Good Lord, Deliver Us (35 page)

After what seemed forever, Ruble struggled
to his feet, the big man teetering for a moment before launching
another charge.

For his part, Z was too enfeebled to do
anything, the fellow plowing forward to fall on Z again, Z bent
backwards over the small desk by the sheer weight of the man's
body.

If the psycho hadn't been desperately ill
himself, the fight would already be over. As it was -- wheezing,
panting -- Ruble managed to get his large hands around Z's throat.
Began to choke.

Not having much breath to begin with, still
suffering from the madman's first attack, Z could only beat
ineffectively at the man's broad back.

The world quickly turning gray, Z's next
"strategy" was to flail about, trying to lay his hands on something
he could use to pound the crazy man loose.

In the half-world of almost blacking out,
grasping for anything, Z felt his hand strike the metal desk lamp,
knocking it over.

Desperate now, Z swept his hand over the
desktop, his last chance to use the heavy metal fixture to club the
man's head, stunning the crazy enough for Z to pry loose from those
strangling fingers.

Finding the cord, jerking on it frantically
... Z felt the wire pull out of the lamp's base, his chance of
dragging the lamp to him, gone.

But maybe not his
final
hope. With his
last, desperate burst, Z grabbed the electric cord and brought up
his arm. If he could bring his hands together behind the crazy's
head, get the wire around the lunatic's neck .....

But ... Z couldn't, Z's other arm pinned
beneath the man's body, the wire flailing uselessly.

It was at the far end of consciousness that
Z heard a ... sizzling sound; felt Ruble's fingers stiffen, then
relax, the big man slumping to the floor at Z's feet.

Z still couldn't catch his breath, even to
cough, making it impossible to do anything but flop over on his
stomach and clutch at the desk while trying to gasp in enough air
to keep himself alive.

Only the knife-edged agony in his chest was
keeping Z from blacking out, that terrible, sharp stab he felt
whenever he tried to breathe.

Beside Z's head, looming large because of
its nearness to Z's staring eyes, was the telephone receiver,
knocked off its cradle; the phone base overturned in the struggle,
lying on its side facing him.

Painfully, laboriously, Z concentrated on
sliding his nearest hand along the smooth surface of the small
desk. In show motion, dialed 9. ...... dialed 1. ..... dialed
......

Though he must have dialed another 1, Z
couldn't remember doing that.

Later, the shattering of
his office door
had
roused him to semi-consciousness, Z also hearing shouts and
running feet ... before drifting back again toward
death.

* * * * *

The ceiling came into focus slowly, its
thinly spaced rows of fluorescents lighting the room, a white
ceiling with a brown, water stain of South America directly
overhead. Metal tracks were looped above him and to the side.
Ceiling-to-floor waterfalls of sheeting.

Not the lavender-painted ceiling in Z's
bedroom.

Not the cracked lath-and-plaster ceiling in
Z's office.

Z turned his head to feel ... something
press against his nose ... to feel a hand on his cheek.

Looking up, Z saw a blurry image of a person
leaning over him ..... Susan. ... Reaching out to stroke his
forehead.

Rolling his head from side to side, Z saw he
was in a large rectangular room, a room with ... beds ... other
people in them, some of the "bed spaces" curtained off.

Floating up his hand from someplace far
away, Z touched his face; found that plastic tubes ran from his
nose to his cheeks, to hook around his ears. "They're giving you
oxygen," said Susan's husky voice. "You're in the hospital, but
you're going to be OK."

Being in the hospital was the way Z had
gotten to know Susan. She'd called his office to hire him as a
bodyguard, saying that her maniac of an ex was threatening her. It
wasn't until after the husband had put a slug in Z's lung, however,
that Z had actually gotten "hooked-up" with Susan, Susan coming
frequently to visit Z in the hospital. (He'd been in a charity ward
that time: and probably was again. Without insurance, that's where
you landed if you had a serious problem with your health.)

The last time Z was flat on his back in a
place like this he'd been slow to heal -- bleeding problems --
Susan helping him continue his post-hospital recovery by walking
with Z until he got back his strength. That was when Z had learned
to like art, on their "comeback" walks through the Nelson
gallery.

Now, it seemed, he was back in the hospital
with Susan beside him once again.

But
why
was he here?

In spite of fog masking his memory, Z
recalled breathing troubles; remembered chest pain.

Twisting his head on the pillow, he found
Susan's face in better focus now that she'd settled back in a
straight chair near the side of the elevated bed. "Heart attack?"
he whispered.

"Pneumonia," Susan
countered, trumping
that
idea. "Now that you're getting antibiotics at
long,
long
last,
you're doing fine."

Pneumonia.

"It's just like you, Z," Susan continued,
growling her worried disapproval, "not to see a doctor when you're
sick. Playing Mr. Macho." Susan was more frightened than lecturing.
"Why didn't you tell me that being deathly ill was the reason you
couldn't see me?" She paused, her voice now soft as summer showers.
"And all this time, I thought I'd lost you, that you'd fallen for
another woman."

Another woman? Somewhere at the base of Z's
skull, Susan's accusation seemed to ring a bell .... but not enough
of one to keep Z from falling back to sleep.

* * * * *

Not his heart. Z woke to the memory of what
Susan said. Not his heart. He might yet live long enough to die in
a dark alley.

Z's throat hurt, touching it here -- there
-- only making it worse.

Was it night? Was it day? ..... From his bed
in the center of the dimly lighted room, he couldn't tell.

Trying to think back, Z wondered how long
he'd been in the hospital, recalled being awakened for shots; had a
clear impression of coughing and wheezing.

On the other hand, he couldn't remember
eating or drinking, probably what the IV drip was doing in his left
arm.

Nurses were also putting him through a
periodic routine to help him breathe, making Z take deep breaths
through a machine's plastic mouthpiece, the idea, to get him to
suck air into his lower lungs: medicated air.

As Z continued to wake up, he realized Susan
had been coming to visit in the evenings -- though Z had been
sleeping through much of her time with him.

He remembered asking about the date, Susan
saying it was the 6th of July.

Damn!

He'd missed the 4th. ... But was too sick to
care.

He recalled getting Susan
to promise to have a phone put in as soon as the hospital personnel
allowed it. Z had money to pay for the phone, he'd assured her,
Susan shushing him. What Z
didn't
have was money for all this care. His Mom had
refused to take charity; that kind of "po' folks pride" eventually
killing her.

Z didn't like handouts, either.

* * * * *

Every time Z woke up, now, he felt
stronger.

Another proof of his
improved health was that the hospital people had finally put in a
phone, not that he had the strength to use it. Anyway, who would he
call? That, plus the fact that, during the night --
night
was when
most
light tubes were
switched off -- the IV drip had magically disappeared from his arm,
a healthy-sized Band-Aid replacing it. Though Z was still sleeping
much of the time, a dangerous-looking old nurse provided a moment
of excitement by coercing him into taking a few bites of whatever
passed for food here.

Yesterday morning, he'd also been thought
strong enough for a strapping young orderly to get him into a
wheelchair and trundle him off down a long, long corridor, then
take him, by elevator, to X-ray. Any day now, someone would
remember to tell him what the X-rays showed.

Z was still coughing ... but not as much,
his throat continuing to be sore ... though not as painful as it
used to be.

What there could be no doubt about was that
they were still working him over with that plastic breathing
machine, waking him at all hours to try to get him to breathe
deeper.

The most positive indication that Z was
getting well, was that he was sleeping peacefully enough to be
awakened by other sick people's gurgling sounds. That, and having
difficulty getting back to sleep because of being tangled in those
bare-ass-to-the-world, impossible-to-tie-on hospital gowns everyone
had to wear. Being strangled by a twisted piece of cloth was
particularly hard on a man used to sleeping in the
all-together.

* * * * *

The phone rang, Z waking up and managing to
fumble the receiver off the medicine stand and over the
steel-barred side rails of his bed to the thin, hard hospital
mattress. Another struggle got the receiver propped between his ear
and the pillow. Everything -- bed controls, signal button, Susan's
flowers on the movable food stand, telephone -- seemed to be put
just out of reach. Maybe that was the hospital's subtle way of
getting patients to do more exercise.

Arranging the sheet, he was ready.

"Z." Z's voice sounded thin, even to him.
Cautiously, he tried a deep breath ... managed it without coughing.
Figured, from the brightness overhead, it must be daylight
outside.

"I wish
I
had time to laze
around the hospital, pinching good-looking nurses on the butt."
Ted.

"Yeah."

"Though I practically had to arrest her to
find out where you were, your high-falutin' girlfriend says you're
goin' to live, news that wasn't particularly well-received here at
the station." Not, "in particular," by rat-faced Captain Scherer.
"What I called for was, not only to hear for myself that you
weren't going to croak, but to tell you that I'm in line for making
Detective Second. I guess discoverin' the bodies like I did, didn't
hurt. So I thought it might raise your spirits to hear about me
going up in the world."

"Yeah."

"Sometime, you got to tell me how you
stumbled onto all those stiffs. I always said you were one of the
lucky ones. Some guys just get all the breaks and others has got to
earn everything they get in this life."

"Yeah. Lucky."

"I don't want to keep you
on the phone too long, 'cause I don't want your girl to have a go
at my balls with a pair of pliers -- which she threatened to do if
I called at
all
-- but I wanted to ask how that nigger dick from K.C. caught
the killer."

"Don't know." Nigger. A word you didn't hear
much anymore. ... Except from black comedians.

It wasn't that Ted disliked blacks any more
than he disliked everyone else. It was just that, even though he
tried to do better, he often fell back to talking like everybody
did in the old days. There was a lot of truth to the notion that,
after high school, Teddy's world had ... stopped.

As for Addison, Z
also
wanted to know how
he'd caught the crazy.

Memories of what had happened between Z and
the madman had begun to filter back, Ruble, lying in wait for Z at
the office, the slow-motion fight, like two punch-drunk
heavyweights in the fifteenth round.

"OK, then. Give me a call if you find out.
You'll probably be home by the time I could get out to see you.
Anyway, hospitals give me the creeps. It's that smell, you know?
The smell of Lysol mixed with death, if you know what I mean. Sick
people ain't -- isn't -- healthy to be around. But you remember.
Anything I can do for you, just ask. We been friends for a long
time and that's what friends are for, to help one another."

"Thanks, Ted."

Z got the phone hung up.
And
that
-- plus
trying to eat a little something, then having to play S.O.S. on his
call button before a nurse came to help him to the bathroom down
the hall -- was the sum of that day's activities.

* * * * *

Another morning of being examined by nurses,
interns, and one overworked doctor (at least Z was on pills, now,
instead of shots) had left Z with enough energy to make a phone
call of his own. Followed by Addison's "comeback" that
afternoon.

"Z."

"Addison, here. How you doing?"

"Better."

"It's a bitch to be in the hospital."

"Yeah."

"But it's the best place to be if you're
sick. When I couldn't reach you either at home or at your office --
using my police connections, don't you know -- I got in touch with
a Miss Susan Halliwell. Rumored to be your steady. Nice girl, by
the way."

"Yeah."

"You're sick of being sick, would be my
guess, but doing a lot better."

"You think so?"

"I
know
so. Again, using police
privileges, I finally got in touch with someone who actually knew
about your condition. And you're doing just fine. You'll be getting
your mail on Saturday -- your girl has been shielding you
from
any
outside
disturbances -- and be going home on Sunday." Addison was one hell
of a detective, as Z had always thought. Who else could find out
anything about anyone in a charity ward in any hospital? And
Addison was right about Z being tired of this room. Around Z were
people who were
really
sick, folks with tubes and more tubes stuck into them.
Skin-and-bones people. People so ancient they had yellowed,
tissue-paper skin. To make things worse, none of these poor old
folks had anything to look forward to but their withered friends
hobbling in to see them -- maybe for the last time. It was sad.
Especially because poverty wards like this had been banished from
every civilized country in the world ... except the United States
of America. Scenes like this stripped a man of the pride he ought
to feel for his country! ......... But Z couldn't think about that
now.