Shadow of Death

by Patricia Gussin

  “Look here, Willie,” Snake said, “first I’m gonna paint in Diana Ross. That’d be something Stacy’ll like, right bro? Then, I’m gonna get the brother in there, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., man.”

  “Hot shit,” Willie answered. “Can’t believe he showed here, bro. Can’t believe he just up and showed at Cobo Hall last week with nobody even knowin’ he was comin’.”

  Snake smiled, cupping his hands over his mouth to warm them. “Can’t blame him. Up to see the Queen of Soul, Miss Aretha Franklin. What about that, man, what about the mayor calling it Aretha Franklin Day. ’Bout time we get the respect. Someday, my name gonna be added to that list. I keep paintin’ this thing and eventually they’ll take notice, and I’ll be gettin’ outta this fuckin’ hole.”

  Willie, as usual, listened to his friend’s dreams with a look of awe on his face. He’d seen Snake’s determination to create this big painting deepen as the months passed. Regardless of the weather, he painted every day. He was looking for a real job now, too. If anyone could find a way out of the neighborhood, it was Snake.

  As 1968 progressed, David spent more and more time at the hospital. By choice now, rather than necessity. Although the streets of Detroit still provided the usual gunshot wounds and stabbings, especially on weekend nights, casualties related to the riots had finally ceased. But as the post-riot governmental probes and the volatile political rhetoric escalated, City Hospital continued to absorb the victims of poverty and violence as spring approached. It was here in the crowded examining rooms, that University Medical School students were exposed to every conceivable medical scourge, every traumatic horror inflicted by guns, stabbings, auto collisions, burns, and diseases the civilized world considered eradicated — the result of indigence and neglect and nowhere else to go.

  And this was David’s domain. He took tremendous personal pride in the trauma treatment center he had pioneered where victims, whose chances of survival were almost nil elsewhere, survived regardless of their ethnicity. The enormity of the challenge provided by the Detroit riots had carried the accomplishments of City Hospital into national focus. As a result, the hospital had been contacted by a network producer, Ted Compton, about doing a documentary. Something realistic, something that would highlight the need for improved management of serious violent injuries. Compton had been watching the local news coverage and was determined that Dr. Monroe be the real-life central character.

  At first David had balked, shying away from more publicity. Hadn’t the riots been enough? Why prolong the city’s agony. Detroit was still plagued by civil unrest and instability. Fires were still sporadically reported, followed by occasional curfews. Racial hostility was still palpable. Compton argued an opposite point of view — that his program would showcase the expertise of the medical school, helping to rehabilitate Detroit’s damaged image. Finally, as a tribute to his colleague Ed Collins, David had agreed to allow Ted Compton to produce the show. He hoped it had been a wise decision.

  With a cup of coffee in hand, David sat for a moment in his office to reflect on his decision. Alone, in the dark, his mind gradually floated toward a recurring image. Since that impromptu meeting with Laura Nelson and her two kids in the hospital cafeteria, the same picture kept invading his consciousness. It was Laura. Try as he might to submerge the image of her, it returned. A vague sense of guilt ultimately followed his reveries, and to combat them, he had pushed himself harder, working longer hours. Laura was young, she was married, she was out of his reach, she was out of his life.

  It was also strange, he reflected, how accepting his wife had recently become of his grueling, sometimes eighty-hour workweek. Since that dreadful scene at the club on Christmas Eve, Cynthia seemed so much more accommodating, even understanding. They had never discussed the ugliness of that night, but after she’d taken that trip to Aruba with her attorney friend, Ruth, in mid-January, Cynthia had become much more pleasant. She and David still slept in separate rooms but that suited him just fine.

  As David sipped his coffee, images of Laura drifted into his mind.

  David had actually seen very little of her during the second semester. There had been no reason for them to interact. He smiled to himself, aware that he had made it his business to know her class schedule anyway. A simple drop-by visit to the administration office had provided him an easy opportunity to scan class rosters. From then on her schedule was imprinted on his mind. He always knew where she would be, and he occasionally created opportunities to see her. At these supposedly “chance” encounters, Laura had always been pleasant but in a remote, cool sort of way.

  Lately, David had noticed that Laura looked healthier than last semester. She obviously had adjusted well to the incredible stresses a first-year student faced. She radiated a fresh glow and had even gained some weight. He recalled how painfully thin she’d looked during the first semester final examinations, her clothing nearly hanging off her body.

  David glanced at the clock. How long had he been sitting there, foolishly wasting time? It was 8:00 p.m. He was hungry, and he had to catch the ER head nurse to warn her about the invasion of the television crew tomorrow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Ready for the weekend from hell?” Susan quipped as she climbed into Laura’s Falcon for their daily journey into the epicenter of Detroit. “Will told me this program is the newest brainchild of Dr. ‘Charming.’ You get to stay up all night and pretend you’re a real doctor working the ER. Does he think it’s going to scare us into quitting? Like separate the men from the boys?”

  “My stuff’s in the back seat,” Laura replied. “Not sure if that makes me ready though.”

  “I can’t wait for my chance,” Susan said. “You’re lucky to be going first. I’m not on for another two months.”

  “Maybe I’m nuts, but I guess I’m glad to get it over with. Steve’s making the time to spend the weekend with the boys, planning an all-male agenda. I suggested that he take them over to the Henry Ford Museum tomorrow. You know how much Mikey loves cars.”

  “Uh huh, he and every other guy I know.”

  “Would that include Will Cunningham?”

  Susan blushed. “It would. It’s scary how much I like him. Just one problem.”

  “He’s an instructor, right? Can he get in trouble for dating a student?”

  “Once I finish anatomy, I can date him out in the open. It’s not like he’s tenured faculty, he’s just a post doc. But that’s not the problem. We have a major life-style incompatibility.”

  “What? You guys seem so well-suited for each other.”

  “Sports,” Susan smiled. “He’s clueless. Doesn’t know the Pistons from the Lions. With their mediocre standings, who cares? But the Tigers, almost winning the Pennant? And the Red Wings? Four Stanley Cups. Imagine.”

  “You’re the only one who’s more crazy about sports than Steve,” Laura said.

  Susan smiled mischievously. “So what about Will? What if we had kids? How could he teach them to throw a football?”

  “Uh, Susan, speaking of kids,” Laura interrupted. “I have something to tell you.” She turned sideways to look her friend straight in the eye. “Promise not to tell anyone?”

  “Yeah …” Susan hesitated. “What’s up?”

  “I’m going to have another baby.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  Laura blinked. “Maybe I’m crazy, but it’s true.”

  “But … why?”

  “Because I want more kids,” Laura said quickly, avoiding Susan’s blatant stare. “What’s so awful about that?”

  “You already have two. You’re only twenty-three.” Susan sounded very logical. “Still lots of time on your biological clock, so I mean, why now?”

  Laura gripped the wheel. “I’ll be twenty-four. Why so negative? Why not now?”

  “Because you’ll have to drop out of med school, that’s why not now. You’re already stretched beyond reason. Med school’s an eighty-hour-a-week proposition.” Susan�
��s foot began to drum against the floor. “Girl, after how hard you worked. I mean, why?”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, fighting tears to reason with her friend. “But I’m already an experienced mother and I got through the first semester okay, right?”

  “So when is the baby due?” Susan asked.

  “Late May. I’ll be able to finish the second term, have some time off for semester break, and be back in September for the next term. Great planning, huh?”

  Laura suddenly realized that she was rehearsing these words for the school administration office. She feared that as soon as they learned she was pregnant, they’d ask her to leave and reapply in the future. If only this were her sole concern, she thought. The real issue was whose baby she was carrying. Her whole world hinged on the answer to this question. Right now, there was no answer; there was nothing she could do but bury the question as deeply as she could.

  “I suppose,” Susan said flatly. “When are you planning to tell the school?”

  “I’m going to wait as long as I can. Maybe another month. Then it’ll be too late to kick me out. I’ll guarantee them that I’ll be back in September.” She glanced at Susan. “Please don’t tell anyone, including Rosie and Vicky.”

  “You have my word. Your little secret is safe with me.”

  “Thanks. You’re a true friend. My only concern now is whether it will be a boy or girl.” Laura flashed a smile she hoped looked sincere.

  “Wow!” Susan pointed ahead. “Take a look at the hospital parking lot, would you? It’s jammed. You can hardly even see the entrance with all those vans lined up. What’s going on?”

  “Who knows, but I’ve gotta get out of this miserable traffic,” Laura said. She skillfully weaved her way off the Chrysler Expressway.

  “Lots of activity,” Susan reported. “Not more riots, I hope?”

  “Whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t interfere with my ER call weekend. I guess you can understand why I’m anxious to get this weekend behind me. Now remember — nobody knows but Steve, my parents, and the in-laws. I’ve been dying to tell someone, you have no idea.”

  “Well, I’m glad you told me.” Susan stared pointedly at Laura’s abdomen. “You definitely do have a bulge. No wonder you’ve been wearing those oversized muumuu things. Don’t think Vicky hasn’t commented.”

  “Let’s just hope I can find an extra large scrub gown for tonight.”

  * * *

  The emergency room bustled with frenetic activity on Friday, March fifteenth, as cameramen stationed themselves strategically to best capture a series of dramatic vignettes. The more sensational the story the better, from the time an ambulance screamed its arrival at the hospital to the closing of the operating room doors. Bright floodlights illuminated the ER entrance area, casting an eerie daylight image throughout the usually dim interior. To make matters more intense, the heat generated by the powerful lights overwhelmed the ancient thermostats, and a sheen of sweat covered every face as the hospital staff and film crew moved about.

  The triage area, where the most urgent cases were separated from more minor ones, was the documentary’s focus. Cameramen, lighting technicians, and reporters all waited to descend on the next unlucky trauma victim. A large movie camera on a swivel focused its telescopic lens on the panorama of treatment cubicles. A separate huge, wide-angle lens camera covered the production command center that had overtaken the main nursing station.

  The network was not disappointed. By midnight, it was evident that inner city Detroit had produced its typical Friday night violence resulting in a parade of ambulances, sirens screaming and lights flashing. Already four gunshot cases, in addition to six stabbings, had been admitted. These were on top of the usual car crashes, heart attacks, concussions, and fractures.

  Despite the commotion caused by the production crew, the ER trauma team functioned at its best. Professional and practiced. Each crisis was more urgent than the former, and life and death traded places so often that no one could keep count. The shoot was going so well that Ted Compton planned to wrap it up for the night after filming one last case. By midnight, a growing pallor had overtaken his usual ruddy complexion, the result of too much blood and gore.

  In the meantime, David walked past a crowded waiting room to a cramped, curtained cubicle in the main ER. He had to squeeze around the patient’s family and a uniformed policeman to do so. When he parted the curtain, he saw Dr. Doug Kaplan, a staff urologist, bent over a young patient with a big Afro, who lay with his pants down by his knees, gripping the edges of the examining table so hard his knuckles were truly white, his face a sweaty study in agony. David watched as the urologist attempted to insert a plastic catheter into the stump of what had been a normal-sized, functioning penis. Until tonight. The patient’s name, David had noted on the log-in record, was Lonnie Greenwood, age twenty-three.

  Because of the din created by bickering members of Lonnie’s family and his girlfriend’s family, Dr. Kaplan had to shout to be heard by the four medical students at his side. “The shaft of the penis is totally destroyed!”

  Meantime, a young police officer was trying to take a statement from the victim’s girlfriend, Maya Johnson, a moon-faced girl with large gold hoop earrings.

  “A clean break we might be able to repair, but not this,” Dr. Kaplan continued in a matter-of-fact, clinical tone. He paused for a moment to respond to one of the student’s questions.

  From what David gathered, Lonnie’s girlfriend had been the cause of the awful wound.

  “There’s not enough tissue to piece together. These fragments are already necrotic; we’ll have to excise them,” the urologist went on. “This man would be dead if he hadn’t been hit so precisely. Would have severed the femoral artery. We’ll take him to the OR and secure a patent urethra so that there’ll be bladder drainage.

  David could not help but overhear the involved families squabbling over whose fault the incident was: Lonnie’s, for messing around with another woman, or his girlfriend’s, for taking revenge. David learned that the policeman on duty had driven the victim and his girlfriend to the hospital in his squad car rather than wait for an ambulance. He had just been joined by a dark-skinned detective named Morris Willard. Willard, who wore an ill-fitting brown suit, a pair of shiny shoes, and a scowl, attempted to ascertain some details about the gun that Maya Johnson had allegedly used against her boyfriend.

  “It’s not alleged, it’s true, I did it, and I’d do it again! That sorry ass butterhead thinks it’s just fine for him to bang Glenda.”

  “Who’s Glenda?” the detective asked.

  “She was my best girlfriend! But no more.”

  “Excuse me, Miss,” Willard interrupted. “Your name please?”

  “What? My name is Maya Johnson. No relation to the President of the United States in case you was wondering.”

  “Miss Johnson,” the detective continued, “you have just admitted that you attempted to murder.” He waited for the officer to supply the name. “Lonnie Greenwood.”

  “Like hell I did,” she spat, “I was attemptin’ to shoot his dick off!”

  The detective, a mask of sweat already covering his face, turned to the young cop. “Have you read Miss Johnson her rights?”

  “Not yet sir.”

  “Miss Johnson, are you still in possession of the weapon that you used?”

  “Course not. That weapon, like you say, disappeared real quick. Got no idea. Go ahead and arrest me, I don’t care, nothin’ else left for me now.”

  “Maybe not,” Willard said roughly, turning to the uniformed officer. “Cuff her. Find that weapon.”

  David had intended to observe Doug’s case and to assess it for the camera crew, but once he saw the nature of the wound, he knew that television was out of the question. However, his attention was soon diverted. First there was the scene with Lonnie’s girlfriend and the police. Then there was Laura Nelson, right here in the ER, witnessing the awful spectacle. On weekend rotation,
he realized, as it dawned on him that he had neglected to keep the students out of the way of the cameras and reporters on this unusual night.

  The students wore the traditional green surgical scrubs worn by staff. Crumpled and baggy, the outfits were hardly flattering, but to David the scrubs made Laura look younger. Her blonde hair hung loosely to her shoulders, looking fresh and soft, her cheeks bright. Her eyes, however, shone with what he imagined was utter horror at the sight before her.

  “Doug,” David called to make his presence known.

  Surprise registered on the students’ faces as they recognized the chief of surgery.

  “Thought I’d check on your case for the film crew.”

  Doug frowned. “I don’t think so, Dr. Monroe.”

  “I agree. This one’s not fit for TV viewing,” David said, grimacing at the gory stump and agonized face before him.

  Lonnie groaned.

  “He’s on his way to the OR,” Doug said, turning to the students still standing at Lonnie’s side as the sedative took effect on the patient. Two students helped the traumatized young man lay back, finally closing his eyes. “You students go on up and scrub for the surgery.”

  David cut in. “Doug, may I borrow one of your students? I’ve got an interesting case.”

  “Of course.”

  “Mrs. Nelson, would you come with me?” David said, pausing at the door and motioning to the detective inside. “This place is overly crowded tonight. I’m getting concerned about security. Is it possible for you to get more officers here?”

  “Soon as I’m done dealing with this circus, Doctor.” He sounded more annoyed than cooperative.

  At that moment, a familiar figure walked with authority through the ER doors and after a moment’s hesitation, approached them. It was Detective Reynolds. Laura felt her knees buckle. What was he doing here? Did it have to do with her?

  “What’s all the hoopla about?” Reynolds directed his question to the cameras. “You should have told me, I would’ve sent some uniforms over.”