Passing Through Midnight (23 page)

She nodded and tried to smile. A little boy's unhappy
efforts to make his dreams come true were endearing, but…

"Fletcher won't drive your car anymore. He says it's only
fun if he thinks he's getting away with something. He says he can smell
your perfume in it. I think it makes him sad."

She glanced away briefly in confusion. Two young boys
wishing they could make things the way they want them to be was heart
wrenching, but…

"Matthew has stopped talking to me. He thinks there was
something I could have done to make you stay. He says he's got no use
in living now that he's seen me give up without a fight. He said he
never thought he'd live to see the day, and he's sorry he did."

She frowned. She wanted to tell him that Matthew would
come around. One old man and two young boys thinking they could change
the inevitable was inspiring, but…

"Was there something I could have done?"

A faint alarm sounded, followed by some squawking from a
radio. Dorie ignored it.

"Gil…"

"I thought about it. I wanted you to stay," he said,
taking one step closer to her. "But I thought you wanted to come back.
And I sort of agreed that you should, at the time. I mean, if you had
decided to stay, I didn't want you to have any regrets later. You did
want to come back, didn't you?"

"Ambulance pickup from Holy Trinity Retirement Home," the
nurse said. "Two victims. Chest pain. ETA four minutes."

"Call the residents' lounge and see who's up there and see
if Dr. Gillmore's in the house," she told the nurse before turning back
to Gil. "I…"

"I told you I wasn't any good at this. I've never been
able to play this game right. You have to tell me what you want, cuz
I'm no good at guessing. Damn, I've missed you," he said, blurting out
the words. "I think about you constantly. What are you doing? Are you
all right? Are you dead in a ditch somewhere? I can't concentrate. I
can't sleep. I eat, but I'm not hungry. If you didn't want to come back
here, why didn't you tell me? Straight out. Not as if you were sad to
be leaving, but as if you really didn't want to go."

"Oh, Gil, I've missed you, too, but this… this
isn't a good time for me to explain everything."

"I know you're busy. Just tell me you'll come home with
me, and I'll get out of your way till you're finished."

"I can't just…"

"Can't what? Pack up and leave? I thought about that too.
I'll sell the farm if I have to. Chandler Cattle Company has been after
my place for a while… They're not American
owned"—he was clearly worried about this—"but we
can hold out awhile, wait for a company that is and then—"

"Sell the farm? No. I—"

"Dorie, I love you. If selling the farm and moving here is
what it's going to take for us to be together, then that's what I'll
do. I understand that I can't expect you to give up what you have here.
I do. I'll sell the farm, but I think I should tell you that I'm hoping
we can come to some sort of compromise before it comes to that."

She was speechless.

"They're here," the nurse said, walking toward the
electric glass doors, the ambulance coming to a stop on the other side.

"Can we talk about this later?" she asked Gil, looking at
him over her shoulder as she followed the nurse to the emergency
entrance.

"No, I don't think so. Well, selling the farm we can talk
about later, but I want this other business settled. I need an answer."

"Gil! Look around," she said, agog at his strange
behavior. He had his stubborn moments, but this was ridiculous. "I have
an emergency coming in. I can't give you any answers now."

He did look around, but didn't seem to care where he was
or what else was going on.

"Yes, you can. Yes or no, it's that simple."

"Yes or no what?" she asked as the doors slid open and she
walked out into the sweltering heat to assist the ambulance attendants.

He followed her halfway out. "Yes, you'll come home and
marry me. Or no, you won't come back, and Matthew, the boys, and I will
come here and
then
we'll get married."

"This is crazy," she said, helping to lift a stretcher out
of the back of the ambulance. "You're a farmer. You belong in Kansas."

"I belong with you." He stepped back as she and one of the
medics passed him, Dorie examining the patient as they went. Another
patient was rolled by, and he stepped out of the doorway, following the
parade into the treatment room.

"You can't come in here, Gil."

"Well, I'm not leaving until you give me an answer."

"Are you a doctor?" Gil looked sideways at a very short
old woman standing next to him. She was peering at him through dirty
half-glasses sitting on the end of her nose. "Where's your uniform?"

"I'm not a doctor," he said. He motioned across the room.
"She's the doctor."

"Don't like she-doctors. Never have. Never had one in my
life. You a nurse? They got lots of male nurses nowadays. Where's your
uniform?"

"I'm not a nurse either. Are you hurt? Do you need help?"
he asked, bending low to look her over, then looking around for some
help.

"Heck no, I'm not hurt. Are you hurt?"

Another old woman, as wide as she was tall, rolled up
behind her, followed by an elderly gentleman with shocking white hair
that stood straight on end.

"Are any of you hurt?" he asked, concerned. "Do you need
to see a doctor?"

"No. Are you hurt?" they asked in unison.

"No, I—"

"Are you a doctor?" the little round ball-woman asked,
squinting at him. "Where's your uniform?"

"Dorie?" he called across the room to her. She looked up,
saw him surrounded by elderly people who didn't appear to be in
distress, and pulled the curtain around her patient.

"If you're not a doctor or a nurse, what are you?" Ms.
Half-Glasses asked. "If you don't have a uniform and you're not hurt,
what are you doing here?"

It wasn't any of their damned business who he was or what
he was doing there—but where he came from you had a little
respect for life's survivors. Living long enough to be considered old
was an achievement.

"I'm asking her to marry me," he said simply, motioning
across the room to the curtained-off area, not really eager to get into
any explanations.

"She's too old for you, son," the gentleman said, walking
by and patting him on the shoulder good-naturedly.

"She's only two years older than I am."

"She's pulling your leg, sonny boy," Ms. Half-Glasses
said. She shuffled over to a chair and began pushing it across the
floor to where the gentleman with the hair had already seated himself.
"You can't trust a word she says. Especially about her age."

The ball-woman wobbled by him, mumbling under her breath.

The second patient they'd wheeled into the treatment room
had his head elevated and was getting oxygen through two short prongs
in his nose. The nurse was taking his blood pressure and asking
questions which he was responding with terse answers.

By the time Gil looked back to the three ancients, they
had all found seats and were sitting together, almost in the middle of
the room.

"You're waiting for them," he surmised, using his first
two fingers in a
V
to motion back and forth.

The three of them nodded.

"Where'd she pick you up?" the ball-woman asked, none too
nicely.

"We met in Kansas," he said, growing resigned to the idea
that he'd have to wait his turn for Dorie's attention. But he still
wasn't leaving until he got his answer.

Six weeks he'd been without her—without a word,
without knowing how she was or what she was thinking. For six weeks
he'd tried to convince himself that he'd done the right thing in
letting her go; that she didn't belong to him; that they weren't meant
to be together. Six miserable weeks—until he went crazy. And
not just a little crazy, a lot crazy to come all the way to Chicago to
get her. And he was going to get her. He didn't care what he had to do.
Not anymore.

He was sick of taking his lumps like a man. He was tired
of swallowing life's little disappointments with a spoonful of sugar
and going on as if he wasn't tormented and ailing. He was finished with
putting his dreams second to others'. This time he was going to get
what he wanted, make it work, and find his happiness. This time he
wasn't reaching for the stars; he wasn't asking for the impossible; he
wasn't wishful thinking. This time he wanted something real and true
and solid. He wanted Dorie.

"Must have met you on that trip she took last winter," the
ball-woman was saying, pugnaciously folding her arms across her chest
by locking her fingers together midway. "You have no idea what you're
getting yourself into, young man."

"I think I do," Gil said, confident and determined.

"She's loose. She has the morals of an alley cat. She'll
flirt with anything in pants." Gil was shaking his head in denial. "The
only thing worse than an old fool," she said, glancing at the patient
on the stretcher before squinting back at Gil, "is a young fool."

He frowned. "You know, I don't think you know her the way
I do."

"Oh, we know her all right." They were all agreed.

"Why would you want to marry a woman like her?" the
gentleman asked, looking completely befuddled. "She's a looker, but
she's not a young woman anymore."

"I don't care. I love her." Normally, Gil would have been
getting angry about this time. But he was so baffled by these people
and their poor opinion of Dorie—hell, he couldn't imagine
what she'd done to deserve this sort of treatment from them.

"Love, schmove," the ball-woman said. "Tell us the truth.
Tell us why you really want to marry her."

In the interest of fair play, he thought he should explain
to these people exactly how wonderful Dorie really was. Their
perception of her was clearly out of focus.

"All right," he said, "I'll tell you the truth about her.
And I'll tell you why I want to marry her…"

Meanwhile, behind the drawn curtain, Flora DeLuca, a
regular at West Side General whose chief ailments were being entirely
too young for her age and an incurable romantic, was having a cozy
little tête-à-tête with her favorite physician.

"Who
is
that big hunk of sweet meat
over there?" she asked, straining against Dorie's hand to sit up and
get a better look.

"Shhh. Lie still and be quiet so I can hear this," she
said, trying to listen to the woman's lungs with a stethoscope. She was
holding her wrist as well and was glad to feel that her pulse was slow
and regular.

"I think he's trying to get your attention, honey. Look
alive."

Dorie glanced over her shoulder at Gil. The Blessed
Trinity, as they were affectionately known, from Holy Trinity
Retirement Home had him surrounded. She almost laughed at the
expression on his face, but knowing they'd keep him busy and out of
trouble for the next few minutes, she pulled the curtain all the way
around the stretcher to cut off Flora's view of him. There was no other
way to get the woman's attention if there was a man in the room.

"What'd you go and do that for?"

"I want to make sure you're faking it again before I send
you back home in the ambulance. Flora, these joy-rides in the
ambulances have got to stop. I told you that before."

"We checked," the woman said defensively. "We listened all
morning on Walter's police scanner. Two runs downtown this morning and
that was all. They weren't busy."

"That's beside the point. What if—?"

"Hush, hush. He's talking about you. Listen." She gasped.
"He wants to ask you to marry him. Go out there, girl. Let him ask you."

"He already has."

"Well?"

"Are you sure your chest isn't hurting? How about your
left arm here?"

"I told you there was a holy miracle in the ambulance on
the way over here. First I had it, then Leroy caught it from me. Open
the curtain and let's see how ol' Lee is, huh?"

Dorie sighed, exasperated—and remotely amused.

"I'm not pulling the curtain back so you can hustle my man
away from me," she said fondly. "Are you sure Leroy is okay?"

"Oh, honey, we were just so bored, and it was so damned
hot in that dayroom. Ol' Lee and me decided we'd start dancing and get
the Blessed Trinity's blood moving a little. They were due for an
outing anyway."

Dorie frowned at her, straining her ears to hear what Gil
was saying.

The Blessed Trinity were the self-anointed guardians of
the ill from the retirement home. They nearly always followed the
ambulance the eight blocks to the hospital in a taxi, got the scoop
first, and returned with all the vital information for the others. They
were the center of attention for a good five or ten minutes every time
they did it.

"So, what'd you tell him when he asked?" Flora asked in a
whisper.

"Nothing really."

"Why not?" Flora was floored.

"It's not as simple as yes and no."

"Sure it is."

"He's a Kansas farmer. I'm a doctor in Chicago."

"So?"

"So, we've both invested a lot of our life in what we do."

"They don't have sick people in Kansas?"

"Of course, they do, but…"

"You don't love him?"

"Of course, I do, but…"

"You can find love on every corner you walk around?"

"Of course not, but…"

"You stupid?"

"Flora!" she muttered. "Let me explain. I can't get a word
in edgewise with you."

"Don't need to. I know two people in love when I see them.
I'm old, but I'm not blind, and I'm not nearly as stupid as you're
acting. How many times do you think you're going to get to fall in love
in this lifetime, huh? I'll be eighty-seven years old three months and
two days from now, and I'll tell you how many chances you get. I was
married four times before I swore off it forever, and they were all
fine, good men—sexy as hell, real charmers every one. But I
was only in love once, in nineteen twenty-five when I was eighteen
years old, to a traveling salesman my daddy didn't approve of because
he was older than me—and he was a Baptist, too, which was
probably worse than being both a traveling salesman and older than
me… But anyway," she said with a sigh, "I made the mistake
of listening to my father. I played it safe. I waited for men my own age with the right
religion and secure jobs, and I never fell in love again. Not like
that." She became silent and left Dorie in a thoughtful state, then
suddenly grabbed her arm and tittered, "Listen to that old bat Laverne.
She's still miffed that I got ol' Leroy to dance with me instead of
playing canasta with her. She's thinking your fella is after me too!"