“I joined the Police Department to die—no, I mean it, I went in for God to kill me—police or the Marines— was gonna be one or the other. I slept with my boss’s wife, and it was killing me. I worked as a bricklayer’s boy—apprentice? Nah, I was less than an apprentice. I mixed up the mortar—those guys tortured me—they’d shake the mortar on the trowel—‘Nah, too wet’—and throw it off, I’d put in more gravel, ‘Nah, too dry’—Christ! My hands blistered, then split, then finally got strong—see, it’s been years and they still are the same calluses.”
“But these guys, the real bricklayers, big, tough, muscles like fuckin’ ox—I wondered why they never cursed—they worked, they drank, but so quiet and never swore. Then after about six months, they invite me to their church—Salt of the Earth Church—no, no joke, I don’t know where the hell the name came from. Anyway, the crew chief guy in his old T-shirt and torn overalls- the same guy that’s been having me cart 60 lb bags of cement, making walls every day and running my ass around, —well, turns out he’s the fuckin’ Deacon, up there in a shirt and tie—like, I couldn’t believe it, but he was the head of the whole thing. So now I get it—why they don’t swear. All the guys, they are like the whole meat and body of this church. So I start going, every Sunday. My Mom hates it, ‘cause we’re Catholic—but I go anyway.”
The speaker’s hoarse, gravelly voice is arrested as a sudden metallic clang rings out from down the hall. He starts. Mid-60’s, prematurely aged, he pulls at the neck of his thin, institutional garment, and shifts his half-reclining position uncomfortably, as if to cover his involuntary startle. He then shoots a glance at the lone member of his audience, a much younger man with a military bearing. The older man raises an eyebrow, inclines his head towards the hall where the sound came from. What was that? The younger shrugs.
This younger man, who guards the older, wears uniform cotton blues, sports a fresh crew cut, and bears both an identifying badge and the preeminent tool of his trade. A newcomer to this place might find the attendant’s appearance intimidating—he has massive shoulders, and when thinking, tends to absently toy with the metal of the device he wears on his body, but the older man is used to him, and used to this environment. He is quite familiar with the muscled youth’s rig, and it doesn’t frighten him in the least.
The older man cranes his neck. From his restrained position, he peers with poorly-disguised anxiety down the portion of the stark linoleum and tile hallway that abuts the small space containing the two waiting men. He tries to see the source of the discordant sound that has interrupted him. He cannot. His movement pulls at his bonds—the plastic-coated wire, the tubing, that limit his motion, and it is clear that these impediments to what little freedom he now has annoy him. He pulls fitfully at his restraints. He tugs angrily at the metal sides of the gurney, then releases and slaps at them, almost petulantly.
“Christ, Frank- do I have to be stuck in this thing? Can’t I get up and walk around? Where the hell do they think I’m gonna escape to now?”
“Sorry, Sergeant, it’s protocol.”
The two are alone in a small cubicle, preparing for the ordeal. Perhaps it is the fear of the upcoming “procedure” that has loosened the older man’s tongue. Normally, he is taciturn, although routinely profane; a Stoic, a hard-ass. This wasted veteran is smart, (some would say sly) and his recitation is compelling, if atypical. Frank, the younger man, his attendant, has never heard this man speak so much at one time in the five years that they have known each other.
This grizzled man is what Frank and his co-workers call a “frequent flyer”. He has bounced into and escaped out of the grim walls of this inner-city institution for years. Each time he returns, beaten, defeated, he is in worse and worse trouble. His initially brief stints have become longer and uglier, filled with pain and despair. The staff knows him well, calls him “The Sergeant”, or “Sarge”, which Frank knows tickles the old man.
The years have taken their toll on The Sergeant, but even now, he looks like someone you’d treat with caution if you met him on the street. Brought as low as he has been in the last few years, there is a persistent trace of arrogance, threat, self-aggrandizement, in his speech and manner. Frank has always felt that the man radiates faint menace, even when he’s jocular. Sarge may joke, but in Frank’s experience of this troubled, charismatic man, any expression of true glee, real lightness of heart, is rare.
Sarge’s once powerful muscles are now attenuated, and he is rangy and more pale than he was during his first stint in this joint, but he still comes across as someone to be reckoned with.
Today, however, there is trepidation in his tone, his body language. The Sergeant bluffs well, but Frank knows his heart has taken many blows, has become weak. He is almost beyond redemption. He is preparing himself for his death.
The Sergeant shakes his graying head, disgusted at his restraints, but stops his fidgeting, pulling and complaining, and continues his confession.
“Anyway, one Sunday, I think it was the third time I went—I look up in the choir loft, and I see this angel, this beautiful girl, dark hair, face so pure, voice like sweet molasses, and I think “Ain’t no way I’m leaving here without knowing her”. She was so grounded, in the church, and in her God, and she was steady, and I was already so fucking lost—I had to have her.
She liked me too, I could tell. When I saw her ring, well first, I felt this punch in the pit of my stomach. Then later, when I could tell that she wanted me too—hot nights in July I had crazy thoughts, that summer, I was nineteen, what a know-nothing idiot I was—I thought it was the end of the world. When it finally happened, we slapped together like two magnets, thought couldn’t nothing pull us apart—She was good. I was too stupid to realize it then, but she was really good. “
Frank is listening, nodding, but also carrying out his assigned duties. He moves around the cubicle, attending to them. When the older man pauses, Frank, following protocol, asks him to identify himself by name and number, and compares this data to the orders in the official record, even though he knows The Sarge’s name, number, and face by heart.
In a place like this, there are legalities, records, and rules to ensure safety, accuracy. In this world, one must bear these concepts constantly in mind. Nothing can be taken for granted. You don’t want to do this thing to the wrong guy, although, truly, the chances of a mistake like that happening here, in this highly-secure facility, are slim to none. A careful man, a former Navy corpsman, Frank pays attention to detail and follows the simple rules, even if they seem redundant. In this business, it’s the only way to go.
Not to say that Frank has never broken rules in this institution, where pain and suffering, and the aftermath of violence and fear are grappled with daily by both inmates and staff. Frank knows that in the face of certain situations, even carefully-devised rules are inadequate, but when Frank breaks rules, he does it after thinking carefully, weighing the odds. He does what seems to him to be the right thing. He protects those in his charge, and also his comrades. He is careful to cover himself. He doesn’t just skip stuff out of mere boredom or laziness.
Sarge coughs, a throaty, wet sound, then continues.
“’Course, her husband, my boss, he figures it out, and fires my ass. Really, I deserved it. Part of me wished he would have beat me up too. He never hurt her either, I asked her—was worried. You could tell he was just floored; it was there in his face. He didn’t know what to do. I felt like the bastard I was. Stupid, stupid. I thought I was so bad I deserved to die. What the fuck did I know? I was just a kid. She goes back to live with her mom, and I have no job.
So, I put in my application for the police department and they call me the next week. I grew up in Hamilton, not 5 blocks from the Eastern, but I was so fucking green. I never knew that people stayed up all night, drinking and making trouble, beating each other up, stealing from churches, pushing over old people. It was amazing how simple I was. I remember telling my dad, “Da, you wouldn’t believe what they do.” I spent my first year in a daze, culture shock, wet dreams of Kate, waiting for that bullet to come whizzing in and find me. I pushed it, in some ways really kinda’ wanting it to happen. I was crazed. Took incredible fucking chances. Later, my balls would pull up in my sack when I thought about what I done those first few years.
Jesus—but I couldn’t even make them kill me—what a loser I was! —and my stats—they went through the roof. We practically carried the drugs and the guns into Evidence Control in wheelbarrows. Here I was this brainless, horny, guilty jerk, and now I’m getting commendations, Bronze Star, lifesaving awards, even the Major tips his head when I come in the station.
At my promotion ceremony, I’ll never forget it. They’re giving me some award, and my Mom is crying, she’s so fucking proud, and all I can think of is I screwed an angel, burnt up her wings. Now she’s going to Hell and so am I. I tell you man, I was seriously fucked up in the head.”
Frank has prepared other men for this rite, and knows that some need to talk, some to cry, some to pray. Frank is always willing to be there, to listen. Some beg for drugs to assuage their fear, and Frank has provided these each time he’s been asked, without hesitation.
Last night, knowing that the Sergeant was suffering, but too proud to ask for any surcease, Frank slipped him something strong with his last meal, many hours earlier.
“What the fuck is this?”
The old guy had snapped, looking with suspicion at the unfamiliar capsules Frank proffered.
“Sir, it may help your blood pressure.”
Frank then looked Sarge in the face with a well-practiced bland expression, clean-shaven visage unflinching. He and the doomed tough stared at each other for a long minute.
“Like that matters now,” Sarge had finally snorted. Frank had merely shrugged.
The Sergeant eyed the drugs in his palm, then gave Frank a sardonic wink, and tossed back his attendant’s offering with a glass of iced tea—no beer available in this place.
Frank now thinks to himself that that it’s probably the lingering effects of that supposedly safe, but still potent dose that has produced this flood of words from the old hoodlum.
Though you wouldn’t guess it to look at him, six-foot-four, two hundred thirty pounds, Navy-built physique, tattoos, Frank has a soft heart, unlike like some at this facility. He prides himself on treating each inmate of the institution in which he serves with respect, no matter who he is, or what he’s done. He is used to, and forgiving of, troublemakers. He speaks quietly, politely.
“Sarge, I need to shave you now.”
‘The older man nods, blanches, but cooperates as Frank quickly and efficiently shaves those parts of his body where electrodes must attach, and applies them to the hirsute man’s arms, legs. He leaves the chest alone, that will be taken care of later. Frank wants to distract his charge, so he prompts him to continue his recitation.
“Tell me, Sir, if you don’t mind saying, what happened next?”
“Well…my bricklayer’s gal made it up with her old guy, moves back to him out of her mom’s house. Once I get fired, we never do it again. So I‘m just a memory of a good fuck or two in her head, but he’s bread on the table, right? I don’t really blame her. It killed me, but some part of me was relieved too.”
“I start to think that maybe what I done with her wasn’t as bad as what I see everyday on the street, that maybe I am already in Hell, doing my time—no telling if there is any chance of parole.”
“So, see, I was primed to go bad. The stage was set for what happened next. My old world was gone and my new world—well, it was chaos, pure and simple. It was all broken rules, deception, appetite, pulling angry people apart with my nightstick in my hand, arresting dopers and making dirty jokes with other cops after.
I see my first dead man, my first stripper, my first beaten woman. I carry my first dead kid out of a burned-out rowhouse. I get drunk at cop bars, watching the Colts on TV. I start smoking Marlboros to get the stink of the City out of my nose.
I find out that most of my buddies, and some of my bosses too, are getting blow jobs in the squad cars from the hookers on Pulaski Highway at 3 a.m. I think about Kate less and less. Until later, when I hear she has a son. That gives me a jolt, and I sit for a while staring at the calendar on my Mom’s Frigidaire, and Jesus, I still wonder.
So now I’m cut loose, nothing to hold me back or pull me away from the edge. I’m the Fucking Wonder of the Eastern. People know my name, and my face. They show respect. I am Sergeant Hotshot. I am No One to Mess With. They are a little bit afraid, and a little bit interested, and my punk head swells. People think I am a badass, ‘cause I don’t care if I die.
But then, I start to reconsider the death sentence that I came in to the force thinking I deserved. Christ! If I knew then I was gonna end up here!”
The Sergeant breaks off, voice momentarily cracking, and gives Frank a ghastly smile, more a grimace than any expression of true amusement. Frank looks back at him candidly, wry sympathy showing on his own face.
The Sergeant girds himself, and then continues, almost defiantly, as if he thinks Frank may contradict what he next proclaims:
“So, I live and learn. And one of the things I learn is that some ‘bad’ men have honor in their own kinda’ way, and some ‘good’ men are twisted, ugly fucks who would as soon screw you over as look at you.”
Frank chuckles and agrees: “Isn’t that the truth.”
Sarge smiles again, this time a real smile. It’s clear to him that Frank is not judging him, and the tension in the small anteroom eases just a bit.
“Every day I see the worst that Charm City can puke up. I make shit for salary, but everywhere I go, small graft comes to me without trying. On any given day, it’s, ‘Hey Sarge, come in for just one minute’. Have some coffee…. a pastry…a quickie in back of the store with the hot counter girl. And always, behind it, the favor, the begging, the demand they always finally come out with and say —Now you gotta keep me safe, help me out, I give stuff to you, you help me, you fix me.”
“Well, so I figure… this is alright, this is not so bad. I am the Police, I fix trouble.”
This hoary vet now becomes more animated. He forgets himself. He mimics voices from his past.
Sarge apes a woman’s soft croon:
“ ‘My son—he in trouble’– this pretty cocktail waitress—she’s pulling her panties up, her skirt down, after.”
Now a clipped Asian accent:
“ ‘My store—it between two gang territory’. This butcher complains to me while he wraps up free steaks”.
Now the Sarge hunkers down, hoods his eyes, and in a grotesquely playful way, evokes for Frank a fair imitation of the accents of Little Italy: First generation Sicily has mated with Baltimore.
“‘My family enterprise, it ain’t designed to hurt no one’ –Mafia middle-management — big rings and a suit—he slides me 50’s across the table.”
“I feel strong—Sometimes I feel like God with a gun—to all these folks who think I can make miracles—and I got temptation—not so much the money, but the feeling that I got it all under control. I know how things work, I got connections. I feel powerful.”
He glares at Frank. “Powerful. And Goddammit, I was!” This last louder, angry, defiant. Sarge looks around, blinks, seems to realize anew where he is. When he resumes, his voice is low-pitched, pensive.
“Dunno if it was better or worse than what I did with Kate. So, anyway, I take what they give, give back whatever kind of help, protection, influence I can. Most times, I feel good about it, it feels right. And I mean, it was the accepted thing back then. We all were on the take, not just me and the rank. The big guys too. It was part of the perks of an otherwise shitty job.”
He stops, puts his hand to his jaw, rubs it, as if it aches. His focus shifts from Frank’s face to some interior realm. He appears to be staring inward at the thoughts in his own head. Perhaps he is merely focusing on distressing sensations from his own haggard body. His face becomes more grim. He begins again to pull at the side of the gurney with his still-strong right arm. His knuckles whiten. Frank looks up from his task, razor in hand, watchful, alert.
“You okay, Sarge? Take it easy now, don’t get upset.”
“Upset? My whole life is fuckin’ upset. It’s a total disaster.”
Nonetheless, he lets Frank ease him back, soothe him. He sighs, and watches Frank place the last of the electrode pads. In a quieter, more weary tone, he starts again.
“Sometimes… Well, sometimes it felt wrong. Sometimes I got confused, wondered where the line was. On the street, you can’t be weak, can’t hesitate. You gotta make decisions fast, then live with it. Some decisions weren’t so good. I took what came out of it, dealt with it, acted like I didn’t care—but sometimes I felt it later.
Those days I worked out like hell at the gym, or did shots at the bar, rolled myself home and fell asleep in my blues on the couch of this ratty Eastside apartment I had back then.
For a while, most Sundays, hungover, I’d drag my sorry ass back to my Mom’s old parish church. Mike, the priest—we were in grade school together—he listened through the grille at my confessions. He made me say more Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s than you could shake a stick at—you could tell he was stumped.
One day, he tells me he don’t want to be my confessor no more—says he don’t know how to help me, wants me to come see the fucking Monsignor.”
“‘No way’, I tell him, mad, ‘No fucking way.’ ”
‘Jack’, he tells me, ‘Pray to God, ask him to guide you. You are a soul in mortal peril.’
“I just start laughing. Too loud, too long. I can’t stop. I can still hear it in my head today. Even to me I sound like a crazy man. I wanna punch Mike out, but I don’t. We might’ve played stickball together as kids, but you don’t punch out the priest.
But I start hollering at him, right there in the church.
I’m yelling, ‘You wanna tell me about ‘mortal peril’ Mikey? Yeah, I’m in ‘mortal peril’—every fuckin’ day, Mikey, every fuckin’ day. Tell me something’ I don’t know.’ “I was bragging, but still really mad, and kinda’ shamed too.
Old birds in black are fluttering and whispering as I slam out, slam the stupid little confessional door; me swearing, pissed, embarrassed, knowing this is gonna get back to my folks—Dad now retired, sick, broken-up from Bethlehem Steel, and my Mom, still hopeful. Still proud of her cop son. Last church I ever set foot in, besides my officer’s weddings and funerals. Sometimes I wonder now whether I ought’ve broke with the church… might’a made some difference…”
“Sarge, do you want me to call the priest? I know he is right here, if you want him.”
Sarge cocks his head, considering. He is thinking Frank’s offer over carefully. Then slowly, regretfully, he shakes his head, no.
“What? I’m gonna confess, and he’ll give me Last Rites? Won’t help, won’t save my sorry ass.”
Sarge considers further, chews his lip.
“Nah, let him work on someone salvageable. Frank, most of my life I’ve been a bastard, and maybe I deserve every bad thing that’s ever happened to me, including this. I won’t lie to you. I took some stuff that wasn’t mine, and I gave back some stuff to people who had lost everything. I’ve saved some people and I’ve killed some people. I loved being a cop. But now it’s over. I can’t ever be a cop no more.”
“This place, you people”, now he bitterly indicts the whole facility as best as he can with his tethered arms, “have made sure of that. You told them that I’m no good no more.”
He thinks, then reprises:
“I’ve run my race. I might have been what you would call a crooked cop, but I did my best, and now I’m done. I done good in my life and I done bad, but I never thought I’d be punished like this. I thought I’d die on the street, never end up here, like this.”
Sarge’s face is ashen. Frank feels a tug of empathy, concern, but there is really nothing for Frank to say, and little more he can do at this moment in time. He puts his hand on Sarge’s shoulder, squeezes, and releases. He grasps the man’s wrist gently and looks at the portable clock. Sarge follows his eyes, notes the time on the military chronometer face, and complains.
“What’s taking them so long?”
Perhaps exhausted from all his talk, Sarge slumps further down in his half-seated position in the gurney. Now he sounds querulous, sick.
At this change in his charge from wordy bravado to apparent enervation, Frank calls on his walkie-talkie for a co-worker to guard the soul in his care for a moment. When Frank’s relief arrives, he briefs her in clipped tones, and quickly exits the anteroom. He walks rapidly down the hall and addresses the green-clad technicians preparing the procedure room.
“You guys ready? He’s getting antsy, and he doesn’t look good to me. We don’t need any trouble right now.”
“Bring him in.”
Frank returns to his post, dismisses the substitute, and wheels Sarge in on the gurney. The lights of the Amphitheatre are bright. This huge room spans two stories. Frank and the other technicians transfer Sarge efficiently but gently to the big central table. They strap his arms to crosspieces, so that he resembles a candidate for crucifixion.
Sarge looks up and sees that at the top of all four of the tall walls of this tiled, sterile-looking room there are big glass windows, faintly tinted green. Behind the windows, he can make out a gallery, with seats for the witnesses. There are perhaps a dozen figures up there, peering down into the room. Some look away quickly when they meet Sarge’s angry, searching gaze, but others stare with avid curiosity and a curious detachment, as if watching TV, instead of seeing a real man in the worst kind of trouble.
Idly, Sarge thinks to himself how young they look. He sees clearly that they are far too young and upright to feel mercy for a wrecked, wracked man. He chides himself, silently. What the fuck did he expect? Sympathy? His teeth chatter in this rather cold room, whether from fear or chill, no one will ever know. Frank notes this, and procures a warm blanket, covers The Sergeant from the waist down.
The staff is almost ready. The team of three in this most cloistered of rooms are making final preparations.
Frank inspects the IV himself, finds it unsatisfactory in some way, and starts another, then removes the first. The other techs circle the supine central figure, attaching electrodes to the monitoring equipment, securing leads, attending to tubes. They talk quietly to each other as they adeptly hook Sarge up to the apparatus.
They are now ready, and another, apparently more senior figure enters the room, glances briefly at Sarge, and picks up Sarge’s official papers. Sarge stares at the new man without speaking, then turns his head to look at Frank, who now stands guard at his side.
The Sergeant speaks, perhaps for the last time. His voice is bluff, gruff, without a hint of tears.
“‘Bye, Frank, you were always square with me.”
Frank wants to say something of comfort to the Sergeant, but what can he possibly say that would make a bit of difference to the old man now? Frank is uncertain. Deciding that touch is better than futile words, he settles for another shoulder squeeze. Then, pretending he has forgotten where his hand rests, he stares intently at the equipment at the head of the table, as if he is analyzing the set-up. His calloused palm remains a warm, strong, confident weight upon the prisoner’s stringy deltoid.
The anesthesiologist approaches Sarge, speaks in professional, clipped tones. He carefully measures out, then pushes milky “pre-medication” into the IV in the crook of Sarge’s tattooed right arm.
The scraggy man’s tense frame relaxes, and the anesthesiologist and Frank share a look as Sarge lapses into unconsciousness.
Frank takes off the man’s hospital gown. One of the techs, a sharp-eyed woman clad in scrubs and gloves, begins to prepare the old hustler’s torso. Sarge’s bony chest, once revealed, is shown to be bisected vertically by a thick, keloided scar. Through his skin, a keen observer can detect the faint outline of the wires that were used to put the breastbone back together five years ago.
Frank takes a long look, then sighs, turns to the anesthesiologist.
“How you think he’s gonna do?” Frank queries.
The doctor hesitates, considers.
“Dunno, this is his second cardiac by-pass, his kidneys are nearly shot, and his ejection fraction isn’t what you’d hope for. If his angina wasn’t intractable, you’d never want to bring him to the O.R. They tell me he can’t take a crap without chest pain.”
The anesthesiologist squints at the monitors that record his patient’s vital signs. Stethoscope in ears, he checks Sarge’s lung fields, scrutinizes the taped position of his endotracheal tube, listens carefully to his heart sounds. He looks again at some test results in the chart, glances at the X-rays hung close by in the view box. He is clearly absorbed in this case’s particulars.
He turns to see Frank still standing there, almost at attention, patiently waiting for a better answer to his question. Frank removes his stethoscope, which he normally carries draped across his neck. He slides the thumb and forefinger of his right hand back and forth around the metal curve of the stethoscope, in a polishing motion. The other nurses have teased him many times about this involuntary habit. He tends to exhibit this little idiosyncrasy when pensive, or uneasy.
Sarge was familiar with this habit of Frank’s, as is the anesthesiologist. Looking up at Frank, he sees the well-muscled cardiac care nurse absently indulging in this characteristic mannerism. This, more than Frank’s question, or his continued presence in the O.R. (he is really no longer required here) lets the doc know that Frank is truly troubled, and really wants to know what the sick man’s chances are.
“Hard to say, but he’s a tough old codger. I’d say we got about a 50/50 chance.”
“I hope he makes it.”
“Yeah”, the anesthesiologist laughs wryly,” Me too, Frank, me too.”
Frank glances up and sees that more med students are piling into the second floor gallery of this teaching hospital’s operating room. He observes that they look clean, business-like, and are mere kids. He never finds out that Sarge was thinking much the same only a few minutes before.
As Frank leaves the surgical suite he passes by the cardiac surgeon and his first assistant, the former distinguished and gray, the latter female and blonde. They are both scrubbing at the sink in preparation for Sarge’s coronary artery by-pass grafting procedure.
Frank greets them out loud, taking comfort from the fact that in his years as a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit nurse at the University, he has learned that this surgical team is one of the best.
Frank makes his way back to the Unit, retrieving the gurney, now empty of patient, but still containing the portable monitor/defib unit, O2 tank, pulse oximeter, and all of the attendant “spaghetti” that pissed Sarge off so much just a short time ago.
Frank walks briskly. He has other patients waiting, and a whole shift ahead of him. He begins to think of his other responsibilities. He begins to push Sarge from the forefront of his thoughts. The old man is in good hands, and Frank is no longer his keeper. Frank begins thinking of his other charges back in the Unit.
However, before he enters the CCU, Frank pauses. He is not yet ready to enter and move on. There is something more that needs to be done. He recalls the Sergeant’s uncharacteristic pre-op oration, his grim expression, his resignation and pallor. Frank shakes his head. He is moved. Such a confession is a gift, a bond, and a burden as well. He needs to offer something in return.
Silently, in the confines of his own head, this solicitous and sober medical man, Navy-trained nurse, offers up a brief, wordless prayer. In a scant minute, he entreats the powers that be to assist those who will once again split the old man’s chest, attempt to patch his battered heart. Knowing that The Sergeant is too stubborn to ask it for himself, he adds a plea for clemency—for mercy, on behalf of this irascible, imperiled, timeworn patient that Frank has come to regard.
Paula Lyons, MD
2/6/05