Jimmy then placed a blood pressure cuff on Jack’s right arm, which was also attached electronically and would routinely puff itself up and slowly decompress the pressure on his arm. There were also numerous electronic probes attached to his chest, connected to a loud monitor that beeped every few seconds indicating his cardiac rhythm by numerous electronic lines on a screen by his bed that only the doctors and nurses could understand. He also had a finger monitor measuring his oxygen level.
He would have no concern, should the beeps cease their annoying tones. If they stopped, it could mean one of several things. Either the heart monitor was accidentally disconnected from the wall outlet or one of the heart monitor suction cups adhered to his chest disconnected. Another option was that the blood pressure cuff loosened. The last option was that he had died. Should the last option trigger frenzy among the hospital staff, Jack certainly wouldn’t know it or give a shit. After all, he had to be defibrillated twice during surgery and survived through those. The nurse’sstation also monitored all his vitals twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week.
His nurse moved a rolling table beside Green’s bed and placed some crackers on it, a container of water, and a large container of apple juice with an empty cup with which he could help himself. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
The nights were quite different though. He got little rest, with different nurses waking him up every two hours to check his blood pressure, temperature, and pulse at his bedside, though they had the same information at their station. They also checked the hanging drip bags on the T-bar to assure that all was working as it should be and that there were no clogs in any of the lines connected to him. These night nurses couldn’t have cared less that he was in the worst pain he ever experienced in his life. He practically turned purple each night with exasperation; no matter how often he rang for a nurse, no one came. They seemed to have the attitude of just do your job when you’re in with the patient, and then get the hell out of the room.
Nine
When Detective Pratt arrived to interview him the next day, Jack was sitting up in bed and complaining about the shitty hospital food. He hated that he was now required to drink buckets of water to push clear liquid through his kidneys. There were noticeable bloodstains on his pillows, sheet, and blanket. The cop assumed they were from leaky tubes, since he wasn’t brought into the room until after surgery, at which point he would have been all sewn up and bandaged.
Pratt pulled the visitor’s low-seated leather armchair up to the bedside, sat down, placed one ankle over the opposing knee and began questioning Green.
“Mind if I open the window a bit? It’s a little stuffy in here,” he asked.
“Go ahead, if I can survive a bullet, I can survive a breath of fresh air.”
Green was the city’s seventh shooting victim during all the years that Pratt had been a detective and had to conduct interviews with those victims. However, Jack told the rest of his golfing foursome that even though he was still recuperating, the interview felt more like an interrogation.
The good news was that Jack would not be accused of adding to the list of shooting suspects. The bad news was that immediately after he regained consciousness from surgery Pratt had been waiting in his room to question him as soon as his wife and daughters left.
The detective asked, “Why were you at the synagogue at a time after the doors were closed?”
Jack explained, “I work for the Arizona State Insurance Co. It takes me three minutes to walk from my office over to the synagogue to have lunch with the Rabbi. That day, I was shot just after lunch as I was leaving the synagogue.”
“Why do you think you were shot? Do you have any enemies that may want to see you dead?” asked Pratt. Groggy from extreme pain and still drowsy from the anesthesia, Jack was dumbfounded by the question.
“Me, why would anyone want to see me dead, is that your question? What makes you think that they were shooting at me? Maybe they thought I was the Rabbi or the custodian. I really have no idea; I was just there to have lunch,” he reiterated. “Even Rabbis have to eat lunch. Neil is a good friend of mine and has a nice office in the rear of the Temple where we can both eat lunch three times a week undisturbed. I left the temple at about 12:50 p.m. When I exited the front doors, I felt a pain in the lower left side of my body. I didn’t know what hit me, since I don’t remember hearing a gunshot, but I did feel the pain that knocked me off my feet and made me fall unconscious. I’m guessing that Neil must have heard the gunshot and came out to see what happened and found me lying there. He probably got shot too. Is he going to be all right? Why do you think they were aiming just at me?”
“We’re not sure if the shot was aimed at you. You may have just been in the way, or you may have been targeted,” said Pratt. “Yes sir, the Rabbi’s fine. He wasn’t shot, nor did he see anything. You were the only one shot. That’s why I was asking you if you could guess why it was you?”
“He wasn’t shot? Just me? Did he find me and call you guys?”
“No, the synagogue’s custodian Andre found you. He was cleaning up just inside of the front doors when he heard the shots and ran
