And late that night she still burned with that longing, her body kindled with lust and fever. She came naked into his arms and seemed intent on draining him, exhausting him, taking all for herself and leaving nothing.
He tried to contain her fury-so unlike her; she was usually languorous and teasing-but her rage defeated him. Once, thrashing about in a sweated paroxysm, she called him “Ted,” which she had not done since their life together was born.
He did what he could to satisfy and soothe, wretchedly conscious that his words were not heard nor his caresses felt; the most he could do was be. Her storm passed, leaving him riven. He gnawed a knuckle and fell asleep.
He awoke a few hours later, and she was gone from the bed. He was instantly alert, pulled on his old patterned robe with its frazzled cord. Barefoot, he went padding downstairs, searching all the empty rooms.
He found her in what they still called the “parlor” of their converted brownstone, next door to the 251st Precinct house. She was on the window seat, clad in a white cotton nightgown. Her knees were drawn up, clasped. In the light from the hallway he could see her head bent forward. Her hair was down, hiding her face, drifting shoulders and knees.
“Barbara,” he called.
Her head came up. Hair fell back. She gave him a smile that twisted his heart.
“I’m dying,” she said.
2
Barbara Delaney’s stay in the hospital for tests was longer than the five days predicted by Dr. Louis Bernardi. It became a weekend and five days, then two weekends and five days, and finally a total of fifteen days. To every inquiry by Captain Edward X. Delaney, the doctor answered only, “More tests.”
From his daily-sometimes twice-daily-visits to his wife’s private room, Delaney came away with the frightening impression that things were not going well at all. The fever persisted, up one day, down slightly the next. But the course was steadily upward. Once it hit almost 103; the woman was burning up.
He himself had been witness to the sudden chills that racked her body, set teeth chattering and limbs trembling. Nurses came hurrying with extra blankets and hot water bottles. Five minutes later she was burning again; blankets were tossed aside, her face rosy, she gasped for breath.
New symptoms developed during those fifteen days: headaches, urination so difficult she had to be catheterized, severe pain in the lumbar region, sudden attacks of nausea that left her limp. Once she vomited into a basin he held for her. She looked up at him meekly; he turned away to stare out the window, his eyes bleary.
On the morning he finally decided, against his wife’s wishes, to dismiss Bernardi and bring in a new man, he was called at his Precinct office and summoned to an early afternoon meeting with Bernardi in his wife’s hospital room. Lieutenant Dorfman saw him off with anguished eyes.
“Please, Captain,” he said, “try not to worry. She’s going to be all right.”
Marty Dorfman was an extraordinarily tall (6'4") Jew with light blue eyes and red hair that spiked up from a squeezed skull. He wore size 14 shoes and couldn’t find gloves to fit. He seemed constantly to be dribbled with crumbs, and had never been known to swear.
Nothing fitted; his oversize uniform squirmed on thin shoulders, trousers bagged like a Dutch boy’s bloomers. Cigarette ashes smudged his cuffs. Occasionally his socks didn’t match, and he had lost the clasp on the choker collar of his jacket. His shoes were unshined, and he reported for duty with a dried froth of shaving cream beneath his ears.
Once, when a patrolman, he had been forced to kill a knife-wielding burglar. Since then he carried an unloaded gun. He thought no one knew, but everyone did. As Captain Delaney had told his wife, Dorfman’s paperwork was impeccable and he had one of the finest legal minds in the Department. He was a sloven, but when men of the 251st Precinct had personal problems, they went to him. He had never been known to miss the funeral of a policeman killed in line of duty. Then he wore a clean uniform and wept.
“Thank you, lieutenant,” Delaney said stiffly. “I will call as soon as possible. I fully expect to return before you go off. If not, don’t wait for me. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Dr. Louis Bernardi, Delaney decided was perfectly capable of holding the hand of a dying man and saying, “There there.” Now he was displaying the X-rays proudly, as if they were his own Rembrandt prints.
“The shadows!” he cried. “See the shadows!”
He had drawn a chair up close to the bedside of Barbara Delaney. The Captain stood stolidly on the other side, hands clasped behind him so their tremble might not reveal him.
“What are they?” he asked in his iron voice.
“What is it?” his wife murmured.
“Kidney stones!” Bernardi cried happily. “Yes, dear lady,” he continued, addressing the woman on the bed who stared at him sleepily, her head wavering slightly, “the possibility was there: a stubborn fever and chills. And more recently the headaches, nausea, difficulty in passing water, pain in the lower back. This morning, after more than ten days of exhaustive tests-which I am certain, he-he, you found exhausting as well as exhaustive-we held a conference-all the professional men who have been concerned with your condition-and the consensus is that you are, unhappily, suffering from a kidney calculus.”
His tone was so triumphant that Delaney couldn’t trust himself to speak. His wife turned her head on the pillow to look warmingly at him. When he nodded, she turned back to Bernardi to ask weakly:
“How did I get kidney stones?”
The doctor leaned back in his chair, made his usual gesture of placing his two index fingers together and pressing them against his pouting lips.
“Who can say?” he asked softly. “Diet, stress, perhaps a predisposition, heredity. There is so much we don’t know. If we knew everything, life would be a bore, would it not? He!”
Delaney grunted disgustedly. Bernardi paid no heed.
“In any event, that is our diagnosis. Kidney stones. A concretion frequently found in the bladder or kidneys. A hard, inorganic stone. Some no larger than a pinhead. Some quite large. They are foreign matter lodged in living tissue. The body, the living tissue, cannot endure this invasion. Hence, the fever, the chills, the pain. And, of course, the difficulty in urinating. Oh yes, that above all.”
Once again Delaney was infuriated by the man’s self-satisfaction. To Bernardi, it was all a crossword puzzle from the Times.
“How serious is it?” Barbara asked faintly,
A glaze seemed to come down over Bernardi’s swimming eyes, a milky, translucent film. He could see out but no one could see in.
“We needed the blood tests and these sensitive plates. And then, since you have been here, the symptoms that developed gave us added indications. Now we know what we are facing.”
“How serious is it?” Barbara asked again, more determinedly.
“We feel,” Bernardi went on, not listening, “we feel that in your case, dear lady, surgery is indicated. Oh yes. Definitely. I am sorry to say. Surgery.”
“Wait,” Delaney held up his hand. “Wait just a minute. Before we start talking about surgery. I know a man who had kidney stones. They gave him a liquid, something, and he passed them and was all right. Can’t my wife do the same?”
“Quite impossible,” Bernardi said shortly. “When the stones are tiny, that procedure is sometimes effective. These X-rays show a large area of inflammation. Surgery is indicated.”
“Who decided that?” Delaney demanded.
“We did.”
“‘We’?” Delaney asked. “Who is ‘we’?”
Bernardi looked at him coldly. He sat back, pulled up one trouser leg, carefully crossed his knees. “Myself and the specialists I called in,” he said. “I have their professional opinions here, Captain-their written and signed opinions-and I have prepared a duplicate set for your use.”