Michael himself was beginning to believe he’d really been attacked by a tiger. As he got out of the cab, he looked up and down the street in both directions, to make sure there weren’t any more of them around. He also looked up toward the roof to make sure one of them wasn’t going to jump down into the street from up there. He got a little dizzy looking up. He swayed against Connie, suddenly feeling very weak. But he did not pass out until they were safe inside the apartment.
“Ah, ah, ah,” the doctor said.
He looked like Fu Manchu.
A scarecrow of a man with a long, straggly beard and little rimless eyeglasses. He wasn’t wearing silken robes or anything, he was in fact wearing a dark suit and a white shirt and a tie with mustard stains on it, but there was something about his manner that seemed dynastic. He was bent over Michael, his stethoscope to Michael’s heart. Michael’s shirt was open. He had bled through the bandage Connie had put on his arm before calling the doctor. The sheet under him was stained with blood. The doctor moved the stethoscope. He listened to Michael’s lungs.
“Very good,” he said.
“Yes?” Connie said.
“Yes, the bullet did not go through his lungs.”
“Perhaps because he was shot in the arm,” Connie said respectfully.
“Ah, ah, ah,” the doctor said.
His name was Ling.
He took the bandage off Michael’s arm.
“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” he said.
“Is it bad?” Connie asked.
“Someone shot him in the arm,” Ling said.
“Is the bullet still in there?” Connie asked.
“No, no,” Ling said, “it’s a nice clean wound.”
Good, Michael thought.
“Good,” Connie said.
“You’ll be able to play tennis in a week or so,” Ling said, and chuckled. “Are you left-handed?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll be able to play tennis tomorrow,” he said, and chuckled again.
Michael watched as Ling worked on his arm. He was wondering if he planned on reporting this to the police. He felt certain that reporting gunshot wounds was mandatory.
“How did this happen?” Ling asked.
He was sprinkling what Michael guessed was some kind of sulfa drug on the wound. In the field, you stripped a sulfapak and slapped it on the wound immediately. In the field, people were spitting blood on you while you worked. In the field, everyone got to be a doctor. You lost a lot of patients in the field.
“We were walking down the street minding our own business,” Connie said, “when this man came along from the opposite direction with a gun in his hand.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Ling said.
“So Michael said to the man …”
“Excuse me, but is this your husband?” Ling asked.
“Not yet,” Michael said.
Connie looked at him.
Ling looked at them both.
“You must be cautious,” Ling said. “There are many problems in East-West marriages.”
“Like what?” Michael asked.
“Like food, for example,” Ling said.
“But I like Chinese food,” Michael said.
“Exactly,” Ling said.
“I see,” Michael said.
“So what did you say to this man?”
“Which man?”
“The one who shot you.”
“Oh.”
“What he said,” Connie said, “is that he thought it was against the law to be walking down the street with a gun in your hand.”
Not in Florida, Michael thought.
Florida was the Wild West these days.
Though not as much as New York seemed to be.
“So the man shot him,” Connie said.
“Tch, tch, tch,” Ling said.
“Are you going to report this?” Connie asked flatly.
Ling looked at her.
“Are we both Chinese?” he asked.
“I’m only walking wounded,” Michael said.
“And walking wounded are allowed to walk.”
Dr. Ling had bandaged his arm neatly and tightly, and it was no longer bleeding and certainly in no danger of becoming infected unless Michael went rolling around in the dirt someplace. Moreover, it hardly hurt at all now, so what he wanted to do …
“No,” Connie said. “What we’re going to do is I’ll go down for some food and we’ll eat here in the apartment and I’ll call Charlie Wong and tell him I’m not feeling good and won’t be able to work tonight. Then you’ll go to bed and get some …”
“No,” Michael said.
“Dr. Ling said you have to rest.”
“Dr. Ling isn’t wanted for murder. What I want to do is go see this Charlie Nichols person …”
“No. You can call him on the phone if you like, but I won’t let …”
“I don’t want to call him on the phone. Every time I talk to somebody on the phone, the police show up in the next ten minutes. I am wanted for murder, Connie! Can’t you …?”
“You’re yelling at me,” she said.
“Yes. Because you’re behaving like a …”
“We’re having our first argument,” she said, grinning.
“Let’s go see Charlie Nichols,” he said.
She did not want to ask Charlie Wong for the use of a limousine because she had already called to tell him she was sick. She did not want to go to a car rental place because she suspected the police would have contacted all such places and asked them to be on the lookout for the wanted desperado Michael Barnes. So she went to Shi Kai, who ran the restaurant downstairs.