by Paul Hoover
“How about a watch? Was there a watch?”
I said there was, and Cane checked the list to make sure.
“There’s always a watch,” he said. “How about a wedding ring?”
You couldn’t have knocked me over with a sledgehammer. A great force had fixed me to the floor. Barbara looked at me funny, as if my face had done something acrobatic.
“There was a ring,” I said. “I have it here somewhere.” Nervous fingers a mile from my shoulder reached into my pocket and pulled out a perfect circle of gold. I held it up for Cane to see, then handed it to Barbara. I was afraid if I gave it to Mrs. Johnson she might start crying again. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but in the rush of things I forgot to include it.”
“This looks very bad, young man,” said Cane.
“Oh, shut up, Norm,” said Romona.
Mrs. Johnson thanked us and dropped the ring into her purse. She seemed more relaxed than before. It was as if, by having the belongings, she had attained some understanding.
“Would you like to visit the room?” said Romona.
“Do I have to?” said Mrs. Johnson, looking at Barbara.
“It’s up to you,” she said.
With Barbara holding her arm, she headed toward the room. Romona joined them, refusing to miss the visitation she herself had suggested. Betty Marder and the nurse’s aide would still be there, standing discreetly to the side.
“It’s a touching moment,” said Cane in a voice like organ music.
“Yeah,” agreed Ed.
“I guess we’ll need a cart,” I said, “to take him to the morgue.”
I walked to the service side of the elevators and found a gray cart with a two-inch pad on top. Two straps hung down at the sides, like the seat belts in cars. I wheeled it around by the front of the station.
“You have to take off the pad,” said the Reaper, “in case there’s any drainage.”
Ed and I removed the pad and stuffed it into a small supply room next to the station. Then we pushed the bare cart over by the wall where it wouldn’t look too obtrusive when Mrs. Johnson came out. Pretty soon she appeared, crying worse than before, and Barbara looked a little angry, as if the visit was a bad idea. Romona followed them, beaming with satisfaction. They went straight into the lounge. Romona came back and joined us.
“The tough part,” she said, “is getting the body out of the room and into the elevator without anybody seeing what’s happened, but first we’ve got to get him on the cart.”
Cane went to the rear of the unit, where Samuels and Rickles were working on the chart, but they completely ignored him, so he sat down by the station clerk, who shifted away.
Wheeling the cart ahead of us, we headed for the room. Mr. Johnson’s face was now covered, and he looked like a mummy. We shoved the cart right next to the bed, which the aide had raised so it was slightly higher than the vehicle. It’s hard enough to lift a body; you want gravity on your side, not working against you. The technology was all worked out. The nurses had also placed a doubled sheet under the body. Each of us was to grab a corner, and on the count of three we were to lift and swing the body over onto the cart. I stood on the far side with Betty; Ed and the aide took the cart side. The only problem was, the body was distant from us, and we couldn’t get leverage. The first heave failed, and Mr. Johnson landed on his side, half on and half off the bed.
“Shit!” said Betty. “We’ve got to get on the bed.”
To Ed’s great amusement, the nurse and I climbed onto the bed and stood on our knees in order to get a better hold on the sheet. The next attempt was easy. The body floated over the cart and landed as smooth as fog. The aide strapped the body down, in case we took a corner too sharp, then covered it with another sheet.
Betty and I climbed back down from the bed, blushing. When we were on the bed, a fierce sex static had passed between us, and we looked at each other differently now.
“You two looked good up there,” said Ed with a stupid grin.
“Get lost!” said Betty.
Romona gave me a knowing wink. “OK,” she said. “Time to call the elevator.” Picking up the patient phone, she dialed three numbers and talked directly to the elevator operator.
“Bud?” she said. “Romona. Got a live one for you. Sixth floor.”
Betty and the aide went back to their work. Romona and I waited with the body, just inside the door, while Ed closed all the doors on the hall, as well as the doors to the patient lounge. The idea was to prevent anyone from seeing the body. Then, on Romona’s instructions, Ed stationed himself in the hall where he could see the service elevator. It only took a minute, and he waved to us furtively, like a convict inviting his buddy to dash across a prison yard. Romona and I, one on each side of the cart, sped out of the room and down the hall, glancing in each direction. Robert Sage stood at the door of his room as we sailed past, but nobody minded him, and he looked straight through us. The operator, seated on a stool, was a very old man whose right hand trembled. “Where to?” was his mumbled, apparently standard joke. Romona rolled her eyes, the doors slid shut, and we descended in one long motion into the cool basement.
It didn’t matter who saw us there, since only employees were allowed in the area. Anyone who worked near the morgue had to expect a body to cruise around the corner every now and then. A maintenance man walked by, dressed in workman’s green and wearing a belt full of tools. He gave Romona a friendly wave and continued on his way. Robert Holiday, a well-dressed young black man who supervised the maids in Housekeeping, stepped out of his office and smiled.
“Hi, Bob,” said Romona. “How’re you doing?”
“Oh, pretty good,” he said. “How about you?”
“They’re dying like flies up there,” she said with mock drama.
“Well, you tell them to stop that, Mrs. Fisk.”
“Got a bed needs making up,” she said. “Room 621.”
“His?” he said, nodding at the body. “You need the Bomb?”
“No,” she said. “It was only cancer. Just wash the bed like usual.”
We went around the corner to the morgue. Romona inserted her key, and pushed open the door. It didn’t look like much, but Ed was excited. He entered eagerly and gawked at the walls. There were only two small rooms, not what you’d expect from a large hospital. The one we were in was painted gray and kept very chilly. On one side was a row of doors with the same kind of locks you see on trucks. There were twelve of them all together, four rows of three, but the top ones were pretty high, at the level of my shoulders. Only two of them had cards on the door, meaning they were occupied, and all those were on the middle row. They often used the bottom ones, Romona said, for left-over specimens, but I didn’t ask what she meant. She pointed at a vacant one in the middle row, and I snapped open the door. It was empty, all right. Cold sick air came out of it and struck us in the face.
“Pee-yoo!” said Romona. “Let’s get this over quick.”
I pulled on the freezing metal handle, and the slab came sliding out. It was about six inches deep, and in one corner there was congealed blood and plasma. We pulled the cart next to the slab, as we had with the bed, but this time the slab was higher. We were going to have to lift, and conditions were awkward. On the count of three, we heaved on the sheet, but we’d forgotten to lock the wheels of the cart. It slithered away as the body brushed against it. Now we were holding the full weight of the body. Ed made a second desperate effort, which caused Mr. Johnson to roll up my arms, right into my face. I was virtually holding him by myself. Seeing the emergency, Romona threw her weight under the body, lifting it over the edge of the slab. The head and shoulders struck with a thud, and the legs dangled. There were going to be bruises on the body that would surprise even the undertaker.
Ed thought it was very funny. “You should have seen your face,” he snorted, doubled over in a laugh.
Romona couldn’t conceal her smile. “It’s tough the first time,” she said. “You’ll get used to
it.”
We put the legs onto the slab, and I tried unsuccessfully to push it back into the wall. Apparently the weight of the body had bound the metal track. On Romona’s advice, I lifted and pushed at the same time, and the slab sailed in smoothly. Ed suavely flipped the door shut and put yet another ID tag inside a slot on the front of the door.
“Want a cigarette?” Romona asked, lighting up a Lucky Strike.
“No thanks,” I said. “How long are we going to stay here anyway?”
“What’s the rush?” she said. Blue smoke from the cigarette rose slowly through the cold air.
“Hey, look at this!” Ed said. He’d wandered into the neighboring room, and we followed. The walls were lined with shelves containing various organs. It looked like they were mostly brains, and they were tilted in many directions, like people at a ball game. There were other fleshy objects, but you couldn’t tell what they were, probably kidneys and livers. He walked from jar to jar, reading the labels with intense fascination.
A damp coldness came out of the cement floor and walls, but it was nothing compared to the chill created by the stainless-steel table at the center of the room. Designed like a trough, it had a drain at its center, and at the head, laid out neatly, were several instruments, the most dramatic of which was a compact power saw. Romona said the pathologist’s assistant, known as the Diener, used this to cut the body open from the crotch to the chin. Then he would lop off the top of the head. After they spread out the ribs a little, the doctor would search inside the body, detailing what he found on a tape recorder. This explained the microphone attached to the side of the table by a gooseneck extension. It made the table look strangely like a pulpit, and what a church it was. The choir was always in attendance, including a row of fetuses with large beautiful heads, one of whom had its back turned like a recalcitrant deacon. While the doctors would vary from day to day, the Diener and congregation were always the same. Romona said the Diener was a tall black guy with sunken cheeks whom everyone knew as James. Nobody knew if that was his first name or his last, and nobody asked. Whenever he entered the cafeteria, wearing his long white coat, the place got very quiet.
Ed asked if he could see an autopsy someday. Romona said sure, she’d seen lots of them. The worst part, she said, was the smell of bone when they cut through the skull.
That was it for me. The smell of formaldehyde, the sense of being watched by the bottled fetuses, and all this talk: it was too much. I grabbed the cart, threw open the outer door, and left. Romona and Ed caught up with me in front of the elevator, still gossiping about the morgue. My breathing was fast and shallow, as if there wasn’t enough room in my lungs, and my throat was so tight it was hard to swallow. This was the first time I’d ever felt this way, but over the next couple of years it would come back of its own account, for no apparent reason.
Bud, the elevator operator, mumbled angrily as we got on. It had something to do with red ripe tomatoes. I noticed one of his arms was lame, as if he’d had a stroke.
Back on the sixth floor, we put the pad back on the cart. Then we remembered we’d missed our dinner. The three of us joined Barbara in the cafeteria, where the assistant head of Food Service, Ulysses Thomas, a former football player who looked like a muscular Buddha, arranged for us to get new trays of food without extra charge. We ate in silence at first, then Romona started to tell her hospital stories. There was one about the rich woman on Nine North who had kept a stack of five-dollar bills on her bedside table to tip the orderlies and nursing aides. The strategy proved so effective that aides were lined up in the hallway outside her room; they came from all over the hospital, hoping to get a chance to serve her. If someone took her to X-Ray, she gave them five dollars going down and another five coming back. Romona said the rest of the hospital nearly shut down for lack of help. Alma Pinson and Malvinia Graven, the powerful nursing supervisors, flew onto the unit in a rage, but the aides were too quick for them. They disappeared like spirits into patients’ rooms, and the supervisors failed to get the goods on a single employee. When Pinson and Graven went into the woman’s room, she offered them each five dollars to take her off the bedpan.
We stayed in the cafeteria for almost two hours, and I realized we were less Romona’s employees than her new audience. She didn’t care if we got back to work, and we were glad to stay. In no time at all, our first day on the job was over.
7
IT WAS SATURDAY MORNING, and everyone was around the apartment. In his room Rose the Poet worked on a poem about the world’s fattest man. He’d been at it for a day and a half without any sleep, keeping himself up with coffee and speed. He’d gotten the idea from a show on television about a man in Scotland who weighed eight hundred pounds. I told him I didn’t think anyone in Scotland really weighed that much. They always looked so bony and hardy. He said you could believe most of what you saw, especially on TV. The work was two hundred pages long and still growing, composed in what he called “clandestine dithyrambs.” I took this to mean free verse, but I never got a full explanation.
Vicki had gone back to Wisconsin for the week, and we’d kept in touch by phone. I thought we were too young to get married, but she wasn’t so sure. Whenever we talked about what to do, I could see a Methodist church deep in her face. We had to do something soon, one way or another. She was getting more pregnant, not less, and while it created a bond between us that hadn’t existed before, it also placed an obstacle.
The day after she learned the results of the test, we went down by the lake, walking all the way through the park, past the entrance to Lincoln Park Zoo, where the ratty bears slept in their cages and the lions were too tired to come outside on a hot summer day. We passed the statue of Shakespeare, hidden in a bunch of bushes across from the Conservatory—all you could see was the top of his bald head sticking above some trees. In the Conservatory itself the city grew exotic plants, many of which you could find in your grandmother’s living room: rubber trees, snake plants, and patches of baby tears. We turned right on Fullerton and went by a group of picnickers barbecuing spareribs. Their kids ran around in circles just to be running, but the adults were already wilted at eleven in the morning, that’s how hot it was. One fat woman sat on a blanket with her legs spread, staring blankly at the ground. She didn’t move as long as we were there, and when I turned at the end of the block, she was still in that position. They’d chosen a spot right next to the parkway, which was filled with cars and noise; on the other side was the sidewalk. There should have been a sign in the ground that said The American Family, Modern Era. If they thought this site was bucolic and peaceful, what kind of neighborhood were they from? Other families were picnicking in the parking lot itself.
At the end of the zoo was the rookery, with a small lagoon surrounded by flat rocks and trees, and some ducks clacking. It wasn’t much, but a few young couples were scattered around the place, trying to fall in love. Vicki pointed at a couple holding hands and kissing with just the tips of their lips, as if they were birds. They looked like the sort of people who would dress in matching T-shirts that said “I Love Bob” and “I Love Nancy.”
We walked through the spooky underpass at Lake Shore Drive, which was cool but smelly. You could hear the cars roaring overhead. It seemed each tire left a thin trail of rubber, like a snail. Everything was connected by heat, sweat, and endurance. The day was so brightly overexposed, it gave you an ache between the eyes.
The worn triangle of grass at Fullerton Beach was beginning to fill with sunbathers. Few bothered with the water, which in Chicago, even in late summer, could be pretty cold. Stripping down to our bathing suits, we sat on a concrete ledge, watching the hectic families try to keep their kids from drowning. There was a clear separation of social groups. We were the singles, aloof and cool, with perfect bodies. They were chaotic, elemental, and real—to be avoided at all cost. A pack of kids, sand and mud all over their bodies, ran into the lake, shrieking with delight. The mothers sank back into their gothic romances.
Vicki put her lips up to mine, pretending we were Bob and Nancy.
“Kiss, kiss,” she quacked, then stuck her tongue in my mouth. She smelled salty and earthy.
“I love you, Holder,” she whispered.
“I love you, too.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I love you, too,” I said.
A motorboat went by just beyond the buoys dividing the swimming area from miles of lake beyond, bouncing on the waves with a spanking, tinnish sound. Two hotshots inside waved their cans of beer.
“What are we going to do?” Vicki asked.
“I don’t really know,” I said, squinting out at the water.
“You do, too,” she said. “You want an abortion.”
I denied it, but we both knew what would happen, and that night, back in the apartment, sweating, I called the number Vicki had gotten from a friend who’d gone through an abortion last year. Everything had worked out well.
The phone rang, and as instructed, I asked for Dr. Wells.
The answering service said someone would call right back. Abortions were illegal, except, we’d heard, in London and Kansas City. London and Kansas City? It didn’t make any sense. But you could also get one in Chicago, if you called Dr. Wells.
Half an hour later, the telephone rang.
I picked it up nervously.
“You want Dr. Wells?” said a tough male voice. It sounded like he had a cigar in his mouth and was calling from a pay phone.
“Yes, someone gave me your number. She said you provided…a certain service.”
“Yeah, that’s right. What kinda service you lookin’ for?”
“Uh, well…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. What if the moment I said abortion the vice squad broke down the door?
“My friend is pregnant,” I said, voice trailing into the wire.
“You telling me you want an abortion?”
“Yes,” I managed. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Don’t worry, kid,” he said, “it happens all the time. You knocked her up, you can unknock her, right? You got seven hundred?”