Emergency Room

  I learned something from Diana, he thought. I think I know the passing grade here. He sat down next to Meggie. The inner side of the desk was usually littered with doctors using telephones or computers, scribbling on charts, or looking something up in the pharmacology references. It was rare to find an empty seat. What great stuff had he missed? Seth looked longingly at the press of cops blocking the Trauma Room and forced himself to pay attention to Meggie. “I guess I don’t want to interrupt the family, Meggie,” he said, although in a sick and twisted way he wanted very much to do that. “I guess that’s pretty hard on the family.”

  Meggie relaxed. She smiled at him. He had passed her test, and Meggie thought better of him.

  Diana was walking in their direction, very slowly for Diana, a sheet of paper in her hand. She was about the same color as the sheet of paper. Seth frowned.

  Meggie said to Seth, so casually that he knew it was not casual at all, “What’re you doing tonight after work?”

  A hundred thoughts rocketed through Seth’s mind. None were complimentary to Meggie. Was she asking him out? What if somebody saw him with her? How could she possibly think — but when he looked her way, he knew she had thought he would be interested, and he could not imagine how to be polite about his refusal. He could hardly answer, “Ugh! Yuck! Never!”

  After all, no matter what night of the week he volunteered here, Meggie would still control the desk; he had to stay friends with her. Now how was he supposed to accomplish that without notice or time to prepare an intelligent answer?

  Since Meggie worked the four-to-midnight shift, he said, “Diana and I are probably quitting around nine and we have to share a taxi back to the dorm. I haven’t even started studying yet, so I’ll probably be up until one or two hitting the books. My roommates will throw old sandwich crusts at me to make me turn out the lights.” He laughed lightly, pretending he and Meggie shared the trials of being a college kid.

  Meggie of course saw right through him, going back to her original assessment of Seth as calculating.

  Women stuck together. They never considered themselves calculating. Oh, no. Only men. We just calculate differently, he thought.

  He tried to saunter off, but under Meggie’s stare, every move was awkward. Diana was almost upon them, walking with a queer lurch, as if the paper she held in her hand weighed a great deal.

  What if Meggie told Diana about the supposed taxi sharing? Diana didn’t want to share Seth’s oxygen, never mind a backseat. Well, the thing was to distract everybody. “Hey, Diana,” he teased, “you look as if you’ve been asked to escort a body to the morgue.”

  Diana’s black hair looked even blacker, and her skin even whiter, as if she were human no longer, but had been cut out of paper. “Seth.” Diana said his name as if it were a key. A door. “Seth, I have to show you something.”

  He could not help himself. “Gee, Diana, thing is, I’m in a hurry. Stuff I do is important, you know.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I know I’ve been kind of — well —”

  “A bitch,” said Meggie.

  Both Seth and Diana blinked. “Well…” said Diana, flushing, but not using the word herself. She took Seth by the sleeve, and he wanted her to hold his arm, not the cloth; he wanted her to put her hand on his waist or his cheek, not his elbow. She pulled him into an ell where ceiling-height open-wire carts stored IV bottles, disposable thermometers, sheets, blankets, urinals, Kleenex, and gloves.

  Seth made a mental note of the spot, in case any pretty medical students or Diana wanted to do something other than air kiss.

  “Seth.”

  She was actually trembling. He could not believe this. The Dianas of the world did not quiver. “What’s wrong?” he felt himself changing from future doctor to Diana’s brother. I don’t want to be her brother, he thought.

  “Volunteer!” yelled Meggie from around the corner.

  Not now, Meggie, he thought. But, of course, now was when Meggie would yell for them.

  “Seth,” said Diana again, heavily, as if she needed the name. “The man in Bed Eight.”

  Seth waited for her to go on but she didn’t. She looked glazed. “Yeah?” he said. “The white guy? About fifty? Shortness of breath?”

  She nodded.

  “What did he do to you?” asked Seth, suddenly angry, suddenly ready to go in there and slam the guy against the wall.

  She held out the paper, presumably the guy’s insurance stuff. But she didn’t look at it. Her face trembled, and the smile she put on was unconnected to her thoughts. It came to Seth that if he had ever needed a bedside manner, he needed it now. Hesitantly, Seth put an arm around her shoulders. Diana did not appear to notice it there, which made him feel supremely awkward. He did not know how to touch in a comforting fashion. Perhaps he should practice. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said. Now he didn’t even like the sound of his voice. Not soothing at all, but kind of rough. He should practice that, too. Make his voice kind. How did you do that, if you weren’t basically a kind person?

  What if I’m not kind enough? thought Seth. What if Diana’s right? What if I really am in this for power and prestige and money and pushing people around? What if Meggie and Knika are right, and I’m just another despicable would-be doctor?

  “What did Bed Eight do?” repeated Seth.

  “I think,” said Diana Dervane, “that he’s my father.”

  The Second Hour

  The City 7:00 p.m.

  “MOTHER?” SAID ROO NERVOUSLY. She tugged on her own long hair, as if this would give her courage. “Do you think you could help me with the twins tonight?”

  “No.”

  The syllable hit Roo like a slap on the face. It was intended that way. Roo trembled. She needed an ally so badly she could not think. “Mother, I’m really coming apart. Please help me.”

  “We’ve been through this, Ruth. You had choices. You made them. You have to live with it.”

  “It’s too hard!” she cried. “Mother, it’s too hard!”

  “You should have thought of that.”

  She was five miles from her mother. Not in the pretty suburb but the terrifying welfare housing of the City. Not in the comfortable ranch house with its two bathrooms and easy-to-clean linoleum kitchen, but in an ugly dark apartment with roaches. It might as well have been five hundred miles. She had no car. Thursdays, her mother grimly did her good deed, and took Roo and the twins grocery shopping and then to canvas every thrift shop they could find for clothing for the babies. The City had a good bus system, but managing the double stroller by herself was impossible.

  On nice days she stuck the twins in the stroller and walked. At first the street terrified her. After all these months, she was far more terrified, having seen what the City could be, but if she stayed home she became angry.

  The anger was different from anything Roo had ever felt. It was creeping violence. It would begin in her fingertips and crawl back upward into her hands. Then her hands would knot into fists and she would have to wrap her arms around herself to keep from hitting the twins. The desire to hit the twins lived in her own hands, like evil muscles that belonged to some other body; some wrestler’s or boxer’s body.

  But it was Roo’s.

  Cal and Val cried all the time. They had diarrhea. Their noses ran. If one slept, the other was awake. They messed up everything. The floor of the little apartment was never free of stuffed toys or tipped-over plastic juice glasses.

  She had thought their names were so cute when she picked them out: Callum and Valerie. Now they were nonsense syllables. Cal and Val. Like her life. She could not make sense of her life.

  The babies were impossible to escape.

  Roo kept the television on twenty-four hours a day. It was her only friend.

  Today had been unbearably hot and the arrival of evening had not cooled the apartment one degree. The apartment baked. The babies screamed. Their diaper rashes got worse and their eyes watered and —

  Maybe they have feve
rs! thought Roo eagerly.

  She could go to the Emergency Room. It would be air-conditioned. The nurses would take the babies. Roo would duck out and go to the cafeteria. She had a couple of dollars. She could get a Pepsi. Sit in that cool clean dining hall and listen to people talk about their work.

  She thought of her old friends. Amy would be playing a softball game against JFK High. Lucy would be at the pool wearing her newest bikini for her newest boyfriend. Megan would be at the mall with her allowance. Doing what seventeen-year-old girls did.

  Roo forced herself to change diapers yet again. Then she filled two bottles with milk from the refrigerator, stuffing them into the carry bag latched to the back of the stroller, and strapped the twins in, thinking, What lie will I tell the nurse? I’ll say their fevers were a hundred and one.

  It’s the City Hospital. They can’t say no.

  Emergency Room 7:01 p.m.

  SETH KNEW HIS FATHER pretty well. They’d tossed baseballs back and forth since Seth was a tot. Shared many a pizza and math assignment. Had had fierce arguments and gone to a million movies together. Keeping the house alive had been their mutual assignment: They were evermore patching the roof, changing the light-bulbs, mowing the lawn, arguing over how the plastic Christmas tree came apart.

  When his parents divorced, Seth had thought it would kill him; but his parents had been good — if anybody is ever good during a divorce — and he saw both his mother and father whenever he wanted. More than anything else, Seth had hated the new purchases that went with any divorce. Getting another fake Christmas tree for the parent who didn’t inherit the original one. Replacing the CD player the other parent kept. Buying another big casserole to cook the lasagne in at the new place.

  But that, thankfully, had been two years before college. He felt safe about the two houses he had now, the two separated parents, the new sets of china, and the new lawnmower. He knew exactly where his father and mother were because they were involved in a post-divorce game of seeing who could keep in touch with Seth the most.

  So Seth did not know what to make of Diana’s shaky sentence. How could you just “think” somebody was your father? Wasn’t that the kind of thing you knew for sure? Didn’t you know this over the course of your eighteen years, six million arguments, twenty thousand photographs, and six thousand good night hugs?

  “Volunteer!” came Meggie’s outraged screech.

  “My father’s name was Rob Searle,” said Diana. “He left when I was four to marry somebody else. My mother took back her maiden name for both of us. We never heard from my father again. He never paid child support. He never wrote, never sent a Christmas card, never sent a birthday present.”

  Seth felt as if his mind were too full; it was actually overflowing. This was not a good sign. How was he going to learn all the facts required of him in medical school if he ran out of brain space in one conversation with Diana Dervane? “You think that’s him? In Bed Eight?”

  She nodded.

  “Let’s kill him,” said Seth.

  Diana actually laughed. “When your first thought is homicide, you’ve been in the ER too long.”

  “A guy that doesn’t send his baby girl birthday presents? A guy that lets her grow up without even being able to recognize him in the street? Or the hospital bed?” Seth shook his head. “Kill him, I say.”

  “I think there are a couple people in the Waiting Room who have weapons to lend us.”

  “Heck, let’s just hire them. They probably need the money. What’s he worth to you, this father? I have enough cash to buy a candy bar. Or off the guy in Bed Eight.”

  “This is the sickest conversation I have ever had in my life,” said Diana. But she was giggling.

  “He’s sicker,” pointed out Seth.

  “You mean mentally,” said Diana, “but he’s also sick physically. That’s why he’s here.”

  “Let’s check out his next of kin,” said Seth. “This wife might be in the Waiting Room. What was her name, do you remember?”

  “Bunny.”

  “No way,” said Seth. “Nobody is named Bunny.”

  “It probably wasn’t her real name. It was probably a nickname. Her real name was probably Gertrude or something. But I don’t necessarily want to do anything, Seth.”

  “You think this patient could be your biological father and you’re not sure whether you’re going to talk to the guy or introduce yourself or anything?” Seth was dying to know, and it wasn’t his father!

  “What would I say?” Diana asked him.

  “How about, ‘Hi, I’m your daughter Diana, who you haven’t seen in fifteen years, and I have a lethal dose of poison for you.’?”

  “Stop that! You pervert! I don’t want him to die. I want…”

  Her voice drifted off. She didn’t know what she wanted.

  Seth knew what he wanted. Diana. She might just be the prettiest girl at the entire college. Although that medical student was in the running for prettiest girl at the hospital.

  He knew he shouldn’t say girl. He should say woman. But he didn’t like saying woman because it sounded too competitive. Girl sounded more controllable. Then he hated himself for wanting to control Diana. She would certainly hate him for it.

  “How can I help?” said Seth. There. Success. Just the voice he wanted. Sexy, but comforting. He tightened the arm that was lying on her shoulder, in what he hoped would be a friendly fashion.

  She took the hand off, as if it were a scarf, and like a scarf twisted his fingers around hers. He liked it. Her hands were cool and smooth and her fingernails felt neat, glossy clear polish sliding against his skin.

  “Oh, Volunteer?” said Meggie, having actually left her desk and walked around to find them. Meggie was not fond of exercise, and leaving her swivel chair was an awesome amount of activity for her.

  Seth opened his mouth to tell Meggie he was busy, but she saw the words coming. “Busy, huh? Typical. You college kids come down here, show off a little, try to rack up points with your professors, do good, that kind of crap. And then you —”

  “What do you need?” interrupted Seth. “Name it, we do it. Seth — and/or Diana — at your service!” He gave her his biggest, finest grin but Meggie simply looked at Diana.

  Meggie hated Diana, it was in her eyes. Seth all but shivered. What’s that about? he thought.

  It never crossed his mind that it was about him.

  “They need that guy’s paperwork,” Meggie said to Diana.

  Seth whipped the insurance sheet out of Diana’s hand and bowed to her. “I shall accomplish this task,” he said in his knight-in-shining-armor voice. He could hardly wait to stare down Bed Eight. Check out what kind of guy —

  “What do you think you’re doing!” hissed Diana, ripping the sheet right back out of his hand. “I’ll thank you not to interfere in my life. Or his either! Who do you think you are, you arrogant future doctor, you?”

  Seth stared at her. “I was just helping,” he protested.

  “It’s my own fault for saying a single thing to you,” said Diana, furiously, and he thought how grand she looked — really regal — in her rage. Not whiny, not minor, but immense, as if Diana’s fury could blow the walls down.

  “Stop smiling!” shouted Diana. “It is so sick the way you take such pleasure in other people’s troubles.”

  She stomped away, and now his attention was taken by the wonderful switch of her walk.

  Meggie said, “Guess you’re not sharing a taxi after all, huh, Seth?”

  Oh, no! She was going to invite him out again. Seth said hastily, “I think they need me in Trauma, Meggie.”

  Emergency Room 7:10 p.m.

  THE HALLWAYS WERE SO crowded that neither Seth nor Diana could pass. Stretchers bumped into stretchers and portable X-ray units and treatment trays and wheelchairs snagged on people’s legs.

  They were rolling one of the GSWs out of the Trauma Room.

  The girl from college. I forgot her! thought Diana. She might be dyin
g and instead of thinking about her, and worrying about her, or praying for her, I’m all worked up about some man who — if he’s my father — never got worked up enough about me to send a birthday card.

  The girl was just paler than she had been, and becoming fidgety, her finger knotting and searching the bed. Jersey. That was her name. She roomed with Susan and Mai.

  “Systolic blood pressure is dropping,” said one nurse impassively to another. Jersey was going into shock; blood loss was causing her body to shut down whatever it could in an attempt to save whatever it could.

  Rolled blankets had been packed along Jersey’s body to keep her on her side. While a medical student held her IVs aloft so gravity would keep them running, and the tech rolled the portable heart monitor alongside, a doctor and two nurses wheeled the stretcher toward the patient elevators. They must be taking her to the operating room.

  Briefly, the doors to the Trauma Room remained open.

  Where Jersey’s stretcher had been, and where her blood had spilled, the floor was not red, but yellow. Footprints of Jersey’s blood tracked out of the room and down the hall. The housekeeping staff mopped up.

  “Everything’s fine, sweetie,” said the nurse to Jersey, patting her hair. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’ve got excellent surgeons waiting for you. Wang and Seredy, they’re the best.”

  Let it be, thought Diana. Let Wang and Seredy be the best and let it all be all right for Jersey.

  She slid a little on the yellow slick of Jersey’s blood, and swallowed hard before she went back to Insurance.

  Mary didn’t even ask why Diana didn’t want to do Bed 8, but just nodded, took the paperwork, and set off to interview Mr. Searle.

  Diana tried asking herself why she didn’t want to do Bed 8, but it was too much. She literally could not think about it.