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  Nancy took it in silently as long as she could.

  “Why didn’t you call?” she blurted out in exasperation.

  The background noises stopped.

  “Oh Tia,” Carmelita said, “it turns out we all wanted to surprise you.”

  Nancy saw Lilly looking at her and a silent understanding of secrecy crossed between them.

  “Okay, so I suppose that none of you wanted to come but figured somebody had to and by mistake you all showed up instead, right?”

  Edison was grumpy. Normally he allowed Galen to play that role.

  Eight young voices shouted out, “no!”

  Edison smiled and cleared his throat.

  “Folks, we’re going to have to figure out the sleeping arrangements. Good thing we’ve got a spare room or two.

  “Freddie, you and Mike can bunk in your room. Tonio, you’ve got JP. Carm and Lilly in Carm’s room. That leaves Judy and Sarah in the spare guest room and...”

  “Uh ... dear, I think the youngsters can work this out on their own,” Nancy interjected after seeing the amused reactions around the room. Edison harrumphed and bit his lip.

  “Dr. Galen, have you heard from Grandma?” Sarah asked.

  “No, he hasn’t, but he will now.”

  As the elfin woman closed the front door behind her, Galen rushed to embrace her. He was beaming as he led her into the living room and raised a hand for quiet.

  “Point of order, ladies and gentlemen. Fortunately our resident wizard had three bathrooms put into our magnificent home, one for the master and mistress of the house and two others. One of them’s mine. Now I don’t mind sharing it in an emergency, but if you see me coming, better step aside.”

  At that, Nancy, Edison and Sandy called out in unison, “A lot of men didn’t, a lot of men died.”

  Galen grinned and joined in.

  “Saint Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company sto’!”

  Eight otherwise bright and cultured young adults stared at the four laughing geriatrics.

  Mike turned to Carmelita.

  “What’s Spanish for ‘crazy old coots?’”

  Viejos locos , she whispered.

  For the four old friends, the tension of the day had been broken.

  Nancy kept the dinner light that pre-Thanksgiving evening. No one wanted to be full when the prospect of the next day’s feast beckoned.

  Carmelita, Federico and Antonio Hidalgo reverted to old habits and cleared the table of dishes and utensils then returned to their seats. It seemed like the old times when after meals they could air problems, ask questions, or just talk. Tonio had told his friends about the routine so they weren’t surprised to be the first called on.

  Galen and Sandy cast eyes on the four future doctors.

  “So, what fabulous cases and strange maladies have you seen and cured this final year of training?” Galen queried.

  The quartet exchanges glances all around.

  “Come on, come on, you’re not going to shock us. We’ve seen and heard it all.”

  “Well,” Sarah began, “there was this guy who came into the ER last Saturday night. He said he had problems with … uh…”

  JP cut in.

  “Yeah, he didn’t want to spend money on Viagra so he…”

  “Took a martini swizzle stick and…” Judy blurted out with a wicked giggle.

  “And you can guess what he did with it,” Tony chimed in.

  As the realization set in, whatever sense of decorum remained quickly vanished and the whole room rocked with laughter—except Edison.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, throwing up his hands. “What do martini swizzle sticks have to do with blood pressure medication?”

  Nancy shot Galen a “see what you’ve started” look.

  The giggles continued for several minutes as Galen patiently explained to his exasperated friend the medical problem the youngsters had witnessed.

  As Carmelita rubbed her aching sides she suddenly remembered what she had meant to tell Galen.

  “Oh, Tio, I have a message for you.”

  He shrugged for her to continue.

  “I met someone who knows you.”

  “From where, Carm?”

  “I was attending a linguistics conference at Fordham early last month and I met one of the leaders in the field. When he learned who I was he asked me to give you a message.

  “He said, ‘It’s been a long time, Bear.’ He spoke a passage in Russian, and he said to tell you it was from ‘Reindeer.’”

  “Rudy!”

  “How did you know Dr. Magyar?”

  “I went to high school with him. Brilliant boy. Gave me a run for my money, grade-wise. Really nice guy, too.”

  “Why don’t you give him a call, Tio? I’ll bet he’d enjoy that.”

  He looked at Carmelita and shrugged again.

  “Why not? How about right now?”

  Edison brought out the miniature tripod and placed it on the dining room table. Everyone quieted down as Galen called up the national telephone data base and requested information on his boyhood friend. After just an instant, the holographic projector displayed Rudy Magyar’s professional and residential information, including his latest photo.

  “This time of day you should try his home, big brother.”

  Galen nodded as he pointed to the residence number and the device read his gesture. Eleven souls held their breaths as the call went through, and a few moments later the projector displayed the image of a young woman.

  “Magyar residence. Who are you, please?” she asked, looking at Galen’s image on her conventional phone screen.

  “I am Dr. Robert Galen calling from Pennsylvania. I was a classmate of Rudy’s and my ward met him at a conference recently. We haven’t talked in years and I wanted to see how he’s doing.”

  She stood silently for a moment, and he could see it in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Galen. My father passed away on October 3rd. He had been ill for a long time before he was mercifully taken.”

  Galen hung up after perfunctory condolences then turned to Carmelita.

  “What was the Russian passage?”

  Stunned at the realization, she nevertheless repeated it in her perfect pitch for languages:

  He rose silently from the table and retired to his room. A little while later he heard the knock on the door but didn’t reply until it sounded again.

  “Come in.”

  “Tio, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t, Carm. It’s okay.”

  She left him sitting at his desk, staring out the window at the chilly landscape.

  IN MEMORIAM

  Dr. Rudolph Vladimir Magyar

  October 3, 2005

  Linguist, opera singer, Renaissance man, one helluva nice guy.

  Go with God, my friend .

  11. Straighten Up and Fly Right

  —NAT KING COLE

  The Dark Angel worked overtime that night.

  “Call it, Hidalgo.”

  Jack Halloran’s face creased in sorrow as the nurse pulled the sheet over the body of the young boy.

  “Time of death 22.00,” Tonio responded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

  He hoped the others would think it was sweat. He didn’t want them to see his tears as the attendant wheeled the Go to Jesus cart carrying the remains of the twelve-year-old to the morgue.

  “Why, Jack?”

  The resident just stared back at him.

  “I don’t know. There’s never a good reason. The kid was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He took a bullet from his dad that was meant for his mom.”

  “I hope the sonofabitch fries.”

  “I’m sure some combination of lawyers and shrinks will get him off on an insanity plea.”

  At that moment they detected the rising wail of an ambulance siren as it approached the building.

  “Oh, shit!” they uttered in unison.


  The Reaper enjoyed a bumper harvest that night as Halloran called out the litany. Antonio Hidalgo, senior medical student, responded with Death’s doxology.

  “Time of death 23:10.”

  Auto accident.

  “Time of death 12:50.”

  Street violence.

  “Time of death 1:35.”

  Self-inflicted wound.

  They began to lose count, acting as automatons dancing at Death’s whim. They silently thanked their respective deities when a brief interlude interrupted the grim disassembly line.

  Halloran was an Iraq War vet who served as medic and got his M.D. after his discharge. He shook his gray head as he sat next to his star student.

  “Kid, I haven’t seen this much carnage since Tikrit.”

  Someone changed the playlist for the PA system, usually orchestral versions of ’80s rock, to easy-listening show tunes in an attempt to sooth the staff’s frazzled nerves. But Tonio’s gut wrenched when he heard “Lara’s Theme” softly echoing in his ears.

  Another ambulance siren shattered the uneasy respite.

  “Airway obstruction!” one of the EMTs yelled as they raced the cart through to the triage bay.

  Halloran grabbed the tracheostomy kit containing a hand-held ultrasound unit, laryngoscopes and oral and cut-down tracheal inserts.

  Tony got his first glimpse of the cyanotic young woman lying on the gurney, and the sight twisted his gut even more. He froze, unable to speak as Halloran activated the ultrasound screen.

  “Damn, it’s not working!”

  Halloran pulled down on the woman’s jaw, extending her head back as he maneuvered the laryngoscope inside her throat to see what was obstructing her windpipe.

  “Geez, it’s epiglottitis! Large bore needle in the cricothyroid! Tony, move!”

  He actually reached out and slapped Tonio in the gut.

  “Sarah, my God, it’s Sarah!”

  Halloran didn’t care who it was. Right now all he knew was that a young woman would die unless her airway was restored.

  “Jack, it’s … it’s my fiancée!”

  The battle-hardened vet had no time for emotion.

  “Then move your ass like you’ve never moved before, boy!”

  Tonio grabbed a sterile, .16-gauge needle from the instrument tray. Halloran pointed at the cricothyroid ligament just below the thyroid.

  Tonio’s hands trembled as he quickly stabbed the needle into the spot. The men watched for that critical moment when air should have been sucked through.

  It didn’t happen.

  “Shit!” Halloran muttered. “Cut-down trach!”

  Again Tonio froze.

  “Now, Tony!”

  Straining to control his panic, Tonio took a number-11 bladed scalpel and made a cut just below the thyroid, that sweet spot of membrane covering the trachea on Sarah’s neck.

  Halloran placed the tracheal tube in his left hand.

  He heard himself muttering and cursing as he struggled to maneuver the tube through the opening. With a slight pop it entered the small space, and suddenly Sarah’s body drew a deep, whistling breath through the artificial airway. Tonio taped the tube in place and hooked it up to a line providing moisturized oxygen.

  Sarah’s body continued to pink up.

  Halloran grabbed Tonio’s shoulder.

  “You saved her, kid.”

  The young man burst into tears and collapsed in his resident’s arms.

  As usual Galen was awake at 4 a.m. But instead of getting up to take his daily walk he decided to just stay in bed, listening to the spring birds outside his window preparing for the day ahead.

  He felt surprisingly good, his arthritic joints giving him some needed relief from their ongoing creaks and crackles.

  Then the phone ring jarred him. Absent his glasses he couldn’t see the name and number on the touch screen.

  “Tio, Tio Galen!”

  A young man’s voice. Tonio? No, it was someone else.

  “Tio, it’s JP, Julius Petrie, Tony’s roommate. We need you!”

  His heart started to race.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Another voice, this time a young woman’s.

  “Tio, it’s me, Judy Hicks. Sarah’s been hospitalized with epiglottitis. Tony caught her case in the ER and did the tracheostomy. She’s stable now but Tony’s a basket case. We had to drive him home. He’s locked himself in his room and says he’s going to quit school, that he’s a Jonah to every woman he’s loved.”

  Galen’s eyes closed.

  Dear God, not him! Don’t make his life mirror mine.

  “Please, Tio, can you and Dr. McDevitt come down?”

  He managed to mutter “we’re on our way” before hanging up.

  Two quick phone calls later he threw on a bathrobe and slippers and padded down the hall to the next room. He knocked gently.

  “Come in, Bear.”

  “Sandy, sorry to…”

  “Hush up, big guy. Are you here to invade my boudoir and ravish an old lady?”

  “It’s Sarah, she’s…”

  Sandy recognized the look on Galen’s face. She seemed to leap out of bed, as she grabbed a bathrobe.

  “Sarah was stricken with epiglottitis. We need to get down to Richmond.”

  Both knew the condition well. In their beginning days of practice, it was a killer of young children and young adults. An infection called Haemophilus influenza caused a swelling of the flap that opened and closed over the windpipe, blocking air from reaching the lungs.

  A vaccine developed in the 1970s reduced the incidence to nearly zero. But cases still emerged here and there, usually caused by bacterial infections such as strep and staph. More often than not the patient died suddenly if not quickly diagnosed.

  “I called the charter service at Wilkes-Barre,” Galen told Sandy. “We can fly into Richmond airport.”

  “Galen, you know I can’t drive at night anymore.”

  Sandy had been diagnosed with glaucoma and borderline macular degeneration, both of which affected her ability to see at night. Galen’s vision wasn’t much better.

  “Neither can I, Sandy. I’ve already called Lachlan Douglas.”

  “At this time of night?”

  He nodded. Before she could protest, Edison and Nancy appeared in the doorway.

  “What’s going on, you two?”

  A quick explanation later, Nancy asked if Galen and Sandy wanted them to come along.

  “I think we’d better go alone,” he responded. “Lachlan should be here shortly to take us to the airport. We’ll call when we get down there.”

  Twenty minutes later Sandy and Galen hurried out the door to meet the police cruiser crunching gravel in the turnaround.

  “ KA3333 , this is Richmond tower. You are cleared for runway 2.”

  “Roger, tower. KA3333 on runway 2, out.”

  The pilot nodded to his two passengers then headed the twin-engine turboprop in for a gentle landing. As he turned onto the taxiway he saw a police vehicle’s flashing red and blue lights approaching.

  “Uh … you guys in trouble with the cops?”

  “Why, Sam?” Galen muttered.

  “There’s a police cruiser coming up on our tail.”

  Instead of continuing to taxi, Sam braked the plane to a full stop then opened the door and yelled, “Honest, officer, I was doing the speed limit.”

  The Virginia state trooper laughed and yelled back, “Captain Douglas asked me to pick up your passengers. Figured I’d save them a walk from the terminal.”

  Galen and Sandy gingerly climbed out of the plane while Sam grabbed their bags from the tiny cargo hold and laid them in the cruiser’s open trunk. The trooper opened the rear passenger door for the couple and then got in.

  “Hi, I’m Vic Gladsten,” the trooper addressed them via the rearview mirror as they rolled down the tarmac. “I served under the captain overseas. When my old Cap’n Lach needs a favor, he’s got it.”

  Gladst
en eyed Galen.

  “You the doc that helped Lach adopt that Arab boy?”

  An image of the blind Faisal Fedr, now the world-famous concert pianist, flashed through his mind. He smiled and nodded.

  “You folks headed over to the med complex?”

  Galen nodded again.

  Vic swung the car around, lights still flashing, siren now blaring, and headed onto a highway that didn’t exist when Sandy and Galen attended school in Richmond. A few minutes later they arrived at a building that likewise hadn’t existed during their med-school days. Unfamiliar with the layout they needed an escort, but soon they were at Sarah’s bedside.

  Sandy reached out and lightly touched the young woman’s forehead. She knew she couldn’t talk—the trach tube prevented it—but she was pleased to see the look of recognition in Sarah’s eyes, though the expression quickly changed to one of sadness and tears. She sobbed gently, punctuated by the oxygen whistling through plastic piping.

  Sandy wasn’t wearing heels—she never did—so the bed came up to her chest. Galen found a stepstool. He said nothing as the diminutive octogenarian climbed onto it, stared down at her granddaughter, and pointed at the tube entering her neck.

  “I hear that boyfriend of yours did this to you, girl.”

  Both women cried as Sandy whispered, “love you.”

  “Sarah,” Galen interjected softly, “another few days and this will be over. We’ll be staying with you until you get better.”

  Galen raised an eyebrow when he heard Sandy bluntly ask Sarah, “You livin’ with that tall drink of water, kid?”

  A nod from Sarah and a “good” from Sandy raised Galen’s other eyebrow.

  They stayed a few more minutes and watched Sarah slip back into sleep. As they headed down the hospital corridor he turned to her.

  “You approve?”

  “Of course I approve, Bear. Don’t tell me you don’t!”

  He smiled and sighed. He knew that the second half of this mission would be far more difficult.

  They called a taxi from the hospital lobby and it dropped them at a small townhouse complex east of Richmond. The door to 1900H opened as they walked up the front steps and Judy ran out, extending her arms to hug them both.