For a moment Eddie only stood there, unable to believe that Roland had done it, had really gone ahead and done this idiotic thing in spite of his promise—his sincere fucking guarantee, as far as that went—of what the consequences would be.
He stood for a moment, eyes rolling like the eyes of a frightened horse at the onset of a thunderstorm . . . except of course there was no thunderstorm, except for the one in the head.
All right. All right, goddammit.
There might only be a moment. That was all the gunslinger might give him, and Eddie damned well knew it. He glanced at the door and saw the black hands freeze with a gold necklace half in and half out of a purse that already glittered like a pirate’s cache of treasure. Although he could not hear it, Eddie sensed that Roland was speaking to the owner of the black hands.
He pulled the knife from the gunslinger’s purse and then rolled over the limp, breathing body which lay before the doorway. The eyes were open but blank, rolled up to the whites.
“Watch, Roland!” Eddie screamed. That monotonous, idiotic, never-ending wind blew in his ears. Christ, it was enough to drive anyone bugshit. “Watch very closely! I want to complete your fucking education! I want to show you what happens when you fuck over the Dean brothers!”
He brought the knife down to the gunslinger’s throat.
CHAPTER 2
Ringing the Changes
1
August, 1959:
When the intern came outside half an hour later, he found Julio leaning against the ambulance which was still parked in the emergency bay of Sisters of Mercy Hospital on 23rd Street. The heel of one of Julio’s pointy-toed boots was hooked over the front fender. He had changed to a pair of glaring pink pants and a blue shirt with his name written in gold stitches over the left pocket: his bowling league outfit. George checked his watch and saw that Julio’s team—The Spics of Supremacy—would already be rolling.
“Thought you’d be gone,” George Shavers said. He was an intern at Sisters of Mercy. “How’re your guys gonna win without the Wonder Hook?”
“They got Miguel Basale to take my place. He ain’t steady, but he gets hot sometimes. They’ll be okay.” Julio paused. “I was curious about how it came out.” He was the driver, a Cubano with a sense of humor George wasn’t even sure Julio knew he had. He looked around. Neither of the paramedics who rode with them were in sight.
“Where are they?” George asked.
“Who? The fuckin Bobbsey Twins? Where do you think they are? Chasin Minnesota poontang down in the Village. Any idea if she’ll pull through?”
“Don’t know.”
He tried to sound sage and knowing about the unknown, but the fact was that first the resident on duty and then a pair of surgeons had taken the black woman away from him almost faster than you could say hail Mary fulla grace （which had actually been on his lips to say—the black lady really hadn’t looked as if she was going to last very long）。
“She lost a hell of a lot of blood.”
“No shit.”
George was one of sixteen interns at Sisters of Mercy, and one of eight assigned to a new program called Emergency Ride. The theory was that an intern riding with a couple of paramedics could sometimes make the difference between life and death in an emergency situation. George knew that most drivers and paras thought that wet-behind-the-ears interns were as likely to kill red-blankets as save them, but George thought maybe it worked.
Sometimes.
Either way it made great PR for the hospital, and although the interns in the program liked to bitch about the extra eight hours （without pay） it entailed each week, George Shavers sort of thought most of them felt the way he did himself—proud, tough, able to take whatever they threw his way.