Emergency Room
Part Six
By Gary Schneeberger
TheSchnays@cs.com

"Malucci, I hope that's not a personal call."

Damn. He'd finally managed to get to the person he needed to get to, sifted through several strata of secretaries, and before he
could even ask the question that would get him the information he was after, Weaver had to come click-clocking back by the
admitting desk.

"Uh ... no problem, chief. Just checking on some blood work."

"Excuse me?" It was the voice of the person he needed to get to, inside the phone.

"Oh ... uh ... sorry. Someone asked me a question. So, can you help me?"

Malucci glanced over at Kerry, hoping she wasn't glancing over at him, too, because the goofy smile on his face was sure to give him away. Mercifully, her eyes were buried in a chart.

"What was your name again?"

"Malucci. M-A-L-U-C-C-I."

He could feel Kerry's eyes move off the chart and toward him.

"The lab doesn't even know your name? That's not a good sign, Malucci."

"Yeah, well, you know ... "

His voice trailed off. He couldn't think of anything to say, at least not anything that wouldn't make the voice inside the phone
even more skeptical than it already was. He felt his grin get goofier, then felt its goofiness register just enough with Kerry to signal that his time was running out.

"Kerry, have you seen Cleo?"

Benton. Coming up behind him. Just the diversion he needed.

"Hello?"

The voice inside the phone.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. So, do you have a number for me?"

Ha, he thought, easing a little of the goofiness out of his grin, a question that would actually make sense if I was talking to the lab about blood work. He looked up to see if Kerry had heard him, but she was too busy congratulating Benton about his save during the trauma they'd just wrapped up.

"Hey, Malucci, you still need the number for the agent that handles that Palladino guy?"

The shrillness of Randi's voice usually hit Benton like a cheese grater on bone - one of his bones -- but this time, he was too lost in Kerry's praises to notice what she said or even who she said it to. Yeah, he thought, it was a great save. Too bad Eriq
with an IQ wasn't there to see it, to see which one of them was really the baddest mother-"

"Shut your mouth!"

Peter's gaze was the last to reach Malucci. Randi's got there a split second before, wearing that annoyed "why-the-hell-are-you-yelling-at-me?" look everyone in the E.R. had received from her at one time or another. And Kerry's had gotten to him a split second before that, even before his outburst, wearing that "I-know-you're-lying-to-me-and-boy-are-things-about-to-get-unpleasant-for-you" look everyone in the E.R. had received from her at one time or another, too.

"Hang up the phone, Malucci."

"But chief-"

"But nothing, Malucci."

His grin was pained, not goofy, as he pulled the receiver away from his ear and dropped it toward the cradle. He could still
hear, just barely, Erik Palladino's agent's confused chorus of "Hellos" the moment before the line went dead.



"So, how did it go?"

Mark had been wanting to check with Elizabeth about her session with the actress who was playing her in "Emergency Room" all morning, but between monitoring old ladies' palpitating hearts and patching up accident victims and drunks who'd sliced each
other to shreds, he hadn't had an opening until now.

"Oh, it was fine."

"Really? You liked her? What's her name again?"

"Alex Kingston."

There was something in Elizabeth's tone, something in the way the words squeezed through her teeth rather than rolled off her
tongue, that told him his girlfriend was lying.

"Hated her guts, huh?"

"Oh, Mark, she was perfectly awful. So haughty and stuffy, so phony. And you should have seen the way she flirted with Peter.
If he and Eriq hadn't gotten into their tiff--"

"What?"

"Peter apparently got offended by Eriq. I don't know why. He seemed perfectly--"

"Peter told me about that. Eriq?"

There was something in Elizabeth's tone, something in the way the words didn't just roll off her tongue, but did a flawless, Kerri
Strug-like dismount from it, that made him uneasy.

"Oh, Mark," she said, sensing the source of his discomfort. "Why would I fancy him when I have you?"

His discomfort eased under his spreading smile.

"Of course, I can't say how I'd behave if I met that absolutely dreamy creature from 'Revenge of the Nords'"

"Nerds," he hissed, his smile flatlining. "N-E-R-D-S."



"Dr. Finch?"

Cleo hadn't even heard anyone open the door, but now that it was clear someone had, she did her best to make it look like she and Peter were intently studying the chart on the counter in front of them - and not intently studying the relative depth of each
other's throats by using their tongues as measuring devices.

"Yes, can I help you?"

"I'm ... uh ... Michael Michele. John Wells said you were expecting me."

"Right. Yes. Dr. Benton and I were just ... uh ... studying this patient's chart. Tragic case, really. Very sick little boy."

"Yes, very sick," Peter said, trying mightily - and failing just as mightily - to stifle his smirk. Who's the cat who's a sex machine to all the chicks, indeed.

"Well, if this isn't a good time, I can come back."

"No, no. Dr. Benton was just leaving."

"Right. Just leaving. Can we continue this ... consultation later, Dr. Finch?"

"Yes, absolutely, Dr. Benton. Later."

As Peter walked - or, more accurately, strutted - away, Cleo felt the heat of her embarrassment fan out across her face. Thank God, she thought as she motioned for her visitor to sit down, you can't see a black woman blush.

"So, what can I do for you?"

Of course, she was a light-skinned black woman. Maybe it was obvious. The distressed, almost physically ill look on Michele's face seemed to indicate something was going on.

"Well, I've never played a doctor before, let alone one who specializes in treating children. And I was just hoping you could
tell me a little bit about what you do."

Cleo was halfway, maybe a little less than halfway, into her explanation of why she was so passionate about pediatrics when
she noticed it. The words were still coming out of her mouth, dutifully following the synapses in her brain that ordered them
into Michele's ears, but somewhere along the line her own ears had stopped processing them. In her own head, she sounded like the monotonous adults in a "Peanuts" cartoon.

"Bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah."

She blinked once, then twice - reasoning that maybe her eyes, which were working well enough to notice Michele yawn a couple of times, would somehow reboot her ears.

"Bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah."

She closed her eyes this time, directing all her body's energy into altering the inflection of her words. Maybe if she could will a little more emphasis into the way she spoke, that would fix the problem.

"Bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah."

She shifted the energy to her face this time, hoping that maybe a different expression, a more engaging, more inviting look, might do the trick. She tried happy first, almost grunting from the effort of trying to rearrange her features.

"Bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah."

OK, how about concerned?

"Bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah."

Angry?

"Bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah."

Her next expression was confused, but she didn't have to grunt to try to get in on her face. She really was confused, and she
caught a quick glimpse of her reflection in the aluminum paper towel dispenser on the opposite wall just to see what that expression looked like.

It didn't look any different from any other expression she'd ever seen on her face.

"Bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah bwah."

Oh, God, she thought, suddenly feeling flushed again. Not only do I talk in a monotone, I look like a monotone, too.

She would have liked to take some time to explore the heft of such a weighty epiphany, but when she looked up at Michele she
knew she'd have to wait.

First, she was going to have to wake the actress up.



Malucci checked his watch. 2 o'clock. The lounge was always empty at 2 o'clock. Plenty of time to call the agent back and finagle Palladino's phone number out of him.

He pushed through the door briskly, saw them and turned just as briskly to push his way back out.

"Where you going, Malucci?"

Dr. Greene. Talking with Dr. Benton.

"Ah ... I ... uh ... forgot something."

"C'mon, Malucci, we don't care if you use the phone."

It was Benton, smiling the kind of cocksure smile that would have looked a lot more at home on the face of someone like Samuel L. Jackson.

Malucci's own smile was a hybrid of goofiness and pain as he slinked over to the phone on the wall.

"He's trying to get ahold of the actor who's playing him in this movie," Benton said gleefully.

"Why don't you just talk to mine?" Mark offered in response, ungleefully.

"Not thrilled about meeting Anthony Edwards?" Benton asked, even more gleefully.

"Oh, and you were thrilled about meeting Eriq La Salle?" Mark responded, not as gleefully as Peter was in either of his earlier
statements but definitely not as ungleefully as he had been in his earlier statement.

"I let that guy know where we stand," Benton added, more gleefully than he'd been before - not just in this exchange but maybe in his life.

"Did you make fun of him for his Jeri-Curl?"

It was Malucci, the receiver's mouthpiece under his chin in the universal symbol for "I'm on hold."

"Jeri-Curl?" Benton asked, setting what may have been a new conversational record for gleefulness.

"Yeah, you didn't know that? In "Coming to America," the Eddie Murphy movie, he played the bad guy and wore this awful Jeri-Curl the whole time."

Benton said nothing, fearing the glee that was raging inside him was too combustible to be made audible. I bet he learned proper Afro-Sheen application in his theatrical makeup classes in Julliard, he thought.

"Yeah, that's right, Malucci."

The mouthpiece was no longer under his chin.

"M-A-L-U-C-C-I."

NEXT TIME ON "EMERGENCY ROOM":  Romano learns the truth about the
more "Fame-ous" roles of Paul McCrane's past.