Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Booth hung up. The way he hung up rang in Ronkers's ear for a long time. The walnuts dropping on the roof were almost soothing after the sound Booth had made.

"I think we've got him," Ronkers told Kit.

"'We,' is it?" she said. "You sound like you've joined up."

"I have," Ronkers said. "I'm going to call Margaret Brant first thing in the morning and tell her about my bumper-sticker idea."

But Margaret Brant needed no coaching. In the morning when Ronkers went out to his car, there was a freshly stuck-on bumper sticker, front and back. Dark blue lettering on a bright yellow background; it ran half the length of the bumper.

HARLAN BOOTH HAS THE CLAP

On his way to the hospital, Ronkers saw more of the adorned cars. Some drivers were parked in gas stations, working furiously to remove the stickers. But that was a hard, messy job. Most people appeared to be too busy to do anything about the stickers right away.

"I counted thirty-four, just driving across town," Ronkers told Kit on the phone. "And it's still early in the morning."

"Bardlong got to work early, too," Kit told him.

"What do you mean?"

"He hired a real tree outfit this time. The tree surgeons came right after you left." "Ah, real tree surgeons

"They have helmets, too, and their names are Mickey, Max, and Harv," Kit said. "And they brought a whole tub of that black healing stuff."

"Dr. Heart," said Ronkers's receptionist, cutting in. "Dr. Heart, please, to 339?

"Raunch?"

But the receptionist was interrupting because it was so early; there just might not be another doctor around the hospital. Ronkers came in early, often hours ahead of his first appointment -- to make his hospital rounds, yes, but mainly to sit in his office alone for a while.

"I've got to go," he told Kit. "I'll call back."

"Who's Dr. Hart?" Kit asked. "Somebody new?"

"Yup," Ronkers said, but he was thinking: No, it's probably somebody old.

He was out of his office, and half through the connecting tunnel which links the main hospital to several doctors' offices, when he heard the intercom call for Dr. Heart again and recognized the room number: 339. That was old Herr Kesler's room, Ronkers remembered. Nurses, seeing him coming, opened doors for him; they opened doors in all directions, down all corridors, and they always looked after him a little disappointed that he did not pass through their doors, that he veered left instead of right. When he got to Kesler's room, the cardiac-resuscitation cart was parked beside the bed and Dr. Heart was already there. It was Danfors -- a better Dr. Heart than Ronkers could have been, Ronkers knew; Danfors was a heart specialist.

Kesler was dead. That is, technically, when your heart stops, you're dead. But Danfors was already holding the electrode plates alongside Kesler's chest; the old man was about to get a tremendous jolt. Ah, the new machines, Ronkers marveled. Ronkers had once brought a man from the dead with 500 volts from the cardioverter, lifting the body right off the bed, the limbs jangling -- like pithing a frog in Introductory Biology.

"How's Kit, George?" Danfors asked.

"Just fine," Ronkers said. Danfors was checking the IV of sodium bicarbonate running into Kesler. "You must come see what she's done to the house. And bring Lilly."

"Right-O," said Danfors, giving Kesler 500 volts.

Kesler's jaw was rigid on his chest and his toothless gums were clenched together fast, yet he managed to force a ghastly quarter-moon of a smile and expel a sentence of considerable volume and energy. It was German, of course, which surprised Danfors; he probably didn't know Kesler was an Austrian.

"Noch ein Bier!" Kesler ordered.

"What'd he say?" Danfors asked Ronkers.

"One more beer," Ronkers translated.

But the current, of course, was cut. Kesler was dead again. Five hundred volts had woken him up, but Kesler did not have enough voltage of his own to keep himself awake.

"Shit," Danfors said. "I got three in a row with this thing when the hospital first got it, and I thought it was the best damn machine alive. But then I lost four out of the next five. So I was four-and-four with the thing; nothing is foolproof, of course. And now this one's the tie breaker." Danfors managed to make his record with the heart machine sound like a losing season.

Now Ronkers didn't want to call Kit back; he knew Kesler's death would upset her. But she called him before he could work it out.