Today Steve got back to Metro General and I ran out of stamps to mail his checks with, so I figured I could close the shop for a while and visit him, not that I wanted to go back to the store at all. I can give all the moody excuses that people come up with not to visit family in the hospital. It smells bad, there's dead people there, I don't like being surrounded by illness. My only excuse is that I barely have ten dollars a week to spend on food, so a 3.35$ subway pass is a rare purchase, but if Claire's there she'll give me a few stamps from the mailroom, so I figure I can spare a meal and see my uncle.
Metro General, unsurprisingly, is more of a glorified emergency room than a hospital. Surgeries are cancelled daily to aid gunshot wounds, stabbings, and head traumas. When I arrive I have to beep through a metal detector and walk around a waiting room full of crying and frantic phone conversations. The chemo wing is an antithesis to this. It's dead (poor wording) quiet, with patients hooked up to pods they're connected to by beeping monitors, wire and IV. Steve is a fan of spontaneity, so he contradicts the scheduled sessions of therapy by sitting in a new seat each time. I have to scan the varying stages of balding to find his olive head looking out the window at pedestrians below us. "Steve!" I deposit my check and shuffle to him cumbersomely in an effort not to disturb the twenty or so other people being kindly poisoned.
Steve in chemo is to the Chemo wing as real Steve is to the ER: a complete reversal. He is hairy and dark and burly; his chest, face and arms are swept with a forest of thick black curls. In chemo it is all lost, and he compensates with loud, macho behavior, ratifying the Aussie typecast. When he hugs me he laughs aloud and pats my back as hard as he can, making loud claps against my shoulder blade. Scapula-thoracic cage. It still hurts. That's how I know he's doing better.
I don't tell him anything about the Shtolens, and instead I talk about Sarah and dad, happy memories. I pretend we've kept in touch and that I'm about to find work outside of the Kitchen, something upwards of impossible, but it makes him grin wide, so I stick with it. When his session's over I wheel him to his room like I'm on a grocery cart, one foot on the rack underneath his seat, the other pushing us in big swoops. I've never actually needed a cart for myself, but the deli near Steve's has a lot of family traffic, so I watch them. He's howling in cheer and it's drug-like, I keep doing what I can to get another fix, to know one of us is happy and safe and good. After Claire sneaks me ten stamps and helps another nurse sit him up in bed we play cards while the television runs in the background.
"It must feel good to have more than two channels on your TV, huh?" I lay an ace down and he laughs, picking a grape off his lunch plate and popping it in his mouth before slapping a two on the table. "Yeah, you can also read the news without feeling like you have uv, uve… whatever it's called." He chuckles, and I laugh loudly. I don't know when I'm going to have a good laugh again, so I'm overcompensating each giggle, emphasizing every note. For each smile I indemnify a laugh, and for each laugh I remit an excessive cackle. "Uveitis. You were close." He actually wasn't thinking of the right thing, but I didn't give a shit. If he wanted to have a tea party and play Captain America I would add milk and sugar without reluctance. Instead we just watched the news because it's all we knew.
He's remembering things though, even random bits of information are good. Chemo hit him hard with bouts of disorientation and vertigo. The staff won't say it to your face, especially if you're on the verge of collapse, but they call it 'chemo brain.' Them I will correct. It's Chemotherapy-Related Cognitive Impairment, bitch. I couldn't be shushed and cooed and given warm soda to pacify. Seeing him try to focus on me while his words slurred and his irises danced violently was unnerving. Nystagmus; extraocular muscles. It broke him early so that he could build a tolerance (this is how he describes it. Obviously I did not inherit his tenacious optimism, nor his story-telling skills).
When I realize I'm losing the game I start to review my cards again, the only source of color in the entire room. His wrist has a white laminated bracelet that glints in the light of the buzzing lights above us. Ah, I see. That's why people hate hospitals so much, it's not as much the disease as it is the sterility.
"Are you ready to be uncomfortable?" He asks, and I look up, smiling way too big. "What?" I laugh, and he looks out of the door's vertical mirror as a nurse walks by before leaning in. "You know how people have prison wives?" He asks, and I nod slowly, hooked, hanging on his thread. He does this. "Well I have a hospital wife. She teaches the residents and I'm the class pet. She loves me." I lower my head in amusement and place my hand against my forehead, cards fanning out. "I'm proud of you." We continue to play, the noise of the plastic covering on the cards clicking against his bedside tray fill the silence in the room.
I'm only brought back when Steve stops playing, his hands holding his cards in a tableau. I glance at him and see he's looking past me, up at the television. I turn with him to see that he's watching and observe a red BREAKING NEWS headline with white lettering:
SUSPECTED MOB MEMBERS MURDERED TUESDAY EVENING: PUNISHER TO BLAME?
I watch the reporter list off facts about the kill, and I find myself completely facing the TV now, the card game forgotten, transfixed as they detail unnamed victims and their alleged involvement with Hell's Kitchen's organized crime. "You know he's the guy who went postal in here? Shot up the entire intensive care looking for one of the Irish. He's wiping the city clean one scumbag at a time" Steve says, and I can't decipher whether he admires or detests him. I'm still fixed on the TV, looking for any details about the suspect. "Huh" I make an interested sound but we both know I'm not paying attention. "Have you seen him?" Steve asks after a pause, and I finally turn back. "What?" I ask, and he moves his eyes from the screen to me. "They say he's working out of Meatpacking and Hudson Yards. People are dying all over Hell's Kitchen, gangs, murderers, rapists." I squint my eyes, trying to scan him for signs of hysteria. "Who's they? Your hospital wife and children?"
He shakes his head feverishly and it tells me he's not being facetious. "I'm serious Elly. That guy's real, and he's in our neighborhood. He's hunting those people down." He looks like he's thinking, and puts his cards down. I push mine to the side. "I want you to start closing the shop while it's light out. I can't be in here knowing you're by yourself." I shake my head, turning back, hands up in protest. "No, no, I'm fine. I've been doing fine by myself. I've got the sluggers at home and the gun at the store. We don't need to lose any more money. Look at you, you're almost all done here! You're gonna come home soon." I lied about the gun, and the being okay part, but I can't get him worked up after a meal or he won't keep it down. He's upset, shaking his head in small swings. I place my hands on his and move my head to try to catch his eyes. "Steve. Steve." He looks at me and I know I'm talking to chemo Steve now. His eyes are glazed and pink and he's gripping my hands, the macho overlay gone. "You know I just want to get you out of here, kid. I just want you to be safe." He whispers, and I reach over the bed to hold him. "I am safe. If he's doing what you say he is then—"
"We have a Daily Bugle representative at the crime scene right now. Lance, can you tell us what the police have revealed?"
Me and Steve part and both stare at the screen, angst blanketing our tender moment. A young man in gingham is holding an umbrella and microphone, standing next a loading dock, his glasses getting foggy as he speaks. It's Pier 59 Studios, I can tell by the ships parked against the concrete landing.
"Yes Michelle, I'm here just outside Pier 57, where a massacre occurred last night. At least 6 bodies have been recovered and there were several injured in the process. As you can see, Michelle, this ship arrived last night carrying almost 20 units of illegal drugs, military-grade weapons, and high amounts of hazardous chemicals shipped from overseas. A shootout occurred sometime around 4:00 yesterday morning at the pier, and there were no witnesses who could point to a suspect. I'll tell you, Michelle, this has a lot of people on their toes."
I stand from the chair, taking a step towards the TV, my arms crossed over my chest, eyebrows woven together like a silk suture. Name, say a name. Steve watches behind me, his face in the same twist.
"That's for sure, Lance. Have the police revealed any of the victim's identities to the public yet? Does this look like the work of the Punisher?"
"Pier 57, isn't that where the—" I shush him, then apologize. The reporter's on screen again, wiping the lens of his glasses, emphasizing every few words and speaking in an Ivy League cadence.
"I'll tell you, Michelle, the police are keeping this under very tight wraps. They're not speaking to the media or any journalists at the moment about who they suspect is behind this murder, but it seems like the same pattern we've been seeing all month. Police have however confirmed that the only body that could be properly identified was Abel Shtolen—"
My heart and breath slow, like I've entered a state of hibernation. Bradyarrythmia, bradypnea. My hands are gripping my arms like railing and the hair follicles on my armpits stand straight out, adrenaline widening my blood vessels, my heart thumping in my ears. Steve exits chemo-mode on command, and finds the strength to sit up in his bed by himself. "Oh, shit."
When he finally gets my attention he studies me, concerned. "Elly? Are you okay?" I nod automatically, giving me away. My mouth is cottonball dry and when I speak my voice is so far away that I have to push the words out of my lungs. "I'm afraid… I'm, I'm afraid but I don't know what to be afraid of." I muster, and I sit on the bed, hand tremoring with nerves. Steve sits with me, both of us tired, our bodies betraying us, wasting our resources on stress. Before I fall asleep on the chair next to his bed he crosses his hands over each other and rests them on his stomach, "then don't be afraid." He changes the channel to the soap operas.
4:30 A.M. LAST NIGHT
11th AND 14th STREET—18 FLOORS UP
Ten, ten and labor. That's how many I see inside the crosshairs. Two Polish, Two Irish, three hired guns. And the three Germans on top. While workers unload the TEUs they do a line of blow off a case of champagne before cracking it open. The tall one's coked out of his mind, shouting at the teenagers unloading his shit, roaring in laughter. They're just kids, came over with the boat, Mexican. I take in a deep breath and hold, counting the beats. I stand straight as possible, finger rubbing the trigger up and down. Go. Once the labor's out of the shot I make the first strikes, both Poles and an Irish down in a split second. I aim at the guns before they can find me and knock them down. The other Irishman after that. The labor's off the pier by now, running, scattered into the city.
Big brother screams his head off, hiding behind a unit while the real big one's got his piece out, unloading it into the sky, trying to find something to shoot. I look back into the scope. One shot, done. When he hits the ground the firstborn screams, peeking out from the unit to see him painting the deck. I aim at him and shoot, clipping the corner of the container. Fuck. They'll be gone by the time I get down there. I keep unloading, but he and the baby are hiding behind, shrieking like Goddamn monkeys. If I listen closely I can hear him offer me money, and when I keep shooting he starts to shout out that I'm a dead man. "Good to know." When the police radio catches wind of it I'm already gone, tacking one off the list.
The night after I come back. When I look over the pier I can tell it's been roped off, yellow tape and folded evidence tents littering the deck. Nothing on the radio, though, the last two are still out, still on my turf. The thermos is nestled next to the ledge where I left it. I take a gulp of cold coffee and scrunch: still good. Police were too stiff to check up here, I guess.
I look out over the Hudson and inhale, ribs aching when my lungs expand, muscles in a fit of unrest. I can smell the roving water, journeyed from Adirondack, on its way down to the Upper Bay and into the Atlantic. New York's own river. From where I'm standing I can see where Holland Tunnel comes out from under the water, where New Jersey cuts the river right down the middle, glowing a little less bright on the other side. Right behind me is Queens, the Bronx above, and Brooklyn below. If I had the telescope I might be able to see the Lady from here, facing Kings County, law in her arms. This place was home, once. I grew up in Hattan, I started a family here. I know it from the belly up.
I down the stale coffee and sit on the ledge, staring out at the city. She's a looker, for sure. Always on, always up. 'New Amsterdam,' I think that's what the Dutch called it way back. I look off in the direction of Meatpacking, the lights in the district yellowed and warm. There's one quick way to find those boys. They're not skipping town. No, they're going back to daddy and trying to save face, keep the reputation. I know the first place they're gonna go, the first person they're gonna go after. I swirl the cap shut on the thermos and get out of the building before anyone else shows up.
I decide to set up across the street, fresh coffee in the aluminum, two shots in the barrel: all I needed. I fixed the bipod to rest on the ledge so that I can dial the focus on the green and white sign above the store, and I realize I'm hungry. Jesus, when was the last time I ate? I burn my throat and stomach on hot coffee so it'll shut up and press my knees back, locking into place. I regret giving the dog the rest of the fish now. Wasn't half bad. I wonder where she's out this time of night.
Clearly I know where she lives. I followed her home once thinking I could find dirt on the Germans. This was before I realized she had the whole district on tabs. That was the day I knocked a pawner's teeth out for offering me kiddie porn. I'd just ended up in front of her store afterwards, three blocks in the wrong direction. I wanted to check, just make sure. After she closed I tailed her back to the shanty apartment she stays at. She can't even afford blinds—I watched her read in the glow of a TV, looking at her door every once in a while, just like at the store, waiting for someone to jump. I squinted like it would help me see her better.
When I got back to the garage I'd been squatting in I unwrapped the curly grey fish she'd given me and cooked it on a gas flame and tin tray, Eagle Scout style. It tasted like wet chicken, so I ate a few for the sake of keeping me up and gave the rest to the dog. When he coughed up our meal a second time I realized I couldn't buy anything with legs again, but it gave me a reason to go back.
I open my eyes and realize my socket is pressed into the scope and the bipod legs are holding me up. I'd fallen asleep. "Fuck." I rub my eye to get my sight back, swirls and dots of white peppering my vision. I chug the coffee, no longer steaming but still hot, and I shake my head, loosening my shoulders. The watch says it's 0512, almost magic hour. It's after I get the focus on the scope just right that I hear a scream two buildings down.