basin he held for her. She looked up at him meekly; he turned away to stare out the window, his eyes bleary.
On the morning he finally decided, against his wife’s wishes, to dismiss Bernardi and bring in a new man, he was called at his Precinct office and summoned to an early afternoon meeting with Bernardi in his wife’s hospital room. Lieutenant Dorfman saw him off with anguished eyes.
“Please, Captain,” he said, “try not to worry. She’s going to be all right.”
Marty Dorfman was an extraordinarily tall (6'4') Jew with light blue eyes and red hair that spiked up from a squeezed skull. He wore size 14 shoes and couldn’t find gloves to fit. He seemed constantly to be dribbled with crumbs, and had never been known to swear.
Nothing fitted; his oversize uniform squirmed on thin shoulders, trousers bagged like a Dutch boy’s bloomers. Cigarette ashes smudged his cuffs. Occasionally his socks didn’t match, and he had lost the clasp on the choker collar of his jacket. His shoes were unshined, and he reported for duty with a dried froth of shaving cream beneath his ears.
Once, when a patrolman, he had been forced to kill a knife-wielding burglar. Since then he carried an unloaded gun. He thought no one knew, but everyone did. As Captain Delaney had told his wife, Dorfman’s paperwork was impeccable and he had one of the finest legal minds in the Department. He was a sloven, but when men of the 251st Precinct had personal problems, they went to him. He had never been known to miss the funeral of a policeman killed in line of duty. Then he wore a clean uniform and wept.
“Thank you, lieutenant,” Delaney said stiffly. “I will call as soon as possible. I fully expect to return before you go off. If not, don’t wait for me. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Dr. Louis Bernardi, Delaney decided was perfectly capable of holding the hand of a dying man and saying, “There there.” Now he was displaying the X-rays proudly, as if they were his own Rembrandt prints.
“The shadows!” he cried. “See the shadows!”
He had drawn a chair up close to the bedside of Barbara Delaney. The Captain stood stolidly on the other side, hands clasped behind him so their tremble might not reveal him.
“What are they?” he asked in his iron voice.
“What is it?” his wife murmured.
“Kidney stones!” Bernardi cried happily. “Yes, dear lady,” he continued, addressing the woman on the bed who stared at him sleepily, her head wavering slightly, “the possibility was there: a stubborn fever and chills. And more recently the headaches, nausea, difficulty in passing water, pain in the lower back. This morning, after more than ten days of exhaustive tests-which I am certain, he-he, you found exhausting as well as exhaustive-we held a conference-all the professional men who have been concerned with your condition-and the consensus is that you are, unhappily, suffering from a kidney calculus.”
His tone was so triumphant that Delaney couldn’t trust himself to speak. His wife turned her head on the pillow to look warmingly at him. When he nodded, she turned back to Bernardi to ask weakly:
“How did I get kidney stones?”
The doctor leaned back in his chair, made his usual gesture of placing his two index fingers together and pressing them against his pouting lips.
“Who can say?” he asked softly. “Diet, stress, perhaps a predisposition, heredity. There is so much we don’t know. If we knew everything, life would be a bore, would it not? He!”
Delaney grunted disgustedly. Bernardi paid no heed.
“In any event, that is our diagnosis. Kidney stones. A concretion frequently found in the bladder or kidneys. A hard, inorganic stone. Some no larger than a pinhead. Some quite large. They are foreign matter lodged in living tissue. The body, the living tissue, cannot endure this invasion. Hence, the fever, the chills, the pain. And, of course, the difficulty in urinating. Oh yes, that above all.”
Once again Delaney was infuriated by the man’s self-satisfaction. To Bernardi, it was all a crossword puzzle from the
“How serious is it?” Barbara asked faintly,
A glaze seemed to come down over Bernardi’s swimming eyes, a milky, translucent film. He could see out but no one could see in.
“We needed the blood tests and these sensitive plates. And then, since you have been here, the symptoms that developed gave us added indications. Now we know what we are facing.”
“How serious is it?” Barbara asked again, more determinedly.
“We feel,” Bernardi went on, not listening, “we feel that in your case, dear lady, surgery is indicated. Oh yes. Definitely. I am sorry to say. Surgery.”
“Wait,” Delaney held up his hand. “Wait just a minute. Before we start talking about surgery. I know a man who had kidney stones. They gave him a liquid, something, and he passed them and was all right. Can’t my wife do the same?”
“Quite impossible,” Bernardi said shortly. “When the stones are tiny, that procedure is sometimes effective. These X-rays show a large area of inflammation. Surgery is indicated.”
“Who decided that?” Delaney demanded.
“We did.”
“‘We’?” Delaney asked. “Who is ‘we’?”
Bernardi looked at him coldly. He sat back, pulled up one trouser leg, carefully crossed his knees. “Myself and the specialists I called in,” he said. “I have their professional opinions here, Captain-their written and signed opinions-and I have prepared a duplicate set for your use.”
Captain Edward X. Delaney had interrogated enough witnesses and suspects in his long career to know when a man or woman was lying. The tip-off could come in a variety of ways. With the stupid or inexperienced it came with a physical gesture: a shifting away of the eyes, a nervous movement, blinking, perhaps a slight skim of sweat or a sudden deep breath. The intelligent and experienced revealed their falsehood in different ways: a too deliberate nonchalance, or an “honest” stare, eyeball to eyeball, or by a serious, intent fretting of the brows. Sometimes they leaned forward and smiled candidly.
But this man was not lying; the Captain was convinced of that. He was also convinced Bernardi was not telling the whole truth. He was holding something back, something distasteful to him.
“All right,” Delaney grated, “we have their signed opinions. I assume they all agree?”
Bernardi’s eyes glittered with malice. He leaned forward to pat Barbara’s hand, lying limply atop the thin blue blanket. “There there,” he said.
“It is not a very serious operation,” he continued. “It is performed frequently in every hospital in the country. But all surgery entails risk. Even lancing a boil. I am certain you understand this. No surgery should ever be taken lightly.”
“We don’t take it lightly,” Delaney said angrily, thinking this man-this “foreigner”-just didn’t know how to talk.
During this exchange Barbara Delaney’s head moved side to side, back and forth between husband and doctor.
“Very well,” Delaney went on, holding himself in control, “you recommend surgery. You remove those kidney stones, and my wife regains her health. Is that it? There’s nothing more you’re not telling us?”
“Edward,” she said. “Please.”
“I want to know,” he said stubbornly. “I want you to know.”
Bernardi sighed. He seemed about to mediate between them, then thought better of it.
“That is our opinion,” he nodded. “I cannot give you an iron-clad one hundred percent guarantee. No physician or surgeon can. You must know that. This, admittedly, will be an ordeal for Mrs. Delaney. Normal recuperation from this type of surgery demands a week to ten days in the hospital, and several weeks in bed at home. I don’t wish to imply that this is of little importance. It is a serious situation, and I take it seriously, as I am certain you do also. But you are essentially a healthy woman, dear lady, and I see nothing in your medical record that would indicate anything but a normal recovery.”
“And there’s no choice but surgery?” Delaney demanded again.
“No. You have no choice.”
A small cry came from Barbara Delaney, no louder than a kitten’s mew. She reached out a pale hand to her
