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CHAPTER 25
1
I stayed with Sadie on the morning of August fifth until they put her on a gurney and rolled her down
to the operating room. There Dr. Ellerton was waiting for her, along with enough other docs to field a
basketball team. Her eyes were shiny with preop dope.
“Wish me luck.”
I bent and kissed her. “All the luck in the world.”
It was three hours before she was wheeled back to her room—same room, same picture on the wall,
same horrible squatting commode—fast asleep and snoring, the left side of her face covered in a fresh
bandage. Rhonda McGinley, the nurse with the fullback shoulders, let me stay with her until she
came around a little, which was a big infraction of the rules. Visiting hours are more stringent in the
Land of Ago. Unless the head nurse has taken a shine to you, that is.
“How are you?” I asked, taking Sadie’s hand.
“Sore. And sleepy.”
“Go back to sleep then, honey.”
“Maybe next time . . .” Her words trailed off in a furry hzzzzz sound. Her eyes closed, but she
forced them open with an effort. “. . . will be better. In your place.”
Then she was gone, and I had something to think about.
When I went back to the nurses’ station, Rhonda told me that Dr. Ellerton was waiting for me
downstairs in the cafeteria.
“We’ll keep her tonight and probably tomorrow, too,” he said. “The last thing we want is for any
sort of infection to develop.” (I thought of this later, of course—one of those things that’s funny, but
not very.)
“How did it go?”
“As well as can be expected, but the damage Clayton inflicted was very serious. Pending her
recovery, I’m going to schedule her second go-round for November or December.” He lit a cigarette,
chuffed out smoke, and said: “This is a helluva surgical team, and we’re going to do everything we can
. . . but there are limits.”
“Yes. I know.” I was pretty sure I knew something else, as well: there were going to be no more
surgeries. Here, at least. The next time Sadie went under the knife, it wouldn’t be a knife at all. It
would be a laser.
In my place.
2
Small economies always come back and bite you in the ass. I’d had the phone taken out of my Neely
Street apartment in order to save eight or ten dollars a month, and now I wanted it. But there was a
U-Tote-M four blocks away with a phone booth next to the Coke cooler. I had de Mohrenschildt’s
number on a scrap of paper. I dropped a dime and dialed.
“De Mohrenschildt residence, how may I help you?” Not Jeanne’s voice. A maid, probably—where
did the de Mohrenschildt bucks come from?