Manhattan Lockdown

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’M NOT STAYING,” Roland Fortune said. “Let’s get that IV out right now.”

The excruciating pain in his shoulder and back had lessened since the moment he walked through the emergency room door at Mount Sinai, the hospital nearest the museum. He was surrounded by policemen, some of whom had guns drawn. He was the first wounded person to arrive at the hospital, at exactly 1:45 p.m. Covered in blood and grass stains and dirt from the ground where he had fallen at the rear of the museum, he had regained consciousness in the ambulance that raced through Central Park. As he lay on the stretcher in the rocking vehicle, he’d felt the initial surge of relief from pain when one of the medics injected him with morphine.

“Mr. Mayor, you’ve lost significant quantities of blood,” Dr. David Edelstein, a sober man with the weight and presence of a rabbi, told Roland. “Your hemoglobin is low, you’re so impaired by painkillers that you’ll have trouble walking on your own, and you aren’t likely to be able to hold any press conferences or to act in a coherent, focused way. There’s a significant risk of infection. You need to be treated.”

“Listen: I was hit by a stone, not shrapnel. I was cut, not shot. You run a hospital. I run a city. I can’t lie down in a hospital because my shoulder hurts when there is complete chaos out there. There are thousands of people who think I’m dead. Unless they can see me and see that I’m alive and functioning, there will still be this alarming distraction that the leader of the City of New York is dead.”

Edelstein’s expression didn’t change. “I can’t worry about that. You and you alone are my patient right now, not the population of the City of New York.” He paused. “If you leave, you’ll be doing that against medical advice and you will have to sign a form that says precisely that, just like anybody else who walks out of here without the approval of a doctor.”

“I genuinely appreciate the concern, but I feel strong and alert enough to step up to do the things I’m supposed to do. I can’t live with myself secluded in a hospital bed while there are fires still burning ten blocks downtown from here and the dead are still being counted.”

At a signal from Edelstein, two male nurses expertly disassembled the tubes of the IVs to which Roland Fortune was attached. They then placed his damaged shoulder and arm in a sling, fastening it to the fresh clothes that had been brought to him from Gracie Mansion, the spacious Georgian mansion overlooking the East River in which New York City mayors lived during their terms. As they worked on him, he felt a resurgence of the pain and asked for another Vicodin. One of the male nurses placed the pill in his mouth, like a priest giving communion, and he swallowed it without water. Just the act of taking the pill brought him increasing levels of relief from the pain. Like a drug addict worried about not having enough, he put a handful of Vicodin in his pocket.

He watched the television set affixed to the wall just below the ceiling as Gina Carbone began to speak to the world. She stood in bright sunlight on the sidewalk in front of PS 6. “We now know that six hundred thirty-six people are dead,” she announced. “There are at least ninety-five men, women, and children in hospitals throughout the city who are wounded in varying degrees, most with burns, many in life-threatening condition.”

Gina Carbone had a commanding presence. She was calm and measured. She was an attractive woman. Her raven hair was pulled back from her forehead and tied at the back of her neck. Her well-balanced features and the graceful muscularity of her body gave her the look of an athlete. Roland was grateful for the firmness she conveyed, and he found her Staten Island-tinged accent reassuring, a home-bred New Yorker obviously in command.

She said, “At this point, we’re not certain what the final number of dead and wounded will be. We are still involved in search and rescue operations inside the museum. So far we have located at least fifteen wounded inside the building, which, as many of you know, has dozens of separate galleries. We consider it still a place of high security concerns and danger. Too many evil, cowardly, and dangerous men have too many places to hide and opportunities to carry out more evil.”

The scene on CNN shifted to the museum’s steps. The front of the museum was profoundly scarred. The windows were blown away. The massive stone façade, that heavy nineteenth-century fortress-style front, had huge gouges. For more than a century two immense blocks of stone had rested above the entrance. There had once been plans to sculpt them into neoclassical figures or lions’ heads but that had never happened. Now they were toppled.

Incredibly, there was still bright midafternoon sunshine, as on any limpid day in June. And the long oval fountains still gushed water into the sunlight even though flames rose from the water.

The camera shifted back to Gina Carbone. “While no single life is more important than any other, I can now reliably tell you that Mayor Roland Fortune is alive. There have been rumors all afternoon that the leader of the city, who was attending an event at the museum when these despicable bombings happened, was among the casualties. He did sustain what are described as serious but not life-threatening wounds, and he will certainly recover.”

Roland’s attention was suddenly and fully arrested by the question he heard from one of the reporters. “Do you know anything about the condition of the mayor’s partner, Sarah Gordan?”

Roland had repeatedly asked Irv Rothstein, who had arrived at the hospital from his apartment on the West Side an hour after Roland was admitted, where Sarah Hewitt-Gordan was. Rothstein repeatedly had said, “We don’t know.”

“The confirmed names of the dead are being posted right now on the city’s website. Ms. Hewitt-Gordan was with the mayor at the museum event. Unfortunately, her name is on the list of the dead.”

Roland Fortune felt his bones turn instantly to water. He couldn’t stand. He sat down on the bed and leaned forward, his hands covering his face. Except for the voice of Gina Carbone still speaking steadily, matter-of-factly, there wasn’t a sound in the room. When Roland took his hands from his face, he looked at Irv Rothstein.

“Did you know about this?”

“We weren’t certain.”

“Is Gina certain?”

“She should have told us, Roland, before she went public with it.”

There was a sixty-second pause. Irv had from time to time counseled Roland to express more emotion when he was on television or speaking to large groups of people. Irv felt that Roland projected class and intelligence and control under pressure, but not enough rachmonis, the Yiddish word for passion from the gut.

Suddenly Roland, lithe and tall, stood up. There were tears on his face. He wiped them away. In a clear voice, he said, “Let’s get moving.”