The Stone War

by Madeleine E. Robins

  Fratelone hung his head. “Then whadda we do?” he asked. “I told them girls I was takin’ care of them from now on.” He was stroking the child’s hair; his big square hand was larger than her face.

  “What can we do?” Barbara echoed. “If she died on the way out of the city, at least we’d have tried something. What else can we do?”

  “You can’t let her die, Boss. Shit, she’s only a baby. I promised them.”

  The fury that filled Tietjen was overwhelming. At Bobby Fratelone and Barbara, at the girl, at everyone who had got out and left the city, at the city itself, at whatever had happened—

  He wheeled around, strode into the next room, and kicked at a closet door until it hung by one hinge and his foot hurt like holy hell. The adrenaline subsided. Reason, or something that felt close enough, returned. Tietjen limped back into Kathy’s room.

  Barbara and Fratelone watched him warily. Neither one had moved.

  “I’m okay,” he said tersely. Tietjen looked from Fratelone to Barbara McGrath, and finally at Kathy Calvino, unaware of them all. For one more minute he wished that he could chuck it all and go back to the streets, wished that he had come back a day later, or a week, that he had not left Massachusetts and come back to the city. No, not that, but he wished.

  No use wishing.

  He took a long breath. “Bobby, I want you to find some things for me.” As Tietjen started to list what he needed, Fratelone began to shake.

  “Ah, God, Boss. No, there’s gotta be something else you can—”

  “Like what?” Tietjen asked. “Just get everything together and bring it back here. We don’t have time to go around the block on this, Bobby. Okay? I don’t like this any better than you do.”

  There was a great release in having made a decision, even with the consequences that flowed from it. “Barbara?”

  She nodded. There was fear and reluctance in her look, and sorrow, and trust that terrified him. “We have to do something,” she affirmed. “If there’s no help, we’ll have to do it ourselves. What will we need?”

  He could have damned everything on the face of the Earth just then for making him the decision maker, but McGrath made it easier by not asking questions, protesting, acting squeamish. She came around the bed to his side, put her hand on his for a moment, then reached for her clipboard.

  She took charge of sterilizing the tools: a hacksaw, the kitchen parer, a few scalpels, suturing needles and thread, all the surgical clamps they had brought back with them, and two steel spatulas that could be heated for cautery. From somewhere, a pile of miraculously clean towels. Bobby had found a folding massage table upstairs and brought it down to the infirmary, where it was swabbed with alcohol and draped with sheets to make an operating table. A ring of high-beam lamps stood a yard’s length from the table, all connected to a single battery.

  As Barbara and Fratelone set up the room, Tietjen sat by Kathy’s bed, rereading the descriptions in Dortland’s of amputations, checking the skeletal and circulatory charts. Poring through Rosen’s, the emergency medicine book, trying to plan. What kind of amputation it was, exactly, that he was planning? Callander’s? Carden’s? Farabeuf’s? Flaps cut from where to where, sewn how? Bleeding to control from the femoral artery, the deep femoral, saphenous vein—a moment of panic: I can’t do this. Sutures: vertical mattress, over and over, Lembert, lock stitch, Halsted, horizontal mattress stitch. Methodically Tietjen worked it out. Watch for the femoral artery, which might retract to a place where he couldn’t find it: clamp it first, then cut. No anesthesia: if Kathy was not unconscious with the fever the pain would knock her out. Tourniquet to cut down the flow of blood while he located, clamped, and tied off the blood vessels—

  “John?” McGrath’s voice startled him. “We’re ready.”

  “Right.” This time she followed him to the bathroom, where Bobby Fratelone was scrubbing his hands with angry attention.

  “’S my kid. You and Barbara might need a little help.”

  Tietjen decided not to argue, and started washing his own hands. One book prescribed twenty soapings, twenty rinses. Soap was too precious, hot water in too short supply. After five cycles they rinsed their hands in alcohol, then went back into Kathy Calvino’s sickroom, hands held up before their faces to dry in the cool air of early evening, and snapped on latex gloves. Allan Hochman had moved Kathy to the operating table and stood in the hallway, guarding the quiet of their work.

  First the tourniquet, a narrow belt with the insignia of an expensive designer. Fratelone wrapped it around the girl’s leg, high on the thigh. “Like that?”

  Tietjen nodded. “Draw it tight.”

  Afterward he remembered very little of what he’d done. When he took up the scalpel it did not seem possible to use it on another human being. At the first cut Kathy strained against Fratelone’s hands, shuddering. Then she went limp.

  “That’s taken care of,” McGrath observed dryly. She was calm, and followed Tietjen’s orders briskly, as if she had trained for her job since childhood. Fratelone, at the head of the bed, had slumped back on his stool when Kathy fainted. “Don’t faint, Bobby,” McGrath said quietly. Fratelone shook his head and sat still, hands on the child’s shoulders and eyes trained on her face, not looking at what was happening.

  He’d plotted it out beforehand, but despite his planning the operation wasn’t neat, wasn’t tidy. It took forever, cutting, clamping one artery and then another, sewing, cauterizing, cutting bone. The sound of sawing bone made Tietjen’s stomach lurch; it reminded him of sitting in the dentist’s chair listening to things he couldn’t see. Now he could see, and wished he couldn’t. Tietjen made it work by thinking like an architect, envisioning structure, systems, making a puzzle out of the little girl’s leg.

  At last he finished the cut with a long flap from the thigh, pulled the skin over the blunted edge of the stump and began to suture it into place in the front. McGrath took the tools he had used and dropped them into a bucket on the floor. Fratelone relaxed just enough to pat the child’s shoulder clumsily. Tietjen put the needle down and swabbed the stump with alcohol and iodine.

  “I don’t know,” he said into the silence.

  “I do,” Barbara said. She took a sheet nearby and tenderly wrapped the leg he had amputated, for disposal. “There was nothing else we could do. I don’t want to hear any nay-saying. I’ll stay in here for a while—you guys go get cleaned up.” She frowned at Fratelone when he shook his head. “Don’t give me any trouble, Bobby; you’re white as a sheet. John, drag him out of here. She’s going to live, okay?”

  Tietjen took Fratelone with him, wishing he were as sure as McGrath.

  Allan Hochman was still at the door. “Wait and see,” Tietjen told him, and pushed past him into the hallway to find everyone—Elena, Ketch, Ted, Sandy Hochman, the other Calvino girls, the thirty-odd others who were living in the Store, waiting there.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” They looked at him expectantly. “It’s over, she seems to be okay, we don’t know. Don’t any of you have work to do?” They looked at each other but no one moved. “Go away. You’ll breathe up all the good air! You’ll leave all your nasty germs around. Christ!” Sandy and Allan exchanged sheepish looks and Sandy turned, taking the children with her; the others began to move away. Tietjen felt a little guilty at having yelled at them.

  “Damn sideshow,” Fratelone muttered beside him. The two of them went off to the men’s showers to wash the operation off.

  It was dark when Tietjen was finally clean, changed, and a little of the adrenaline had dissipated. He went into the lobby, where two of the men were putting up the shutters for the night, peered out the door, and decided against a walk. Instead he started climbing stairs, up to the fourteenth floor, to sit in a window and look out over the city. He sat there a long time, not really thinking, forgetting about Kathy and McGrath, about the monsters he had seen the night before, forgetting about anything but his own exhaustion and the delicious sensation of sitting
with the breeze on his face.

  “You pull a couple more stunts like that one and you’re going to be a legend in your own time.” A woman’s voice came from behind him. “Between last night and today—definitely mythic stuff.” Ketch stepped closer.

  “Come on,” Tietjen said uncomfortably.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what the hero is supposed to say, no? Shucks, ma’am, ’tweren’t nothing?”

  “It was something. I don’t know if we did more harm than good. As for last night … I didn’t do anything heroic last night. Stood there pissing myself and praying.”

  “And kept the rest of us from freaking and running out and getting ourselves killed. Can’t get out of it, Jefe; you’re developing a reputation.” She moved closer and Tietjen swung one leg down from the sill, making room for her. She sat down easily, leaning against the sash. “It’s nice up here. You could almost forget some things. Have you told anyone about last night?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t had the time. I thought maybe tomorrow we’d call a meeting, try to decide what to do.”

  “They’ll do what you decide to do,” Ketch said. “Better figure out what you want.”

  What I want? Tietjen looked out over the streets. “I want things the way they were,” he said.

  “Really? Street kids and peddlers and thieves and blockcops beating on anyone they don’t like? You don’t look like the type. You should be the armored-cab-from-door-to-door type with sixteen locks and a gun under your pillow. Upward mobility, all that.”

  He smiled. “That’s why my wife married me. Didn’t think I’d run against type. I thought you said you were a street kid for a while?”

  “A while. I got tired of looking over my shoulder all the time. The times I didn’t, that’s when I got to know the inside of ERs so well.”

  “Then what were you doing before all this?” He waved a hand to indicate the ruins below them.

  “Law at NYU—educational ward of the state. Which meant I did a lot of shit jobs for the state while I was getting my degree.” She sounded as if she did not want to be asked. “You?”

  “I was a project manager, an architect. Lived on the West Side. I wonder if my apartment is still there. I should go look sometime.”

  They sat quiet for a while. “Your wife didn’t make it?” Ketch asked at length.

  “I think not. The building she lived in was burning when I got there.”

  “You weren’t together, then.” She sighed and stretched one arm above her head. Her fingers were very long and ended in long, bluntly shaped nails. “You know, I meant what I said yesterday.”

  Tietjen didn’t remember. “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah. You know: no one else I’d rather be stuck in a nightmare with. You held us together—the tough guy looked like he was going to lose it, and I was damned near wetting my pants, and you just looked—strong. You got us through it.”

  Tietjen blinked and thought about that. He hadn’t felt strong, if anything he’d just been concentrating on keeping himself together.

  Ketch leaned a little closer. “I might as well ask. You sleep alone?”

  “Alone?” It took Tietjen a moment to make sense of the question. “Yeah. Who would I sleep with?”

  Ketch smiled whitely. “I don’t know, that’s why I asked. Ms. McGrath, maybe, or Elena-the-rabbit. Or the tough guy, Fratelone. No telling. Think of it as a rhetorical question. Like, a proposition.”

  He had figured that out, at least. “I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t be flattered, say yes or no. Or not tonight.”

  “Uhh. Tonight I don’t think I could do justice—” he began.

  “Okay. The offer stands.” She stood up. “Go back to your stargazing. I’m on the second floor, if you change your mind.”

  He watched her turn and start for the stairs. He flirted with the idea, feeling an adrenaline rush at the thought. Couldn’t just let her walk away. “Wait a minute. What’s your name, first name?”

  “Luisa. You can call me Li. Does it matter?”

  Now Tietjen smiled. “I like to know. Second floor?”

  “Yeah.” Ketch stood by the stairway, a shadow in the darkness, her head tilted to one side as she watched him.

  “Maybe you’d better show me where,” Tietjen said at last, and left the windowsill.

  9

  IN the morning Tietjen ate breakfast with McGrath. She was exhausted, her skin the translucent white of vellum … but Kathy Calvino’s fever was down. McGrath was certain the little girl would live; she sounded like a drunk in love with the world. “You were wonderful!” she slurred, stirring her oatmeal. Barbara leaned toward him and repeated, “You were wonderful. We were wonderful!” It was as if the surgery had bound them together in some new way. But Tietjen had woken early, unused to another body in the bed, left Ketch’s room silently and crept upstairs to his own to wash and change, thinking about the monsters. The operation had allowed him to put off thinking about what to do next. Now the operation was over, and he was going to need Barbara’s help. If he closed his eyes he could hear that woman screaming again; he thought sickly that it was the call to battle.

  “John?” Barbara was looking at him, had obviously said something that required an answer. “I said I hoped you got enough sleep?” McGrath gestured wryly at herself. “I must look like I slept in a barrel, but we did it. The kid’s going to make it, I’m sure.”

  “I’m glad, Barbara.”

  “But …” she prompted. “But what, John?”

  “There are some things I didn’t get around to telling you yesterday. Barbara, we saw something out there when we went to the hospital—”

  He was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder and in his ear Ketch’s voice. “Hey, early riser. Can I join you?” Her breath was very warm.

  He waited while Ketch settled herself at the table, caught between adolescent embarrassment and an equally adolescent pleasure. She could corroborate what he had to tell McGrath.

  Across the table McGrath looked momentarily disconcerted, pursing her lips as she watched Ketch sit down. She smiled politely. “Good morning, Luisa.”

  “Ms. McGrath.” Ketch turned back to Tietjen. “I didn’t hear you go.”

  “Uh, no.” Tietjen felt his face go hot, and he willed Ketch to understand that this was not the time for morning-after chat. As if she read his thoughts, McGrath made a little noise of impatience and began gathering up her plate and silver to leave.

  “Barbara, wait, we need to talk. We have to tell you—” He turned back to Ketch. “I’m glad you made it down; I was about to explain to Barbara about the, the people—”

  “Oh,” Ketch said dully. “Right.” Her smile dimmed.

  “The people?” All the tired ebullience that had characterized McGrath five minutes before had faded. She made no move to leave, but neither did she put her silverware and plate down. “John, later? I need to get some sleep.”

  “Barbara, five minutes. Look, I’ll walk you up to your room. Li, you come too, you can tell her—”

  McGrath shook her head. “I’m too tired to listen now, John. Give me a couple of hours; maybe then.” She walked away without a backward look.

  “Barbara!”

  “John, let her go.” Ketch had her hand on his sleeve and urged him back into his seat. “Like she says, she’s tired.”

  That was not it, though. Something else was going on. “We need her to understand about what we saw out there. We have to get the Store ready: those things’re going to come down on us and we have to be ready.”

  Ketch pushed her fork through the beans on her plate. “They won’t try to take the Store. We’re dug in here, we’re fortified. They’d be crazy to try anything.”

  “They are crazy.” Tietjen looked at the knife in his hand. “Oh shit, maybe I’m crazy.”

  Ketch looked at him levelly. “A little, maybe. Tilting-at-windmills crazy. Look, baby: most people here don’t give a shit except that they’ve found a safe place. Unles
s that’s threatened you’re not going to find a lot of fighters here, John. Everybody’s too tired.”

  “You too tired?”

  Ketch said slowly. “I heard that woman screaming. But she was one woman, alone. They won’t come here, after us. There’s a lot of people here. And I tell you: when I think of fighting those things I want to dig a hole and crawl in. Maybe take you with me, since you obviously don’t have the sense to run yourself.” She raised a hand to his neck in a light caress to soften the words.

  He shrugged under the touch, aroused and discomfited by the casual intimacy. “So you think we should play business as usual unless the—what can we call them? Unless the monsters come after us?”

  “When you get a better plan, let me know.” Ketch dropped her hand, made a face at her plate, pushed it away and stood up. “I’m on cleanup again. See you later.”

  Tietjen waited until she was gone, then cleared away his plate. Something was going on with McGrath and with Ketch, and it was distracting him from a threat to the Store, and he couldn’t have that. Trying to think through that knot, he left the dining room for the building next door, where Fratelone had started workers clearing and cleaning out living space.

  When he cornered Fratelone the man said, “We don’t need to go after no more trouble, Boss.” He waved Tietjen away and refused to hear anything more. The gawky teenager, Ted, looked pleased to be asked to advise, but he said the same thing, only with more words. “Jeez, Mr. Tietjen, like, they aren’t gonna bother us here, we’re, like, established. Nobody here wants to go after them, right?” The boy looked at him as if to see if he’d made the right answer. Tietjen could not tell him.

  He filled the day with hard work and went to bed too tired to think. The next day was filled with work, and the day after that. The harder he worked, the less time to remember. Tietjen persuaded himself that Ketch was probably right, the Store was too strong for the nightmare people to attack.