Pete Hamill - North River

“Hey, it’s me,” Monique said. “I’m at the telephone company. I told them we need the goddamned phone. I told them, hey, the man’s a doctor, people could die. Then I shot three guys at the front desk. That worked.”

Delaney laughed.

“What would I do without you, Monique?”

“You’d be doing house calls, that’s what. The patients must be going nuts trying to get through to you. I’ll be there in maybe twenty minutes.”

“I’ve got a surprise waiting for you.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“You might love this one.”

“See you.”

She hung up. He buttoned his shirt. How long have you been here, Monique? How long have you been nurse and secretary and bouncer? Since we laid out the office. Since before the goddamned Depression. Since Hoover was president. Since the time when Molly found her secret garden on the top floor, her aerie, her retreat. Away from Monique, who annoyed her with her energy or her precision or her daily presence. Away from the patients. Away from me. The bathroom door opened and Rose was there, smiling a lovely smile, her face glistening from the small steamy room, snuggling the boy with one arm to her generous breasts and lifting clothes from the stroller with her other hand. Carlito was smiling too, pointing a finger at Delaney, then curling it. She dressed him quickly in two shirts and corduroy trousers.

“Now, where’s the kitchen?” she said.

Delaney led her downstairs again to the kitchen, the boy back in her arms.

“This is small,” she said darkly.

He tried to explain how he needed space on this floor for a waiting area, a consulting room, a small bathroom for patients, but she wasn’t really listening. They went into the kitchen and she put the boy down on a chair. And Carlito pointed to the pantry.

“Co’flay,” he said.

“You want co’flakes? Okay, boy. ”

How did she know co’flay was cornflakes? The telephone rang and Delaney hurried into the consulting room to answer it. Annie Haggerty. About her mother, around the corner on Lispenard Street. She was hurt. Bleeding and moaning.

“Where’s your father, Annie?” he said, knowing he was talking to a girl who was about fourteen.

“Out.”

“Is your mother awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she bleeding?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Face.”

“Nose? Mouth? Ears?”

“Yeah.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be over as soon as I can. Keep talking to your mother, Annie. Keep her awake.”

“Okay.”

He wrote a note to himself: the name Haggerty, the word “blood.” He knew the building too well. The telephone rang again. Hurry, Monique. This was Larry Dorsey’s wife. He was a saxophone player in some Times Square hotel.

“Doc, it’s Larry. He got hurt New Year’s Eve, some fight, drunks throwin’ chairs. You know. He got hit on the head, but he won’t go to St. Vincent’s. Goddamned Irish, don’t want to go to hospitals.”

He took her address on Bank Street and then went to the kitchen.

“You get more calls than a bookmaker,” Rose said. Her English is good, Delaney thought, but who is she? Carlito was delighted with his cornflakes.

“Many more.”

She was going through the pantry.

“Not many pots and pans. The icebox is great, electric and all. But we gotta get some food in here for this boy.”

“Yes, we do, Rose. Plenty of food. Maybe when my nurse, Monique, gets here, you can —”

“And we gotta get rid of that stroller,” she said, pronouncing it “strolla.” “That thing will give you a disease or something.”

The telephone rang again.

The snow was piled high on Lispenard Street as Delaney trudged toward number 12, shifting his heavy leather bag from gloved hand to gloved hand. Today a change in routine. House calls in the morning or Mary Haggerty might die. Trucks were pushing for passage to the meat market, where Harry Haggerty was a butcher. Delaney knew the street well. Herman Melville had worked here, right in that building, waiting for ships to arrive so he could clerk the cargo. A job that he needed because nobody was buying his books. Even today nobody anywhere around here had heard of the white whale. Or Ahab. Or Queequeg. Or Melville himself… He climbed to the second floor and knocked.

"Yeah?” came the girl’s voice.

“Dr. Delaney.”

She unlocked the door and Delaney went in. The girl was trembling and pale, her hair frazzled, her eyes wet. There was an odor of excrement in the air.

“Where’s your mother, Annie?”

She led him to the back bedroom, where the odor was stronger. The woman’s face was swollen blue. Her husband had literally beaten the shit out of her. One eye was closed. The other was skittery with fear. Her nose had been pounded to the side.

“Annie,” he said to the girl, “boil a pot of water, will you, dear?”

All the way to Bank Street on his second call, he struggled with his rage. The story was too familiar. Big tough Harry Haggerty had come home loaded, demanded his supper, and when his wife served it cold, he started pounding her. He had to punch real hard. After all, he only had seventy-five pounds on her. Then he passed out on the couch, and went off to work at dawn. Big tough guy. Knowing that the cops would do nothing. Just another domestic dispute. If she died, maybe they’d make an arrest… Delaney had done what he could: cleaned the wounds, applied bandages, checked for broken bones, gave her some aspirin and a painkiller, and told Annie to hold ice to her face. She should come see him when the swelling went down, and they would discuss what to do about her broken nose. The wounds in her mind would need much more time, and he could do little to heal them. Physician, heal thyself…

Larry Dorsey was in bed in the first-floor flat on Bank Street. The place was spotless, the wood polished, no dust. Wallpaper from an earlier time still looked fresh. It was an apartment without children, except Larry. Delaney could see a piano in the living room, topped with framed photographs of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bix Beiderbecke. A gallery of heroes, just like Molly’s, but with different names and faces. Louise was heavy, wearing full makeup, her face twitching.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing to her husband’s head. “That ain’t kosher.”

She was right. There was a bulge on the right temple. Larry was conscious, but when Delaney gently touched the lump, he pulled away in pain.

“That hurt,” he said.

“Is it getting larger?” Delaney said to Louise.

“Yeah,” Louise said. “When he come home last night, there wasn’t even a bump.”

Delaney leaned in close. “Listen, Larry, we gotta get you to St. Vincent’s —”

“No hospital. Not for me. Not now, not never. Everyone I ever knew went to a hospital never came back. Including my father.”

“Larry, you might have a fractured skull. You might have bleeding in the brain. We need X-rays. And I don’t have an X-ray machine in my bag.”

“Not a chance.”

Delaney sighed in an exasperated way.

“Okay, I can’t force you. But tell me this: Who’s your favorite undertaker?”

Louise sobbed and turned away.

“Don’t make jokes, Doc,” Larry whispered.

“It’s no joke, Larry.”

Larry said nothing. Delaney put his hands on his hips, trying to look stern.

“Come on, you dope,” he said. “I’ll go with you. I want to hear you play ‘Stardust’ again.”

Delaney and Louise walked him east on icy streets to St. Vincent’s. Larry Dorsey grumbled all the way. The wind rose, and they shuddered together in their heavy winter clothes. Boys shoveled snow in front of the shops. An elevated train moved slowly along the tracks into a crowded platform. The street in front of the emergency room had been plowed since he’d taken Eddie Corso through the secret door a hundred feet away from this entrance. They walked in past an empty ambulance. Delaney explained the problem to a buxom nurse named McGuinness. He saw nuns like black haystacks walking the corridors beyond.