Angel of Mercy (8 page)

Women, unless they were stone-cold dead, terrified him. Invariably, he would lower his eyes when a woman spoke to him, unless that woman was someone in authority, especially someone who wore a uniform.

The uniform had the effect of neutralizing her sexuality and emphasizing her authority. He had deep respect for authority, which was why he was obsessive about obeying traffic laws.

But Faye Sullivan had been different. She had been the first woman in uniform who had touched him deeply, maybe because he had seen something in her eyes, a second set of eyes, the eyes of the woman beneath the white dress and within the white slip and white panties and white bra; the woman who pulled on those white socks and stepped into those heavy black shoes. He heard a warmer tone under the orders she snapped to underlings and he saw another pair of hips swing under the skirt of her uniform when she marched down shiny corridors.

He had learned her schedule, and when he, was able to, he would sit in the parking lot by the hospital and wait for her to arrive just so he could watch her get out of her car and walk to the entrance. Often he was there at the end of her tour of duty to watch her emerge and get into her car. He had done this for weeks before gathering up enough nerve to say his first words to her, which were merely, “Good morning.”

She returned the greeting with a perfunctory smile, but it was enough to encourage him. He decided to follow her home one day and that was when he discovered she had a twin sister. At first, that confused him, threw him into a fluster because he was both excited and discouraged by the revelation. He had been fantasizing about Faye, imagining that she was really just as lonely as he was, and just as particular about whom she associated with and befriended. That was why she was a loner at work and why the others resented her.

Just as they resented him.

But a sister… this meant she did have someone close, someone in whom to confide her troubles, her secrets, her dreams and fears. And a twin sister to boot! They shared more; they had to.

However, when he saw Susie hobble down the stairway and he realized she had a handicap, his ambitions were once again kindled. There was a real loner in this family, someone with whom he could commune, someone who would understand his deeper feelings.

But he didn’t try to make any contact with her that day.

Always the gentleman and always respectful of authority, he finally gathered his nerve and approached Faye Sullivan while she was alone in the nurse’s quarters at the hospital. He had waited for her to have the sort of patient whom he knew would not be a constant worry. He studied her pattern and then, when he felt confident, he approached.

“Excuse me,” he began. She looked up from her magazine with surprise, but she did not smile. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple almost freezing in place and refusing to bob. “My name is Cor… Arnold Ratner. I work in pathology.”

Faye folded her magazine and sat back, her eyes becoming small and fixed, the pupils darkening. “Yes?”

“Urn… I’ve said hello to you on a number of occasions and you’ve returned my greeting,” he continued.

Faye looked as if she didn’t remember, but she nodded.

“I know you’re not on staff here, that you’re only special, but I thought since we both work at the hospital…”

“What?” she demanded with growing impatience.

“I… I just thought I could come by one day and say hello.”

“Come by? Come by where?”

“Your home… your apartment. The truth is,” he continued, finally building up enough courage to say it, “I’d like to meet your sister.”

“My sister?”

“Uh huh. Properly, of course. That’s why I came here to ask your permission to drop by and pay you two a visit. Whenever you think it would be a good time,” he added. Faye stared at him silently.

“How do you know about my sister?” she asked.

“Well, I just happened to see her one day and I was quite surprised at first … being you two are twins…”

“Have you called our house and spoken to her?”

Faye demanded.

“Oh no,” Corpsy said, shaking his head vigorously.

“I would never do that.”

“Did you speak to her in a store or…”

“No, ma’am.”

“Susie is a shy girl. I don’t think your paying us a visit would be wise,” Faye said sharply. “And I wouldn’t advise you to call or try to speak to her if you should see her out and about. She is a fragile person, Mr ….”

“Ratner.”

“Ratner. I have a special responsibility to look after her. I’m sure you understand,” Faye said and snapped the magazine open again. It was as good as her saying “Dismissed.”

Corpsy’s naturally pallid complexion turned crimson. He started to stutter another explanation and then quickly retreated, hurrying down to the sanctity of his lab, where he paced between two dissected male bodies and berated himself for making himself look so foolish.

But he couldn’t erase Susie Sullivan from his mind.

The image of her hobbling down those stairs lingered and tormented him.

He had caught her angelic smile and he dreamt that smile was for him.

Of course, he understood and appreciated Faye Sullivan’s reaction to his request. In her shoes he might very well have responded the same way, but she just didn’t know him, he thought. If she did, once she did, she wouldn’t see him as any sort of threat to her sister.

And so, with the same sort of monomania he brought to all his obsessions, he began to pursue Faye Sullivan, seeking ways to ingratiate himself with her.

He followed her every assignment and made it his business to be there whenever she arrived at the hospital to greet her, and whenever she left, to bid her a good evening. He tried to expand his hellos and goodbyes with small talk about her patients, the hospital, her work, even the weather, but she resisted.

And then he thought he would approach her through her patients and their families. He began to visit her patients whenever she wasn’t on duty.

With those who were able to talk, he spent time, always turning the discussion to Faye and praising her on her abilities.

When the patients were too sick to talk, he spoke to the lingering spouse or daughter or son, if there was any.

That was how he learned that Susie Sullivan cared for some of them.

When the first corpse of a dead spouse appeared in autopsy, it was as if he were greeting an old and special friend. This was someone Susie Sullivan had known and touched and cared for with affection. He treated the bodies the same way, taking extra care, extra interest, and that was how he discovered what the chief of pathology had missed: amyl nitrate.

Taken in these dosages, it would bring on a heart attack.

He had every intention of pointing it out. He imagined Faye was somehow responsible, but then he envisioned Susie Sullivan’s angelic smile and fantasized her beside him. Any investigation most likely would begin with her, and he could do nothing to hurt her, nothing to put suspicion on her. However, armed with his knowledge he found new courage and became far more brazen when he approached the stern Faye Sullivan. He lingered longer when he greeted her and he saw she noticed the way he looked at her. There was curiosity in those blue eyes now, curiosity and not just annoyance.

One evening he waited two hours in the parking lot for her to complete her tour, and when she appeared, he got out of his car and approached.

“I’d like to meet your sister,” he said firmly.

“Now look, Mr. Ratner…”

She remembered his name, he thought smugly.

“Arnold.”

“Arnold. I’ve already told you…”

“I thought she and I could talk about Mr. Brofenberg,” he said sharply.

“Pardon?”

“Amyl nitrate,” he said. She stared at him a moment and then pivoted and marched to her car, her heels clicking sharply in the night.

A few days later, Corpsy drove to the apartment Susie shared with Faye.

He noted that her car wasn’t in the parking lot, but he remained there for hours until he saw the complex superintendent come along and go into the Sullivans’ apartment. Curious, he got out and approached. The door had been left open, and when he gazed into the unit, he saw how empty it looked.

“Can I help you?” the superintendent asked.

“I… I was looking for Faye Sullivan,” he said. He couldn’t bring himself to say Susie.

“Gone,” the superintendent replied.

“Gone?”

“Checked out without asking for her security back, and after she had just paid a month’s rent. Got to admit,” he added when Corpsy didn’t utter a word, “it surprised me. I thought she and her sister were more reliable than some of the dips I get renting units in this complex.”

“But did she leave a forwarding address? Are they somewhere else in Phoenix?”

“Hey, I was lucky she left the keys with my wife.

Place is in good shape, though,” he added gazing around. “Not a scratch, and pretty damn clean, too. I can turn this around tomorrow.”

“What about her mail?” Corpsy demanded.

“I’m not the post office, mister. I guess you weren’t such close friends,” he said with a wry smile.

“No, actually, I’m very close to her sister.”

“Not now, you ain’t,” the superintendent said and laughed.

Corpsy glared at him for a moment and then rushed out. He drove around in a daze for a while, trying to come to terms with the reality before returning to the lab, but the frustration and the disappointment he suffered was so great, he couldn’t work. When he gazed at himself in the mirror, he did see a resemblance to a corpse. I deserve my nickname, he thought. It riled him and he made a major decision. He decided he would pursue his fantasy. Nothing he had was as important.

Eventually, he discovered where Faye Sullivan had gone by tracking back her requested letters of reference, and then he packed all that was of any importance to him, even some of the jars of kidney and gallstones, thinking they just might interest Susie.

“Where are you going?” his mother asked when she saw him carrying his things out to the car., “To see someone.”

“Where?”

“Palm Springs, California. Don’t worry, I told the hospital, and I took my accumulated vacation days.”

“But how long will you be away, Arnold?” she asked, her face troubled.

He had never so much as left for a weekend before. Even going out for the evening was a major undertaking.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. Then he smiled.

“Until she says yes, I suppose.”

“She? Who?”

“Susie Sullivan,” he replied. “She’s a nurse’s sister and she’s the woman I love.”

His mother was astonished. When had he courted her? Why hadn’t he mentioned her before?

“She’s very shy,” he explained, “but she’s waiting for me … just sitting by a window gazing out and hoping I will come. It’s going to be a surprise,” he concluded.

His mother shook her head and fumbled for words.

“You’re… going to marry… marry this girl?”

“Of course,” Corpsy replied. “And live happily every after,” he added.

He kissed his mother on the cheek and hurried out to his car. She stood on the steps and watched him drive away.

He had a game plan. He would find a place to stay first and then he would go to the hospital and park and wait to spot Faye. He would be as inconspicuous about it as he could. He would follow her home and then… then she would be impressed with his determination and finally invite him in to meet Susie. It seemed so logical, so easy.

Now he was approaching Palm Springs, but he didn’t see the wide streets lined with beautiful palm trees and colorful vines of bougainvillea, nor did he see the velvet green golf courses and the sparkling fountains, the new homes and town houses, the comfortable condominiums in their peaceful settings. He saw only an angelic smile on a beautiful young woman as she hobbled along, alone, waiting for him to come into her life.

Frankie paused before opening his car door.

For a moment he just sat in the vehicle in the police station parking lot and stared at the building that had been his second home for so long. Of course, he had realized it would someday come to this, but he had hoped it would have been on his own terms: when he could admit to himself that he was tired and ready.

This wasn’t fair. He felt as if he had been driven here by a malicious chauffeur, shackled and carted like some suspect and dragged into his supervisor’s office to turn over his pistol and badge. Reluctantly, he stepped out of the vehicle and slowly started toward the entrance.

As he walked he realized it was one of those magnificent Palm Springs days, with the temperatures warm but made tolerable by a gentle breeze, the sky a deep blue, peppered with dots of cotton-candy clouds.

This shouldn’t be the day a large part of him dies, he thought. It should be cloudy and overcast or at the least, dreary and miserable, as dreary and miserable as he felt on the inside.

Imagining himself as a retired person, even in Palm Springs, which was one of the retired person’s paradises, was a tough pill to swallow. If we’re lucky enough to live a full life, he thought, we really die a few deaths and experience rebirths. The person I’m about to become would be a stranger to the young man who first set foot in this building to apply for the job.

For a moment he envisioned his younger self standing in the doorway watching him approach, a faint, almost sardonic smile on his younger face.

“About time,” his younger self said. “About time you made room for new blood. Too bad you had to be brought to the brink of death before considering it, but that’s you, stubborn until the end.”

“What do you know about me?” he fired back at this imaginary second self. “You’re too young to have that much wisdom.”

“I’m not too young to know an old fool when I see one. I’m not surprised at your attitude. Look at how you and your daughter bark at each other. You ever give her a chance, a real chance, to get close to you?”

“Don’t bring my daughter into this. She makes her own problems.”

“Just like you,” his younger self quipped and then popped like a soap bubble, leaving him staring at himself in the glass of the door.