The Awakening of Dr. Brown Read online

  Ethan gave Mrs. Schmidt a wink and a wave as he picked up the clipboard Ruthie had abandoned, and turned to confront the unhappy patient in the curtained cubicle designated as exam room three.

  The patient-a boy about seven or eight years old, dressed in the standard urban uniform of baggy jeans and oversized T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backward-sat slumped on the paper-covered exam table. The boy’s mother had been sitting beside him, but she slid off the table at the doctor’s entrance and now faced him, one nervous and protective hand resting on her son’s knee.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Brown,” said Ethan in a brisk but friendly tone designed to put them both at ease, offering his hand first to the mother, then the boy. He glanced down at the chart in his hand. “And you are…”

  “This is Michael,” the boy’s mother offered, and in a fiercely whispered aside to her son, accompanied by a glancing swat on his denim-draped leg, “What you doin’, boy? Get that hat offa your head.”

  “Okay, Mike-”

  “It’s Michael.” Obeying his mother while at the same time thrusting his chin defiantly upward, the boy slid proud amber eyes toward Ethan. “Like Michael Jordan. Ain’t nobody ever called Michael Jordan Mike.”

  “You’re right about that,” Ethan agreed, instantly charmed. He gave the boy’s mother a wink and was gratified to see her relax, if only slightly. “Michael it is, then. So, I understand you’ve been having earaches?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t of brought him for such a little thing,” the boy’s mother said, tense and defensive again. “But, my sister Tamara? A woman where she works told her her boy had earaches, and they was so bad his eardrums busted. Said they had to operate on him, put tubes in his ears. I don’t want my baby to have to have no operation. Don’t want him to have no tubes in his ears. So I thought-”

  “No, it’s good you brought him in.” Ear scope at the ready, Ethan leaned toward the child, who, predictably, pulled away with a sharp “Ow!” Ethan eyed him sternly. “Come on, now, you think Michael Jordan would raise a fuss about such a little thing?” Again the amber eyes slid toward him with that look of proud disdain. “Hey, I just want to take a look inside your ears, see what’s going on in there. Okay?”

  Michael nodded, but grudgingly. But he sat perfectly still for the duration of Ethan’s exam.

  “How is he?” Hugging herself, the boy’s mother hovered at his side, all hunched-up shoulders and worried eyes. Dark eyes, Ethan noticed, rather exotic, tilted, almond shaped and much darker than her son’s. “His eardrums-they ain’t busted, are they? Maybe I shoulda brought him in sooner, but I couldn’t get offa work-”

  Ethan assured her the boy’s eardrums were still intact. “Looks pretty red and angry in there, though. We’re going to get him started right away on some antibiotics-”

  “Am I gonna hafta get a shot?” Chin cocked, Michael regarded him with his brave golden glare.

  Ethan laughed and squeezed the thin shoulder. “Nah-you just get to take some nasty orange medicine. You take it all, though, every time your mama tells you to, no arguing, okay? Otherwise you’re just gonna make those germs that’re causing your earaches good and mad, and then they’ll come back twice as mean next time. You understand?”

  Trying not to look relieved, Michael nodded. Ethan scribbled a prescription for the antibiotic and handed it to the mother, explaining in an undertone the procedure for getting it filled free of charge at a nearby pharmacy and securing her promise to bring her son back for a checkup in three days.

  Then, remembering what Mrs. Schmidt had told him about the most likely cause of the current rash of ear infections, he turned back to Michael, who had already hopped down from the exam table and was looking much happier now that he no longer felt the need to keep up a macho front worthy of his namesake and hero. “And no swimming, you hear me? Not until those ears are completely cleared up.”

  At that, his mother gave a gasp and dusted her son’s shoulder with her glancing swat. “Michael! You been swimming in that filthy river again? After I done told you? Didn’t I tell you stay away from that filthy water? What am I gonna do with you, boy?” She turned eyes glistening with hopelessness to Ethan. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I got to work, I can’t watch him all the time. My sister Tamara, she supposed to watch him days, but she got the baby… It wasn’t so bad when he was in school, but now, with summer vacation and him home all day…”

  Ethan nodded in automatic sympathy as he drew aside the exam room curtain; it was a story he’d heard many times before, one that unfortunately he had no answer for.

  Just outside the curtain the woman stopped, turned abruptly and asked, “So, how much I owe you?”

  It caught Ethan by surprise; he was already moving on, his mind leaping ahead to other things-the afternoon’s schedule, Ruthie’s lovelife, the evening’s four-to-midnight EMS ride-along. He turned back with a frown, poking absently at his lab coat pocket. “There’s no charge, ma’am, this is a free clinic.”

  But the woman-Ethan glanced now at the chart, searching for her name…Louise, that was it, Louise Parker-drew herself up, somehow seeming inches taller. And in the proud lifting of her chin, reminded Ethan suddenly and for the first time of her son.

  “Uh-uh-I got me a job, I been offa welfare for a year, now. I ain’t no freeloader. Michael and me, we pay our own way.”

  Ethan glanced imploringly at Mrs. Schmidt, who had heard the exchange and was watching with great interest from her cubbyhole behind the reception counter. The woman drew a folded bill from the pocket of her faded jeans and thrust it at him. “Here-it’s all I got right now. If it’s not enough I’ll give you the rest next time I come. Let’s go, Michael.”

  Speechless, Ethan watched Louise Parker and her son until the clinic’s front door had closed with a click behind them. Then he unfolded the bill. “My God,” he whispered, showing it to Mrs. Schmidt. “Twenty dollars-I’ll bet that’s a lot of money to her.”

  “Probably.” As she went back to her books Mrs. Schmidt added in a musing tone, “That is one lucky little boy, you know that? With a mother like that, he might actually have a chance.”

  Across the street from what had once been the South Church Street Fire Station, a thin black woman hurried along the sweltering sidewalk. So preoccupied was she with the scolding she was administering to the small boy dressed in baggy clothes and a backward baseball cap shuffling along beside her that she failed to notice a similarly dressed youth-this one Caucasian and of indeterminable gender-until they had all but collided.

  “Michael!” The woman’s sharp whisper accompanied a light swat to the sagging seat of the boy’s trousers. “What you doin’, boy? Mind your manners! Say ‘excuse me.”’

  “’Scuse me,” the boy dutifully mumbled, just as the “youth” was muttering, in a voice several tones deeper than her own distinctive contralto, “No, no, that’s okay-my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  The woman had done a double take and was now regarding the youth with an appraising stare, taking in the pale hue of her skin, the mirrored sunglasses, the New York Yankees logo on her baseball cap. “Hey,” she demanded on a rising note of incredulity, “you lost?”

  Safe in her disguise, Phoenix reached out to give the bill of the little boy’s baseball cap a tug-why, she didn’t know, she normally had little use for children. “Nah,” she said with a wry smile, “not exactly. I was just looking for something…a place I used to know.”

  “Yeah, well…” Looking extremely doubtful, the woman was edging away from her now, hands protectively on the child’s shoulders. “If I was you, I’d be askin’ Father Frank.”

  “Who?”

  “You know-the priest? Over there at St Jude’s.” She pointed, then hurried off in the opposite direction, calling back over her shoulder, “He can probably help you.” But she sounded, Joanna thought, as if in her opinion any white person dumb enough to be walking around alone in that neighborhood was most likely beyond help. She wondered if the woma
n knew St. Jude was the patron saint of lost causes.

  Half a block down the street in the direction the woman had indicated squatted the ugly redbrick pile trimmed in white that housed the rectory of St. Jude’s Catholic Church. Next to it on the corner, the church itself-for which the street had been named nearly a century before-was only a slightly more graceful edifice, brightened somewhat by a Victorian abundance of stone trim and stained glass windows. On a tiny patch of grass tucked between the two, a stocky man dressed in black bermuda shorts and a white T-shirt had paused in his task of manhandling an old-fashioned push lawn mower in order to watch the exchange. Now he came toward Joanna, wiping sweat from his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  “Can I help you?”

  Joanna hesitated. Normally she had no more use for priests than she did for children. But the man’s eyes were kind. “Maybe,” she said grudgingly, and jerked her head toward the street. “Didn’t there used to be a firehouse around here somewhere?”

  The priest smiled. “That’s right-that’s it over there, across the street. Used to be the old Church Street station. They moved it a few years ago-three blocks over, on Franklin. Got too small, the street too crowded, I guess. Anyway, they’ve got a big new station over there-police, fire and EMS, all in one building. Go back down a block, then over three-you can’t miss it.” He paused, liquid dark eyes narrowing with concern. “Is everything okay? Anything I can do for you? You need to use the phone-”

  Joanna shook her head. Then, for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, heard herself explain, “I used to live around here-years ago. I was just wondering…” She paused and drew a careful breath, released it in a soft laugh. “I guess things have changed quite a bit.”

  “Yes, I guess they have.” The priest’s eyes rested on her now with gentle appraisal. She felt herself tense under their scrutiny, and was instantly annoyed. Priest or not, the man was probably younger than she was; what right had he to make her feel like a truant?

  But instead of turning her back and walking away, for some reason she hesitated still, her eyes going once more to the narrow redbrick building across the street. A man was just emerging from the arched front entrance, pausing the way people do when they come from air-conditioning into the heat, as if he’d just missed bumping into something solid. A young man, he appeared to be, with a tall, healthy, well-built body dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with a collar, open at the neck. Sort of preppy looking, in spite of a neatly trimmed beard. Definitely not from this neighborhood. Even from this distance-just something about the way he moved, maybe, the way he carried himself-she could tell he was good-looking, even handsome in a wholesome, blond, shredded wheat sort of way. Nice.

  Memories crowded in, filling her chest with a treacherous sadness. Nice voices…kind faces, smudged with soot. Your momma’s gone, honey, you come with me now…it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay…

  “It’s a free clinic now,” the priest was saying, and his eyes were friendly and young once again. “Staffed by volunteers, mostly. My sister works there part-time-she’s a nurse over at Community Med. Hey, if you happen to drop in over there, tell Ruthie Mendoza her brother Frankie said hello.”

  But the rock icon known as Phoenix barely heard him. She was already moving away down the cracked and dirty sidewalk, walking quickly, one hand going to her mirrored sunglasses as if to reassure herself the disguise was still in place.

  Ethan could hear a stereo thumping before he’d even reached the door of the EMS station. Classic light rock-so he’d guessed right about Kenny Baumgartner being his ride-along partner. Kenny was thirty-one, considered ancient for a paramedic, so his tastes in music tended to run pretty close to Ethan’s, which made him a welcome relief from some of the younger EMT’s and their mind-numbing, not to mention ear-deadening preferences. Ethan wondered if it was a sign of advancing middle-age, now that he was approaching thirty himself, to be finding fault with the younger generation’s music.

  “Ah…good song,” he said as he walked into the EMT’s lounge to a driving beat, the familiar and haunting chorus of “Pretty Mary.”

  “Classic,” Kenny agreed without looking up. The paramedic was sprawled in a chrome and plastic kitchen chair poring over his latest sailing magazine, bobbing his head and whistling tunelessly in time to the beat. “One of the all-time top ten-right up there with the Boss, man. Might even beat out “Born To Run.”

  That brought a snort from the lanky and obscenely young EMT who was lounging with one elbow propped against the countertop, waiting for something in the microwave. Any comment the paramedic had intended as a follow-up was preempted by the oven’s prolonged beep, and he uttered instead a satisfied, “Ah!” as he popped open the door. The smells of pepperoni and processed cheese filled the off-duty room.

  “Heard she’s got a new CD coming out.” Kenny tossed aside the magazine and tilted his chair back at an alarming angle. “Supposed to be starting a big worldwide tour, is what I heard.”

  Concentrating on separating mozzarella from cardboard, the young paramedic glanced up long enough to say, “Who?” just as Ethan was exclaiming, “No kidding?” So then both Ethan and Kenny had to pause to give the kid a look of incredulity.

  “Phoenix-who the hell are we talking about?” Kenny said, shaking his head as if in profound disgust at such ignorance, as Ethan set his medical bag on the floor and sank into a chair, wiping sweat with his shirt sleeve.

  “Oh, yeah, Phoenix…right.” The EMT-Leon, according to the tag on his uniform pocket-shrugged, licked his fingers, then added, “Isn’t she supposed to be in town?”

  Again, both Kenny and Ethan stared at him. And again it was Kenny who asked, “Who? Phoenix? Here?”

  Leon placed his pizza on the table and shrugged.

  “Where’d you hear that?” Kenny demanded, clearly in disbelief.

  “Hey,” said Leon, looking offended, “I read Rolling Stone.” He glanced from Kenny to Ethan and back again. “It’s true. Supposed to be getting ready for some big new gig.”

  It was Kenny’s turn to snort in derision. “Nobody kicks off a tour from this town, man. This town is where tours come to die.”

  Leon could only shrug, being totally committed to the lava-hot mozzarella he’d just bitten into. Presently he managed to mumble through the mouthful, “Just tellin’ you what they said, man. It was like, she used to be from here or something.”

  Once again both Ethan and Kenny were struck momentarily dumb by that news, but the stunned silence lasted only a second or two before it was filled by the raucous blast of the alarm. It was a sound that never failed to send a bolt of electricity through Ethan, kick his heart rate into high and lift up the hairs on his forearms, and in that instant he lost all interest in the likely whereabouts of the rock-and-roll legend called Phoenix.

  Kenny righted his chair with a thump. “We’ll take it,” he said to the younger paramedic, who was hunched over his pizza, desperately trying to sever the umbilical cord of cheese that bound him to it. Ethan was already on his feet and reaching for his medical bag. Kenny signaled to him with a jerk of his head. “Time to rock ’n’ roll.” He grinned at his own cleverness, then let the grin slide toward wryness as he added, “Starting in early tonight. Must be the heat.”

  Kenny’s words proved prophetic. During the course of Ethan’s four-to-midnight ride-along, he and Kenny had already handled two multi-injury MVAs, a jogger with chest pains, the combatants in a bar brawl, and a portly fellow who’d fallen off a ladder while attempting to install an air conditioner in a second-floor bedroom window. So, when the Klaxon sounded at eleven-forty-five, Leon and his partner, Scott, generously offered to take it.

  “’Bout time for ol’ Doc, there, to be headin’ for the barn, anyways,” was the way Leon put it, a blatant reference to Ethan’s age. Which had been the source of a running, and in Ethan’s opinion not very funny, joke among the younger EMTs for quite a while now.

  Kenny, who had been list
ening to the dispatcher, shook his head. His face was grim as he gave Ethan the head-jerk signal to roll. “Balcony collapse over in The Gardens,” he said, referring to one of the worst of the many slum neighborhoods in that part of the city, one well-known to police, fire and rescue squads who’d nicknamed it The Gardens because it was anything but. “Sounds like one for you, Doc. Do you mind?”

  Ethan was already a step ahead of him going out the door, adrenaline pumping. “That’s only a few blocks from here,” he pointed out as he signaled to the driver of an anonymous dark sedan parked in the No Parking zone in front of the station. He climbed into the EMS wagon and pulled his safety belt across his shoulder as the wagon rolled down the drive. Watching in the side view mirror, he saw the sedan take up its customary position a couple of car-lengths behind as they sped down the dark street, lights whirling and siren wailing.

  High in her converted loft, Phoenix heard sirens and woke from a restless sleep. It was not the first time; the sirens had been busy tonight. As all the times before, she woke with her heart racing and her body slick with sweat, and it was a minute or two before the chill of terror faded and her breathing grew quiet again.

  But you’re safe here…safe.

  From somewhere a melody came to her and she sang it softly to herself in her mind. Yes, and she remembered now, remembered where she’d heard it most recently. It was the melody Doveman had played that afternoon, segueing from “Pretty Mary,” except that he’d played it in a minor key and with a bluesy rhythm.

  The words came to her, and she sang them to herself, too, finding in them a familiar comfort.

  Hush little baby, don’t say a word,

  Papa’s gonna buy you a mockin’bird…