“There’s something I think you should read,” he said.

The following night, lying in the dark with Gaby, he told her Longwood had resigned that afternoon as Surgeon-in-Chief.

“Poor man,” she said.

“Can’t anything be done?” she asked in a moment.

“Chances of getting a cadaver donor with a rare blood type are slim. He can be sustained by dialysis, but Kender says the machine is the cause of his psychiatric failure.”

In a black sea and looking up at a black sky, they hung suspended, side by side.

“I don’t think I’d want the machine for long if I were,” she said.

“You were what?” he said drowsily.

“Doomed.”

He was asleep.

In a little while she brushed him with her toenails, twice, until he awoke and turned to her. Her wild cries sent sound-ripples across the black sea.

Afterward she floated with her head on his chest while he slept again and his beating heart spoke into her ear.

Alive, it said.

Alive.

Alive . . .

16: Spurgeon Robinson

16

Spurgeon Robinson

The man was bent and black and weeping, none of which made him a strange sight in the hospital, but Spurgeon paused by the bench.

“You all right, old timer?”

“They done kill him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said gently, wondering whether it had been son or brother, highway accident or homicide.

He did not at first make out the name.

“Shet him up for good. Our leader, the King.”

“Martin Luther?” he said faintly.

“White mothers. Get us each and every one, in the end.”

The old black man continued to sway. Spurgeon hated him for creating so monstrous a falsehood.

But it was true. Soon the radios and televisions all over the hospital were confirming it.

Spurgeon wanted to sit down on the bench himself and weep.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Adam said to him. Others spoke similar words. It took him a little while to realize that people were offering condolences to him the way he had offered them to the elderly patient, in the belief that he had suffered a loss which somehow would leave them essentially untouched. He did not feel rage at this until later.

He had no time for the luxury of shock. Dr. Kender called in all off-duty personnel. Suffolk County General Hospital had experienced racial conflict only once, the year before, and on that occasion it had been unprepared. Now wards were left with skeleton crews while every operating theater was readied for immediate use. Each ambulance was stocked with extra litters and supplies.

“I want an additional doctor in each vehicle,” Dr. Kender said. “If all hell breaks loose I don’t want you to come back with one patient when it’s possible to bring in two or even three.” He turned to Meomartino and Adam Silverstone. “One of you stay here and run the Emergency Room. The other one can go with the ambulances.”

“Which do you want?” Meomartino said to Adam.