The Chosen Page 4

  I wanted to finish it quickly because of the pain in my wrist, and I sent in another fast ball. I watched it head straight for the plate. I saw him go into a sudden crouch, and in the fraction of a second before he hit the ball I realized that he had anticipated the curve and was deliberately swinging low. I was still a little off balance from the pitch, but I managed to bring my glove hand up in front of my face just as he hit the ball. I saw it coming at me, and there was nothing I could do. It hit the finger section of my glove, deflected off, smashed into the upper rim of the left lens of my glasses, glanced off my forehead, and knocked me down. I scrambled around for it wildly, but by the time I got my hand on it Danny Saunders was standing safely on first.

  I heard Mr. Galanter call time, and everyone on the field came racing over to me. My glasses lay shattered on the asphalt floor, and I felt a sharp pain in my left eye when I blinked. My wrist throbbed, and I could feel the bump coming up on my forehead. I looked over at first, but without my glasses Danny Saunders was only a blur. I imagined I could still see him grinning.

  I saw Mr. Galanter put his face next to mine. It was sweaty and full of concern. I wondered what all the fuss was about. I had only lost a pair of glasses, and we had at least two more good pitchers on the team.

  “Are you all right, boy?” Mr. Galanter was saying. He looked at my face and forehead. “Somebody wet a handkerchief with cold water!” he shouted. I wondered why he was shouting. His voice hurt my head and rang in my ears. I saw Davey Cantor run off, looking frightened. I heard Sidney Goldberg say something, but I couldn’t make out his words. Mr. Galanter put his arm around my shoulders and walked me off the field. He sat me down on the bench next to the rabbi. Without my glasses everything more than about ten feet away from me was blurred. I blinked and wondered about the pain in my left eye. I heard voices and shouts, and then Mr. Galanter was putting a wet handkerchief on my head.

  “You feel dizzy, boy?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “You’re sure now?”

  “I’m all right,” I said, and wondered why my voice sounded husky and why talking hurt my head.

  “You sit quiet now,” Mr. Galanter said. “You begin to feel dizzy, you let me know right away.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He went away. I sat on the bench next to the rabbi, who looked at me once, then looked away. I heard shouts in Yiddish. The pain in my left eye was so intense I could feel it in the base of my spine. I sat on the bench a long time, long enough to see us lose the game by a score of eight to seven, long enough to hear the yeshiva team shout with joy, long enough to begin to cry at the pain in my left eye, long enough for Mr. Galanter to come over to me at the end of the game, take one look at my face and go running out of the yard to call a cab.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WE RODE to the Brooklyn Memorial Hospital, which was a few blocks away, and Mr. Galanter paid the cab fare. He helped me out, put his arm around my shoulders, and walked me into the emergency ward.

  “Keep that handkerchief over the eye,” he said. “And try not to blink.” He was very nervous, and his face was covered with sweat. He had taken off his skullcap, and I could see him sweating beneath the hairs on his balding head.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I was frightened and was beginning to feel dizzy and nauseated. The pain in my left eye was fierce. I could feel it all along the left side of my body and in my groin.

  The nurse at the desk wanted to know what was wrong.

  “He was hit in the eye by a baseball,” Mr. Galanter said.

  She asked us to sit down and pressed a button on her desk. We sat down next to a middle-aged man with a blood-soaked bandage around a finger on his right hand. He sat there in obvious pain, resting his finger on his lap and nervously smoking a cigarette despite the sign on the wall that said NO SMOKING.

  He looked at us. “Ball game?” he asked.

  Mr. Galanter nodded. I kept my head straight, because it didn’t hurt so much when I didn’t move it.

  The man held up his finger. “Car door,” he said. “My kid slammed it on me.” He grimaced and put his hand back on his lap.

  A nurse came out of a door at the far end of the room and nodded to the man. He stood up. “Take care,” he said, and went out.

  “How’re you doing?” Mr. Galanter asked me.

  “My eye hurts,” I told him.

  “How’s the head?”

  “I feel dizzy.”

  “Are you nauseous?”

  “A little.”

  “You’ll be okay,” Mr. Galanter said, trying to sound encouraging. “You get a Purple Heart for today’s work, trooper.” But his voice was tense, and he looked frightened.

  “I’m sorry about all this, Mr. Galanter,” I said.

  “What are you sorry about, boy?” he said. “You played a great game.”

  “I’m sorry to be putting you to so much trouble.”

  “What trouble? Don’t be silly. I’m glad to help one of my troopers.”

  “I’m also sorry we lost.”

  “So we lost. So what? There’s next year, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t talk so much. Just take it easy.”

  “They’re a tough team,” I said.

  “That Saunders boy,” Mr. Galanter said, “the one who hit you. You know anything about him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I never saw a boy hit a ball like that.”

  “Mr. Galanter?”

  “Yes?”

  “My eye really hurts.”

  “We’ll be going in in a minute, boy. Hold on. Would your father be home now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your phone number?”

  I gave it to him.

  A nurse came out the door and nodded to us. Mr. Galanter helped me get to my feet. We walked through a corridor and followed the nurse into an examination room. It had white walls, a white chair, a white, glass-enclosed cabinet, and a tall metal table with a white sheet over the mattress. Mr. Galanter helped me onto the table, and I lay there and stared up at the white ceiling out of my right eye.

  “The doctor will be here in a moment,” the nurse said, and went out.

  “Feel any better?” Mr. Galanter asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  A young doctor came in. He had on a white gown and was wearing a stethoscope around his neck. He looked at us and smiled pleasantly.

  “Stopped a ball with your eye, I hear,” he said, smiling at me. “Let’s have a look at it.”

  I took off the wet handkerchief, opened my left eye, and gasped with the pain. He looked down at the eye, went to the cabinet, came back, and looked at the eye again through an instrument with a light attached to it. He straightened up and looked at Mr. Galanter.

  “Was he wearing glasses?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  The doctor put the instrument over the eye again. “Can you see the light?” he asked me.

  “It’s a little blurred,” I told him.

  “I think I’ll go call your father,” Mr. Galanter said.

  The doctor looked at him. “You’re not the boy’s father?”

  “I’m his gym teacher.”

  “You had better call his father, then. We’ll probably be moving him upstairs.”

  “You’re going to keep him here?”

  “For a little while,” the doctor said pleasantly. “Just as a precaution.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Galanter said.

  “Could you ask my father to bring my other pair of glasses?” I said.

  “You won’t be able to wear glasses for a while, son,” the doctor told me. “We’ll have to put a bandage over that eye.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Mr. Galanter said, and went out.

  “How does your head feel?” the doctor asked me. “It hurts.”

  “Does that hurt?” he asked, moving my head from side to side.

  I felt myself break out into a cold sweat. “Yes, sir,
” I said.

  “Do you feel nauseous at all?”

  “A little,” I said. “My left wrist hurts, too.”

  “Let’s take a look at it. Does that hurt?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, you really put in a full day. Who won?”

  “They did.”

  “Too bad. Now look, you lie as quiet as you can and try not to blink your eyes. I’ll be right back.”

  He went quickly out.

  I lay very still on the table. Except for the time I had had my tonsils out I had never been overnight in a hospital. I was frightened, and I wondered what was causing the pain in my eye. Some of the glass from the lens must have scratched it, I thought. I wondered why I hadn’t anticipated Danny Saunders’ going for the curve, and, thinking of Danny Saunders, I found myself hating him again and all the other side-curled fringe wearers on his yeshiva team. I thought of my father receiving the phone call from Mr. Galanter and rushing over to the hospital, and I had to hold myself back from crying. He was probably sitting at his desk, writing. The call would frighten him terribly. I found I could not keep back my tears, and I blinked a few times and winced with the pain.

  The young doctor returned, and this time he had another doctor with him. The second doctor looked a little older and had blond hair. He came over to me without a word and looked at my eye with the instrument.

  I thought I saw him go tense. “Is Snydman around?” he said, looking through the instrument.

  “I passed him a few minutes ago,” the first doctor said.

  “He had better have a look at it,” the second doctor said. He straightened slowly.

  “You lie still now, son,” the first doctor said. “A nurse will be in in a minute.”

  They went out. A nurse came in and smiled at me. “This won’t hurt a bit,” she said, and put some drops into my left eye. “Now keep it closed and put this bit of cotton over it. That’s a good boy.” She went out.

  Mr. Galanter came back. “He’s on his way over,” he said.

  “How did he sound?”

  “I don’t know. He said he’d be right over.”

  “It’s not good for him to be worried. He’s not too well.”

  “You’ll be okay, boy. This is a fine hospital. How’s the eye?”

  “It feels better. They put some drops in it.”

  “Good. Good. I told you this is a fine hospital. Had my appendix out here.”

  Three men came into the room, the two doctors and a short, middle-aged man with a round face and a graying mustache. He had dark hair and was not wearing a gown.

  “This is Dr. Snydman, son,” the first doctor said to me. “He wants to have a look at your eye.”

  Dr. Snydman came over to me and smiled. “I hear you had quite a ball game there, young man. Let’s Have a look.” He had a warm smile, and I liked him immediately. He took the cotton off the eye and looked through the instrument. He looked at the eye a long time. Then he straightened slowly and turned to Mr. Galanter.

  “Are you the boy’s father?”

  “I called his father,” Mr. Galanter said. “He’s coming over right away.”

  “We’ll need his signature,” Dr. Snydman said. He turned to the other two doctors. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it’s right on the edge. I’ll have to have a better look at it upstairs.” He turned to me and smiled warmly.

  “An eye is not a thing to stop a ball with, young man.”

  “He hit it real fast,” I said.

  “I’m sure he did. We’re going to have you brought upstairs so we can have a better look at it.”

  The three doctors went out.

  “What’s upstairs?” I asked Mr. Galanter.

  “The eye ward, I guess. They have all the big instruments up there.”

  “What do they want to look at it up there for?”

  “I don’t know, boy. They didn’t tell me anything.”

  Two hospital orderlies came into the room, wheeling a stretcher table. When they lifted me off the examination table, the pain rammed through my head and sent flashes of black, red and white colors into my eyes. I cried out.

  “Sorry, kid,” one of the orderlies said sympathetically. They put me down carefully on the stretcher table and wheeled me out of the room and along the corridor. Mr. Galanter followed.

  “Here’s the elevator,” the other orderly said. They were both young and looked almost alike in their white jackets, white trousers, and white shoes.

  The elevator took a long time going up. I lay on the stretcher table, staring up out of my right eye at the fluorescent light on the ceiling. It looked blurred, and I saw it change color, going from white to red to black, then back to white.

  “I never saw a light like that,” I said.

  “Which light is that?” one of the orderlies asked.

  “The fluorescent. How do they get it to change colors like that?”

  The orderlies looked at each other.

  “Just take it easy, kid,” one of them said. “Just relax.”

  “I never saw a light change colors like that,” I said.

  “Jesus,” Mr. Galanter said under his breath.

  He was standing alongside the stretcher table with his back to the rear of the elevator. I tried turning my head to look at him, but the pain was too much and I lay still. I had never heard him use that word before, and I wondered what had made him use it now. I lay there, staring up at the light and wondering why Mr. Galanter had used that word, when I saw one of the orderlies glance down at me with a reassuring grin. I remembered Danny Saunders standing in front of the plate and staring at me with that idiot grin on his lips. I closed my right eye and lay still, listening to the noise of the elevator. This is a slow elevator, I thought. But how do they get the light to change colors like that? Then the light was bad all over and everyone crowded around me. Someone was wiping my forehead, and the light was suddenly gone.

  • • •

  I opened my right eye. A nurse in a white uniform said, “Well, now, how are we doing, young man?” and for a long moment I stared up at her and didn’t know what was happening. Then I remembered everything—and I couldn’t say a word.

  I saw the nurse standing over my bed and smiling down at me. She was heavily built and had a round, fleshy face and short, dark hair.

  “Well, now, let’s see,” she said. “Move your head a little, just a little, and tell me how it feels.”

  I moved my head from side to side on the pillow.

  “It feels fine,” I said.

  “That’s good. Are you at all hungry?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s very good.” She smiled. “You won’t need this now.”

  She pushed aside the curtain that enclosed the bed. I blinked in the sudden sunlight. “Isn’t that better?”

  “Yes ma’am. Thank you. Is my father here?”

  “He’ll be in shortly. You lie still now and rest: They’ll be bringing supper in soon. You’re going to be just fine.”

  She went away.

  I lay still for a moment, looking at the sunlight. It was coming in through tall windows in the wall opposite my bed. I could see the windows only through my right eye, and they looked blurred. I moved my head slowly to the left, not taking it off the pillow and moving it carefully so as not to disturb the thick bandage that covered my left eye. There was no pain at all in my head, and I wondered how they had got the pain to leave so quickly. That’s pretty good, I thought, remembering what Mr. Galanter had said about this hospital. For a moment I wondered where he was and where my father was; then I forgot them both as I watched the man who was in the bed to my left.

  He looked to be in his middle thirties, and he had broad shoulders and a lean face with a square jaw and a dark stubble. His hair was black, combed flat on top of his head and parted in the middle. There were dark curls of hair on the backs of his long hands, and he wore a black patch over his right eye. His nose was flat, and a half-inch scar beneath
his lower lip stood out white beneath the dark stubble. He was sitting up in the bed, playing a game of cards with himself and smiling broadly. Some cards were arranged in rows on the blanket, and he was drawing other cards from the deck he held in his hands and adding them to the rows.

  He saw me looking at him.

  “Hello, there,” he said, smiling. “How’s the old punching bag?” I didn’t understand what he meant.

  “The old noggin. The head.”

  “Oh. It feels good.”

  “Lucky boy. A clop in the head is a rough business. I went four once and got clopped in the head, and it took me a month to get off my back. Lucky boy.” He held a card in his hands and looked down at the rows of cards on the blanket. “Ah, so I cheat a little. So what?” He tucked the card into a row. “I hit the canvas so hard I rattled my toenails. That was some clop.” He drew another card and inspected it. “Caught me with that right and clopped me real good. A whole month on my back.” He was looking at the rows of cards on the blanket. “Here we go,” he smiled broadly, and added the card to one of the rows.

  I couldn’t understand most of what he was talking about, but I didn’t want to be disrespectful and turn away, so I kept my head turned toward him. I looked at the black patch on his right eye. It covered the eye as well as the upper part of his cheekbone, and it was held in place by a black band that went diagonally under his right ear, around his head and across his forehead. After a few minutes of looking at him, I realized he had completely forgotten about me, and I turned my head slowly away from him and to the right.

  I saw a boy of about ten or eleven. He was lying in the bed with his head on the pillow, his palms flat under his head and his elbows jutting upward. He had light blond hair and a fine face, a beautiful face. He lay there with his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling and not noticing me looking at him. Once or twice I saw his eyes blink. I turned my head away.