From Safelight

          We found Rolly reclined on sloped concrete rubble in the courtyard of an abandoned building. His legs out, ankles as thick as his thighs, his hand fished for a bottle wedged between two bricks.
         "I wanna go to hospital oh-seven," he said. "I'm sick."
         He wasn’t sick. Rolly called every day. He got drunk every day, needed a place to stay, so he called us to take him to the hospital, where he slept on a stretcher that they’d wheel out into a hallway near the lobby.
          I set the drug bag in the dirt. Burnett found a red milk crate, brushed dust from the top, sat, and tapped Rolly’s bottle with the antenna of his radio. 
          "What’re you drinking?"
          "Thunderbird."
          "How much was it?"
          "Two oh nine."
          Burnett turned, smiling.
          "Two oh nine. He knows it exactly. That with or without tax?"
          "With tax. Dollar ninety-four without."
          "Jesus."
          "Dollar ninety-four warm. Dollar ninety-nine cold."
          Burnett gave me a look. 
          "Guy’s a whiz with numbers. How much's Night Train?"
          “Dollar eighty-seven with tax. Dollar seventy-five without."
          "And warm?"
          "I already told you. Nickel less. Dollar seventy."
          "Whattaya buy it? Warm or cold?"
          Rolly rolled his shoulders.
          "Don't matter to me. Warm or cold. I won't lie to you. I just wanna drink.” He looked over as if he recognized me for the first time. “Take a picture,” he said.
          “He remembers you take pictures.”
          “I don’t need a picture,” I said. “I got ten of you sitting right there. Do something new and I’ll take a picture of that. Like if you were sober. That’d be a picture.”
          “Aw.”
          “What?”
          “You’re mad,” he said. “You in a bad mood today.”
          Burnett placed two fingers on Rolly’s knee. 
          "You ever had a job?"
          "Sure I had a job."
          "What?"
          “I boxed.”
          “You boxed?”
          “Look at his hands,” I said.
          Burnett rolled a concrete lump the size of a baseball in his fingers. He looked at Rolly critically.
          “So where’d you box?”
          “All over. Vegas. Wherever.”
          “What happened?”
          “Nothing happened.”
          “Why didn’t you stay in the boxing business?”
          “I guess I had enough.”
          “You started drinking. That’s what happened,” Burnett said.
          “I was sent to prison is what happened.”
          “Bullshit.”
          “All right.”
          “What for?”
          “Killing someone.”
          “Bullshit,” Burnett said again. He cleared his throat and spit past Rolly’s foot. “You listenin to this?” he said to me.
          “What else would I be doing?”
          “Guy was messing with me,” Rolly said. “Messing with my woman.”
          “Uh-huh,” Burnett said. “What’d you use to kill him? Gun?”
          “I didn’t use anything,” he said. “I used myself.”
          “Look at his hands,” I said again.
          Rolly had enormous, knobby, arthritic hands. Old boxer’s hands. He could not close them all the way.
          "So how long'd you do?"
          "Six years eight months. Parole for two."
          "And where'd you do it?"
          "Couple places."
          "Where was the first?"
          "Attica."
          "What'd you do there?"
          "Worked in the kitchen. Did that two years."
          "What cell block?"
          "Eight."
          "You were in cell block eight?"
          "That's what I just said."
          "And after that?"
          "I was down in four."
          "What'd you do there?"
          “Still in the kitchen."
          "And how long for that?"
          "Nine months. Then I was upstate. Sing Sing. In two north. I made street signs."
          The three other buildings that formed the courtyard were all abandoned and boarded, here and there a window showing black where the plywood had fallen or been pried off for some other use. Pigeons sat on concrete window ledges.
          "What'd you do when you got out?" Burnett asked.
          "I didn’t do anything," he said.
          "You didn't go back into the boxing business?"
          "No."
          “And the woman?”
          Rolly just looked away and didn’t answer. Burnett tossed his lump of concrete aside and stood.
          "Get up, Rolly."
          Rolly reached for his green bottle. Burnett pushed his hand away.
          "Nah. You're not drinking anymore. Get up."
          Burnett held Rolly at arm's length.
          "You boxed?"
          "I don't anymore," Rolly said.
          "Of course you don't. You're an alcoholic. You're forty-two and can hardly walk. Your ankles're like a fucking elephant’s. And every day you’re calling. Bugging us. Forget that we could be helping someone else. I could be eating my lunch.”
          Burnett held him by the shoulder. I noticed a kid watching from around the corner of the building.
          "Jack," I said.
          Burnett saw the kid, and glowered. The kid ducked away. I stepped over to check the slot between the two buildings. The kid had stopped halfway. When he saw me he kept on running and tailed off onto the sidewalk, out of sight. Burnett turned back.
          "Show me how you used to box, Rolly."
          "I don't do it no more,” he said in a meek voice.
          "Show me how you used to."
          Rolly raised his hands to his chest and Burnett punched him in the jaw, grabbing Rolly’s collar to keep him from falling. Burnett punched him again so I heard the clacking sound as Rolly’s teeth knocked against each other. I started forward as if I was going to stop him. Then I turned as if to wait between the buildings. I could hear Burnett grunting behind me, the sound of flesh on flesh. I turned again. I brought my camera out and took a shot of Burnett hitting. Burnett smacking with his open hand. Burnett pushing him back when Rolly tried to protect himself. Burnett smiling with his arm around Rolly’s neck. Burnett prodding him on with one stiff arm between the shoulderblades.
          "I gotta wear gloves. He almost fucking bled on me."

 
          The ambulance was parked twenty yards down the block to the left. To our right was a concrete stoop. The boy I’d seen before stood on the other side of the stoop, and was talking to a man and woman through the bars of the railing. When we came out from between the two buildings they all looked up and the boy walked away quickly, glancing over his shoulder several times. The woman, tall, skinny, with bony knees and elbows, yelled out, "You all right, Rolly?"
          "Yeah, I'm all right," he yelled back.
          "You're bleeding!" she shrieked. She stood abruptly. She was five foot nine, with big feet, and big hands, and an inch of matted hair. She was about forty years old. She tapped the man sitting beside her. "He's bleeding!"
          "I'm all right," Rolly said over his shoulder.
          A raised edge to the sidewalk, and as Rolly looked back his foot caught the edge. Burnett supported him with one hand under his left arm. Rolly leaned on Burnett, then slumped and sat on the pavement. Burnett stood over him, smiling.
          “Get up, Rolly,” Burnett said.
          “He’s bleeding!” the woman down the block shrieked. “Look’t’m! Look’t his face! He’s bleeding! They hurt him!”
          “I don’t fucking believe this,” Burnett muttered. Then yelling to the woman, “He fell down. He’s drunk.”
          “His mouth’s bleeding! I see it! Blood!”
          The woman stood. The man stood, too, reluctantly. He was a trim-looking guy wearing khakis, a white button-down shirt, and a gold chain with a gold cross around his neck. Fifty years old. Some church guy. The two walked over, the scrawny lady striding quickly, waving an arm, and the short, well-dressed man following behind.
          "He’s not bleeding,” Burnett said.
          “He’s bleeding!”
          "That's wine," Burnett said. Then to me, “Talk to her, Frank.”
          “He was drinking when we found him. That red you see is wine.”
          “That ain’t wine.”
          “Night Train.”
          “Lie!” she shrieked. “Lie! Lie!”
          The left side of her mouth twitched. She squinched her eyes shut and stood with her head turned, shaking. An older woman and two teenaged boys approached, wheeling one of those wire carts that you tilt to push. She set the basket upright. Rolly sat on the concrete, looking drunk, bewildered. Burnett caught my eye.
          "Get’m in the bus."
          The trim little man bent to help.
          "How you doin, Rolly?" the man asked in a gentle voice, and Burnett, who was already annoyed by the gathering crowd, said impatiently, "We got him. Step back."
          The man ignored him. Again, in a soft voice, "You hurt?"
          Burnett held the man back with one hand. The woman with the grocery cart shouted, "Don't you touch him! He ain't done nothin! Don't you touch him!" Burnett made a little huffing noise and pushed the man back. He tried to raise Rolly with one hand but only dragged him across the concrete. Both women yelled out, "You’re hurting him!"
          “We’re gettin him in the ambulance,” Burnett said.
          “He’s bleedin!”
          Burnett turned on me.
          "You gonna help, Frank?"
          I’d been standing back, fingering the camera in my pocket, wondering how to get a photograph without making a scene. As I stepped up, Burnett looked past me and his eyes grew wide, startled. I turned to see a flash of metal. Something passed under my right arm. I fell. A blossoming on my right side, a warmth that flowed into my entire body. There’d been an insulated feeling to the whole exchange, and then suddenly it was like that moment when you come out of an air conditioned house into the heat of the day. I lost perhaps ten seconds. Then I was on my back with a view of sky between brownstones. I heard sirens faintly. People ran back and forth near my head, shouting. I just lay there, overcome, for a moment, with a feeling of well-being. Burnett stood near my head, a blue glove on his right hand, pulling a glove on the left, saying, "I gotta protect myself, Frank, never know who you been fucking." I tried to sit up and was surprised when I couldn’t. I tried to sit up again and Burnett held me down with two gloved fingers. They were putting me on a board. Strapping me in. I felt hands on either side of my head. Burnett placed three fingers on my wrist.  "Frank," I heard someone say. "How you doin, Frank?" Burnett seemed far away. He was counting my pulse.
          "I got one?" I asked.
          He didn't answer.
          "What is it?"
          He stopped counting.
          "Little fast."
          "Burnett."
          "Yeah."
          "What is it?"
          "One ten."
          "How's it feel?"
          "Like you'll live."
          I was being lifted. Burnett had his gloved hand at my right side.
          "How's that feel? That hurt?"
          "Ah fuck."
          "That?"
          "Would you fucking stop it?"
          We were in the ambulance. Burnett was bandaging me. I felt something both sharp and heavy on my side. I began to sit up and Burnett held me down.
          "She get you anywhere else?"
          "I don't know."
          I was lying on the stretcher looking up at the hanging bags of saline. Burnett was holding me down.
          "How deep is it?" I asked.
          "Hardly a scratch," he said.
          “What was it?”
          “Knife, Frank. Didn’t you see it?”
          I tried to sit up again. I was restless. "Come on, Frank. Jesus. . ." They put an oxygen mask on me. Burnett was saying, "Take it, easy, Frank. Fucking take it easy.” I was infinitely grateful that it was Burnett treating me. He was a great medic. Much better than I was. He was a thug, but he was a great medic. Burnett was going into my arms with the needles, the clear lines swinging on either side. He was talking to the driver up front. Then we were at the hospital and they jerked me out. The wheels landed roughly, with a pain that jolted through my entire right side. I did not really feel it for a moment, and then I did.
          Inside the trauma room, Towers and Joseph came into view over my head. There were two stethoscopes on my chest. They cut my uniform off. Six pairs of hands rolled me, and they felt my whole back, the area inside my legs, my neck, my stomach, my back again, a finger in my rectum. Dr. Towers was over me, listening with his stethoscope, and then taking it off one ear, then the other, smiling, and saying, "You must've said your prayers this week, Frank. Been a good boy." They gave me a chest tube and took a chest X-ray and gave me a unit of blood and listened to my lungs about eight times. Then they sent me upstairs where, later that night, Norman came in wearing surgical scrubs, a blue hairnet, and around his neck, a dangling white mask.