Frank

by Fred Petrovsky

  “I’m fine this morning,” I said.

  “That’s good. I’m going to move your legs around a little here. We can’t have them go stale on you, can we now? That wouldn’t be acceptable. Take me for example. I think you’d be quite surprised at the shape I’m in. Well, I suppose I could stand to lose a few pounds. But my legs are in tip-top shape. I’m telling you. I once wore one of those little tickers on my belt that measured how far I walked during the day here. And you know what? I can put on three miles in a day, easy. That’s quite a bit, you know. Oh, I know it comes in short spurts. Not really working my heart. Walking back and forth down halls is really all I do. But it adds up. My calves are hard as a rock, I’m telling you, Mr. Howie.”

  She stopped and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  But she wasn’t right back. I was alone a long time. I strained to hear voices but couldn’t pick up anything. This was unusual. I couldn’t remember another time when she’d disappeared without explanation.

  The next voice I heard was Dr. Bernstein’s. “Morning, Howard. How’s your shoulder?” he asked, but didn’t wait for my answer. “We’re going to run you through an MRI. The full unit downstairs. Now.”

  I asked him why. This was totally out of the blue. Every procedure I’d undergone so far had been explained to me well in advance. Usually the day before they were conducted. And now, quite abruptly, I was leaving the room that had been my home for so long without notice. Something had changed.

  “Why so sudden?” I asked.

  Dr. Bernstein’s mouth was close to my ear. “I struggle with how much to tell you because I don’t know how productive it would be.”

  “Don’t protect me. It’s my life.”

  “It’s not a matter of keeping things from you. Listen, Howard, I’m going to have to disconnect the speech synthesizer for a while now. Okay?”

  “Why?”

  “It won’t be long,” he said. “I promise.”

  I said, “Wait, please,” but didn’t hear my voice and knew that I’d been disconnected. I perceived switches being thrown and plugs being pulled. I sensed movement, heard springs and wheels against the floor, a rushing, squeaking sound.

  “We’re moving you downstairs now, Howard. I’ll be with you all the way. But it’s like this: I understand it’s your life and all. I respect that. But it goes deeper than that. I have a responsibility to ensure your survival. Information is like a medication. I decide what to prescribe. Are you ready to face the microphones? And how about your face? Can we allow your picture to be taken? We risk you being recognized.”

  I was panicky and dizzy with emotion. Hard to think straight. I was thrust into the ocean and was trying to keep my head above the waves. It was like I was dying in my nightmare again.

  Still, I understood what he was getting at, and it’s something that I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about. It certainly was very likely that if my picture was published in the newspaper or broadcast on the evening TV news someone would instantly recognize me. There were bound to be people watching who knew Frank. I could only guess at the media circus that would ignite. Before you knew it, there would be special issues of national magazines focusing on Frank and myself. I would be recognized everywhere. Not that I would be roaming around town anyway.

  I felt someone touching me on my shoulder.

  “I know you can feel this,” Dr. Bernstein said in a raspy whisper. “It’s an amazing accomplishment that will threaten a lot of people. I’m sorry, Howard. I should have planned for this. I knew it was coming. You don’t know how sorry I am. Honestly, I’ve spent more time on the technical aspects of your surgery than the public repercussions. But that’s all behind us now. I’ve got everything arranged. I think you’ll be pleased.”

  I only partially understood what he was saying, not because he was couching his words in riddles but because I was lost in a slashing terror at not being able to communicate. I could hear Dr. Bernstein, could feel his touch, and that trapped me even more. I felt as if my brain was sloshing around inside Frank and was helpless to control anything. I tried to scream but couldn’t, of course. What was happening? Stop it. Stop it now. I tried to concentrate on the sounds, the rushing of steps and doors opening.

  “Stay with me, Howard. We’re almost there,” Dr. Bernstein said, though I actually felt little comfort at his voice. Where was Catherine?

  Then my limited sense of motion detected a slowing down and I heard a low humming. Finally, heavy doors opened and I was aware that I had been taken outside. I could hear traffic in the distance. Motion again, wheels against pavement or asphalt. The sound of a door opening, then more movement.

  “Quickly,” said Dr. Bernstein, though not to me. “Now.”

  Metal against metal this time. A sliding and scraping sound and my aural landscape had changed again. A door closed. I was inside a vehicle of some sort. An ambulance, I thought. Ignition and motion again.

  I was indignant that I could not communicate. I was totally helpless and was filled with rage and frustration. I think Dr. Bernstein knew this, and he moved quickly to comfort me.

  “You still with me?” he asked. “Hang in there. I know you can hear me. We’re moving you, Howard. I can tell you that now. The hospital was becoming dangerous. We had to take action, and we had to take it now. Tomorrow might have been too late. I’m moving you to a safe place, Howard. A private nursing facility that I think you’ll like just fine. It’s state of the art, Howard, and I wish to hell I could have warned you. Sorry for the spur-of-the-moment thing and the cover story, but I had to get you out and take control of this again before it was pulled from me. Here’s the story, Howard. Once we’ve got you set up safe and secure, we’ll move forward with a news conference. Probably tomorrow or the next day. Only now we’ll be able to dole out the information as we see fit. The script will be ours, not someone else’s. For now, at least, we’ll be able to take it slow, walk it through, and lead people where we want them.”

  I couldn’t argue with Dr. Bernstein’s reasoning. But he was wrong. I don’t know what he was afraid of. And I was upset that I hadn’t been consulted. I hoped Catherine had been involved in this move. She had a full medical power of attorney. They couldn’t do anything without her consent. I could understand how she’d be in favor of this clandestine move. Anything to protect me, I assumed. But she was wrong, too.

  Sooner or later everything would be revealed. I was sure that it was a mistake for them not to wheel me out in front of the press and lay it all out. Catherine and Frank’s wife would speak. They’d have blown-up pictures of both of us. They should have played it up as a humane, medical breakthrough. Instead, though, Dr. Bernstein had descended into a world of fear and secrets. What was he afraid of? What’s the use of slowly releasing information? It was a careless mistake.

  But I understood what was happening because I could hear Dr. Bernstein as he rambled on. He had changed. The confident healer had disappeared and seemed to have been replaced with a tentative, anxious man. His voice had fallen an octave and he didn’t finish some of his sentences. He sounded like a scared, conquered man. But what had beaten him?

  “Howard,” he said, “I can’t predict what will happen. I don’t know. I’m really not sure of a lot of things right now, to tell you the truth. And I don’t know who we can trust anymore. I know what to do now. That’s not a problem. But the next step? I don’t know. You’re my only patient now, my friend. And I won’t abandon you. I won’t allow anyone to harm you.” He coughed and said, “Anyway, enough of that. You. How are you? Can you feel me? I’m sure you can.” I felt him touching my shoulder, his hand rubbing my skin in a circle. “You have contact with the world, my friend. I’m going to check your eyes.”

  This was a simple procedure he’d performed many times. He’d manually open my eyelids and shine a small light.

  This time, I could see the light.

  Let me rephrase that. I couldn’t actually see the light. But I could sense the differenc
e from the moment before he checked my eyes. It wasn’t a brightness. More a change in density. A different kind of darkness is the only way I can describe it. I couldn’t open my eyelids, in any event. But I didn’t tell the doctor. Not because I couldn’t communicate with him at that moment, but because I didn’t want to. Not yet, at least. Keeping this change in eye sensation from him was a way of taking control of my own destiny, I reasoned. Something like that. For the same reason I hadn’t told him that my perception of feeling in my left shoulder and upper arm had now spread nearly to my elbow. In any case, I felt it prudent to keep my evolving sight sensation to myself.

  “Looks fine,” he said. “You’re doing well.”

  Doing well? What did he mean by that, I wondered. Did doing well mean staying alive? I had not yet told anyone that undergoing the procedure may have been a mistake. My quality of my life was hideous. I don’t even think you could call it a life. It was more like an existence than anything else. I was more useless than a garden slug. To the doctor, I was a specimen. I was something to show off. A publishing subject for him. His ticket to medical stardom, I suppose. He was treating me like a prized possession, protecting me, concealing me, controlling me. But I was much more than a possession, I knew. I was his future, whatever that held. I would be his meal ticket or his pariah. I didn’t really begrudge his actions. I suppose I might have done the same thing. When I discovered an artist, I too would take care to guard my new asset.

  As a matter of fact, that’s how I acquired representation of Earl Baldwin, my first exclusive artist. In the very early days I’d learned the gallery business from the bottom up, starting in sales at the Arnoldson Gallery and eventually working my way up to manager of that medium-sized gallery. I attribute its success to its location, not the quality of work sold. It was a tourist-oriented gallery with cheesy canvases of children and sunsets that catered to the walk-in crowd, not serious collectors.

  Maybe it was because I was much younger and idealistic, but I had the notion that a gallery had a hallowed and moral responsibility to mirror the best and worst of what humanity was and could be. Real art should be a reflection of what was, is and might be. Art was permanent and, as such, should be moral. It should communicate and commemorate. Good art draws a person in and should give him pause. Great art can go further; it can teach people something about themselves.

  But that’s not what Shelby Arnoldson, the owner of the gallery, thought. “Any art that someone buys is good art,” she’d say frequently. “If someone likes something, and it appeals to them, it’s good art. Even better art if they buy it. Get off your high horse, Howard.”

  I left The Arnoldson Gallery and leased space down the street where I started my own place, modestly named the Lavery Gallery.

  One of the first things I did was travel to the gallery district in Atlanta, which was fast building a reputation as being one of the most ambitious art centers in the country. If they were doing something right, I wanted to know what it was.

  Sadly, I found the Atlanta galleries to be rather vulgar and, well, the same as each other. Each gallery merged into the next. None had a personality. They each had their own featured artists. That was clear. But they all focused on the same themes. Southern culture. Ethnicity. Landscapes. Reconstruction. The techniques were executed well, but few were challenging or involving. Art should live, not be delivered stillborn.

  During a stop in one of the last galleries I was particularly disillusioned. I remember standing and shaking my head at a terribly executed sculpture of a boy carrying a fishing pole. I said, “What a shame.”

  I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. But I’m glad I did. Next to me was a tall young man who nodded his head. “You said it,” he said. “It’s shit. It’s all the same.”

  “You don’t need to tell me,” I said.

  He introduced himself as Earl Baldwin. He’d been making the rounds at the local galleries trying to get his work displayed, but there had been no takers except one that had agreed to test one canvas.

  “I could do stuff like this in a second,” he said. “I wouldn’t even have to plug in my brain. I’d be on autopilot. I could churn out this crap and make a mint.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because I wouldn’t be doing anyone any good. I’d contribute nothing.”

  That’s all I needed to hear. I treated him to lunch and invited myself back to his apartment, which doubled as a studio. It took just one look at his work to fall in love with art all over again. And it made me feel justified and not so alone in the art world anymore.

  Baldwin displayed a rare talent. First, and perhaps most important, his canvases were honest. His subjects were real people with real problems and real dreams, surrounded by involving environments. The people in his canvases weren’t doing anything obvious. There wasn’t teaching or preaching going on in Earl’s world. Rather, his oils offered parables and situations any viewer could relate to and interpret. Simply put, his paintings were challenging and made you think. You weren’t always sure what he was saying, but you could relate to it.

  “I’d like to feature your work,” I told him. “When can you deliver ten canvases?”

  It didn’t take a lot of convincing. Earl and I hit it off beautifully. I appreciated his work. Understood what he was doing.

  But it wasn’t that simple.

  “I’ve already contracted with a gallery,” he said.

  “You said just one canvas,” I reminded him.

  “But if they like it and it sells, they have a first option for exclusivity.”

  “Then make sure they don’t like it,” I said, and wove a scheme for him. “If you want to display your work in those galleries, then that’s your prerogative. I’ll never make those choices. I promise. Your work will hang on honored walls, surrounded by art with similar voices. A tuxedo doesn’t look smart when you’re standing in shit.”

  Earl grabbed a fresh canvas and spent a half hour painting something so hideous and juvenile that, when he presented it to the gallery the next day, they sent him packing.

  Earl Baldwin was mine, but I wasn’t through with him yet. I flew him back home and made him live with Catherine and me, his canvases locked in a spare room, until the gallery opened. Five of his ten paintings sold the first week. Within two years the Arnoldson Gallery was closed, and I took over its larger space.

  I don’t mean to imply that the art world held even remotely similar stakes to the one Dr. Bernstein was shepherding. But I could understand what motivated him at least. What was Murphy’s Law? That anything that can go wrong, will? Then what was the ultimate wrong turn for me and Catherine and Dr. Bernstein? Is that what he was defending against?

  For me, I guess, it didn’t really make a difference. I had some feeling in my arm. Big deal. Whether or not this blew up into an international affair wouldn’t amount to much as far I was concerned. I’d still be in a bed somewhere. Was there really any risk that I’d be seized by the government to be probed and tested? It was Catherine I was concerned about. Even Frank’s wife would be severely affected. Not to mention Dr. Bernstein, whom I must admit I cared about. They’d all be whirling around a curve in a roller coaster. I’d be sedated and listening to music.

  I had begun to drift off when I was pulled back by Dr. Bernstein’s voice.

  “We’re here,” he told me. “It won’t be much longer, Howard.”

  Then I heard Catherine and it was grand medicine. “It’s me,” she said. “How are you, sweetheart? I’m here now. This is a wonderful place. Clean and bright. And it doesn’t smell like a hospital. I really think you’re going to like it.”

  12: Dave Hueger

  My job seems to be slipping away from me. I don’t know any other way to say it but that the shit gods have been aiming in my direction and I am covered.

  My most pressing concern is all the way across the newsroom in her glass-walled office: Peggy Bolyard. I think she’s looking at me. She’s standing there with her hands on her hips
and gazing out over the vast copy and editing staff and making judgments, which is mostly what managing editors do. She’s been waiting for an article from me.

  When that nurse gave me the lead about Dr. Bernstein last week I wasn’t expecting much. I was hoping for something, that’s for sure. I like talking to her, anything other than working on the story I was supposed to be writing. Evelyn Meadows, the very reliable registered nurse and somewhat of a friend, had proven to be very helpful and accurate concerning the governor’s bouts with cancer. But this new, crazy story? I can be made to believe almost anything, but a leap of faith that large is really out of character for me. Just how gullible and desperate am I?

  Pretty desperate, I guess.

  I know I should be thinking about my stories and deadlines, but I haven’t been able to shake the paranoia that Bolyard has it in for me. Intellectually, I know that’s silly. But I can’t help feeling that way. Her office is far across the newsroom but it feels as though she’s standing behind me looking over my shoulder, nudging me.

  Yesterday, for example, she buzzed me and asked me to step into her office. I stood up slowly and brushed off my pants, not wanting to give those around me the impression that I’d been beckoned and that I was running. No, I walked to Dan Hathaway two desks down and told him a joke, slapping him playfully on the back and kept moving. I hated that walk. When you marched to Bolyard’s office you had to walk a long way and everyone would see you. It was humiliating.

  I kind of wound my way around the newsroom in serpentine fashion, trying not to give the impression that I was really headed anywhere. I’d go to someone’s desk I knew and kneel down, talk about the weather. Ask what they were working on.

  Eventually, though, I wound up at Bolyard’s door and walked in kind of sideways, ready to step out quickly. “Hi, what’s up?” I said and already started leaning out the door, waiting for her to stop me.

  Of course, all I was wondering about was why she wanted me. To fire me? To give me an assignment? To ask about an overdue story? To change my beat? Mostly, I was wondering whether this was going to be an open-door meeting or a closed-door session. A closed door was the most terrifying thing imaginable. When Bolyard’s door closed, you know something bad was happening. Everyone across the newsroom started whispering to each other when they saw her door swing shut.