Deathbed

by William Kienzle

  “Yes, Sister.” Dolly had filled many notebook pages with Sister Eileen’s dictated letters. Ordinarily, instead of asking Dolly to stay late, Sister would have used the tape recorder. But tonight, it was as if Eileen were doing something akin to making out her last will and testament. She had caught up on all her correspondence, which was unusual for her. Odder still, she had cleared her calendar for the foreseeable future, canceling appointments and appearances. Dolly could not understand it. But she was not the type to question superiors.

  Eileen gently massaged her forehead. She was not sure what was causing the pain. But if she could not shake it soon, she would be forced to let one of the doctors see if he could find anything. Meanwhile, she was so sure she was going to be incapacitated for at least some time, that she had kept Dolly overtime to finish the letters and clear the calendar. And now both were completed.

  “Oh, and Dolly, as soon as you can, get someone from maintenance to change the locks on the cabinets and drawers in the pharmacy. And tell them to make sure only the pharmacists have the new keys. Then tell the pharmacists that it is my express order that they let no one else use their keys. No one, no matter who.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “That’ll be all for tonight, Dolly. You’d better get home and get some sleep. There’s a heavy snowfall predicted for the early morning hours. If you can’t get in on time, don’t worry. Just make sure sometime tomorrow you get those letters out. And that notice to maintenance and the pharmacists. That’s important. And Dolly: Thanks.”

  “You’re most welcome, Sister.” Dolly exited into the outer office, where she put her notes together. She expected she would indeed be late arriving for work in the morning and she wanted everything lined up so she could get it all finished tomorrow. A feat she would accomplish only if there were no unforeseen obstacles.

  She dialed the superintendent of maintenance and told him of Eileen’s order. Dolly knew Joe to be conscientious; he would not be upset at being called at home. Joe would, she knew, be in at the crack of dawn or earlier no matter how bad the weather became. And he would see to it that the parking area and the approaches to the hospital were cleared of snow.

  Now that the pharmacy matter was taken care of, there was just the paperwork to do tomorrow. Dolly bundled herself warmly and made certain she had car keys in hand.

  She was about to leave when she heard a small cry and a thud.

  Dolly hurried to Sister Eileen’s door. She knocked. When there was no answer, she timidly opened the door and peered in.

  Sister Eileen was sprawled on the floor. Clearly, she was, at best, unconscious.

  Dolly experienced a moment of panic. But, with no one in the immediate vicinity to call on for help, she quickly pulled herself together and dialed emergency.

  * * *

  Dr. Fred Scott was told about the headaches Sister Eileen had been suffering. He knew she had been assaulted the other evening. Putting the two together, he ordered a CAT scan, which revealed what he suspected: Sister Eileen had a subdural hematoma.

  Under the best of circumstances, this would be serious. But Eileen was in her late sixties and undoubtedly had been suffering from this condition for up to forty-eight hours. On top of which, she was a nun. Thus, particularly in a Catholic hospital, a Very Important Person. And on top of that, she was chief executive officer. Thus, anywhere, she was a Very, Very Important Person.

  Nevertheless, standard protocol was followed.

  Dr. Robert Rollins was the neurosurgeon on call. So he was called. But he did not answer. It was not immediately known why he did not answer. Not until the next morning, during the incredible confusion that was to come, was it learned there was nothing wrong with Dr. Rollins’s beeper. The trouble was that Dr. Rollins was not wearing his beeper during the time it was beeping. Indeed, Dr. Rollins was not wearing anything.

  Dr. Rollins was attending one of the seasonal parties by which Detroiters try to defeat the post-New Year’s doldrums. For no discernible reason, Dr. Rollins simply assumed he would not be called while he was on-call. Thus, he entered into the high spirits of the party. So Dr. Rollins’s beeper, along with all his clothing, was two rooms removed from the bedroom wherein the doctor and several others were cavorting.

  Trying to get Dr. Rollins to respond to his call consumed considerable valuable time. Mostly because the patient was a Very, Very Important Person, a halt was called to the futile efforts to raise Dr. Rollins and the decision was made to contact the first available and qualified neurosurgeon.

  Of course it took more time to rouse another neurosurgeon. Then it took more time for the neurosurgeon to dig out and drive down to the hospital. The gently, but steadily, falling snow made the almost deserted streets resemble a picture postcard. But it also made driving slow and treacherous.

  * * *

  Bruce Whitaker had worn white coveralls for his tour of the operating room area. He did so because whites, if not the scrub uniform, were required in that section of the hospital. In the event he had encountered anyone, he would not have been stopped for being out of uniform. As it happened, he had, as far as he knew, come through the venture unscathed. But it never hurt to be careful, as he was learning.

  As was the custom, he had donned the white paper coveralls over his street clothes. He was now having considerable trouble getting the overalls off. He had perspired generously and the garment clung to his sweat-laden clothing. It did not occur to him that, particularly since whites routinely were discarded like wastepaper, he could simply rip them off. As he struggled to work the coveralls down over his hips, he heard the locker-room door open. He stood absolutely still. The perspiration began again.

  “Anyone here?” a small voice inquired.

  Whitaker’s surprise at hearing a female voice in the men’s locker room caused him to topple backward over the low wooden bench. The crash was substantial.

  “Who’s there?” the small voice asked.

  Whitaker, scrunched in the corner, contemplated the folly of overconfidence. Everything had been going swimmingly! Now he would be discovered.

  Tentatively, Ethel Laidlaw peered around the corner of the lockers. It was impossible to identify who it was wrapped like a pretzel. “Who is it?”

  “Ethel?”

  “Bruce?”

  “Ethel!”

  “Bruce!”

  “Ethel, help me.”

  The plea was redundant. Ethel was already unwinding him.

  “How did you ever get tangled up like this?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “One thing at a time.” Ethel finally got Bruce into a redeemable position, then ripped off the remainder of the coveralls and threw them in the basket.

  Whitaker adjusted his toupee, which had slipped to a devil-may-care angle. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you. “

  “Me!”

  “I knew you were here somewhere.”

  “How did you . . .?”

  “Oh, Bruce. You want to help me so much. I just knew you’d be here somewhere trying to help me. I just wasn’t sure where I’d find you.”

  Still and all, it seemed odd to Whitaker that in the entire hospital, Ethel would have stumbled upon the men’s lòcker room to search. But this was not the best time to sit around wondering. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Gee, I think that might be the worst thing we could do right now.”

  “What?”

  “This is a bad time—I mean a bad time to leave. It’s too late to just walk out as if we were part of one of the shifts going off duty. And it’s too early to leave completely unnoticed. Some of the patients get restless about this time and the nurses and the guards are pretty active now. We’d better wait awhile.”

  This did not fit into his plan at all. Whitaker was becoming a bit panicky. “Where can we hide?”

  “Sometimes the best place to hide is right out in the open.”

  “What?”

  Ethel
removed something from the pocket of her uniform. “Here, take this stethoscope and hang the earpieces around your neck.” She fixed the medical instrument on him. “Like this. Now, put on your white jacket. See, now you’re a doctor. And I’m your nurse. This way, as long as we don’t get too close to anyone, and especially if we don’t meet anybody who knows you, we’ll be able to go anywhere in the hospital until the early hours of the morning. Then we can slip out.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Just with this stethoscope?”

  “When you see someone, particularly a man, in a white coat with a stethoscope, who do you think he is?”

  “A doctor.”

  Ethel nodded. “And so does everyone else. Come on, let’s go.”

  “Huh?”

  “One thing’s for sure: We don’t want to stay in here. We’re pinned down. And for sure I don’t want to be caught in the men’s locker room.”

  “Where’ll we go?”

  “Just walk the main floor, maybe the basement. We don’t want to be near the patients. One of them might need a real doctor. Then we’d be in real trouble.”

  So Whitaker in his white jacket and stethoscope left the locker room with Ethel. The two walked together, slowly but purposefully.

  George Snell saw Bruce and Ethel on one of the monitors. They were not of even passing interest to Snell. Just two more figures moving across grainy screens. Besides, Snell was far more involved in what was being shown on commercial TV. And that, as the night or early morning wore on, became more and more select. He was down to mostly test patterns and two UHF channels showing ancient movies. But he kept switching around. One never knew when a given channel might start programming for a new day.

  Meanwhile, Bruce and Ethel pretty much maintained their pacing, occasionally resting against an unoccupied booth or station.

  “Bruce, I been thinking. We’ve gotten kind of close, you and me. I mean, we have, haven’t we?”

  “Yeah, Ethel, I think so. I hope so.”

  “And you been going out of your way to try and help me with this problem that I got with Sister Eileen.”

  “Oh, Ethel, it’s more than your problem. See, the thing about Sister Eileen, it’s bigger than just you and me. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. But it’s not time yet. It’s too early. At least I think it’s too early. But, after tomorrow . . .” Whitaker checked his watch. “Actually, in just a few hours at most . . .”

  “That’s okay, Bruce. The thing I was gettin’ at is . . . well, we’re gettin’ kinda close, and I think I really like you a lot. But we don’t really know each other very good. You don’t know anything about my life . . . I mean before we met. And I don’t know anything about yours.”

  “I guess you’re right. Is it important to you? I mean, it’s not all that important to me. The most important thing for me is that we like each other a lot. Maybe we even love each other.”

  “I think we do, too, Bruce. But it’s important we know more about each other just so’s we don’t go into this like blind.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “I’ll go first. I was the fifth of five children—all girls. I never figured out whether Pa kept trying for a boy and didn’t get one and gave up, or whether I wasn’t intended at all. All I know is I wasn’t terribly wanted. So I had a kind of miserable childhood. I went to parochial school and I was smart enough, but . . . clumsy? I broke everything but the rules. And ’cause the nuns were always yelling at me for being uncoordinated, I didn’t do as good in school as I might have. See? There’s a good example for you: I know it should be ‘I didn’t do as well in school . . .’ But why should I speak correctly when I can’t keep a ham sandwich together? I’m so clumsy that I just naturally act dumb. The two go together.”

  “Gee, Ethel . . .”

  “Wait! So I entered a convent but I didn’t last past being a postulant. By then I had gummed up so many things the mother house hasn’t been the same to this day.

  “Since then, I’ve been pretty much on my own trying to find jobs and—even harder—trying to hold onto them after I get them. And that sort of takes us up to the present, where I’m trying like mad to hold onto this job. While the big boss is doing her best to fire me. And what chance do I have in a fight like that!

  “So that’s what I am, Bruce: a loser. I’ve been a loser all my life and there ain’t nothin’ that indicates things are about to change. That’s what you got, Bruce, a loser.”

  “Ethel! You think you’re a loser! I’ll tell you about a loser! I was an only child. And I went to parochial school too. And I was as awkward and clumsy as you even thought about. Only I wasn’t as smart as you. So when I went to the seminary, I guess I don’t have to tell you I didn’t last long.

  “Back then, particularly, there were lots of guys in the seminary. And the professors demanded that you put out. They demanded, oh, accomplishment. I gotta confess to you, I’ve been bitter about that ever since.

  “And this is the part that turned out bad: I got in with some other guys and afterward we tried to get even with some of the professors that were in the seminary when we were students. Well, these other guys are easy as clumsy as I am. They won’t admit it, but they are. And, well, being the kind of klutzes we are, we didn’t actually do all that much damage to the priest-professors. But we did enough so that we all got prison terms. I’m out now on parole. The other guys are still in.”

  “You mean you actually tried to kill priests? Catholic priests?”

  “To be honest, yes.”

  “But why?”

  “Because we were doing God’s will.”

  Ethel shook her head. “Do you do this sort of thing very often?”

  “Oh, good grief, no. But I gotta be honest with you: We’re doing it now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah. See, I’m embarrassed about this, Ethel, but I’ve been giving you the impression that I’ve been working on your case, trying to do something about Sister Eileen, so she won’t fire you. Which is true, as far as it goes. But what I’m really doing—or what we’re doing, ’cause the other guys still in prison are in on this too—is we’re trying to get the public eye on this hospital so the Church authorities will have to crack down on all the immorality going on in this place.”

  “Immorality?”

  “Birth control and illicit operations and like that.”

  All the while Bruce was explaining himself Ethel’s eyes continued to widen in disbelief.

  “You mean . . .? So that’s what you’ve been up to. I had no idea . . .”

  “You mean you knew what I was doing?”

  Ethel nodded. “But I didn’t know why.”

  “Now you know, Ethel. I hope you don’t try to talk me out of it.”

  Ethel shook her head.

  “But,” Bruce continued, “with my luck, eventually they are going to catch me and I will probably end up going back to jail. And, Ethel, I know I haven’t got any right to ask you, but if I do have to go back to jail, I mean, would you wait for me?” Bruce hurried on, not giving Ethel an opportunity to respond. “I know I shouldn’t ask you this. I’ve got no right to ask you. So I shouldn’t ask you. Forget I asked you.”

  “Don’t be silly! Who else have I got to wait for but you? Oh, Bruce, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. Truly, I think you’re wonderful. And I don’t care if you did do all this as part of some kind of conspiracy. You did it for me, too. I know you did.”

  “You’re right, Ethel; I did. And I’m proud of that part of it. . . well, I’m proud of all of it. No matter what price I’ll have to pay, it was God’s will.”

  “God’s will. That’s important for you, isn’t it, Bruce?”

  “It’s the most important thing in the world. But”—Bruce studied the floor, unwilling to meet Ethel’s gaze—“you are right up there now, Ethel. You and God’s will! The most important things in the world for me.”

  “Are you saying you love me,
Bruce?”

  Bruce nodded sheepishly.

  “And I love you too, Bruce.”

  Bruce grinned.

  “Bruce, do you think that some relationships are made in heaven?”

  “I never thought about it much until now. But, uh-huh.”

  “I think that’s what happened to us, Bruce. You going to the seminary, me to the convent. Both of us being clumsy as a pair of oxes. Meeting each other here in the hospital. Joining together in more things than even you know about. Bruce, we were meant for each other . . . what do you think?”

  “I think you’re right, Ethel.”

  “But with our luck, it will be years before we can get together. One or another or both of us might go to jail and God knows when we’d get out, if ever.”

  “You, Ethel! What—?”

  “Never mind, Bruce. We got to get together—now. It’s God’s will.”

  “God’s will?”

  “God’s will! But . . . where?” Ethel thought about that. “I think I know. Come on.”

  Ethel led Bruce through the corridors in a much more decisive manner than before when they were wending their way around with no more purpose than to pass time.

  They encountered no one. But, unknown to them, George Snell again noticed them on one of the monitors. He was slightly surprised to see what appeared to be a doctor and a nurse hurrying so rapidly, so early in the morning. But that was the way with hospitals. Emergencies could not be scheduled to happen only during business hours. By definition, emergencies could occur at any time. So, he turned from the monitor to the commercial TV set.

  Only one channel was telecasting. And Snell wasn’t very interested in the offering. After all, how many times could one be expected to watch Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights? Shakespeare was all well and good, thought Snell, but not this early in the morning.

  However, given the choice between grainy monitors showing mostly empty corridors, and something—anything—commercial, Snell knew what his selection would be. But, just for luck, periodically he would run the selector switch through the gamut of stations, just in case there might be something, anything, else besides Shakespeare. One never could tell.