Why they (remarkable, unexpected and inexplicable resolutions) should
happen, and what indeed is happening, are questions which are not yet in our
power to answer; for health goes deeper than any disease.
Oliver
Sacks, Awakenings
The
next morning, after drinking the usual four or five cups of coffee, I went next
door to see her. A piece of lined
notebook paper was tacked to the front door.
Her handwriting was difficult to read because the ink skipped in places
where it left a groove in the paper:
“Went to
I
ran back home, and called the hospital.
Waiting for someone to answer the phone, I saw Kidd, in his room,
hunched over his desk, studying. A woman
answered the telephone. I said, “I’m trying to
locate
There
was a silence.
“Are
you a relative, sir?”
“I’m
her boyfriend.” Jack hated the juvenile
sound of that word.
“Oh.”
There
was another ponderous silence that lasted for more than a few seconds.
“All
right,” her
voice lowered, almost to a whisper, “she’s in room 335 on the third floor in
intensive care.”
“When
can I see her?”
“She
isn’t allowed any visitors. She’s under
intensive care.”
The
words were medical, final sounding, and death portending.
“Intensive care?”
“It
means she isn’t allow to see anyone. Look I’ve already told you more than I’m
supposed to.”
There
was another silence. I asked, “Is she sleeping?”
“Visiting
hours are from six to eight. You will have to schedule an appointment.”
“When
will she be able to have visitors?”
Jack’s voice was just barely under control.
“That’s
up to her doctor. Let’s see it’s doctor... Ordoñez.”
“Look,
I have to see her. I... I have a right to. I’m... her boyfriend.” The juvenile word again.
“It
isn’t my decision sir.”
“What
can I do?” I thought, “At least she’s dropped the formal
tone.”
“Well,
you could come during the regular visiting hours and they would probably let
you see her.”
“Couldn’t
I come over right now and see if they would let me?”
“They
don’t usually sir. Not... Especially
if...”
“Well,
it couldn’t hurt to try.”
Silence. After a
pause, I hung up. I paced around the
house for a while, watching the fear of death fingering the edges of
sanity. I knew that I wouldn’t be able
to wait until
It
was warm, and I drove straight down
Jack
waited for a late model, blue Mercedes Coupe to pull out of a parking place
near the front entrance to the Hospital.
It seemed to him that the silver-haired driver and his fashion-model
passenger sneered ever so slightly at his beat up, red Volkswagen. He imagined them to be a doctor and his
secretary rushing off to get a quick, lunch time piece of ass. His depression over the thought was sharp but
brief and he had already recovered from it, and forgotten them, by the time he
was on the sidewalk, walking towards the picketers.
They
were all young women, dressed in a variety of styles and colors and they were
in high spirits. He could see that to
enter the lobby, he would have to cross the picket line. He did, and he countered their hostile stares
and pointed comments by waiving his hands above his head in a helpless manner,
trying to convey emergency, sickness, disaster... Although he imagined that
they were satisfied, he was afraid to look into their eyes to find out.
To
my surprise, the front reception desk was empty. As I looked around for the receptionist, I
noticed that the door leading to the stairs was open. I seized the opportunity. Walking up the stairs, I rehearsed what I
would say to a doctor if I ran into him ... or her.
The
stairs opened into a long, dark hallway lined with doors. On each door was a window, at about eye
level, approximately the size of a large, hardcover, twentieth century Romance
Novel. The doors were numbered, and I
peered through the window of door 335.
I
saw her lying on her back on a propped up bed, with the bed covers neatly
folded and pulled up over her breasts.
Her eyes were closed and she was under an oxygen tent. She was hooked up to three tubes. Two IVs and a tube that
went into her nose.
I
tried the door handle and it moved. I
looked down both sides of the hall and then opened the door and slipped
silently into the room. There were two
other beds, but they were empty. She
looked angelic. The sweat was gone from
her forehead and hair. The bottles were
suspended a few feet above the bed. I
was afraid to wake her so I called out in a soft whisper, “Flo.”
Her
head moved a little. I whispered again, “It’s me.”
She
opened her eyes. She looked at me for a
few unconscious moments, and then her mouth formed a crooked smile. She whispered, almost inaudibly, and I found
myself reading her lips. She whispered, “You were right.” Then she spoke a
little louder and her voice cracked, “It was walking pneumonia.”
We
stared at each other. Tears began to
form in my eyes. I said, “You broke the
picket line.”
“Oh. Yeah.
I really hated to do that. I felt
like such a fraud.” Her voice sounded
very far away and there wasn’t a hint of irony in it.
“No,
you shouldn’t worry about that. I was
joking. They aren’t trying to hurt the
patients. They’re just trying to
dramatize their case. They don’t care.”
We
looked at each other, in silence. A lump
formed in my throat. “It scares me to
see you in there.”
“Oh,
I’m all right. I feel great.” She smiled again.
“I
don’t like it.” I was surprised by my
tears.
“Really,
I feel great.” The huskiness in her
voice wasn’t as pronounced but she spoke very softly and I could hardly hear
her. She seemed touched by my tears but
didn’t say anything.
I
said, “Well...”
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
I
looked around the bare room. The window
to the outside had a view onto the wall of the building next door.
I
changed the subject, “I
wasn’t authorized to come in here. I
just came through the lobby and walked up the stairs and opened the door and...
Well... Here I am.”
“Just
like you, heh?”
Her voice was humorous and she seemed relaxed.
I
asked, “Are you
in any danger?”
“Are
you kidding? ...... really,
I’m not... The doctor said there’s
absolutely nothing to worry about. I’m
responding well to the antibiotics.”
Jack
imagined that he could hear her doctor’s incantatory tone echoing in her words
and he reasoned that the reassurance that it conveyed was certainly a real part
of the cure and so he shouldn’t contest it.
She blinked and it seemed to him that her soul was separated from him,
resting in the arms of science. He
looked up at the tubes sticking in her arms.
“Do they hurt?”
She
smiled, a little maliciously, he thought, possibly at the irony that it was she
who was reassuring him instead of him reassuring her.
“No,
you get used to it. I can hardly feel
them. Well, when I don’t think about
it. It’s
intravenous penicillin and a tranquilizer.
It might be valium... It probably
is... he wouldn’t tell me. I think it’s
why I’m so tired. They’re feeding me
intravenously too. Through
the nose.” She paused and an
impish look came into her eyes. “The
food stinks.” She smiled at my
laugher.
I
said, “Maybe
you shouldn’t talk so much.”
She
shrugged her shoulders. We stared at
each other.
“How’s
your temperature?”
“I
don’t know.”
I
wanted to hug her. I said, “I don’t like the
oxygen tent.”
“I
don’t mind it.”
“Maybe
it’s because of my father. I was only
three but my mother used to take me up to see him in the Veteran’s Hospital
when he was dying of Melanoma. She said
that he pretended that he liked being in the oxygen tent so that I wouldn’t
cry. I wanted to go in there and sit on
his lap but they wouldn’t let me. My
mother says that I was too young to remember but I remember. His eyes, especially. I didn’t know he was dying but did know. You can’t hide things like that from
children. He knew he’d never get out of
the oxygen tent and probably never hug me again. There was a terror in his eyes that I didn’t
understand.”
She
tried to cheer me up and said with a little smile, “I really do like it in here. Honest.
It’s very comfortable... and cool.”
I
smiled again at the irony, that it was she who was cheering me up instead of
the other way around. I tried to change
the subject, “You
really do look better Flor.”
“Oh
so you think I looked that bad before huh?”
The aggressive glint was in her eyes again. I remembered the first time she invited me to
her room, “to see her etchings,” as she put it. But she looked very tired.
I
asked, “Why do
you think it’s Valium?”
“I
had a girlfriend who was on it. It feels
like the way she described it.”
I
said, “It looks
like you’re high on something.”
“I
feel great, but... it’s costing a fortune.”
I
thought she was referring to the valium.
Then I remembered that a
She
looked dejected. She said, “I feel like such a fraud.”
“What
do you mean?”
“I’m
supposed to be a Maoist, and ... well..”
I
made a crooked smile. “Yeah. You broke the picket line too. But I won’t put it in my novel. It lacks verisimilitude.”
She
smiled and said, “Since
it’ll never be published anyway, it won’t matter.”
“True. I’ll put it in.”
She
said, “I
promise to buy a copy. I might even believe
the part about me crossing the picket line.
Who knows? I probably won’t, but
you never know.”
I
said, “You look
a lot better baby. You really do. Your color is coming back...”
She
looked pleased.
“I’d
like to jump into the tent and fuck your IV s off... but I don’t think the
doctor would approve.”
“You
might break the bed and wake up all the patients.”
Maya’s
face swam into my mind, but I refused to let it break the spell. I said, “I’ll have to leave you to your own
devices today, young lady.”
“I’m
too tired to lift a finger.” She made an
abortive, convulsive movement with her free arm. She made it shake, and then let it fall
helplessly back onto the bed. I was afraid
that we were enjoying ourselves too much.
“I
probably should get out of here and let you sleep. I’m not even supposed to be in here. If they caught me, I don’t know what they
would do.”
“Maybe
they would let you sleep in the other bed.
I’m probably paying for it anyway.”
“I
suppose you are since you can afford it.
Late 20th century, decadent capitalism and all that... Maybe we should get your money’s worth...”
I
eyed the bed and then got up from the chair and went over to the door. I opened it slowly and peered down the
hall. It was still empty. I said, “Some surveillance system they’ve got
here. It doesn’t look like they’ll be
putting the
“It’s
probably the strike. There aren’t any
nurses around.”
I
said, “Gee we could plan the execution of
General Westmoreland from in here.”
“Yeah. We could put
LSD in his rubber.”
“That
wouldn’t work. His men try on the
rubbers first to make sure they aren’t booby trapped.”
She
smiled. I said, “You’d better get some sleep
baby. Otherwise I’m going to tear the
tent off, jump in there and fuck your IVs off, like I said. Take your choice.”
“For
your sake, I choose sleep.”
“I’ll
come back to see you tomorrow at ...
about six?”
“Come
at seven. Martha is coming at six and
Marsha is coming at eight.”
I
was jealous. I wondered they found out
so fast that
“OK.”
Jack
felt like a burden to
Walking down the
hall, he was afraid that the receptionist would be back at her desk in the
front lobby. He saw no other way out of
the hospital except through the lobby and so he tried to think of a way to
explain why he was coming from the stairwell.
When he peered
around the partially opened door, he saw that the lobby was still empty. He thought, “Crime is so much easier than people
think. It is banal, almost trivial. It’s only a bad conscience that makes a
criminal.”
He felt guilty,
even for walking through the picket line. However, he felt good about
Vida’s passionate
kiss and tangled black hair and dark eyes still filled his consciousness and he
thought of her even before he reached his car.
He even thought for a moment that he wanted her more than he wanted