Abundance Read online

  At 3:00 Levin went for a run. The sun had come back, early spring sun, bright but not strong. There was still snow on the ground but the air smelled of the sap that was moving in the maples that lined the streets. The light carried the hope that winter was finally over.

  You have to run in the street, because no one ever shovels their walks anymore, so he stayed to side streets where there weren’t many cars. He ran on Lafayette at first, up the hill to East, then right on Roberta. Left on Alfred Stone to the cemetery where they always plow the roads. A good mile around the cemetery, then down to the river, to hear the seabirds and look out over the marshland.

  Levin imagined this place as it was in the time before people, when it was a high bluff over a beautiful river and estuary; the lime green grass and cattails waving in the breeze blowing north from Narragansett Bay. The river was beautiful, even in winter, even despite the squat brick buildings in the industrial park across the river in East Providence. Levin imagined this place again as a virgin estuary under a blue sky, the river teeming with fish, the deer, the beaver, and the fox coming to the river to drink at sunset.

  Then Levin ran uphill, out on Pleasant, left on Ridge, left on Swan, then home again, pretending that the constant roar of traffic and the grinding of the trucks on Route I-95 just three blocks down the hill was also part of another world. About three miles altogether, maybe four, just enough to break a sweat and make you feel your skin and lungs but not so much as to put you down for the rest of the day.

  He threw in a wash and made a salad for dinner.

  Judy got in a few minutes after 6:00. They had been together for fifteen years. She had been abused when he met her, and he had talked her into a safe house, staying with it until she went. Now she worked in an abortion clinic counseling the kids. Good work. She talked, he listened. She was one life saved, which was a good thing. She liked to watch television. Levin spent his days and nights worrying about justice. You find out later that a saved life isn’t the same thing as passionate company.

  They ate in a hurry, and then he left for the first meeting in South Providence. The second meeting was at the Beneficent Church downtown. The Peace Coalition was planning the same demo that they’d been having for the last thirty-five years. Same groups. Same speakers. Same self-righteous and inclusive gobbledygook—rainbow this, peace and justice that, community this, environment that, but no focus, no program, and no impact. If Republicans had been running it, they would have been in and out in forty-five minutes. All these Peace Coalition types ever did was whine about what they couldn’t change, concede defeat, and sit back to watch the bombs fall. Everyone knew that this invasion, like the shock and awe bombing of Baghdad, was already a done deal. More U.S. exceptionalism. Our version of the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.

  His shift started after the meeting. He walked out to the parking lot.

  What Levin saw in the church parking lot didn’t make sense. His car door was open. There were CDs and CD cases on the pavement, and a pair of legs hung out of an open door. For a few moments Levin was confused. That was his green Subaru wagon. It didn’t make sense that someone’s feet were hanging out of his car at 9:45 at night.

  “Hey,” Levin said.

  A thin black man wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt wriggled out from under the steering wheel into a runner’s crouch. There was a flat black box under his arm. A laptop. Levin’s laptop. Just a kid, eighteen or nineteen. Dark skin. Bright eyes. Big forehead. Tiny ears. With a white coat, he could have been one of the hospital workers or community health center nurses Julia sent pictures of.

  The thin black guy paused just long enough to decide Levin wasn’t a cop. Then he threw something at Levin.

  Levin, always quick with his hands, caught what the guy threw in midair. A screwdriver. He threw it back, hard as he could. There was a thud. Metal hit flesh and bone. A hand flew up to a skinny black head.

  “Fock you,” the thief said. Some kind of accent, maybe Jamaican. Then he was gone, running down Chester Street, Levin’s goddamn laptop under his right arm.

  Then Levin was running after him.

  “Stop him!” Levin yelled. But there was no one on the street to hear him.

  “Car thief!” Levin yelled next. A few people walked out of a wine bar two blocks away. They hurried to their own cars.

  The thin black guy was quicker than he was. Levin was in shape, but he was not a sprinter. He was twenty yards behind and probably fifty years older. Levin pushed himself, gained a little, and then looked back to see if the people coming out of the wine bar were still there. They were gone.

  The running man flew across Pine and then went under the I-195 overpass, where it was dark and deserted. Levin listened as he lunged forward. No sirens. The guy darted left toward the river, running as fast as Levin had ever seen anyone run. Levin pushed harder, but the car thief pulled away into the gloom.

  And then Levin’s breath failed him. He stopped, bent over, winded, and the car thief’s footsteps pounded off toward the deserted river. That boy is going to have one impressive black eye in the morning, Levin thought. The laptop’s gone, but turnabout is fair play. An eye for an eye, actually and metaphorically. Maybe some justice was done.

  There were no people anywhere. Levin was old and slow. The thief was young and quick. What had Levin been thinking? It was just a laptop, just a thing, and it was pretty well backed up. He lost some PowerPoints and the drafts of a couple of papers, but no startling new ideas. What would have happened if he had caught the guy? Just not worth the risk.

  Levin was halfway between Pine and Weybosset, almost back to his deeply disrespected automobile when he heard the sirens at last. At least somebody had called it in.

  The lock on the driver’s side door had been ripped out, so there was no way to close the car door. But it was just a couple of blocks to work. Why God invented duct tape. Levin found a roll under the pile of papers in the trunk. Chance favors the prepared mind.

  He was duct taping the door closed when the cops showed. They looked into the car with a flashlight and offered to call an ambulance. Police report available in five days at headquarters. No illusions about pursuing the perpetrator. Justice, such as it is now, would be found in an insurance settlement.

  His goddamned car. And his goddamned laptop. Maybe this was some kind of a message from God. Perhaps Levin had just been repurified. Maybe. Levin had politics that didn’t work, ideology that no one cared about, an emotional life that was a train wreck, and now, no laptop and a car with a door that was missing a lock and a steering column that was messed up. You bang you head against the wall enough and your head splits open. Maybe it was time to just start fuckin’ over. Give up. Go to Cuba, sit on a beach, and look at the women.

  Levin had a decent night. No drama. Just drunks and ODs. A bunch of people short of breath and a couple of schizophrenics out of control, the aftermath of the Station disaster, which got people who were already on the edge unhinged. Just dribs and drabs. A patient or two an hour. No beeping. No clamor. No ringing phones. At 2:00 in the morning, the nurses turned off the lights at the back end of the ED and pulled the curtains around a couple of the bays to let some of the drunks sleep. Sometimes you catch a break working the overnight. Huge change from the night before.

  But then they needed him to pick up an extra shift. Betty Kidd, who was days, had a cousin who had died in the fire and needed to miss her shift for the funeral. They needed him until noon. Extra shifts suck, particularly after an overnight. Extra shifts after no sleep the day before suck double or triple.

  He’d be done at noon. By 11:30 Levin was already in a landing pattern. He got a cup of hot coffee to warm his cold bones. He hit the head, relaxed his innards, and threw some cold water on his face and on the back of his neck. Then his brain started shutting down. No new thoughts. He imagined his bed. His warm bed. In his mind, he was already in his bed when Johnny G stuck a clipboard with one more chart in front of him.


  “Bay 34,” Johnny said.

  Damn.

  At least the guy in Bay 34 had a simple problem. A twenty-year-old with facial laceration. Just stitching. Great last patient. No previous medical history. Walked into a door. Pretty straight forward. Levin looked at the chart and the facial films before seeing the kid, ordered up a tetanus shot, and asked Johnny to put a suture tray together so he could breeze in, do the deed, and be gone. And then home to a nice warm bed.

  Levin loved sewing. It was simple manual labor. He could sew in his sleep, which was a good thing because his brain was of questionable value after working for twelve hours straight. He’d offer the kid plastics but he hoped the kid would say just go ahead and do it, so Levin could finish his shift with something simple, and then get the hell out of there.

  He blew through the curtain, headed for the packet of sterile white imitation latex surgical gloves, which were open on the procedure tray and lay awaiting his hands.

  Thin dark-skinned black kid. Serious shiner about the right eye. Three-centimeter lac.

  Something familiar. Levin woke up. What was it? Who was it?

  The thief. The goddamn car thief. Laying there in Levin’s ER. Turnabout is fair play.

  “Hey,” Levin said, as he turned away from the procedure tray. He expected the kid to bolt. But there wasn’t even a hint of recognition on the kid’s face. The kid just eyed him, some white guy in scrubs.

  Levin waited. The kid did not have a clue. “I’m Dr. Levin,” he said and extended his hand.

  The kid took Levin’s hand. He had a warm, formless hand, and it took all the energy Levin had left not to twist the bastard’s hand and arm behind his back and push the arm up until the idiot cried for mercy. But Levin was a doctor, and you can’t beat up on patients, even the ones who screw you, even the ones who fuck up your car and steal your blinking laptop.

  “Ran into a door, huh?” Levin said, still one tiny wrong move away from jamming the kid’s arm behind his back or calling a cop.

  But the patient is the one with the disease. You got to pull yourself out of the equation whenever you walk into a patient’s room. Medicine is unself-interested advocacy. All the crap that Levin had been saying all those years, everything he kept telling students and interns and residents and colleagues, all that preaching came back to him, right then. You got to put yourself aside. Patient care comes first.

  The kid didn’t answer.

  “Got any allergies?” Levin said.

  The kid didn’t answer.

  “You speak English?” Levin said.

  “Small-small Inglis,” the kid said.

  “Anybody here with you?”

  The kid didn’t answer.

  “Ma or Pa?” Levin said.

  “Ma he,” the kid said. “Ma here.”

  Levin nodded, stood, and opened the curtain at the foot of the gurney.

  “I need a translator,” he said, in a voice that was louder than speaking but not a shout. “And see if this kid’s mother is in the waiting room, will you?”

  The kid’s mother was there in five, a tired looking but well-dressed woman in a tan coat. The translator was a portly Liberian guy in his fifties who worked as a technician in the lab.

  “Dr. Levin,” Levin said, when Johnny G brought the mother in, and he extended his hand.

  “Yvonne Evans-Smith,” the mother said. She had a strong grip. “This is Terrance Evans-Smith,” the mother said. “He injured himself on a door. He is a recent immigrant from Liberia, and his English isn’t good yet.”

  The mother’s English, on the other hand, was perfect; a formal, polite, British English that made Levin wonder what that story was—mother is a well-dressed black woman who talks like the Queen, kid who steals cars and barely knows the language. It wasn’t all making sense yet.

  “Thanks,” Levin said to the translator. “I think we’re good.”

  “Tell me about the door,” Levin said. “When did you hit this … door?”

  Levin pushed the kid’s head back on the pillow. He was rough, even rougher than he intended to be. He held the kid’s jaw between the thumb and forefingers of his right hand. He swung the overhead light around so it lit the kid’s face but also so it went right into the kid’s eyes. He moved the kid’s jaw back and forth in the light, and turned the kid’s head from side to side. The cut was three centimeters long, just over the right eyebrow, pretty clean, with a decent amount of swelling and ecchymosis at its base. The tissues around the wound and around the eye were a dusky purple black.

  “Last night, after sundown,” the mother said. “I noticed the wound this morning, when I saw blood on his pillow.”

  “Quite a shiner. Pretty dangerous door,” Levin said. “This cut is gonna scar up good unless we sew it.”

  About sixteen hours had passed since Levin threw the tool at the kid. At least the kid told his mother the truth about the timing. You need to sew lacerations quickly, otherwise you risk infection. Inside eight hours is best. Sixteen hours is stretching it. Twenty-four is too long.

  “Johnny, get me a Betadine soak, will you?” Levin said in a loud voice.

  Johnny appeared a few moments later. He brought a bowl of gauze soaking in a brown liquid. Levin laid the gauze on the wound.

  “And he needs tetanus,” Levin said, loud, as though the person he was talking to was deaf. “No allergies, right?” he said, almost shouting and then he remembered that the mother spoke English.

  “No known allergies, right?” Levin said again, quietly this time.

  “No allergies,” the mother said.

  “What does he do for a living, besides interacting with doors?” Levin said. “He in school?”

  “He’s a night watchman.”

  “Look,” Levin said, “It’s a laceration on the face. I’m good at fixing them. I’ve done thousands, maybe two or three a day for the last ten years, but any laceration repair can cause a scar, and people are sensitive about scars on the face. Sixteen hours out, greater than usual risk of infection.”

  Levin paused, and looked at the kid and then back at the mother. “I’m supposed to tell you that I can get a plastic surgeon to sew the scar.” Levin stopped. What the hell am I doing? He thought. I have no business treating this kid.

  “But I’m not gonna sew this right now,” Levin said. “I am going to stop bullshitting you. Your kid didn’t get the damn laceration from a door. Your kid got the laceration from me. Terrance here got the laceration from a screwdriver I threw at him last night, after Terrance threw it at me when I caught him breaking into my car. My personal car. Terrance is a goddamn car thief, and he fucked up my car and stole my laptop. Forgive my French.”

  “Fock you,” Terrance said. He reached up, brushed the packing away from the wound and he jumped up.

  Levin turned to the kid. “So what’s the story, Eddie? You got my laptop? You give me my laptop, I fix your face. Capiche?”

  “Fock you,” the kid said as he started to push past his mother. There wasn’t enough space between the gurney and the next cubicle for two people. The kid’s mother blocked his escape, her hands on her son’s chest.

  “Lay ba dan,” the mother said. “De mon to zip de wou.” Lie back down. Let the man sew the wound.

  “Fock you,” the kid said.

  Then the mother slapped Terrance’s face, hard enough that the sound of the slap rang out across the big room. People working at the desk and in other cubicles heard the voices and the noise. They turned toward the noise, a response that is natural to people who work in the ED whenever there is the sound of trouble.

  The slap stopped the kid’s forward motion. He shrank back, transformed from a thief who was quick on his feet into a misbehaving child.

  “Lay ba dan. Quick-quick,” the mother said. Lie back down. Now.

  “Lie down. I got to repack the wound,” Levin said.

  “He will lie down,” the mother said. “I will speak to him from this point forward. And I will speak for him.”


  The kid backed away from his mother and leaned on the edge of the gurney, glowering at Levin. The he laid back. He watched Levin, ready to jump and run.

  “Why I am sewing this instead of calling a cop?” Levin said.

  “Terrance is here illegally. He’s overstayed his visitor’s visa and is working under the table,” the mother said.

  “He’s doing more than working under the table,” Levin said.

  Then Levin put his hands on the kid’s face again. I get it, Levin thought. Call a cop and the kid gets deported. He gloved and opened a few packages of gauze that were sitting on the tray table next to him, soaked them in the pan of brown liquid, and laid the now brown and wet gauze on the kid’s wound. There’s some kind of war on in Liberia. Or was.

  Later he would think, Why did I do that? The whole thing was crazy. He had been up all night, he was tired, his judgment was impaired, and his hands just did what they were trained to do. Your hands work even when your brain is not really there.

  “Terrance was in the war in Liberia,” the mother said to Levin.

  “How is that my problem?” Levin said. Then he unfolded a paper drape from the treatment table.

  “The war gang found him in 1993,” the mother said. “He was ten. School ended for him forever on that day. They took him away to fight for Charles Taylor, our president. Taylor was a warlord then. Taylor’s people put a gun to his head, and then another gun in his hands. They got him high on pills. They taught him how to kill, and they taught him how to maim and how to steal, but they didn’t teach him how to read or think or work. Ten years old. There was no one there to teach him to listen, to know right from wrong.”