Scandalous Behavior

46

Calhoun was taken into the emergency room and put on an examination table in a curtained-off cubicle. A doctor who appeared to be a recent high-school graduate examined him and strapped a blood pressure cuff to his left arm. He pressed a button and the cuff inflated.

“Ow!” Calhoun yelled. “Too tight.”

“Sorry about that,” the kid said. “No adjustment available. Just relax and enjoy the calm.”

The calm was a cacophony of screams, curses, and shouts of “Nurse!” A woman with a clipboard showed up, asked for the name and phone number of his doctor, then sat down next to his table and took an incredibly detailed history.

“I’m hot,” Calhoun said. “Can you make it cooler in here?”

“Sorry about that — it gets a little cooler for a minute when someone opens the outside door.”

“Can you prop the outside door open?”

“I never thought of that,” she said. She left and didn’t come back; it never got any cooler. The blood pressure cuff automatically reinflated every three minutes. The young doctor came back after an hour and a half and checked the recorded tape. “Your blood pressure is elevated,” he said. “One forty-five over ninety.”

“It usually is,” Callhoun said. “What’s wrong with me?”

“You may have had a heart attack,” he said. “What were you doing when you fainted?”

“I had just climbed four flights of stairs twice,” Calhoun replied.

“Any chest pains?”

“No, I just got dizzy.”

“Well, we’ll keep you on the machine for a while.”

Calhoun checked his watch: after four o’clock. “Can I get out of here now?”

“We can’t discharge you until your doctor arrives and signs you out.”

“But I feel fine,” Calhoun lied.

“We aren’t going to discharge you only to have you collapse and die on our doorstep.” He left the cubicle.

Calhoun tried to sleep but could only doze fitfully. His cell phone rang; it was still on his belt. “Hello?”

“Don, it’s after four. Where are you?”

“I’m in the emergency room at Bellevue.”

“What’s wrong?”

She wouldn’t be too concerned, he thought; after all, there was eight hundred grand in the safe, and she had the combination. “I had to climb eight flights of stairs at the police garage, and I passed out. There’s nothing wrong with me, but they won’t discharge me until my doctor comes and signs me out. Call him, will you, and tell him to get his ass down here?”

“Okay.”

“And will you go to the garage and get the car out? I’ve already paid twenty-nine hundred bucks for the tickets and fines.”

“Will I have to climb eight flights of stairs?”

“Only four — I had to climb them twice. Make sure they send somebody up there to get the other cars out of the way.” He gave her the address.

“Queens?”

“Don’t ask. Tell them I’m the guy the ambulance took away. They’ll remember that.”

“Okay.”

“Then come and pick me up here. The doctor will have had time to get here by then.”

“All right.” She hung up.

The blood pressure cuff inflated again. Three hours passed, and Cheree finally showed up.

“What took you so long?”

“They had moved the car to the Manhattan garage, and I had to start all over there.”

“Where’s my doctor?”

“In the Bahamas,” she said.

“Shit!” He pressed the call button, but no one came. “Go out there and find the doctor — the one who looks like a high-school kid — and get him in here.”

Cheree left and came back half an hour later with a young Asian doctor. “Yours has gone off duty. Will this one do?”

“Yes, thank you. Doctor, unhook me from this thing. I’m leaving.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but your doctor hasn’t arrived to sign you out.”

“He’s in the Bahamas, and I’m not waiting until he gets back.” He clawed at the blood pressure cuff, but it was inflating again. “Get it off me!”

“You’d better do as he says, Doctor,” Cheree said, “or he’ll have a heart attack.”

The doctor complied. “You’ll have to check yourself out and sign a form releasing the hospital from any liability.”

“Gladly,” Calhoun said. “Get me the fucking form.”

The doctor came back half an hour later with a clipboard. “Haven’t I seen you on TV?”

“Maybe.” Calhoun signed the form and got up.

“Oh, yeah, you’re that crazy preacher. I’m surprised you didn’t have a heart attack years ago.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Calhoun said. He grabbed Cheree and made his way outside. “Where’s the car?”

“In a garage six blocks from here. It was the closest place I could find.”