Read Online Greenwich by Howard Fast - Free Book Online

everything must be done with great precision. Harvey Loring was the surgeon, and usually he’s good, but this time he botched it and excessive bleeding started—and—and I don’t know. Dr. Ferguson’s in intensive care now.”
    â€œIs he going to make it?”
    Nellie hesitated for a long moment before she answered, “I don’t know. I spent an hour with his daughter before I met you. She’s very close to him. Good God, I didn’t know what to tell her. If I said her father was going to make it, I’d be lying and making it worse. I don’t think he’s going to make it. Damn Loring! I could have done it better myself—no, I have no right to say that.”
    â€œYou like Loring, don’t you?”
    â€œNo, damn it! He is likable. Everyone likes him. I don’t want you to repeat this, please?”
    David nodded, wondering how he would have felt had it been his father lying in intensive care, and what he would feel about a man who was responsible—yet with a part of his mind thinking that at least this was the end of Nellie and Loring as a competitive couple; and then disliking both the thought and himself as the thinker.
    â€œLet’s go to bed, Davey,” Nellie said. “I want to put my arms around you and cry a little. I don’t want to spend my life as a scrub nurse.”
    â€œSure.”
    In bed, his arms around her, David said, “Is that real—not wanting to go on with being a scrub nurse?”
    â€œWhen I feel the way I do now, it’s real.”
    â€œThen what would you want to do?”
    â€œGet married and have kids.”
    â€œRight on. I’m with you.”
    â€œDavid,” she said woefully, “I’m three years older than you and you’re at Harvard and I’m here in Greenwich, and you have a job now at Bilko’s Boatyard, scraping boats for six dollars an hour, and sooner or later you’ll fall in love with some pretty girl at Radcliffe or Wellesley—”
    â€œNot likely.”
    â€œOh, shut up and hold me.”

Ten
    T he last of the Castle dinner guests had arrived when Richard Bush Castle was called to the phone. Castle was in the living room with his guests, and Joseph, Abel Hunt’s son, was fixing drinks and passing a tray of hors d’oeuvres when Donna, the upstairs maid, informed Castle that there was a call for him in the study.
    â€œDid he give you a name?” Castle whispered.
    â€œNo, sir. He asked for Bush.”
    Castle excused himself. “Only for a moment,” he apologized.
    Not everyone called him Bush; it was the name he had chosen for special situations—a term he loved—and for a select group of people. He explained to some, if they inquired, that it was an old family name, not connected to the family of the onetime president, but to the old Bush-Holly House. Since there was no easily available lineage of the Bush family that had once occupied the Bush House, and since the Bush political family made no claim to a relationship with the Bush House, Castle had, so to speak, picked the name for himself unchallenged. However, Sally always called him Richard, and when she spoke of him in the third person, it was often Mr. Richard Castle or Mr. Richard. She had seen a film once where “mister” was used as a prefix by the household help and wife, and the usage had fascinated her.
    The Castle household had three telephone lines, one for their son, Dickie, one for the home, and one for Mr. Castle, whose personal telephone was a tieline connected to his New York office. His home office had once been a changing room for his swimming pool, but he had rebuilt it and equipped it with his computer, printer, fax, desk, and chairs. And another extension connected to a phone in the main house, in his study.
    When he picked up the phone and said, “Hello—Castle here,” a voice replied, “Bush, this is Larry.”
    Castle had