Just as Hayden and Joey exit Cyrus's room three nuns come rushing out of the room next door as if they're being chased by the devil himself. Cascading after them are a telephone, black leather-bound Bible, and other bedside paraphernalia. A nurse walking down the corridor calmly dodges the barrage as if it's an hourly occurrence that everyone has become accustomed to working around.
"Mind if I have a look-see?" Hayden says to a nun cowering in the hallway outside the door. But she appears to panic and rushes off down the corridor without replying.
"Wait here a minute, Joe-Joe." Hayden slowly enters the room as if he's an advance scout checking for signs of enemy artillery.
"I told you to get out!" a woman hollers and a ceramic vase full of flowers comes flying toward Hayden. He quickly ducks and it crashes and splatters directly above his head.
"Jayzus, Mary, and Joseph!" says Hayden. "With an arm like that you should be pitching for the Mets."
"Who are you?” the woman in the bed shouts and picks up a blue plastic lunch tray, apparently ready to hurl it at him. "A priest? Another specialist?"
"I'm Hayden MacBride, nice to make your acquaintance. And no, I'm just a visitor. My friend Cyrus is tryin' to die in the next room, and you're a-keepin' him from it." His Scottish brogue bubbles to the top in indignation and he rolls his r's more severely.
She scrutinizes the intruder. He's a man of medium height, medium build, and medium age, all of which are incongruous to his outsize personality.
Hayden edges closer. Her pale blond hair is shorn, not very stylishly, making him wonder if perhaps she's just come out of brain surgery. That could also explain the fits. Otherwise, without any makeup she appears no older than forty, though a distraught forty. Her face is flushed with anger, bright blue eyes resembling a pair of shattered prisms about to spill over with tears. But he finds them enchanting, like those on an old-fashioned china doll.
The anguished patient slowly lowers the tray but stares at him with enough loathing to indicate that she might yet fling it. "You don't look very ill to me," says Hayden.
"Well, I am. Inoperable lung cancer. And it's—it's just not fair. I've prayed my entire life, and now this.”
"Terminal liver cancer," says Hayden matter-of-factly, pointing to his midsection. He then lifts the chart that is chained to the end of the bed.
"You sound vaguely familiar," says the woman. "I mean your voice. That's a Scottish accent, isn't it?"
"Well done." He flashes a grin that could illuminate dark places, and the rows of permanent but good-natured furrows that cross his square forehead deepen when he smiles, which is most of the time. "Most Americans think it's Irish or English. Though I have a feelin' it only sounds familiar because yer thinking of a famous Scottish actor, who shall remain nameless, and is known for copyin' my accent in films."
"Sean Connery!"
"I didn't say it." Hayden self-consciously smooths his unruly thatch of dark brown hair, recently streaked with gray, as if an early smattering of frost had wafted down upon it.
The patient calms slightly. "I haven't seen a movie in ages." She loosens her grip on the lunch tray and offers Hayden a small hand. "I'm Rosamond. Rosamond Rodgers."
"The accent was always a good opener when I used to sell casualty insurance. And speaking o' casualties, what's with all the hollerin' and hurlin’ of furniture over here?"
"I'm sorry for disturbing your friend." As she apologizes a solitary tear drifts down her cheek. "I haven't been taking the diagnosis very well. It all happened so suddenly. And now they want to do all these treatments and tests when I'll probably just die anyway."
"So then why stay here?"
"Because it's a hospital, that's why."
"I know that. What I mean is, why sit around and let them poke and prod you if they're just torturing you? Besides, doctors do'an' know what they're up to most of the time anyway. More or less killed my poor wife. And then I was supposed to kick the bucket three months ago. But look, here I am!" Hayden throws up his arms in Olympic medalist fashion.
Rosamond scrunches her brow and finally loosens her fingers on the plastic tray. While she's framed against the white hospital sheets, Hayden can't help but notice she's the antithesis of his wife, slender and fair, whereas Mary was raven-haired and shapely, exactly like their daughter Diana.
Rosamond's countenance slowly shifts from trapped to pensive, as if it hadn't occurred to her to just get up and leave.
"Aggressive inoperable malignant tumor," Hayden says and drops her chart. "Looks pretty hopeless to me."
"Are you a doctor?" she asks.
"No, but death by The Cancer just happens to be my favorite hobby these days. Aside from baseball, o' course. Speaking of sports, my grandson and I are on our way to a game. Why don't you come along?" That would get her out of Cyrus's hair for good. By the time she checked in again he'd most likely be gone, and if not, it was doubtful the same room would be available.
"We're Mets fans." Hayden throws on the charm as if he's selling a million-dollar insurance policy. "They're playin' the Cardinals. Are you a Mets fan?"
She ponders the invitation, as if this is a forbidden outing, or something even more outrageous, like Hayden has suggested firebombing the United Nations. "I've never been to a baseball game." She shoves aside the movable table holding the lunch tray. "That sounds splendid. Would you mind waiting in the hall while I change?"
Hayden exits and vaguely wonders if he's just started a new career as a social worker or, alternatively, asked a woman out on a date for the first time in three decades. After his wife had been gone for over a year, his sweet twenty-four-year-old neighbor Bobbie Anne started bothering him to ask a woman out. Well, now he'd done it. And a feisty one, at that.
Hayden locates Joey, who's counting the tiles on the floor of the patients' lounge at the end of the corridor. The boy is forever counting things. Hayden is beginning to think he'll grow up to be a math teacher. Or better yet, a bookie. Wouldn't that give his mother a fit!
Joey is relieved to see his grandfather return. He believes that if the Cancer Monster has a secret hideaway, it's probably here in the hospital, maybe in the basement or up on the roof.
"Well? Did you give her your Suicide for Dummies lecture?"
"I prefer the term 'self-euthanasia' if you do'an' mind. And yes, I have convinced her to check out," he says like a proud salesman.
"She already took the pills!" Joey exclaims, not even trying to hide his astonishment for the benefit of the other patients in the lounge. "Wow, Grandpa, you could sell ice to Eskimos." He parrots one of Hayden's favorite sayings.
"No, no. I mean check out of the hospital in the traditional sense of the word. I've invited her to the game with us."
Just then Rosamond appears in full nun regalia, like a vision out of a stained-glass window—long black habit, white wimple, black cloth veil, large cross on a long silver chain dangling above her waist. Her face is smooth and pleasant now, dairy-fresh skin and a small upturned nose. "I'm ready!" she announces.
Unable to hide their shock, Hayden and Joey simply stare at Rosamond and then at each other, mouths agape.
"You didn't tell me she was a nun," Joey whispers to his grandfather.
"I had no idea," replies Hayden. "It wasn't on her chart."
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Pedersen grew up near Buffalo and now lives in Manhattan, where she contributes to The New York Times and volunteers at the Booker T. Washington Learning Center in East Harlem.
Visit her Web site at www.LauraPedersenBooks.com.
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BY LAURA PEDERSEN
Fiction
Beginner's Luck
Going Away Party
Nonfiction
Play Money
Beginner's Luck Page 38