3
Eli Bellitto slammed the receiver back onto its cradle. The abrupt movement evoked a jab of pain from his heavily bandaged groin. He groaned and looked at his doctor.
"You have idiots in your administration."
Dr. Najam Sadiq smiled. "You will hear no argument from me," he said in decent English.
Dr. Sadiq had been making late rounds in St. Vincent's when Eli arrived in the emergency department; as the most immediately available urologist, he'd been assigned to Eli's case.
Eli tried to shift his position in the bed and that ignited another bonfire of pain. He glanced at the morphine pump attached to the pole next to his bed. A PCA pump, the nurse had called it. Patient Controlled Analgesia. A button clipped to the bed rail allowed him to self-medicate-within limits-but he'd been holding off because the drug made him foggy and he feared saying the wrong thing. He didn't think he could hold off much longer though.
At least he'd had the presence of mind last night to demand a private room. He didn't care how much it cost. The last thing in the world he needed now was a nosy roommate.
"As I was saying," Dr. Sadiq said, "you are a lucky man, Mr. Bellitto. Very lucky. If that knife had sliced but a quarter of an inch further to the left, we would have had a much bigger problem."
Eli thought, I've got oxygen running into my nose, morphine hooked into my left arm, an IV running into my right, and a tube in my bladder draining bloody urine into a bag hanging near the floor. This is not lucky.
Dr. Sadiq went on. "The knife sliced into the base of your penis, just missing your urethra. We saved your penis without much trouble, but we could not save the right testicle, I'm afraid. It was too badly lacerated. I had to remove it."
The room seemed to darken around Eli as he listened. Not so much the details-that he had been sexually maimed and mutilated, that a piece of him had been amputated-but that it had occurred at all. What had happened to his invulnerability? Why had it failed him?
More importantly, who was that man last night? Had it been a chance encounter, or could he have been following him and Adrian? Could he know about the Circle?
Eli forced a smile. "I'm not thinking about starting a family. Not at my age."
"But you do not have to worry too much about sexual function. There will be scarring, of course, and that may interfere with erections, but with proper care and therapy, you should be able to resume normal sexual function within a couple of months."
Eli didn't care about sexual function. Last night had not been about sex, although the man who had attacked them seemed to think so. Not that Eli could blame him. Two men in the dark with an unconscious boy... the prosaic, untutored mind would naturally leap to such a conclusion. But the Circle was devoted to concerns far more profound than mere sex.
Eli wanted no more talk about his wounds or his chances for full recovery. He changed the subject.
"My friend, Mr. Minkin, the one with the head injuries... how is he doing?"
Adrian was an ox, yet their attacker had felled him in an instant and left him senseless.
Dr. Sadiq shook his head. "That I do not know. He was admitted to the neurology service. Is he your... partner?"
"Partner?"
Now why on earth would Dr. Sadiq think Adrian had anything to do with the shop? Unless... could he be even considering that he and Adrian were lovers! Yes, that had to be it.
Anger flared in Eli. What's wrong with this world? Everything is not about sex!
"Oh, no," Eli said. "He's just an old friend."
A tiny shift of his hips was rewarded by a disproportionate shock of pain. He was suddenly very tired.
"I think I'd like to rest now, doctor."
"Of course," Dr. Sadiq said. "I'll look in on you again during my evening rounds."
As soon as the door closed Eli grabbed the morphine delivery button and began jabbing at it like a telegraph operator. Soon a delicious lethargy suffused him, pushing away the pain and worries about strange men who lunged out of the darkness.