The Babe Ruth Deception by David O. Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

already hawking reports of the disaster. Desperate, he’d raged at the people who swarmed the streets, indifferent to the crisis and how they slowed him down. Horse-drawn delivery wagons, messengers on bicycles, old men with long beards and sad mustaches, and young women tired before their time. They were all malevolent obstacles. When he had arrived in New York twenty years before, he marveled that the air held enough oxygen to support so many. He had grown numb to the wonder of it, insulated by the Ansonia and his hard-won respectability.
    South of the numbered streets, he’d slowed to a crawl. Vehicles avoiding the bomb site butted up against those coming to aid the injured. He’d abandoned his car a mile from the Volunteer Hospital. Out of breath, sweaty, he found the building was only a clinic for the poor, deluged with mangled bodies from the bombing. His white lab coat worked as a badge of authority in the mayhem. He searched the corridors, ignoring anguished cries that came at him from all directions. He was there as a father, not a doctor.
    Joshua saw him first and called his name, waving a hand. The boy didn’t look any better than the other victims. Dust and plaster bits made his hair and skin a spectral white. Blood had crusted under his nose. His suit was filthy and torn. Violet lay on a stretcher on the floor. The boy, crouching, held her hand. Her eyes opened when Fraser took Joshua’s place.
    â€œDo you have much pain?” he asked.
    She nodded.
    â€œIt’s her leg, sir,” Joshua said, and pointed. A rough splint, wrapped with gauze, hung on the outside of her right leg. Fraser’s heart sank. Above the knee. Swelling was stretching her blackened skin to the bursting. Internal bleeding. She needed attention now. Better attention than she could get there. He told Joshua to wait.
    Fraser dodged down the corridor to a supply room he had passed. He told the nurse on duty that he needed morphine for a patient. She gestured to a shelf and let him through.
    When Fraser gave Violet the injection, he spoke to Joshua over his shoulder. “Son, can you carry her with me?”
    â€œOf course. I got her here.”
    â€œI mean a long way. It’s madness out there.”
    Joshua stepped behind Violet’s head and reached down for the stretcher handles. Fraser told Violet that they had to move to a better hospital. It was the only way. They lifted her and set off. She weighed so little. Fraser called out warnings over his shoulder as he backed through the crowded hallways. Violet’s face looked translucent. Her eyes were out of focus.
    The air was cooler on the street, easier to breathe. They set her down so Fraser could turn to face the direction they were walking. People made way for them. Fraser headed uptown, vaguely toward where he left the car.
    â€œWhat do you need, Doc?” A red-faced police officer fell into step next to him.
    Fraser shouted that they had to get to Flower Hospital. They needed an ambulance. At the corner of Park Row and Chambers, the cop told them to head north to Pearl; he’d be there with an ambulance. Then he took off. When they reached Pearl, the ambulance was there. Fraser hugged the cop before climbing in after Violet. There was no space for Joshua.
    Eliza didn’t leave the hospital for the first three days. Now, a week into the siege, they were taking turns, changing off at noon and at midnight. Starting his shift at midday, Fraser stopped to see Doctor Nylander, who was the reason he brought her to Flower. He had served in France with Nylander, who was young enough to know the new techniques. Today Nylander had no news. The thighbone was crushed. Violet had endured two surgeries to ease the swelling and align the remaining fragments. More surgery was possible. Amputation still not out of the question. They were using a Thomas splint, one of the recent innovations, but no one could predict what healing would occur or if