The Waiting Room 7:42 p.m.
AFTER THE MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT, Diana had a homeless woman brought in by the police. Ankles grotesquely swollen, feet half covered by torn moccasins that did not match, thick legs encased in several pairs of stockings rolled up below the knees.
Once she was in school, thought Diana. Once she took spelling tests and went to basketball games and bought new pencils in September.
“Hi, Norma,” said the nurse, shaking the woman’s arm.
“You know her?” said Diana.
“Sure. She’s a regular. Police check out her favorite corners and bring her in when they need to.”
“Why would they need to?”
“When she’s drunk as this,” said the nurse, “she might hurt herself, or hurt somebody else.
She’ll step off a curb and break an ankle because she doesn’t see the drop, or she’ll step in front of a car, and some poor innocent driver will have killed somebody.”
The nurse sounded oddly affectionate and, even more oddly, the cop who had brought Norma in came over and gave the unconscious woman a pat. “We don’t worry so much in summer,” he confided in Diana. “In winter though, then they could freeze to death, we do our rounds pretty carefully. Don’t wanna miss somebody in the dark, let ’em die.”
“But — don’t they go to shelters?” said Diana.
“Nah. Not when they’re as low down as Norma. She forgets. Plus shelters have rules, and Norma can’t keep ’em.”
“They bring Norma in about every week,” said the nurse, telling Diana her last name for the computer. “You’ll recognize them, too, pretty soon.”
Diana felt curiously honored that both a nurse and a policeman were actually conversing with her. She found the nerve to look down the hall at Bed 8.
It was empty.
No patient. No bed. No nothing.
She wet her lips. “Where’s the patient in Eight?” she said to the nurse.
The nurse frowned, trying to remember.
“Radiology, I think. Yes, angiogram. Patient’s an MI. Won’t be back here for a couple of horn’s. Why? Is the family asking about him?”
Diana’s shock was so great she lost her balance. Is the family asking about him? Had that scum Seth betrayed her? Gossiped? Told? Started with Meggie and spread it over the entire ER?
Or could the nurse tell by looking? Was there a physical resemblance between Diana and Bed 8 strong enough for a nurse (with nine other patients to look after) to notice?
But the nurse was not even glancing at Diana. She was already in the clutches of a patient who wanted more attention than he was getting, and who had gotten up off his bed in a grim search for a nurse. “Listen,” said the guy, ready to explode, “I spent two hours in that Waiting Room and I’ve been sitting on the edge of that stupid bed for another forty-five minutes and now —”
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” agreed the nurse. “If people didn’t keep shooting each other or falling off motorcycles, the staff could get to the rest of you sooner.” She took his arm to escort him back to his cubicle. “We just don’t have enough doctors to go around, sir. The thing is, gunshot wounds consume so many people that there’s nobody to see the rest of the patients.”
“But I was here first!” said the man. “This place is such a zoo. I hate this hospital.”
“I know what you mean,” said the nurse, and behind his back she rolled her eyes for Diana’s benefit.
Diana steadied herself against the wall. Its dull, flat, pale-green paint seemed like a friend to rely on. Of course the nurse hadn’t seen a family resemblance and of course Seth hadn’t told. When the no-visitor rule was in effect, the Waiting Room always had griping family members demanding volunteers to get them past the security guards.
An MI. He’d had a heart attack then, and they were going to shoot dye into his heart to see what was going on.
If he’s my father, she thought, he doesn’t have a heart, and that’s what’s going on.
She had a couple of hours before Bed 8 would matter again. Before she had to make the decision of whether to go in there and find out if that Rob Searle was her Rob Searle.
Nobody’s my Rob Searle, she thought. Realistically, I haven’t had a Rob Searle since I was four. Do I care if this man who didn’t care about me is dying? Should I care? I could be dead, and he wouldn’t know.
It occurred to her that since no visitors were allowed in back, and since Bed 8 was two floors and a building away now, that Bunny (Bunny who was better than Mommy, Bunny who took Daddy away forever and ever from both of them) might be in the Waiting Room.
The better to stare at everybody, Diana slid onto one of the toddler seats at the crayoning table.
On holidays, Diana would still catch herself, suddenly aware that she was checking the mail and listening for the phone. Thinking — this birthday, surely, he’ll call me up. This Christmas, he’ll send a present. This Valentine’s Day, he’ll send a card.
But there had been no mail, and no phone calls, and no presents.
Sometimes Diana had pretended he was dead. Once when they were eleven, she and her best friend Trace walked to the cemetery and pretended their fathers were under the stones there. It felt so good they decided to hold a burial service. “You’re dead!” shouted Trace, jumping up and down on a strip of green, green grass next to a stone with somebody else’s name.
Diana and Trace had walked back home, slightly ashamed of themselves, as if they had done something twisted and sick.
Whatever happened to Trace? she thought. We moved away, Trace moved away, I haven’t heard from her in years. Maybe I’ll try to write again, see if they’ll forward the letter. Tracy Stratton, where are you? Do you remember the day we tried to bury our daddies?
Diana’s fingers tightened on the crayon.
If I look up, and if I look around, she thought then, will I see this Bunny, who changed our lives? Is she sitting a few feet away from me, worrying about shortness of breath in the man she took from us?
I’m blaming Bunny, thought Diana clearly. I’ve always blamed Bunny. But Daddy was a grown-up. Bunny didn’t take him. He went. After all these years, I have not accepted that.
Diana Dervane stared down at her coloring.
She had drawn a blue house with a slanted roof and a red chimney. She had curled lots of gray smoke into the sky. She had drawn a mommy, a daddy, and a smiling little girl on the lawn.
After all these years! she thought. I’m still pretending that we are a family of three, not two.
The Waiting Room 7:48 p.m.
DUNK WAS NOT IN control and he hated it. He had been turned down by some overweight, chainsmoking broad and there was no way past her; the sliding doors would no longer open unless she pressed her floor button. He could not get into the treatment area unless she said he could. He knew the treatment area well, having been there many times in his brief life. He knew that unlike the doors which stopped him now, the doors to the ambulance bay were always open. There was a guard on the outside but there probably was not a guard on the inside. He knew that the chaos was so great that he could slip in and the face-masked staff would be too busy to even glance up. He knew that the boy he had intended to kill was probably still in Trauma and it would be a simple matter to off him and get out.
It would, in fact, be exciting. Something he had not done before. It would be on TV. It would be daring, and the networks would cover it.
One of the problems KSI lamented was lack of TV coverage. You could be the most violent and visible gang in the City, but if you went and got your own face on TV, which Dunk would have loved, then the police had something to work with. Dunk knew the police well and had been arrested several times. He’d been back on the street in a matter of hours and had never done time.
Dunk had half forgotten why he’d been mad enough to kill Tillotson. Now he was less mad than he was challenged. He wanted to pull this off in spite of City Hospital. Show this stupid nurse and these pathetic play-cops
dressed up as “security” that no — they were not secure. As long as KSI existed, they’d never be secure. And Dunk was KSI.
He would have to leave the Waiting Room. Walk around the parking area, slip past the pitiful excuse of a guard watching over the cars, come up into the ambulance bay, and get into the treatment area from that direction.
He left the nurse to her phone call. He swaggered past the little kids coloring so furiously, pausing for a moment to admire the prettiness of the young mother who was tracing everybody’s hands; he thought what he would do with her if he got her alone.
He lowered himself casually next to his partner, after first displaying himself and his jewelry, and the gun bulging in his pocket, for the Waiting Room to admire. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he murmured.
The Waiting Room 7:49 p.m.
ROO WAS FASCINATED BY Diana Dervane. Nobody deserved to look that good.
She’s got my life, thought Roo. I was supposed to be in college, with time to do good deeds, so I could look beautiful even in a revolting pink volunteer jacket. I was supposed to flirt with doctors and live in a dorm and dance with cute boys.
How had she done this to herself?
The babies’ father was long gone. How easy it was for a boy to distance himself. In Andy’s case, the distance was several hundred miles and an unlisted phone number. She had obeyed his wish not to be officially listed as the father. He had said he would always take care of the baby anyway. He had never done a thing. “Well, if you hadn’t had twins,” Andy had said irritably, “maybe I could do this child-support stuff. But two of them? Come on, be real.”
I’m being real, thought Roo, and I don’t think much of it.
She turned around to see how the twins were doing. They were back in their double stroller. Cal was asleep and Val was sucking her thumb, staring up at the ceiling lights. The black women had left.
I want to leave, too! thought Roo.
What would the world do to her if she were just to abandon the children? She could. All the money and identification Roo had in the world was in her purse. She didn’t have to go back to that awful apartment. She could take a bus from here to the train station and a train to anywhere. Roo could wait tables, or clean toilets, or file letters. Somebody who had changed eleven trillion diapers had no standards left about great jobs. She could put a life back together.
Everybody cooed over the twins. “Look at their pretty curls!” people would cry. “Oooooh, I could just take you home with me!” women would croon. “What adorable little sweetie-pies!”
They’re not adorable! thought Roo. I hate being a mother. I hate having twins. I hate being poor. I hate being bored. I hate having television for my only friend.
Momentarily she hated Diana, too, this complete stranger wielding a forest-green crayon.
“Ooooh, are those your babies? Are they twins?” cried Diana. She waved at Val. “What’s her name?” said Diana, in that wildly excited voice of a woman who was not the mother, who did not have to change the diapers and get up in the night to stop the crying. Justice required that this girl Diana should have to adopt Val and Cal.
“Valerie. And the boy is Callum.”
“I love those names!” Diana waved again at the twins and to Roo’s surprise, Val attempted to wave back, curling and tucking her fist, struggling to get it right.
Roo planned her escape from drudgery. Should she go back to the apartment for clothes? Briefly Roo wondered what her mother, her former classmates and teachers, her parents’ neighbors, and the mothers and fathers of her old friends, would think of her. First an unmarried mother at sixteen and then living in the slums on welfare and then abandoning the children.
Who cares what they think of me? They don’t visit me, do they? They don’t phone me, do they?
Roo wanted to be a child herself so much she was perilously close to tears. She wanted somebody to take care of her, instead of her having to take care of them. She hated taking care of anybody. It was hard and no fun.
I want to be loved! she thought.
The Waiting Room 7:51 p.m.
DIANA’S MOTHER HAD RARELY discussed Daddy.
Daddy. What a loving, affectionate word it was. And how affectionate the word still made her feel! After all these years, with no Daddy anywhere of any kind — and still, the word Daddy brought on a rush of lovely memory.
She could remember a lap and a raspy cheek.
She could remember a jacket, soft and gray, under which she had burrowed.
She could remember walking down a city street, holding his hand, could remember how his fingers tightened on hers at the crossings and how he swung her aloft to stand on the granite rim of a statue base; a statue, she thought, of a horse.
She could remember a car, sitting on pillows so she was high enough for the seatbelt, the radio playing, her father smoking a cigarette, and the windows open so the smoke would not enter her lungs.
She could remember one Christmas with Daddy. They had had a new chain of gold stars, which she and Daddy draped perfectly, so it glittered in the lamplight.
Diana’s mother had never said bad things about Daddy. But she never said good things about Daddy, either. Daddy had turned himself into an unoccupied apartment. A dusty, musty unused space.
The Trauma Room 7:50 p.m.
“OKAY,” SAID DR. GOLD quietly. “No sense going on.”
She stepped back from the boy on the stretcher. So did the young doctor helping her, the two nurses, and the aide. They stood for a moment looking down at the body of a teenager who a few hours before had been alive and laughing and flirting and full of life.
Dr. Gold peeled off her gloves and dropped them into the bloody waste container. Slowly she ran her thin fingers through her graying hair and slowly she let the air out of her lungs and the hope out of her heart.
You never wanted to accept that you had lost a kid. You wanted to put him back together again. But this kid had broken himself like an egg — like Humpty Dumpty — and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and all the technology of the finest hospital in the City could not put Alexander Whitman together again.
The aide telephoned Transport.
Not all the patients Transport moved were alive. The boy would be transferred to yet another stretcher. An all-metal gurney, because he no longer needed a mattress. It would have a lid, rather like a casserole, so that people they passed in the halls need not realize that a dead boy lay on that stretcher.
The aide went into the hall and erased the name Whitman from the board. The janitors moved in with mops to remove Alec’s blood from the floor, and the aide rolled into Trauma a freshly made-up bed for the next patient.
The Waiting Room 7:52 p.m.
BARBIE, OF COURSE, HAD been a nurse in this City for many years. She, too, knew the outline of a handgun in a pocket when she saw it. And she knew the reason for the no-visitors rule when there was a gunshot wound.
The white guy who claimed to be the black guy’s brother fondled his pocket, caressing his gun through the shiny polyester of his ugly pants. His fingers flexed and his face softened in a contemplative smile as he stroked the gun.
The GSWs had given no names. If the white guy knew it was Tillotson who’d been shot, very likely it was he who had shot Tillotson.
Barbie estimated there were thirty people in the Waiting Room. That included a half dozen small children.
Wonderful.
There was more than one button behind the nurse’s desk.
She pushed her other choice.
The Waiting Room 7:53 p.m.
ANNA MARIA KNEW SHE had to get her brother and sister out of there. She also knew that Dunk recognized her, and knew she was terrified, and was enjoying it. So she had to do this very casually.
She could gather her brother and sister and just walk outside, but what if Dunk followed her? At least here she had the minimal protection of the hospital walls and the other people waiting.
To reach the rest of the ho
spital, the cafeteria and gift shop, and take one of the many exits in those wings, she’d literally have to step over Dunk’s feet, and get him to move his feet so she could push the stroller past. He wouldn’t. He’d be more likely to take the stroller, claiming to be Anna Maria’s brother as well.
Next to the hall was a stairwell, but she did not know where the stairs went or even if she could get the stroller up or down them.
The hallway to the treatment area was closed by huge glass doors that opened only if the nurse or secretary pushed the right button.
Anna Maria decided the bathroom was most likely. Little kids always had to go to the bathroom. It was perfectly reasonable for her and Yasmin and José to leave the crayoning table and walk to the bathroom. She whispered in Spanish to Yasmin, “We’re going to the bathroom.”
“You go,” said Yasmin loudly. “I’m fine.”
“We’re all going,” whispered Anna Maria, kicking her.
“Don’t kick me!” yelled Yasmin.
She tried to whisper in Yasmin’s ear, but Yasmin thought Anna Maria was going to make her stop coloring, and she was having too much fun. “Stay on your side, Anna Maria,” said Yasmin furiously and she shifted her little tot chair right up next to Trouble.
The Waiting Room 7:59 p.m.
PEOPLE MADE HUNDREDS OF phone calls from the pay phones. Diana could not imagine whom they were talking to. How many calls did a person need to make from an emergency room? Diana colored. What was it about crayons that made a person feel safe and calm?
Mary was trying to interview an elderly Russian patient. The man lived in a boarding house and had been stabbed in the face with a fork by another boarder. He held a handkerchief over his cheek while he waited to see the doctor. He wasn’t going to die because of four holes in his cheeks, so he would wait a long time.