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August, 1959:
When the intern caainst the aency bay of Sisters of Mercy Hospital on 23rd StreetThe heel of one of Julio&039;s pointy-toed boots was hooked over the front fender He had changed to a pair of glaring pink pants and a blue shirt with his na league outfit George checked his watch and saw that Julio&039;s tea
"Thought you&039;d be gone," George Shavers said He was an intern at Sisters of Mercy "How&039;re your guys gonna ithout the Wonder Hook?"
"They got Miguel Basale to take ets hot sometimes They&039;ll be okay" Julio paused "I was curious about how it came out" He was the driver, a Cubano with a sense of hue wasn&039;t even sure Julio knew he had He looked around Neither of the paraht
"Where are they?" George asked
"Who? The fuckin Bobbsey Twins? Where do you think they are? Chasin Minnesota poontang down in the Village Any idea if she&039;ll pull through?"
"Don&039;t know"
He tried to sound sage and knowing about the unknown, but the fact was that first the resident on duty and then a pair of surgeons had taken the black woman away frorace (which had actually been on his lips to say�Dthe black lady really hadn&039;t looked as if she was going to last very long)
"She lost a hell of a lot of blood"
"No shit"
George was one of sixteen interns at Sisters of Mercy, and one of eight assigned to a new progra with a couple of paramedics could soency situation George knew that ht that wet-behind-the-ears interns were as likely to kill red-blankets as save theht maybe it worked
Soreat PR for the hospital, and although the interns in the prograht hours (without pay) it entailed each week, George Shavers sort of thought h, able to take whatever they threw his way
Then had coht the TWA Tri-Star crashed at Idlewild Sixty-five people on board, sixty of theht There�Dand three of the reht scrape out of the bottom of a coal-furnaceexcept what you scraped out of the botto for soive them ht afterward, re aed chunk of tail with the nu red letter T and part of a W on it, re on top of a charred Sa a child&039;s teddybear with staring shoe-button eyes lying beside a small red sneaker with a child&039;s foot still in it, if you can take this, baby, you can take anything And he had been taking it just fine He went right on taking it just fine all the way hoh a late supper that consisted of a Swanson&039;s turkey TV dinner He went to sleep with no problem at all, which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was taking it just fine Then, in so he had awakened fro on top of the charred Samsonite suitcase had not been a teddybear but his mother&039;s head, and her eyes had opened, and they had been charred; they were the staring expressionless shoebutton eyes of the teddy-bear, and her s which had been her dentures up until the TWA Tri-Star was struck by lightning on its final approach, and she had whispered You couldn&039;t save e, we scrimped for you, we saved for you, ithout for you, your dad fixed up the scrape you got into with that girl and you STILL COULDN&039;T SAVE ME GOD DAMN YOU, and he had awakened screa on the wall, but by then he was already pelting into the bathroo penitential position before the porcelain altar before dinner came up the express elevator It ca like processed turkey He knelt there and looked into the bowl, at the chunks of half-digested turkey and the carrots which had lost none of their original flourescent brightness, and this word flashed across his e red letters:
ENOUGH
Correct
It was:
ENOUGH
He was going to get out of the sawbones business He was going to get out because:
ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH
He was going to get out because Popeye&039;s motto was That&039;s all I can stands and I can&039;t stand nuht as rain
He had flushed the toilet and gone back to bed and fell asleep almost instantly and awoke to discover he still wanted to be a doctor, and that was a goddaraency Ride or Bucket of Blood or Name That Tune
He still wanted to be a doctor
He knew a lady who did needlework He paid her ten dollars he couldn&039;t afford tosampler It said:
IF YOU CAN TAKE THIS, YOU CAN TAKE ANYTHING
Yes Correct
The messy business in the subway happened four weeks later
2
"That lady was soe breathed an interior sigh of relief If Julio hadn&039;t opened the subject, George supposed he wouldn&039;t have had the sack He was an intern, and soed doc, he really believed that now, but Julio was a vet, and you didn&039;t want to say soh and say Hell, I seen that shit a thousand times, kid Get y&039;selfa towel and wipe off whatever it is behind your ears, cause it&039;s wet and drippin down the sides of your face
But apparently Julio hadn&039;t seen it a thousand tie wanted to talk about it
"She eird, all right It was like she o people&039;&039;
He was amazed to see that now Julio was the one who looked relieved, and he was struck with sudden sha to do no hts on top for the rest of his life, had just shown e than he had been able to show
"You got it, doc Hunnert per cent" He pulled out a pack of Chesterfields and stuck one in the corner of his onna kill you, e said
Julio nodded and offered the pack
They s tail like Julio had saidor e had been scared, all right, no joke about that But he also knew he had been the one who saved the woman, not the paras, and he knew Julio knew it too Maybe that was really why Julio had waited The old black woman had helped, and the white kid who had dialed the cops while everyone else (except the old black woodda, part of a Peter Gunn episode, e Shavers, one scared cat doing his duty the best way he could
The woton held in such high regard�Dthat fabled A-train Just been a pretty young black wo for the fabled A-Train so she could go uptown someplace
Soe Shavers didn&039;t have the slightest idea if the police had caught the slug who had done it - that wasn&039;t his business His business was the wo into the tube of the tunnel in front of that fabled A-train It had been a miracle that she had missed the third rail; the fabled third rail that would have done to her what the State of New York did to the bad guys up at Sing-Sing who got a free ride on that fabled A-train the cons called Old Sparky
Oboy, the miracles of electricity
She tried to crawl out of the way but there hadn&039;t been quite enough time and that fabled A-train had co up sparks because the motorman had seen her but it was too late, too late for him and too late for her The steel wheels of that fabled A-train had cut the living legs off her from just above the knees down And while everyone else (except for the white kid who had dialed the cops) had only stood there pulling their puds (or pushing their pudenda, George supposed), the elderly black wo one hip in the process (she would later be given a Medal of Bravery by the Mayor), and had used the doorag on her head to cinch a tourniquet around one of the young wo for an ambulance on one side of the station and the old black chick was screaive her a tie-off for God&039;s sake, anything, anything at all, and finally some elderly white business type had reluctantly surrendered his belt, and the elderly black chick looked up at him and spoke the words which became the headline of the New York Daily News the next day, the words which made her an authentic American apple-pie heroine: "Thank you, bro" Then she had noosed the belt around the young wo woman&039;s crotch and where her left knee had been until that fabled A-train had coe had heard so black wo out had been "WHO WAS THAT MAHFAH? I GONE HUNT HIM DOWN AND KILL HIS ASS!"
There was no way to punch holes far enough up for the elderly black worie, and the paras arrived
George remembered the yellow line, how his o past the yellow line while he aiting for a train (fabled or otherwise), the stench of oil and electricity when he hopped down onto the cinders, re off hi black woman, off the train, the tunnel, the unseen sky above and hell itself beneath He re incoherently If they put a blood-pressure cuff on o off the dial and then he went cool and yelled for his bag, and when one of the paras tried to jump doith it he told the para to fuck off, and the para had looked startled, as if he was really seeing George Shavers for the first tie tied off as many veins and arteries as he could tie off, and when her heart started to be-bop he had shot her full of Digitalin Whole blood arrived Cops brought it Want to bring her up, doc? one of theot out the needle and stuck the juice to her like she was a junkie in dire need of a fix
Then he let them take her up
Then they had taken her back
On the way she had awakened
Then the weirdness started
3
George gave her a shot of Demerol when the paras loaded her into the aave her a boost hefty enough for hiot to Sisters of Mercy He was ninety per cent sure she would still be with theuys
Her eyes began to flutter while they were still six blocks from the hospital, however She uttered a thick ain, doc," one of the paras said
George was hardly aware this was the first ti other than George or, worse, Georgie "Are you nuts? I&039;d just as soon not confuse DOA and OD if it&039;s all the same to you"
The para black woaze were awake and aware
"What has happened to e remembered the man who had told another oing to hunt the motherfucker down and kill his ass, etc, etc) That e decided now it had been pure invention, inspired either by that odd hue to make naturally dramatic situations even more draent woman
"You&039;ve had an accident," he said "You were�D"
Her eyes slipped shut and he thought she was going to sleep again Good Let sos Someone who made more than 7,600 a year He had shifted a little to the left, wanting to check her bp again, when she opened her eyes onceat a different woo Dis d&039;ae said Suddenly he needed so wet His voice was dry This was like watching Spencer Tracy in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, only for real
"Dey get dat honkey ot it right, goddauely aware that the para he would do so off
"Good Honky fuzz jus be lettin hiittin hioan do t&039;dat suoan tell youtell "
Her eyes fluttered again and George had thought Yes, go to sleep, please go to sleep, I don&039;t get paid for this, I don&039;t understand this, they told us about shock but nobody mentioned schizophrenia as one of the -
The eyes opened The first woman was there
"What sort of accident was it?" she asked "I re out of the I - "
"Eye?" he said stupidly
She sry I It&039;s a coffee house"
"Oh Yeah Right"
The other one, hurt or not, had made him feel dirty and a little ill This one ht who has successfully rescued the Lady Fair fro down the stairs to the platform, and after that�D"
&039;&039;So with that? It was stupid