What happens when a surgeon turns his eye from the operating room to crime fiction? In "Stone Hearts", Craig R. Smith, MD, cardiac surgeon and former Chair of the Department of Surgery, builds a medical caper rooted in transplant, intrigue, and the peculiar moral weather that hovers above and beyond the hospital.
Follow along each Friday as we release the novel one chapter at a time. You can also see more on Dr. Smith's Substack, Long Incision.
Spring, 1974
The flexy round toes of Reggie’s black high-tops skittered across the face of the chain link gate without gaining traction and left him suspended by his screaming fingers, wedged into the lowest right-angles of adjacent links. Vodka metabolites were still sloshing around in his brain. His groin swung heavily into the fence. The boathouse hoses would be no use if he couldn’t get over the gate. He lunged violently upward, reaching the horizontal bar at the top of the gate with one hand, then the other, and finally his flailing legs dragged up and over. He partially braked his descent with his grip on the top of the fence but still landed too hard to stay on his feet in the slippery gravel.
On the other side of the fence, Elias and Emile were slowly getting out of the car, seeming unconvinced by his plan. Reggie pushed himself upright, brushed off a few pieces of cold gravel stuck to his palms, and started running toward a dark shape outlined by the reflected light shimmering on the surface of the river—the dock, right where it should be! Inland on higher ground he saw the boathouse roof outlined in silhouette. He had just reached the wood-plank walkway surrounding the boathouse when he heard the fence rattling far behind him. The faint ambient light was enough to reveal the two hoses, coiled on hooks against the wall of the boathouse, exactly where they’d been five years ago! He grabbed the spray nozzle of the closest hose, yanked a loop free, and squeezed. No resistance. No water. Reggie heard feet scraping gravel behind him. He grabbed the nozzle of the other hose, jerked all the coils free with his other hand and flung them onto the boards. He squeezed, and squeezed. He was smashing the nozzle into the wall of the boathouse in frustration when Elias and Jean appeared beside him.
Elias granted Reggie grudging credit for the general plan, but deduced that the shut-off valves must be inside the building. Reggie tried the door close by on the side wall without success, then he ran around onto the wider front boardwalk and yanked ferociously on each of the locked bay doors. The three partners stood on the boardwalk and looked around for inspiration. Elias was studying the sign over the bay doors while Jean looked south at the Manhattan skyline.
They didn’t notice Reggie clenching and unclenching his fists, breathing heavily, poised like a boxer barely restrained in his corner. There was no time to empty pockets or remove his high-tops. He turned west and ran down the gangway. The brothers Bessette turned toward the sound in time to see Reggie reach the edge of the dock at sprint-speed and launch himself, fully extended in a flat racing dive.
Entering the river felt like diving into broken glass. The ink-black water was shockingly cold and the current stronger than it looked. Although Reggie was swimming hard due west in his best freestyle, his vector sum was southwest. He was sobering up fast and felt partially cleansed by the filthy, cold, foul-tasting water washing through his clothes next to his skin. By the time he climbed out on the Jersey side he’d be well sanitized. But swimming across the Hudson in this current, in water this cold was…what he wanted? Or was it? Pondering his options broke his concentration and slowed his pace, already impaired by shoes and clothing, and his southerly vector increased. He could hear Elias shouting something from the dock. Whatever the fuck, I’m not going back there! he exhorted himself, and tried to pick up his westerly pace again.
His hand struck something. Frightened, he scissor-kicked away, and rolled up to look. It was an empty mooring buoy, straining at its anchor chain and tilted out of level by the current. He threw both arms over it, scraping loose a shower of rust. It supported enough of his weight to rest submerged to his armpits. The current turned him, legs now trailing south. The dock he’d departed from wasn’t visible and the only sounds were distant traffic and the soft murmur-splash of the river. Lights on the Tappan Zee bridge were visible at the northern horizon. He kicked himself to the side to look south downriver. The eastern shoreline was dark to the George Washington Bridge, about a mile away. Its looming mass blacked out a bridge-shaped swath of city lights. It was time to decide whether he was striking out for Jersey or not. He started shivering. Maybe a life devoted to wreaking vengeance on Jean Bessette and his Italian friends would be preferable to the remorse inflicted on everyone when his bloated, chalk-white, fish-eaten corpse washed up on the Battery.
A light flashed on downstream, rocking up and down. The light was coming through a porthole just below the deck line of what appeared to be a moored sailboat, perhaps 100 yards to the south. A thunking sound was followed by a blast of light streaming out from below deck through the now-open companionway. A man emerged carrying a powerful flashlight. He began light-sweeping the water to the north until he fixed Reggie in its beam.
Decision time. Reggie had already ruled out a suicidal Hudson crossing. If he swam east for the shore, in this current, he would likely fetch up on the rocks near the Bridge. No matter what his plan, the current would sweep him close to the sailboat as soon as he let go of his buoy. Reggie was shivering violently, he sensed his limbs losing power and coordination, and he knew he didn’t have much time left in the cold water. He let go of the buoy and let the current carry him. As he approached the sailboat he wondered why the man had not spoken.
With a few easy strokes he was passing the sailboat’s mooring buoy and pulled himself close to the port side. The man had stayed in the cockpit, holding the flashlight beam on Reggie, and it was Reggie who broke the silence. “Yo, man, can you let me up to dry out a bit?” Reggie started vigorously treading water and stroking against the current to hold his position.
Still no response. To Reggie, the man’s options, like his own, seemed stark, and few. Finally, the man said “What are you doing in the river in the middle of the night?”
“I had to jump in off the Canoe Club dock at Tubby Hook. Long story. I can explain! Can I come up?”
Another painfully long pause, then “Work your way around to starboard—the other side—there’s a boarding ladder aft.”
Reggie let the current sweep him south. A dinghy was trailing the stern on a taut painter that Reggie grabbed to help fight the current. He was staring straight up at DULCINEA, above BVI. A few hard strokes up the starboard side brought him to the boarding ladder. When he reached the rung that raised his waist out of the water he remembered why he’d jumped in the river in the first place. Too late, he thought, but he was feeling reasonably well washed off. That was one of many parts of the longer story he was determined not to tell.
His host kept the flashlight beam on Reggie’s face and stayed on the port side of the cockpit while Reggie climbed onto the deck, dripping dirty Hudson River water on the dry teak. The two men stood in darkness on opposite sides of the shaft of light projecting from the open companionway through the center of the cockpit. Reggie was still shivering violently. The wary, faceless man in the shadows had Reggie pinned in place with his flashlight beam, scanning up and down his body, as if to frisk him with light.
The man said “Why don’t you take those wet clothes off and I’ll get you a towel. Just stand right there.” The man continued observing with the flashlight until Reggie was in his underwear. Then he disappeared down the companionway, reappearing moments later with a large towel over one arm and a green Hudson Bay blanket over the other. Reggie saw the man clearly for the first time. He was average height with slumping, narrow shoulders, and a flat waist…clean-shaven, wearing wire-rim glasses, and had fashionably long brown hair that broke above his collar. Reggie guessed he was in his thirties. The man tossed him the towel. “Dry off, then you can wrap up in the blanket.” He laid the blanket on the bench rimming the cockpit behind Reggie. Reggie dried himself as fast as he could make his shivering hands move, then buried himself knees-to-chest in the blanket on the bench. The man stood nearby, watching, until Reggie’s shivering slowed and his teeth stopped chattering. Reggie could see stains in his wet pants and underwear lying on the deck but didn’t think they were obvious enough to give him away. But he needed some kind of story, now.
“I’m sorry to be a hassle, man, but you may have saved my life! I thought when I jumped the fence that motherfucker wouldn’t follow, but he did, and I had to dive in off the dock. I knew I could outswim him.” Reggie hoped the man would slow down the narrative with a question, or a comment, and give him time to pull a story together, but the man stayed mute and expressionless. “My buddies and me were at a bar on Broadway near Dyckman, shooting pool and having some brews. Too many brews, maybe, but we were winning big at doubles eight-ball. It was a crowd that didn’t like to see us win.”
In Reggie’s peripheral vision new shadows flickered in the companionway. Accompanied by the sound of footsteps on the ladder the top of a head appeared, then a head and neck, then a chest, head, and neck—it became the starkly backlit outline of a woman, who stopped halfway up to the deck, and coldly appraised Reggie. She and the man in the cockpit exchanged looks. She disappeared back below deck.
Reggie still hadn’t explain why he jumped in the river, which by this point sounded crazy even to him. He knew the two Dulcinea crew members he’d seen were white. Grasping for ways to embellish his story, Reggie leaned on cultural stereotypes around yachting and guessed that racial justice wouldn’t be their highest priority. A series of scenes formed in his head, and he ran with it.
“Very Washington Heights, if you know what I mean. Anyway, close to closing time we decided to take our winnings and call it a night. This one big splib said we had to put up everything we’d won on best-of-three nine-ball. We said fuck that and walked out. Turned out he had some friends. They chased us down Dyckman. We all split up so they couldn’t track us to our car, but the big asshole stuck to me. I was dying by the time I reached the fence. I got over pretty quick, thinking he wouldn’t follow. You know, they don’t like water. But over the fence he comes, and he was one big nasty motherfucker, lost a lotta bucks being shitty at eight-ball. So I dove, and swam out away from the dock. I used to swim varsity, so I was pretty sure I could beat him in the water, even if he tried to follow. He didn’t, but of course I didn’t know that until I was pretty far out. Next thing I know, I’m sucked way south by the fuckin’ current, and grabbed ahold of that buoy.” Reggie desperately needed a break at the improv mic and decided to start shivering again.
“So all that shouting that pulled me out of a warm bunk, that was your big friend?”
Reggie immediately regretted inventing an extreme racial caricature whose imaginary angry shouting wouldn’t sound like Elias. “Yeah, I suppose so, but I couldn’t hear it very well from the water.”
The man went down the companionway ladder and did something that plunged the boat back into complete darkness. He reappeared on deck and scanned the shoreline from the starboard rail. After what felt like several minutes of reconnaissance the man walked back to Reggie’s side of the cockpit and stood in front of him, hands on hips, looking mildly annoyed. “If someone was intent on hunting you down, they might have waited long enough to see my lights come on. But I don’t see or hear anyone, so maybe not.”
He shook his head slowly. “Well, here you are, alive and drying out. In both senses of the term.” He looked around the sky at the stars and the silver sliver of the new moon. “It’s a clear night. You can sleep on the bench with the blanket. We’ll talk more in daylight.” He paused again. “If you decide to swim for it, don’t drift south. The rocks as you get close to the bridge will tear you up. Aim north and sprint your ass off. You’ll never get back to the dock, and there’s old pilings and rebar and shit from the old ferry terminal all along here, but if you miss all that the rocks aren’t so bad.” He’d reached the top of the companionway and stopped. “I’m locking up and the hatch is alarmed, in case it crosses your mind to invite yourself below. You should know that my woman is armed and dangerous, and was very opposed to taking you in. If you hear someone coming from shore, come down and bang on the door.”
Alone on the deck Reggie noticed how completely blacked out it was; even the running lights in Dulcinea’s rigging were turned off. The skyline was resplendent with light to the south and east. Would he ever be there again? New Jersey was a sparkly smudge to the west. Dark was the north, where he’d been born and suckled and socialized. Now here he was, flotsam in the cold, filthy river. Or was he jetsam? Whatever, he was rubbish thrown away, just collateral damage from the schemes of…friends. Reggie stared at his sopping wet clothes lying on the deck, unable not to see the brown stains. “Round One!” he said out loud, addressing the river, the bridge, the city. He curled tighter in his blanket and fell sound asleep.
Previous chapters:
Chapter 8: The Brothers Bessette
Related:
- A Conversation with Dr. Craig Smith on His Novel “Stone Hearts,” the Art of Writing, and the Surgeon’s Imagination
- For Us the Living: Reflections on 9/11 from Dr. Craig Smith
- Nobility in Small Things: A Look Back at The Leadership of Craig Smith, MD