Emergency Room (11 page)

B
ARBIE, 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.

A
NNA 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 hospital, 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.

P
EOPLE 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.

“I’m eighty-nine!” he cackled. “Been in America seventy-two years! My wife died forty years ago! I have five children. They’re all dead!” He seemed quite proud of these facts.

“What is your address, sir?” said Mary patiently.

“None of your business.”

“The doctor can’t see you until you tell me your address, sir.”

“Whaddaya wanna know my address for? Next thing you’ll wanna know what boat I came on!”

Diana felt as if she were watching a video game.

Little windows of these people’s lives opened when she clicked the screen. She would see them for a minute, or an hour, and she would know only what they had to tell: name, address, phone number, next of kin, insurance. They were bodies accompanied by a few facts and some pain.

She, Diana, was literally untouched by them. She would walk among them in her pink safety-zone jacket but she would do no suffering, answer no personal questions, pay no bills, see no doctors.

“None of your business!” shouted the Russian again. “Whaddaya wanna know my address for? Next thing you’ll wanna know what boat I came on!”

The Waiting Room had lost its terror for Diana. In fact, there was a curious companionship to the place now, as if Diana and this group were boat people together, hoping to hang on long enough to reach shore.

And was one of the people here part of her own story?

Stepmother.

Never before had Diana let the word form in her mind.

If your father abandoned you, the woman he married was not your stepmother, only his wife. Mary had said
suppose we have fifty men named Williams here this year, we have to get the right one.
So this was not necessarily the right one.

I could look him up in the computer, thought Diana. That would spare me actually getting near him. What would I find in the computer? Date of birth, but do I know his date of birth? March, I think, but what year? Next of kin. Yes, that would be useful. It would give me Bunny’s real name.

Diana never glanced at the young mother coloring next to her. Having babies when you were a teenager was so weird that Diana could not get into it. She knew she had nothing to say to such a person so she didn’t try.

Right behind the crayoning table, two thin young men, extraordinarily well dressed compared to the rest of the waiting room, got to their feet. They shot their cuffs and synchronized watches, as if they were about to settle a business deal. They seemed almost giggly to Diana, who puzzled over it. Nobody else in an ER Waiting Room had anything to giggle about.

In the very back of the room slouched a woman who was hugging her overcoat to her chest and eating Saltines. A surprising number of people were wearing coats in spite of the ghastly heat outdoors. Lots of them were also eating snacks. So there was nothing wrong with the woman having a snack. It was just that she was also eating the cellophane wrappers.

“Please tell me your address, sir,” said Mary.

“None of your business!” shouted the Russian again. “Whaddaya wanna know my address for? Next thing you’ll wanna know what boat I came on!”

Diana was beginning to see why he got stabbed with a fork.

“So what boat did you come on?” asked Mary, getting interested.

The woman eating the Saltine wrappers suddenly adjusted the bundle in her lap. It was not a coat. It was a blanket. Inside the blanket was a doll. The woman held the doll so that its head hung downward and its little neck splayed awkwardly on her legs.

Diana felt a chill of horror.

It was not a doll lying upside down on that lap.

T
HE WOMAN’S CHIN NODDED
down over the baby and then snapped up. She arched her torso vertically, sank back, and then, separately, her feet jittered around — her lower part dancing while her upper part slept.

Diana was deeply afraid. The woman was not behaving in an entirely human fashion. It was more as if that body were propelled by electrical impulses than by thought processes. And the baby was not lying there in an entirely human fashion, either. It was either dead or half dead. The woman belonged in the Psych Unit, but how did you get somebody in there? What did you do about a baby about to spill off a lap like a forgotten magazine?

Diana struggled to think clearly, but got nowhere, as if she were thinking inside pudding. If the baby’s half dead, she said to herself, that’s what the Emergency Room is for. To save the baby.

Diana looked around for help, but everybody seemed busy. From here she could see the ambulance bay outside, and it was filling with police cars. This seemed to be a police hobby — gathering, dispersing, gathering, dispersing. Barbie was conferring with Knika, both women half crouched behind the files, heads together, backs to the Waiting Room.

Diana was afraid the baby would go headfirst onto the floor. She left the crayoning table, accidentally bumping into the puffy men who were wending their way toward the exit. “Sorry,” she muttered, steering around them. How did you mention to somebody that she was dropping her kid? “Ma’am?” she said finally. “May I help you?” She sounded more like somebody selling sweaters.

The woman continued to rock, shudder, and hold the baby downward. She tore open a Saltine pack and squirted the two crackers into her mouth by crushing the back of the pack. Cracker dust fell on the baby.

Diana sat down next to her and said loudly, “Have you seen the nurse yet?”

The woman looked up. Her eyes were so out of focus they didn’t match each other.

Diana swallowed in fear. The fear did not go down but began filling her mouth and nose and eyes like some noxious gas. Diana knotted her own hands to stop herself from touching the woman. I’m afraid to touch her, thought Diana. Do I actually believe in the evil eye? “Let’s have the nurse look at the baby,” she said very loudly.

Now the Waiting Room stared at Diana with odd intensity, as if it were Diana behaving like a weirdo. Even the two puffy men stared at her, as if she had done something in very poor taste, knew nothing of Emergency Room etiquette.

They don’t think I should shout, thought Diana. Just because she’s nuts doesn’t mean she’s deaf. But I don’t think anything will register in this woman unless I do yell.

Diana was grateful for the practice on drunks. Yelling was not as uncomfortable as it had been. “Let’s go over to the nurse and ask her to look at the baby!” she shouted.

The crazy woman nodded away. It was more of a bobbing action than a head action and, with each move, the baby’s head dipped lower and lower toward the floor. “He don’t smile no more,” she told Diana. “He not bright-eyed. So I come in.”

Diana was desperate for help. She looked Barbie’s way, ready to give her hand signals or something. Surely Barbie had heard Diana bellowing.

Barbie stood at her desk, which was unusual. Barbie, like Meggie and Knika, preferred to stay seated. But the look she shot Diana was truly exasperated. It was another of those
you stupid college volunteer!
looks. Diana wanted to cry. She knew she was doing the right thing to interfere with this crazy woman.

A security guard wandered over, passing slowly between the crayoning table and the men who seemed so excessively annoyed that Diana had banged into them. As if they were God, and nobody stepped on their feet. The pathetic security guard looked at nobody, just shuffled toward Diana as if he knew he was of no use. At least he was coming. What kind of Emergency Room was this, where they couldn’t even respond to an emergency?

The guard’s hand rested very lightly on Diana’s shoulder. He was black, but his hand was white. In the split second before she realized he was gloved, she could not think how this division might have happened. It was just one more fearsome thing in an inexplicable situation. “Glove up,” said the guard softly.

Diana pulled gloves out of her pocket. She had meant to give them to the children at the crayoning table, so they could play doctor, or blow the gloves up to make balloons.

To her amazement, Barbie — who never left her desk; patients had to go to her; she didn’t come to them — was now beside them. “You did exactly the right thing,” said the nurse. Diana was thrilled until she realized that Barbie was not talking to her; Barbie couldn’t care less about the volunteer; she was talking to the woman. “Let’s just unwrap this blanket,” said the Admitting Nurse, “and —”

“
Don’t touch my baby
.”

Barbie’s voice was melodious and soothing. She sure never talked to Diana that way. “Okay. You hold the baby. I’m just going to take the baby’s temperature while you’re holding him, okay?”

The woman rocked and twitched, grabbing another snack, plucking at the baby’s wrappings, one foot dancing by itself around the chair leg.

Diana could not imagine what horrible disease the mother had.

The baby’s eyes opened. It was alive, thank God.

“Now what we’ll do is,” said Barbie comfortingly, “you and I will go to the doctor, too, because you don’t look like you feel too well either. Diana here’s gonna hold the baby for you.”

Diana had never held a little teeny baby in her life. She was as afraid to take the baby as she had been of approaching the mother. How do I support its neck? What if I drop it? What if —

But Barbie had already coaxed the baby out of the mother’s arms and was putting it in Diana’s. It did not feel like a real baby. It felt as light and unmoving as a doll. She pretended it was a doll and weirdly, after all these years, she could remember feeding her bedroom full of dollies, the ones that talked and wet.

Murmuring gently, the nurse got the mother to walk on through the Waiting Room with her, heading through the thick glass doors into the treatment area. Diana sat in a panic with her arms like sticks, not supporting the baby a whole lot better than the crazy woman had.

A black woman waiting for her son’s leg to be set (he’d broken it in baseball practice) slid over from three seats away. “Honey. Hold that young’un like this.” She moved Diana’s hands into a better position, and then the baby lay against her chest more comfortably. Diana relaxed a little. “That mama’s gonzo,” said her rescuer. “Wonder what she’s on.”

Drugs! thought Diana, feeling both innocent and stupid. She had thought only of disease.

“She’s
not
on ’em,” said another woman, turning around to face them from two rows over. “That’s the problem. She coming down
off
’em.”

The whole Waiting Room had been in on this soap opera. How weird. They had simply watched, as if it were TV, or a video game.

“She knew the baby needed a doctor, though,” said Diana’s helper. “I give her credit. The mama needs a fix but first she gets here to the ER so they see her baby.”

Diana stared down into the baby’s quiet little face. Your mama’s an addict who eats cellophane, she thought. What chance do you have?

In the corner of her eye, she saw a whole raft of police coming through the weather lock and telephone area.