drip into the urine sample, then swirled it about until it had achieved an even mixture. Next he ran cold water over the bleeding thumb until the wound had been sufficiently stanched. Finding a bit of gauze and adhesive in the medicine cabinet above the sink, he bound the wound, took his “doctored” sample and returned to the bed.

  By that time the orderly had just appeared at the door. “Watford?” he inquired.

  “I’m Watford. You have my medication?”

  The young man held up a small envelope with a half-dozen tablets. “Got it right here. Where’s the attending physician?”

  “Who?”

  “The attending physician, Dr. Rashower. He called in for these.”

  “Oh, Rashower. He left about five minutes ago. Some kind of an emergency.”

  “He’s gotta sign out for the pills, otherwise I can’t release them.”

  Watford groaned and clutched his head. “You mean to tell me I can’t have my medication? I’m in excruciating pain.”

  The orderly looked perplexed. “Sorry, that’s regulation. We gotta have the AP’s signature for all prescription drugs.”

  “You mean to say that just because the doctor happens to have forgotten that petty detail, you’re going to deny me relief from pain? Rashower is going to hear about this. Believe me, heads will roll.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s regulations. I can’t. I just can’t.” Watford groaned again. This time more volubly and with a deeper note of pathos.

  “Okay, okay,” the young orderly, none too fast on his feet, capitulated. “But you’d better tell your doctor to get that prescription down to the dispensary first thing in the morning.”

  Deep within his Demerol dreams, Watford dozed cozily before the TV. It had been on for hours but he was scarcely aware of anything he’d seen. The orderly had left him six pills, one to be taken every six hours and only in the event of extreme pain. Actually, he’d had no pain, but he’d had four Demerol anyway. That was the way with Demerol. He craved it always, particularly during times of stress. Besides, the proximity of the pills, the fact that they were close at hand, invariably led to increased dosages.

  Stuporous, he lay numb and far removed within a cool, totally silent chamber where the constant bickering of daily life could not impinge. While deadening his sense of unspecified dread, the Demerol had also the effect of enlarging his sense of perception. The scale of everything he looked at appeared greatly magnified. At the same time his response reaction to external stimuli was notably slowed.

  He was distantly aware of nurses coming and going, the sound of spongy soles squeaking on waxed vinyl tile, and then the small sporadic movements of a barely conscious man in the bed beside him. In Watford’s drugged state of heightened suggestibility, he noted that the aggravated breathing rhythms of his neighbor had imposed themselves on those of his own.

  The technicolor figures of the eleven o’clock news drifted large and unanchored before Watford’s unfocused eyes. Scenes of cataclysm swept across the screen—famine, earthquake, conflagration, a tidy, little tribal war comfortably distant in the African sub-Sahara, all liberally sprinkled, of course, with the daily catalog of carnage on the city streets— murders, assaults, defenestrations. He listened,
scarcely hearing as the announcer described the puzzling death of a midtown pawnbroker from an object that had either fallen or been thrown from a rooftop somewhere in the Hell’s Kitchen district the evening before.

  Watford’s head rolled drowsily on his chest and he fell asleep just as the police on the TV screen were scouring over a rooftop looking for evidence of foul play. Down below, the news cameras panned to a morgue van where several attendants were bundling a canvas-covered package onto a stretcher into the rear of the van.

  A jowly, unshaven detective at the location was answering questions fired at him from a brash young female reporter.

  Yes, he suspected foul play. Yes, there was some evidence that someone had been on the roof a short time before. Yes, someone, possibly injured, had been observed fleeing from the scene a short time later. And yes, this was indeed similar in pattern to five other such incidents over the past half-dozen years. Details were unclear. Witnesses were being sought. But, as of this moment, no one had yet come forth who might be able to supply descriptions of the fleeing figure. They were looking particularly for a man into whom the fleeing individual was said to have bumped. A telephone number, a hot line, was then flashed on the screen for the aid of those who had been in the vicinity at the time and might have seen something of significance.

  A short time later, the plump, rosy nurse came in to check Watford. Finding him fast asleep, she tucked the blankets almost maternally about him. Sleeping, she noted, he seemed boyish and defenseless. There was something sad about him, she thought, then turned off the TV and moved across to the white-haired gentleman stirring intermittently in and out of anesthesia.

  He murmured something and she knelt down the better to hear. “It’s all right. All right, m’dear. I’m here now. You’re doing fine. Just fine.” The lovely Gaelic lilt of her voice made it sound like a lullaby.

  She adjusted the flow of liquid nourishment gurgling down the long yellowish tubes leading from the suspended glassine bags into his nose. He was a proper gentleman, she noted. His white hair spread out like a halo on the pillow gave him the look of some transfigured saint.