ENOUGH

Correct.

It was:

ENOUGH.

He was going to get out of the sawbones business. He was going to get out because:

ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH

He was going to get out because Popeye’s motto was That’s all I can stands and I can’t stand nummore, and Popeye was as right as rain.

He had flushed the toilet and gone back to bed and fell asleep almost instantly and awoke to discover he still wanted to be a doctor, and that was a goddam good thing to know for sure, maybe worth the whole program, whether you called it Emergency Ride or Bucket of Blood or Name That Tune.

He still wanted to be a doctor.

He knew a lady who did needlework. He paid her ten dollars he couldn’t afford to make him a small, oldfashioned-looking sampler. It said:

IF YOU CAN TAKE THIS, YOU CAN TAKE ANYTHING.

Yes. Correct.

The messy business in the subway happened four weeks later.

2

“That lady was some fuckin weird, you know it?” Julio said.

George breathed an interior sigh of relief. If Julio hadn’t opened the subject, George supposed he wouldn’t have had the sack. He was an intern, and someday he was going to be a full-fledged doc, he really believed that now, but Julio was a vet, and you didn’t want to say something stupid in front of a vet. He would only laugh and say Hell, I seen that shit a thousand times, kid. Get y’self a towel and wipe off whatever it is behind your ears, cause it’s wet and drippin down the sides of your face.

But apparently Julio hadn’t seen it a thousand times, and that was good, because George wanted to talk about it.

“She was weird, all right. It was like she was two people.”

He was amazed to see that now Julio was the one who looked relieved, and he was struck with sudden shame. Julio Estavez, who was going to do no more than pilot a limo with a couple of pulsing red lights on top for the rest of his life, had just shown more courage than he had been able to show.

“You got it, doc. Hunnert per cent.” He pulled out a pack of Chesterfields and stuck one in the corner of his mouth.

“Those things are gonna kill you, my man,” George said.

Julio nodded and offered the pack.

They smoked in silence for awhile. The paras were maybe chasing tail like Julio had said . . . or maybe they’d just had enough. George had been scared, all right, no joke about that. But he also knew he had been the one who saved the woman, not the paras, and he knew Julio knew it too. Maybe that was really why Julio had waited. The old black woman had helped, and the white kid who had dialed the cops while everyone else (except the old black woman) had just stood around watching like it was some goddam movie or TV show or something, part of a Peter Gunn episode, maybe, but in the end it had all come down to George Shavers, one scared cat doing his duty the best way he could.