Although it might have its rivals, Dorsey was sure the emergency room at Mercy Hospital was the city’s most hectic. Located in Uptown, the hospital sat in the middle of a crumbling neighborhood in which a number of federal renovation projects had fallen miserably short. Patients, mostly violent trauma victims, were abundant, and the most popular insurance was the Department of Public Welfare card. At times the emergency room resembled a battlefield aid station, echoing with the screams of the injured and filled with a rush of interns and residents in blood-smeared white smocks. And yet Dorsey knew Gretchen embraced it as the finest classroom she had ever entered.
In a misting rain Dorsey drove through the hospital’s parking lot and saw Gretchen at the ER door, examining her reflection in the glass. She was dressed in her customary working clothes: the Reebok shoes that allowed her to stay on her feet for hours, corduroy slacks, button-down oxford shirt, and white smock with nameplate. Dorsey could see that a twenty-four-hour on-call shift had done little to disturb her professional appearance. Tall, just a fraction under six feet, with slim legs and hips and just a hint of breasts, she looked striking and dignified.
Dorsey pulled up and tooted the horn. A short black man in a security guard’s uniform joined Gretchen at the door with an umbrella and led her out to the car, opening the passenger door.
“You late again,” the security guard said. “You always late. Take care with this woman. She’ll leave your ass behind.”
“Thank you, Henry.” Gretchen slipped into the car and brushed a drop of rainwater from her hair, which was short and tightly curled. “Let’s hope he learns in time. Have a nice evening.”
“ ’Night, Dr. Keller.” Henry returned to his station inside the ER door.
“Sorry, I really am.” Dorsey put the car in drive and started back through the lot. “My father called and wanted to see me.” From the car’s tape deck, Sinatra sang “A New Kind of Love.”
“And the Celtics and Atlanta went into overtime.” Gretchen smiled and jabbed a finger in his shoulder. “The residents’ lounge has cable TV. We do get an occasional break.” She gave him another jab, then settled into her seat. “But you said your father called. That’s something different.”
“Well, actually he didn’t call. Ironbox Boyle did the calling. She said that although he refuses to feed me he was willing and even interested in speaking with me.”
“What was on his mind?” Gretchen looked off at the water as the car started across the Tenth Street bridge, heading for the flats of South Side.
“Says he wants to make me rich.”
“That would be a decided improvement.” Gretchen leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. A grin worked its way across her face. “After he puts you in the chips, you can send a limo to pick me up twenty minutes late.”
“The shift was a bad one, huh?” Dorsey asked. “You said so in your message.”
“A madhouse,” she said, letting the other matter drop. “Oh, the first six or seven hours were smooth enough. I even got a few hours’ sleep in the lounge. But then things started downhill. About ten this morning we got an eight-year-old boy with a broken left arm. The fracture was about midshaft in the ulna, and it was a clean one. No shattering and no splintering. We didn’t even bother with the orthopedic resident; I did the setting myself. Plastered myself, too. Well, halfway through the casting the cops come in with this guy for detox and he’s in the absolute depths of the DTs. The whole deal, seeing snakes and slapping at the bugs he says are swarming on his pants. Next thing you know, and I’m not sure how it happened, he breaks loose from the cops—one of which was a female, you’ll be pleased to hear.”
“There’s nothing wrong with female police officers.” Dorsey turned onto Wharton Street. “It’s just that most of them look more like female impersonators than female police officers.”
“Thank you for your tolerance.”
Dorsey pulled the Buick to the curb in front of his row house and Gretchen opened the passenger door and rushed up the front steps in the rain. Dorsey hurried behind her to unlock the door. Inside, she tossed her wet smock over the staircase handrail and continued down the hallway to the kitchen. Dorsey followed behind.
“So, the boozer breaks loose and he’s a wild man, smacking the walls and stomping on snakes. And, of course, the only thing between him and my eight-year-old patient, who is frightened half to death, is me, having just sent the nurse to the phone to answer a page on my beeper.”
“Things got a little rough, sounds like.” Dorsey bent down to search for a frying pan in a cabinet below the sink. “Bet he took the first round, but you came back and cleaned his clock in the second.”
“You can be sure neither of us went the distance,” Gretchen said, seating herself at the kitchen’s Formica-topped table. “I stood straight and tall, hid my trembling knees, squared my shoulders, and yelled for the guy to back off. He in reply smashes right into me. We both go down, and I slipped away and rolled into a ball. At that point the kid was on his own, I’m afraid, but the cops must have caught their breath. They took hold of the boozer and dragged him out.”
Dorsey set down the frying pan. “You okay? Sure there’s no damage?”
“Fine. Slight bruise on the right hip, but it’s okay. The kid was a wreck, though. I gave some thought to slipping him a Valium, but the nurse came back and was able to calm him. She’s got kids.” Gretchen took a deep breath that came out as a long sigh, signaling that the story was over and the incident forgotten. “I’m hungry. What’s to eat?”
“Bacon and eggs,” Dorsey said, peering into the refrigerator. “You like the way I make them.”
“Not always.” Gretchen laughed. “But tonight they sound good. I’m going to grab a shower while you cook.”
“Your robe’s in the bedroom closet,” Dorsey said. “Hey, before you go up, take a look at the medical in that file.” Using the frying pan, Dorsey indicated the manila folder on the tabletop. “You take your shower, I’ll never get you to do it. It’ll take five minutes, no more.”
Gretchen opened the file and studied the contents for a few silent moments. “Can’t anybody in this part of the state drive without getting hit? It’s all I ever see you handle, that and some really hokey comp cases. And something else: must everything I look at be from these cock-and-bull chiropractors? It’s insulting, equating me with them.”
“C’mon, I don’t do that.” Dorsey forked bacon into the pan. “Besides, there’s some X rays and a CT scan report in there.”
“And both of them say nothing.” Gretchen closed the file and rose from the table. “No pathology; no disc problems, herniated or bulging. A whiplash case is what you have.” Gretchen pushed the folder away. “Let the bacon fry crisp. I’m going to take a long shower and try to loosen my hip.”
Dorsey lowered the flame under the bacon and went to the office for his tape player. When he returned he plugged it in above the kitchen counter and put in a cassette of Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall concert.
He had first met Gretchen in the waiting room of a large law firm in the Oliver building. The firm did a lot of insurance defense work, and Dorsey was there to be deposed on a personal injury case. Gretchen had accompanied a fellow ER physician who was being questioned about a negligence suit filed against the hospital. Seated on the waiting room’s brown herringbone sofa, Gretchen spoke first, curious as to what Dorsey was doing there. She had been in Pittsburgh for only two weeks, he gathered, was a little on the lonely side, and talked to anyone she rubbed up against. In doing so, she went on to explain that she had just finished her intern training at Hershey Medical Center near her native Lancaster.
Dorsey was irritated by her at first. The case he was to be deposed on had some serious holes in it, double-and triple-checking that should have been done but proved impossible. But Gretchen was a notch away from being soft-spoken and in an odd, endearing way could not be put off. When Dorsey explained his business she became intrigued, and as Dorsey was being called off to a corner office Gretchen asked if he would like to meet later for a drink. Yes, I would, Dorsey had answered.
Dorsey fell hard for her. She was young but not so terribly that he found himself explaining himself and his favorite TV shows from boyhood. She was strong and she was tranquil and, though they argued, her even manner usually won out. Everything I’ve never had, Dorsey would tell himself, everything I’ve never had. He knew the beer and jazz was a kick for her; beyond that he didn’t know why she loved him in return. After six months she kept half her wardrobe at Wharton Street.
“Please turn that off—please?” Gretchen entered the kitchen, pulling tight her terry-cloth robe. Dorsey hit the stop button, and the tape fell silent. “Over the last twenty-four hours, with the exception of the basketball game from Atlanta, I’ve been cut off from the world. Let’s catch the cable news.”
At the end of the counter sat a portable TV with the cable lead running under the windowsill, courtesy of Al’s electrical prowess. Dorsey flicked on the set, then went about dividing the food onto two plates before sitting down across from Gretchen. Gretchen chewed each forkful slowly and patiently watched the TV screen. He wondered if the food was registering in her mouth and admired her powers of concentration.
“Hey.” Gretchen indicated the TV with her fork. “Isn’t that the priest you told me about?”
Dorsey twisted in his seat and watched as a short, slight priest, bald but with a full salt-and-pepper beard, was led away in handcuffs by sheriff’s deputies. As the videotape played, a monotone commentator explained that Father Andrew Jancek and thirty members of Movement Together had been arrested when they attempted to block the main gate of a steel mill in McKeesport. The mill was scheduled for demolition, and Movement Together had vowed to impede the work. Following their arrest, the commentator went on, the priest and his followers had been released when bail had been posted by the organization’s attorney, Jack Stockman.
“What is this shit?” Dorsey muttered. Not enough money coming in from the insurance companies, P.I.? Or is this just branching out, tired of kicking my sorry ass? New worlds to conquer, or just dabbling in labor? For money, of course.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Dorsey said. “Eat your eggs.”
After making love, they rested in bed and Dorsey gave Gretchen a full report on the meeting with his father. “He says my little piece can grow into a big slice. I said no, he got persuasive, and I said I’d think about it. Which I will do. But for now, what do you think?”
“I’m not crazy about his motives, but money is nice to have around.”
“I wholeheartedly agree about the money,” Dorsey said. “But tell me what you really think.”
Gretchen propped herself on one elbow, her nipple grazing the hair on Dorsey’s chest. She smiled playfully. “What I think is this. It’s a wonderful world we live in when a jerk like you can make a living like you do, have someone offer to make you rich, and, best of all, get laid by a classy broad like me.”