Love Gone Mad (2 page)

“That’s damned good music, Vinnie,” he says.

“Adrian—my
man
,” Vinnie calls. “Nobody loves Led Zeppelin like we do.” Vinnie moves down the bar.

He’s had only one swig, but Adrian already feels a foamy web of warmth in his head. He seems to float in the bar’s dimness.

Adrian hears a voice—but it’s muffled by the music.

He takes another pull on the Bud. A haze settles in his brain.

“I said …
Adrian?
”

Startled, Adrian peers to his right.

A ruggedly built man in his midthirties stands at the bar. He stares intensely with cold, deep-set gray eyes. The guy’s about six two, maybe taller—with sloped, powerful-looking shoulders and a broad, well-muscled chest. He has a bull neck with cordlike veins that look like blood-filled pipes. Even in a flannel jacket, the man’s arms are thick, sinewy. His hands are huge, with thick, gnarled fingers.

“
Adrian
? Do I know you?”

Adrian suddenly feels a clenched dread. A knot forms in his stomach. A shudder floats through his chest. He draws back as if by instinct. The man is steep-jawed; he has a Vandyke beard and closely cropped blondish hair cut in a semimilitary style.

“I don’t think so …”

“Oh, yes … I
know
you …”

The guy edges closer, looming larger.

Adrian thinks the man’s nostrils quiver as though he smells something. Even in the bar’s dimness, Adrian registers the strange grayness of the man’s eyes, with their pitted-olive black pupils reflecting a purple neon sign. Adrian sees a dark madness there, a smoldering rage, and something cold crawls through him.

“Adrian … That’s a girl’s name. You a faggot?”

Adrian’s mouth goes dry. The guy reminds him of a beast—something lethal, soulless. Adrian’s fingers tingle; his scalp dampens.

Holy shit. This is unbelievable. It’s not from the life I’ve been living. What’s this guy about?

“Look, mister,” Adrian says. “I don’t know you and I’m—”

“Hey,
you
,” Vinnie growls from behind the bar.

The man’s eyes shift to Vinnie. The guy has yet to blink.

Voltage charges through the air.

Except for the jukebox, the place goes quiet.

“Vinnie,” Adrian says, “there’s no need—”

“It’s okay, Adrian,” says Vinnie as his sumo-sized arm slips beneath the bar. “If you’re looking for trouble, you son of a bitch, you’ve come to the right place.” A blue-black baseball bat appears in his hand. “Get the fuck outta here.
Now!
”

Suddenly, the guy’s arm lunges out in a mercury-quick movement; his beer bottle slams onto the bar. The bottle bounces, topples, and twirls wildly as foamy beer spurts out its neck. He glares at Vinnie with those cold, unblinking eyes. “I’ll be back,” he says and then turns to Adrian. “And I’ll see you too, faggot.”

Adrian’s skin feels like it’s peeling. His insides go cold, as though an ice floe encircles his heart.

The guy turns, casts another look at Vinnie, and saunters out the door.

Led Zeppelin’s chorus fills the room.

Adrian’s armpits are soaked. His heart batters his rib cage, and his knees feel weak.

“You know that guy?” Adrian asks, surprised at the steadiness of his voice.

“Nah,” Vinnie says, setting the bat behind the bar. “Been hanging around a couple a weeks now. Looks like he’s been waitin’ for someone.”

“Looks like he was waiting for me …”

“He’s just killin’ time—comes in around seven, stays an hour or two, leaves, then wanders in again around eleven, stays another hour. Nurses a bottle of beer, that’s all. Doesn’t talk to anyone. Strange guy.” Vinnie swipes the beer bottle, tosses it into a bin, and wipes down the bar top. “In this business, you meet all types …”

Vinnie heads toward the grill area.

Adrian waits for the adrenaline rush to subside. He feels his heart still throbbing in his throat. He swigs his beer, and it shoots right to his brain. His legs are unsteady. He plops down on a stool.

The last stanza of “Stairway to Heaven” resounds through the bar.

The front window shatters. A scorching air blast whooshes through the room as bottles detonate in a percussive blowout. Glass, liquor, and debris scatter as neon explodes and everything flies. Everyone drops to the floor.

Another blast sprays the place.

The lights flicker; one goes out.

Smoke, plaster, and dust float in the air.

“A shotgun!” shouts Vinnie; he leaps over the bar and rushes out the front door.

A dangling ceiling light sizzles.

A babble of voices rises; panic-level fear takes over as patrons stampede toward the back of the place. It’s pure mayhem.

“Don’t go out the door,” someone shouts. “He could be there.”

Vinnie bursts back in, looking around. “Anyone hurt?”

“What the hell was that?” someone calls.

“A shotgun,” Vinnie says, snapping open his cell phone.

A patron swipes shards of glass from his hair. Another guy curses. Someone whimpers. A few men rush for the front door.

Adrian gets to his feet. “You see who it was?”

“Probably that bastard I kicked out,” Vinnie says, dialing 911. “It was a black pickup, a big Ford or Chevy with a steel toolbox behind the cab. He was goin’ like a bat outta hell.”

“You get his plate?”

“Nah … He was goin’ too fast.”

The place smells like malt and acrid smoke—a trace of whiskey, too. The walls are pocked with pellet holes. Ceiling wires dangle, spit, and sputter.

“It’s King’s Corner,” Vinnie says into his cell. “There’s been a drive-by shooting through my front window.”

A pause as Vinnie listens.

“No … nobody’s hurt …”

The music builds in a surge of guitars and vocals. The air is hazy, yellowish, and caustic. It smells chemical. Booze drips from shattered bottles.

Vinnie’s still on his cell, talking to the police dispatcher.

The music hits a crescendo and then goes serene.

A police siren burps and then whoops. Whirling lights suddenly appear; they carousel everywhere.

The Led Zeppelin vocalist ends the song in a voice that conjures up angels.

A
drian stands on the cafeteria line. It’s a hospital lunchtime madhouse. Pure bedlam. The expanse seems to swell like a roiling sea.

A thunderous crash erupts amid the maelstrom. Adrian reflexively whirls and crouches. An electric surge rips through him.
Shotgun!

Adrian realizes a huge metal tray cart has overturned. The floor is piled with plastic trays and debris. The moment of shock evaporates. People help the cafeteria workers pull the cart upright and slide trays back into the racks.

Last night’s shotgun blast tramples through Adrian’s thoughts. The air-sucking whoosh, the glass shards, the smoke, the sizzling ceiling wires, the pockmarked walls, all of it. It’s life and death—in the OR and at King’s Corner.

“Adrian? Do I know you? You a faggot?”

The words bubble through him like a hemorrhage—again and again—and each time, a sickening wave of dread washes through him. He feels his guts contract as he recalls that moment. Adrian tells himself to push the memory away; it’s an aberration, not part of his life. His life is here, at Eastport General, where lives can be saved. After all, that’s the business he’s in.

Amid the oceanic roar of the cafeteria, Adrian slides his tray along the three-barred railing, picks up a container of chicken soup, a slice of carrot cake, and plastic utensils, and then fills a cup with diet soda from the dispenser. No ice.

Adrian spies his surgical team at a table—six people in hospital greens and surgical caps, chomping sandwiches, guzzling mineral water or coffee, talking and laughing. No seat there. The place is a fluorescent-lit sea of white coats and surgical scrubs—doctors, nurses, attendants, technicians. EMS people and visitors in civilian clothes, too.

Adrian looks about for a seat, catches snippets of conversation amid salvos of laughter and aromas of lunchtime fare—chicken soup, meat loaf, pizza, and tuna fish. He and Richie Moscatello see each other and smile. They’ve known each other since medical school at Cornell, where they did plenty of late-night drinking after exams. That ended when Richie got married and had a kid. Everyone, it seems, has kids.

But not Adrian.

Passing some scrub-suited orthopedic surgeons, Adrian sees a brawny guy with a stethoscope dangling around his neck. The guy’s arms bulge in the surgical greens; it reminds Adrian of that madman in King’s Corner last night. That face, the neck, those huge hands, the quivering nostrils—and those eyes—unforgettable.

Adrian? That’s a girl’s name
.

You a faggot?

Adrian knows he’s still spooked by that steely eyed psycho. The rawness of the encounter has begun fading, but the adrenaline needs time to burn off and dissipate the way a foul odor dissolves with time. But the jangling sensation peaks in an instant—shoots through him—like when the cart overturned. Or earlier this morning when a tire blew out in the hospital garage. Adrian’s insides jumped.

I’ll be back
.

The fucking Terminator—a scene right out of the movie.

And I’ll see you, too, faggot
.

Adrian scours the cafeteria. Not a single seat in sight. He wonders if it might be better to brown-bag it from now on; it would be easier, much less fuss, but he’d miss the connectedness of the cafeteria, the nearness of life around him.

On the other hand, the camaraderie of the place just heightens his loneliness.

As he passes a group of nurses, Mary Pearson, a tall blonde, winks at him. She’s been incredibly flirtatious since Adrian’s divorce from Peggy. He and Mary had had a brief, tempestuous fling at Yale, long before he and Peggy had met. Only a few months ago, a message arrived at his hospital e-mail. It said:

Adrian, I’m around. Mary.

He didn’t respond; he thought it would be unwise.

Then another one popped up.

We can still be friends, can’t we? Mary.

For sure, it’s a small universe: Eastport, Yale, and Bridgeport Hospital. Everyone knows everyone—and they know everyone’s business, too. It’s a gossip mill. But Adrian doesn’t want to get into the casual friends-with-privileges thing. Stir up dead embers and you can ignite an unwanted fire—a shit storm of recriminations. And you don’t shit where you eat, he thinks. He throws Mary a tight-lipped smile, an unspoken
Yes, we shared a moment of need and convenience back then, but not now
.

He finally spies an empty seat and moves toward it. A woman sits alone at the table. She’s drop-dead gorgeous. Adrian feels his knees wobble; he’s riveted by her.

“May I join you?” he asks. It’s the obligatory self-invitation—not overly friendly, just plain straight-talk—merely asking in a polite and casual way. Walking the social high wire—sending out carefully calibrated cues. Not too hot, not to cool … just right. The Goldilocks approach.

She looks up briefly and nods indifferently; he sits down.

Settling into the chair, Adrian realizes he’s been on his feet since six thirty. His arches ache and his feet feel leaden. Maybe he’s a candidate for orthotic inserts. No wonder most surgeons retire by age sixty. So … at forty, he’s got twenty more years of cracking chests and mending hearts. Plenty can happen in twenty years, he thinks.

Twenty years … I can’t think that far ahead … and I don’t want to think of the past
.

Steam rises from his soup in a vaporous cloud. It’s too hot to slurp. The bowl, the soup’s aroma, and the plastic tray remind him of the dorm food at Cornell; they bring back the verdant rolling hills of the Finger Lakes, rowing on Cayuga Lake and playing center field on the varsity baseball team. It’s amazing—Ithaca, New York—merely a whiff away.

He glances across the table—eyeballs the woman. She’s staring down at a book; an untouched egg salad sandwich sits on her plate. A container of coffee sits nearby. It’s obviously cooled down—there’s no vapor. She’s wearing green surgical scrubs and a long white coat. Her name tag says, “Megan Haggarty, RN.” Beneath it, “Neonatal Intensive Care.”

Adrian … do I know you …?

That shock-like sensation jolts through Adrian. His legs tighten. Forget last night, he tells himself. It was a few moments of craziness in an otherwise sane world.

He peers at Megan Haggarty. God, she’s gorgeous. Her face has the look of unbroken Celtic lineage—beautiful Irish features—unattainable beauty, he thinks. She’s in her early thirties, Adrian guesses. She has fiery red hair with an iridescent hint of blond and a coppery undertone. It looks silken soft and shines under the fluorescent lighting. Pulled back, it flows into a hair clip, perfectly framing her oval face. He can almost smell it through the curling soup vapor infiltrating his nostrils.

Is blood rushing to his cheeks? Or is it the steaming-hot soup? Either way, he feels flushed.

Megan Haggarty’s forehead is high; her cheekbones are prominent. Her nose is delicately sculpted, while her jaw is square, firm. Auburn eyebrows accentuate her forehead. Her skin is bone-white and looks creamy, luscious. What would it taste like? he wonders. Staring at her, he knows he’s incapable of subtlety.

Her eyes flick up—past him. They’re hazel with emerald-green rings around the irises. He’s never seen such eyes—so soulful and sad in a way. She’s seen hard times, he thinks. It’s in those eyes. He could
fall
into them.

She turns a page. Adrian realizes he might as well be a vapor wafting in a wind.

God … she’s a work of art
.

He scans the book upside down, a skill he refined riding on subway trains in Manhattan years ago.
In Cold Blood
. Oh, right—Truman Capote. Four poor souls murdered by two madmen using a shotgun in the Kansas night.

A shotgun. It reminds him of that bastard at King’s Corner. “Stairway to Heaven,” the guy’s piercing, gray eyes, and his quivering nostrils.

I’ll be back
.

You gotta put that out of your mind. That was then; this is now
.

Megan Haggarty’s fingers are long and graceful, with perfectly shaped nails—no polish, just natural pink nail beds—with light half-moon crescents above the cuticles. And, the most important feature—the
crucial
one—no ring. Adrian wonders if it’s possible she’s not married, but he knows lots of nurses wear no jewelry while working in the hospital.