Manhattan Lockdown by Paul Batista

fountains.
    The CNN announcer said, “Ever since the city released this security footage three hours ago we’ve been trying to identify this man, already called the Angel of Life. Police estimate that he was treating the wounded just one minute after the last of the three explosions,at a time when more explosions were likely. This is being hailed as an extraordinary act of heroism.”
    Cam stood behind Gabriel, both hands on his shoulders. The announcer said, “It was obvious that this heroic man had experience in providing emergency medical assistance. Now we know that he is Gabriel Hauser, a doctor at the prestigious Mount Sinai Hospital just ten blocks north of the epicenter of the explosions. We’re told Dr. Hauser is a veteran of the Iraq and Afghan wars, a graduate of Stanford and Cornell Medical School.”
    Gabriel, without turning around, put his hand over Cam’s left hand. Gabriel said, “I don’t like this.”
    They cherished their privacy. They were a close and loving couple. Cam was born and raised in Alabama. After graduating from Ole Miss, he left the South because he was gay and lonely. When he arrived in New York, he had found satisfaction in training in public relations, comfort in living without falsehood and pretexts as a gay man, and love. “I don’t like it either,” Cam said in his genteel Deep South accent. “God help us. I’ll have to learn what it’s like living with a hero.”
    â€œAnd how much of a hero do you think I’m going to be when America finds out I was tossed out of the Army for being gay?”
    Three interviews followed on CNN with other doctors at Mount Sinai. Gabriel wasn’t even certain he knew them. They were asked about Dr. Hauser and, in a strange inversion of reality, as though they were speaking about someone else, Gabriel heard himself described as “compassionate and caring,” an “extremely skilled emergency room doctor,” and a “courageous man.”
    He knew he was completely unprepared to deal with the fame that was now obviously cascading over him. He had never sought notoriety. When he and Cam made contributions to groups like the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, they asked to be listed as “anonymous.”
    Gabriel had been through challenging experiences in his life. Even before he enlisted in the Army, he’d led a life he now rarely talked about. His father was Jewish, his mother Puerto Rican. His father had trained as a flautist at Julliard and played briefly with the New York Philharmonic. He was a failed musician who refused to find other work and lived an increasingly alcoholic and embittered life. Gabriel’s mother was a flamboyant woman who loved Manhattan nightlife and spent most of the early years of Gabriel’s life at places like Studio 54, CBGB OMFUG, and the Mudd Club, those legendary party spots of the late 1970s and early 1980s. She spent her days in melodramatic hugging and praising of Gabriel before she left for what his father called the nightly whoring around. “I’m a concert flautist,” he’d shout at her, as though the words meant he was royalty. She’d answer, “You’ve got your flute stuck up your ass.”
    As a teenager, Gabriel each day left the chaos of their messy West Side apartment for high school at Collegiate, the exclusive all boys’ private school he attended on a scholarship on West 77 th Street. He was introverted and a very gifted student. By the time he was in high school he dreaded going home. He managed to find several other boys who were as shy as he was who lived in stately apartments on West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. Their parents had opened their doors to Gabriel, who was intelligent, well-spoken and respectful, to spend the afternoons and evenings studying in their homes.
    And when he was fifteen, just weeks after his gorgeous mother abruptly left