As politely as she could, she told Langdon she wanted Detective Willis ambed over to Hoch Memorial, half a mile uptown-and three hundred light years away in terms of service and skill, which she did not mention. Langdon looked her dead in the eye and asked, “Why?” “I’d like him to be there,” she said. Again, Langdon asked, “Why?”
“Because that’s where I feel he’ll receive the sort of care I want him to have.”
“He’ll receive excellent care here as well,” Langdon said.
“Doctor,” Sharyn said, “I really don’t want to argue this. The detective needs immediate surgery. I want him ambed over to Hoch Memorial right this minute.”
“I’m afraid I can’t discharge him,” Langdon said.
“It’s not your call to make,” Sharyn said.
“I run this hospital.”
“You don’t run the police department,” she said. “Either you have an ambulance at the ER door in three minutes flat, or I’ll have him nineelevened out of here. Say, Doctor.”
“I can’t let you do this,” Langdon said.
“Doctor, I’m in charge here,” Sharyn said. “This is my job and my mandate. That detective is moving out of here now”
“They’ll think it’s because St Mary’s isn’t a good hospital.”
“Who are you talking about, Doctor?”
“The media,” Langdon said. “They’ll think that’s why you moved him.”
“That is why I’m moving him,” Sharyn said coldly and cruelly and mercilessly. “I’m calling Hoch,” she said, and turned on her heel, walked to the nurses’ station, and snapped her fingers at a telephone. The nurse behind the counter handed it to her at once. Langdon was still floating in the background, looking angry and defeated and sad and somehow pitiable.
Dialing, Sharyn told the nurse, “Get an ambulance around to the back door, and wheel the detective out. I’m moving him.” Into the phone she said, “Dr Gerardi, please,” and waited. “Jim,” she said, “this is Sharyn Cooke. I’ve got a cop with a thigh wound, he’s being transferred right this minute from St Mary’s.” She listened, said, “Tangential,” listened again, said, “Nonperforating. It’s still in there, Jim, can you prepare an OR and a surgical team, we’ll be there in five minutes. See you,” she said, and hung up, and looked at the nurse who was standing there motionless. “Is there a problem, Nurse?” she asked.
“It’s just…,” the nurse said, and looked helplessly across the counter to where Langdon was standing. “Dr Langdon?” she asked. “Is it all right to order an ambulance?”
Langdon said nothing for several moments.
Then he said, “Order it,” and walked away swiftly, down the long polished tile corridor, not looking back, turning a corner, out of sight.
Sharyn went to Willis where he lay on a wheeled table behind ER curtains, an oxygen tube in his nose, an IV in his arm.
“I’m getting you out of here,” she said.
He nodded.
“You’ll be uptown in five minutes.”
He nodded again.
“I’ll be with you. Do you need anything?”
He shook his head.
Then, quite unexpectedly, he said, “It wasn’t Bert’s fault.”
Section 125.27 of the Penal Law stated that a person was guilty of murder in the first degree when he caused the death of a police officer engaged in the course of performing his official duties. Maxie Blaine hadn’t killed anyone, but he’d opened fire indiscriminately on a roomful of cops armed with an arrest warrant. This meant they had him cold on five counts of attempted murder one, a Class A-1 felony punishable by fifteen to life as a minimum on each count. In this city, you didn’t shoot a cop and walk. No selfrespecting D.A. would even consider a plea when he had four other police officers ready to testify that ole Maxie Blaine here had repeatedly pulled the trigger of the gun that downed a fellow police officer. If they needed civilian corroboration, they were sure they could get that from the eighteen-year-old girl who’d been screaming in Maxie’s bed, and whose lawyer had advised her to remain silent until he saw which way the wind was blowing here. The girl’s lawyer-whose name was Rudy Ehrlich-didn’t yet know the wind was blowing toward lethal injection, the penalty for first-degree murder in this state. So far, all Ehrlich knew was that his client’s “friend” had wounded a police detective, and that she’d been a possible witness to the shooting. In such cases, Ehrlich’s motto was “Speech is silver, silence is golden.” As a matter of fact, this was Ehrlich’s motto in any criminal case. He got a lot of money for this advice, which was only common knowledge to any schoolyard kid who’d ever been frisked for a firearm.
