Nightscript 1

by C M Muller

  Claire waited outside the closed bathroom door, decided to go back out into the living room, to give Hannah some privacy.

  The TV was the only thing on the walls. No photographs, no cheap mass market paintings, no shelves with knick-knacks. Ear cocked for the sound of the knob turning, she went into the kitchen. Opened the small refrigerator’s door. Bottle of ketchup, loaf of bread, iceberg lettuce that was browning, vials of insulin. In the freezer section above, vapor rolling out and two empty ice trays. In the cabinets, seven cans of soup, salt shaker, small jar of dried oregano. She wondered what the circumstances were that caused Hannah to buy this one herb.

  Is this my future?

  At the government clinic, Claire shielded the old lady from everyone milling around impatiently, got her a safe seat in one corner, near an end table with magazines spread out. “You sit right here, Hannah. I’m going to let them know you’ve arrived.”

  “Okay, dear.”

  Claire went down the rows of chairs and couches to the back of the reception area. No one in front of her in line just had a simple question for the one receptionist. All of them wanted to argue with the middle-aged woman about something. Several times she heard the woman say, “I’m not a doctor. I can’t tell you anything about your symptoms. You’ll have to wait for your appointment.”

  When it was her turn, Claire identified herself as a social worker. Gave her Hannah’s name and appointment time.

  “You’re late.”

  “Ms. Sweeney took longer than I expected to get ready. I’m sorry.”

  The receptionist made an entry. “Okay, she’s on the list.”

  “May I ask how long—”

  “We’re running late. There’s about a two-hour delay.” Looked behind Claire at the next person in line.

  “The reason I ask is she’s ninety years old, this is the first time she’s been out of her apartment in a while, and she has what appears to be a particularly large tumor growing in her abdomen—”

  “I’m not a doctor. I can’t diagnose her condition.”

  “No, of course not. I like your bracelet! I don’t think I’ve seen one like that before.”

  The middle-aged woman shot her a bored look. “Really, hon?”

  Claire slunk back to the far corner.

  “Do I get up now?”

  “It’ll be a little while. Would you like to read one of these magazines while we wait?”

  “Can’t read.”

  “Oh!”

  “Do you have a man, dear?”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  Hannah nodded to herself, lips downturned.

  “Of course, these days, Hannah, women don’t need a man.”

  “Okay.” Hannah looked off into space.

  They were finally brought into the back examination cubicles about eleven in the morning. The black nurse, in her white uniform, was actually cheerful, a big plus. She spoke in a louder than normal voice. “Okay, Ms. Sweeney. I’m going to ask you to undress down to your underwear please, and put this hospital gown on you with the ties in front. Do you understand what you need to do?” The nurse looked at Claire.

  “I’ll help her.”

  “I’m going to come back for you in a short while, then we’re going to take you and your friend to the x-ray area. Okay, Ms. Sweeney?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You have any boyfriends, Ms. Sweeney?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I don’t know, I think you probably have a couple of beaus out there.”

  “Long time ago. When I was young.” But it did seem to improve her mood.

  At the x-ray area, they sat in the narrow corridor in two of a series of metal chairs, backs set against the corridor’s walls. Most of the chairs were taken. Young girl with her mother, man in his twenties, sneakers spread on the floor in front of him, nursing his left wrist, old man attached to a rolling IV contraption, head of a needle stuck into his forearm.

  The x-ray room itself was small, a bit larger than a closet. The technician asked Hannah to undo the ties at the front of her hospital gown. Place her abdomen against the x-ray machine. “Hold still! Don’t breathe.” Then place the left profile of her abdomen against the front of the machine; the right profile. “You wait back out in reception. We call you back later.”

  The reception area was half empty. Of course, it was the lunch hour.

  Around two in the afternoon Hannah’s name was called. She and Claire were escorted to a small examination cubicle, curtains drawn around the cubicle.

  An hour later, the doctor showed up. Young, hurried. Ignored Hannah, who had fallen asleep on the examination table. Spoke to Claire. “Are you family?”

  “I’m her social worker.”

  “So I can’t have a discussion with you in the room.”

  “She’s signed the necessary HIPAA forms.”

  The doctor slapped three x-rays up on the illuminated screen on one side of the cubicle. Looked up at them, stroking his chin. “Okay, let’s see. Hah! How old is she?”

  “Ninety.”

  “Really! Well, she does definitely have something inside her that seems to resemble a fetus. A late-term fetus, as a matter of fact.”

  Claire looked at the dark black and gray slides. Definitely, it was a baby-shaped form up inside Hannah’s abdomen.

  The young doctor looked annoyed. “How sure are you she’s ninety?”

  Claire, glancing down at the frail little woman asleep on the table, mouth open, wanted to answer, Doesn’t she look ninety? But held her tongue. “She’s ninety. Yup.”

  “Okay. Well, we need to do a sonogram.”

  “Can we do it today? While she’s here?”

  The doctor ran his eyes up and down Claire’s crossed legs. “For you? I’ll allow it.” Big-toothed, ingratiating grin.

  Back to the waiting area. Sitting side by side. The area was packed again, all the seats taken.

  Hannah tugged Claire’s sleeve. Brought her mouth to Claire’s ear. Frightened whisper. “I want to go home and watch my TV.”

  “We will, Hannah. In just a little while.”

  The next time they were called back to the examination area, their new doctor was a little nicer. Indian or Pakistani.

  Hannah lay on her back on the examination table. The doctor greased up her exposed abdomen. Hannah’s head lifting in surprise off the examination table. Ran the rounded front of the sonogram probe over and around her upraised abdomen, like the planchette of a Ouija board. Looking up at a monitor mounted under the low ceiling. The gray and black third of a circle of the sonogram’s signals. “Yes, there it is.”

  To Claire, it looked like a fetus.

  “Well, the bad news is rather depressing?” He glanced across the small room at Claire. Kept his voice low. “It would appear the fetus is not moving. See? There is no heartbeat here. Where you would expect it. It is a miracle she has been pregnant, yes? But this fetus is not alive.” Watching the monitor again as his right hand slid over the grease. “No, definitely not.” Pulling the surgical gloves off his hands. “She will need a procedure.”

  The procedure was scheduled for that Friday. Claire arrived at Hannah’s apartment extra early, to give her time to be ready to leave. On the drive over to the hospital, Hannah put her wrinkled hand up on her side of the dashboard. “I want to take my baby home with me.”

  “I don’t know if the hospital allows that, Hannah. It may be against the law.”

  Voice raising, angry, hopeless. “I don’t care! It’s my baby, and I want to take it home with me.” She looked defiantly at Claire, jaw set, but of course, at that age, a set jaw means very little. Especially to people who work in a hospital.

  “I’ll do my best to get them to agree.”

  “It better Goddamn be your best.”

  Claire wasn’t allowed to be present during the actual procedure, but she was permitted to participate in the brief pre-op consultation. The meeting took place in the doctor’s office. The doct
or, sitting behind his cluttered desk, pictures of sailboats on his walls, had the wide face of middle age, where from some angles the face still looks handsome. “We’re going to consider going in through the vagina, but if it looks like that approach might be time-consuming, we’ll remove the tissue through a strategic entrance in the abdomen. Are you prepared to stay with her a few hours back in her home, while the general anesthesia wears off?”

  “Yes. Ms. Sweeney expressed a very strong desire to keep the fetus once it’s removed.”

  “To do what? Sell it?”

  “No. She’s emotionally attached to it. It’s a part of her.”

  Annoyed look from the doctor. “We have a protocol for excised tissue. It’s either disposed of through our established procedures, or if there’s something unique about it, as there is in her case because of her age, it’s routed for further research. She can take pride in the fact she’s furthering the cause of science. But she can’t take the tissue home with her. Absolutely not. That’s barbaric.”

  Claire waited in the outer reception area to be called back once Hannah’s operation was finished. Alone in her chair, alone in a sea of chairs, most empty, she cried. For Hannah, for herself.

  Two hours later, a door on the right opened. “Hannah Sweeney! Whoever came with her!”

  Claire rose from her seat.

  She thought she was being escorted to a post-op recovery room, but in fact she was taken to the doctor’s office where she and Hannah had sat earlier.

  After a ten minute wait, the same doctor entered the office. Sat again behind his desk. “Who are you, again?”

  “Hannah’s social worker. Is she okay? Did she survive the surgery?”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “Not much. I’ve only been assigned to her for a few weeks.”

  “Does she have any history of mental delusions?”

  “Nothing in her file. Nothing in my interaction with her suggested she had that issue.”

  Dismissive wave of the hand from the doctor. “You’re not trained to spot it. That’s the problem, we have untrained personnel handling these cases. Has there been any suicide ideation?”

  “No.” Feeling small.

  “Of course, you wouldn’t know what to look for.”

  Sat up in her chair, summoning some courage. “What’s your point?”

  Daggers from the doctor. “Your patient wasn’t pregnant.”

  Claire was confused. “It was a tumor that looked like a baby?”

  “There’s no tumor. She had a plastic doll inside her abdomen.”

  She lost her resentment. “What?”

  “Yeah! She apparently forced a life-sized plastic doll of a baby up inside her, and God knows how she managed to distend her vagina that wide, to make her appear to be pregnant. Is she an alcoholic? Does she take any psychotropic drugs, prescription or illegal?”

  Claire sat silent. Face cold.

  “She really needs to be put under observation. But that’s your job. This has been a complete waste for me. I was all set to publish a paper on a ninety year old being pregnant. Now she’s just some senile woman who decided to shove a doll up her cunt. Sorry. Language. But I’m extremely disappointed.”

  “Does that mean she can take her baby home with her?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Since it turns out there’s no tissue involved, it’s a plastic doll she bought with her own money, is she allowed to bring the doll home with her?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Your fee is being paid by Medicare. Do you want me, or my Director, to file a federal claim against you with Medicare? Language?”

  Hannah came out of the general anesthesia enough to where she could dress herself, with Claire’s assistance.

  “Where’s my baby?” Black eyes darting around in a panic. “Where’s my baby?”

  “I have your baby over there, Hannah. In that chair. See? Once we have you dressed, I’ll take you and your baby back to your home.”

  The hospital staff hadn’t washed the blood off the doll that had been inside Hannah, but the old woman clutched its plastic curves to her breast anyway on the long drive back to her home. She looked happier than Claire had ever seen her.

  Once back at the apartment, Hannah bustled around, making a space on her bed for where the baby would sleep, laying down a doubled-over bath towel, fetching a bag of plugs she had evidently bought recently to push into the rooms’ wall sockets, to baby-proof her home. Claire offered to wash the blood off the doll, but Hannah, with the pride of a new mother, insisted on doing that herself, carrying her baby to the kitchen counter, laying it down carefully on its plastic back, cooing to it while she adjusted and readjusted the hot and cold taps on her kitchen sink until she had a lukewarm flow. She wiped the blood off the stiff limbs and head with paper towels, pink water swirling down the stainless steel sink’s drain.

  Once the baby was cleaned and dried, Hannah carried it against her bosom into the living room. Settled into her favorite chair, baby in her lap. Stroked its plastic head.

  And looking down, started crooning to it in a high, frail voice.

  “Down in the valley

  There are apples in the river

  Bobbing past the blue birds,

  Floating past just you and me.”

  Claire was surprised by the utter sweetness on Hannah’s face as she sang. The raised, almost bald eyebrows, the way she’d try so sincerely to reach the higher notes. She could see the face of the happy little girl Hannah had been, long, long ago, singing with her family.

  Watching all this, the joy, the extreme care, Claire decided, You know what? I can have a talk with Hannah some other time. Let her be content for now.

  Once Hannah was snuggled in bed with her baby, squeezing her eyes at Claire, Claire turned off the bedside lamp, said goodnight to them both, and left, making sure she locked the front door behind her.

  She waited a week before going back to Hannah’s apartment. Not always, but sometimes, it helps to let someone come to reality on their own.

  She didn’t know what to expect when she knocked on the door. No answer? (She’d have to call the police, let their wide blue shoulders be the first to access the apartment, to locate where Hannah or her body was); Hannah answering weak and forlorn, the doll in the trash with empty soup cans? (She might have to recommend a mental/nervous evaluation, which could mean Hannah being placed in a hospital for observation, and losing her apartment.)

  The front door swung inwards. Hannah in the doorway.

  Claire looked quickly to see if anything was in the old woman’s hands; tried to judge the woman’s emotional state.

  Hannah took a moment, then grinned. “There you are!”

  The doll was propped up in one of the living room chairs, in front of the TV. Rich women with horrible plastic surgeries screaming at each other during a dinner service of what looked like salads.

  Claire accepted a glass of water from her hostess. “So how are you?”

  Hannah clasped her old hands together. “I am so happy!”

  “How’s your son doing?”

  “Look at him!”

  Claire took a seat. “Well, he certainly looks healthy. Are you breast feeding him?”

  Hannah, thumb-pressing the volume button on her TV remote to turn down the weeping and name-calling, turned shy. “I don’t give him breast milk.” That long distance stare. Lowering of the wrinkled face. “My breasts have long dried out.” So, some sense of reality. “I give him store-bought milk. Warmed on the stove.”

  “Can I watch you give him the milk?”

  Closed-eye shake of the head. “He prefers to eat when it’s just me and him.”

  “Okay. What’s your baby’s name?”

  Sly smile. “That’s the secret.”

  “It is? Why’s it a secret, Hannah?”

  Troubled look. “There are people around the world who are searching for him. They want to find him. Destroy him.”

/>   “Why would they want to do that, Hannah?”

  Raised her frail chin. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Are you enjoying your water?”

  “He’s probably old enough now that maybe a pediatrician should check him out. To make sure he’s developing normally.”

  Eyes closing again, set mouth. Head swinging left, right. “He’s fine.”

  “You’re not a doctor though, Hannah.”

  “So when do I start getting benefits for my boy?”

  “Benefits?”

  “I had a son! If someone is on assistance, and they have a child, their allowance is automatically increased, to cover the costs of that child.”

  Did Hannah painfully shove a plastic doll up into her vagina, past her vagina up into her abdomen, because she thought it would increase her monthly stipend?

  Which kind of disappointed Claire. She was sympathetic towards a Hannah who was crazy but sincere. She didn’t know how she felt about a Hannah who was just conniving, trying to beat the system like so many others.

  The evening ended on a flat note. After Hannah brought up the increase in benefits a few more times, Claire said she would look into it, although there was really nothing to look into, but worse than that, she felt like she was losing a friend. After she said goodbye to Hannah at the front door, watching the door shut, hearing the latch slide into place, she turned to walk to her car feeling depressed.

  She was sprawled on the sidewalk, on her back. Looking up, dazed. Again, the tug at her right hand, until she finally released the grip on her purse. Footsteps running away. “Don’t say nuthin!”

  Her phone was in her pocket, thank God. Bloody finger punching 911.

  Tried to get to her knees. Not successfully. Like her rising hips weighed five hundred pounds, rolling around like bowling balls.

  The police took twenty minutes to get to the projects. A long time, when you’re throwing up on a concrete sidewalk, and you have a dream remembrance there’s something wrong with your face.