Beginners

by Raymond Carver

  “Oh, no,” Ann said.

  “And a bit of a concussion, as I said before. Of course, you know he’s in shock,” the doctor said. “Sometimes you see this in shock cases.”

  “But he’s out of any real danger?” Howard said. “You said before he’s not in a coma. You wouldn’t call this a coma then, would you, Doctor?” Howard waited and looked at the doctor.

  “No, I don’t want to call it a coma,” the doctor said and glanced over at the boy once more. “He’s just in a very deep sleep. It’s a restorative, a measure the body is taking on its own. He’s out of any real danger, I’d say that for certain, yes. But we’ll know more when he wakes up and the other tests are in. Don’t worry,” the doctor said.

  “It’s a coma,” Ann said. “Of sorts.”

  “It’s not a coma yet, not exactly,” the doctor said. “I wouldn’t want to call it coma. Not yet, anyway. He’s suffered shock. In shock cases this kind of reaction is common enough; it’s a temporary reaction to bodily trauma. Coma—well, coma is a deep, prolonged unconsciousness that could go on for days, or weeks even. Scotty’s not in that area, not as far as we can tell, anyway. I’m just certain his condition will show improvement by morning. I’m betting that it will, anyway. We’ll know more when he wakes up, which shouldn’t be long now. Of course, you may do as you like, stay here or go home for a while, but by all means feel free to leave for a while if you want. This is not easy, I know.” The doctor gazed at the boy again, watching him, and then he turned to Ann and said, “You try not to worry, little mother. Believe me, we’re doing all that can be done. It’s just a question of a little more time now.” He nodded at her, shook hands with Howard again, and left the room.

  Ann put her hand on Scotty’s forehead and kept it there for a while. “At least he doesn’t have a fever,” she said. Then she said, “My God, he feels so cold, though. Howard? Is he supposed to feel like this? Feel his head.”

  Howard put his hand on the boy’s forehead. His own breathing slowed. “I think he’s supposed to feel this way right now,” he said. “He’s in shock, remember? That’s what the doctor said. The doctor was just in here. He would have said something if Scotty wasn’t okay.”

  Ann stood there awhile longer, working her lip with her teeth. Then she moved over to her chair and sat down.

  Howard sat in the chair beside her. They looked at each other. He wanted to say something else and reassure her, but he was afraid to. He took her hand and put it in his lap, and this made him feel better, her hand being there. He picked up her hand and squeezed it, then just held it. They sat like that for a while, watching the boy and not talking. From time to time he squeezed her hand. Finally, she took her hand away and rubbed her temples.

  “I’ve been praying,” she said.

  He nodded.

  She said, “I almost thought I’d forgotten how, but it came back to me. All I had to do was close my eyes and say, Please, God, help us—help Scotty; and then the rest was easy. The words were right there. Maybe if you prayed too,” she said to him.

  “I’ve already prayed,” he said. “I prayed this afternoon—yesterday afternoon, after you called, while I was driving to the hospital. I’ve been praying,” he said.

  “That’s good,” she said. Almost for the first time, she felt they were together in it, this trouble. Then she realized it had only been happening to her and to Scotty. She hadn’t let Howard into it, though he was there and needed all along. She could see he was tired. The way his head looked heavy and angled into his chest. She felt a good tenderness toward him. She felt glad to be his wife.

  The same nurse came in later and took the boy’s pulse again and checked the flow from the bottle hanging above the bed.

  In an hour another doctor came in. He said his name was Parsons, from radiology. He had a bushy moustache. He was wearing loafers and a white smock over a western shirt and a pair of jeans.

  “We’re going to take him downstairs for more pictures,” he told them. “We need to do some more pictures, and we want to do a scan.”

  “What’s that?” Ann said. “A scan?” She stood between this new doctor and the bed. “I thought you’d already taken all your X-rays.”

  “I’m afraid we need some more,” he said. “Nothing to be alarmed about. We just need some more pictures, and we want to do a brain scan on him.”

  “My God,” Ann said.

  “It’s perfectly normal procedure in cases like this,” the new doctor said. “We just need to find out for sure why he isn’t back awake yet. It’s normal medical procedure, and nothing to be alarmed about. We’ll be taking him down in a few minutes,” the doctor said.

  In a little while two orderlies came into the room with a gurney. They were black-haired, dark-complexioned men in white uniforms, and they said a few words to each other in a foreign tongue as they unhooked the boy from the tube and moved him from his bed to the gurney. Then they wheeled him from the room. Howard and Ann got on the same elevator. Ann stood beside the gurney and gazed at the boy, who was lying so still. She closed her eyes as the elevator began its descent. The orderlies stood at either end of the gurney without saying anything, though once one of the men made a comment to the other in their own language, and the other man nodded slowly in response.

  Later that morning, just as the sun was beginning to lighten the windows in the waiting room outside the X-ray department, they brought the boy out and moved him back up to his room. Howard and Ann rode up on the elevator with him once more, and once more they took up their places beside the bed.

  They waited all day, but still the boy did not wake up. Occasionally one of them would leave the room to go downstairs to the cafeteria to drink coffee or fruit juice and then, as if suddenly remembering and feeling guilty, jump up from the table and hurry back to the room. Dr. Francis came again that afternoon and examined the boy once more and then left after telling them he was coming along and could wake up any minute now. Nurses, different nurses than the night before, came in from time to time. Then a young woman from the lab knocked and came into the room. She wore white slacks and a white blouse and carried a little tray of things which she put on the stand beside the bed. Without a word to them, she took blood from the boy’s arm. Howard closed his eyes as the woman found the right place on the boy’s arm and pushed the needle in.

  “I don’t understand this,” Ann said to the woman.

  “Doctor’s orders,” the young woman said. “I do what I’m told to do. They say draw that one, I draw. What’s wrong with him, anyway?” she said. “He’s a sweetie.”

  “He was hit by a car,” Howard said. “A hit-and-run.”

  The young woman shook her head and looked again at the boy. Then she took her tray and left the room.

  “Why won’t he wake up?” Ann said. “Howard? I want some answers from these people.”

  Howard didn’t say anything. He sat down again in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. He rubbed his face. He looked at his son and then he settled back in the chair, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

  Ann walked to the window and looked out at the big parking lot. It was night, and cars were driving into and out of the parking lot with their lights on. She stood at the window with her hands gripping the sill and knew in her heart that they were into something now, something hard. She was afraid, and her teeth began to chatter until she tightened her jaws. She saw a big car stop in front of the hospital and someone, a woman in a long coat, got into the car. For a minute she wished she were that woman and somebody, anybody, was driving her away from here to somewhere else, a place where she would find Scotty waiting for her when she stepped out of the car, ready to say Mom and let her gather him in her arms.

  In a little while Howard woke up. He looked at the boy again, and then he got up from the chair, stretched, and went over to stand beside her at the window. They both stared out into the parking lot and didn’t talk. They seemed to feel each other’s insides now, as though the worry had made them
transparent in a perfectly natural way.

  The door opened and Dr. Francis came in. He was wearing a different suit and tie this time, but his hair was the same and he looked as if he had just shaved. He went straight to the bed and examined the boy once more. “He ought to have come around by now. There’s just no good reason for this,” he said. “But I can tell you we’re all convinced he’s out of any danger, we’ll just feel much better when he wakes up. There’s no reason, absolutely none, why he shouldn’t come around and soon now. Oh, he’ll have himself a dilly of a headache when he does, you can count on that. But all of his signs are fine. They’re as normal as can be.”

  “Is it a coma, then?” Ann asked.

  The doctor rubbed his smooth cheek. “We’ll call it that for the time being, until he wakes up. But you must be worn out. This is hard to wait out. Feel free to go out for a bite,” he said. “It would do you good. I’ll put a nurse in here while you’re gone, if you’ll feel better about going. Go and have yourselves something to eat.”

  “I couldn’t eat,” Ann said. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Do what you need to do, of course,” the doctor said. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that all the signs are good, the tests are positive, nothing at all negative, and just as soon as he wakes up he’ll be over the hill.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Howard said. He shook hands with the doctor again, and the doctor patted his shoulder and went out.

  “I suppose one of us should go home and check on things,” Howard said. “Slug needs to be fed, one thing.”

  “Call one of the neighbors,” Ann said. “Call the Morgans. Anyone will feed a dog if you ask them to.”

  “All right,” Howard said. After a while he said, “Honey, why don’t you do it? Why don’t you go home and check on things, and then come back? It’ll do you good. I’ll be right here with him. Seriously,” he said. “We need to keep up our strength on this. We may want to be here for a while even after he wakes up.”

  “Why don’t you go?” she said. “Feed Slug. Feed yourself.”

  “I already went,” he said. “I was gone for exactly an hour and fifteen minutes. You go home for an hour or so and freshen up, and then come back. I’ll stay here.”

  She tried to think about it, but she was too tired. She closed her eyes and tried to think about it again. After a time she said, “Maybe I will go home for a few minutes. Maybe if I’m not just sitting right here watching him every second he’ll wake up and be all right. You know? Maybe he’ll wake up if I’m not here. I’ll go home and take a bath and put on clean clothes. I’ll feed Slug. Then I’ll come back.”

  “I’ll be right here,” he said. “You go on home, honey, and then come back. I’ll be right here keeping an eye on things.” His eyes were bloodshot and small, as if he had been drinking for a long time, and his clothes were rumpled. His beard had come out again. She touched his face, and then took her hand back. She understood he wanted to be by himself for a while, to not have to talk or share his worry for a time. She picked up her purse from the nightstand, and he helped her into her coat.

  “I won’t be gone long,” she said.

  “Just sit and rest for a little while when you get home,” he said. “Eat something. After you get out of the bath, just sit for a while and rest. It’ll do you a world of good, you’ll see. Then come back down here,” he said. “Let’s try not to worry ourselves sick. You heard what Dr. Francis said.”

  She stood in her coat for a minute trying to recall the doctor’s exact words, looking for any nuances, any hint of something behind his words other than what he was saying. She tried to remember if his expression had changed any when he bent over to examine Scotty. She remembered the way his features had composed themselves as he rolled back the boy’s eyelids and then listened to his breathing.

  She went to the door and turned and looked back. She looked at the boy, and then she looked at the father. Howard nodded. She stepped out of the room and pulled the door closed behind her.

  She went past the nurses’ station and down to the end of the corridor, looking for the elevator. At the end of the corridor she turned to her right where she found a little waiting room with a Negro family sitting in wicker chairs. There was a middle-aged man in a khaki shirt and pants, a baseball cap pushed back on his head. A large woman wearing a house dress and slippers was slumped in one of the chairs. A teenaged girl in jeans, hair done in dozens of little braids, lay stretched out in one of the chairs smoking a cigarette, legs crossed at the ankles. The family swung their eyes to her as she entered the room. The little table was littered with hamburger wrappers and Styrofoam cups.

  “Nelson,” the large woman said as she roused herself. “Is about Nelson?” Her eyes widened. “Tell me now, lady,” the woman said. “Is about Nelson?” She was trying to rise from her chair, but the man had closed his hand over her arm.

  “Here, here,” he said. “Evelyn.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ann said. “I’m looking for the elevator. My son is in the hospital, and now I can’t find the elevator.”

  “Elevator is down that way, turn left,” the man said and aimed a finger down another corridor.

  The girl drew on her cigarette and stared at Ann. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, and her broad lips parted slowly as she let the smoke escape. The Negro woman let her head fall down on her shoulder and looked away from Ann, no longer interested.

  “My son was hit by a car,” Ann said to the man. She seemed to need to explain herself. “He has a concussion and a little skull fracture, but he’s going to be all right. He’s in shock now, but it might be some kind of coma, too. That’s what really worries us, the coma part. I’m going out for a little while, but my husband is with him. Maybe he’ll wake up while I’m gone.”

  “That’s too bad,” the man said and shifted in the chair. He shook his head. He looked down at the table, and then he looked back at Ann. She was still standing there. He said, “Our Nelson, he’s on the operating table. Somebody cut him. Tried to kill him. There was a fight where he was at. At this party. They say he was just standing and watching. Not bothering nobody. But that don’t mean nothing these days. Now he’s on the operating table. We’re just hoping and praying, that’s all we can do now.” He gazed at her steadily and then tugged the bill of his cap.

  Ann looked at the girl again, who was still watching her, and at the older woman, who kept her head down on her shoulder but whose eyes were now closed. Ann saw the lips moving silently, making words. She had an urge to ask what those words were. She wanted to talk more with these people who were in the same kind of waiting she was in. She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common. She would have liked to have said something else about the accident, told them more about Scotty, that it had happened on the day of his birthday, Monday, that he was still unconscious. Yet she didn’t know how to begin and so only stood there looking at them without saying anything more.

  She went down the corridor the man had indicated and found the elevator. She stood for a minute in front of the closed doors, still wondering if she was doing the right thing. Then she put out her finger and touched the button.

  —

  She pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. Slug ran around from behind the house. In his excitement he began to bark at the car, then ran in circles on the grass. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wheel for a minute. She listened to the ticking sounds the engine made as it began to cool. Then she got out of the car. She picked up the little dog, Scotty’s dog, and went to the front door, which was unlocked. She turned on lights and put on a kettle of water for tea. She opened some dog food and fed Slug on the back porch. He ate in hungry little smacks, between running back and forth to see that she was going to stay. As she sat down on the sofa with her tea, the telephone rang.

  “Yes!” she said as she answered. “Hello!”

  “Mrs. Weiss,” a man’s voice said. It was five o’clock in the morning, and she thought she could h
ear machinery or equipment of some kind in the background.

  “Yes, yes, what is it?” she said carefully into the receiver. “This is Mrs. Weiss. This is she. What is it, please?” She listened to whatever it was in the background. “Is it Scotty, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Scotty,” the man’s voice said. “It’s about Scotty, yes. It has to do with Scotty, that problem. Have you forgotten about Scotty?” the man said. Then he hung up.

  She dialed the hospital’s number and asked for the third floor. She demanded information about her son from the nurse who answered the telephone. Then she asked to speak to her husband. It was, she said, an emergency.

  She waited, turning the telephone cord in her fingers. She closed her eyes and felt sick at her stomach. She would have to make herself eat. Slug came in from the back porch and lay down near her feet. He wagged his tail. She pulled his ear while he licked her fingers. Howard was on the line.

  “Somebody just called here,” she said. She twisted the telephone cord and it kinked back into itself. “He said, he said it was about Scotty,” she cried.

  “Scotty’s fine,” Howard was telling her. “I mean he’s still sleeping. There’s been no change. The nurse has been in twice since you’ve been gone. They’re in here every thirty minutes or so. A nurse or a doctor, one. He’s all right, Ann.”

  “Somebody called, he said it was about Scotty,” she said.

  “Honey, you rest for a little while, you need the rest. Then come back down here. It must be that same caller I had. Just forget it. Come back down here after you’ve rested. Then we’ll have breakfast or something.”

  “Breakfast,” she said. “I couldn’t eat anything.”