A Minor Fall

by Price Ainsworth

  “Well, I’ll look at it again, even though you know the insurance company looked at it more than we did.”

  “When you look at it Eileen, pay attention to the amount of time between the fondling and the kissing.” I said. “It is like the doctor is making sure that whoever is watching the monitor would have had time to come stop him. I know that is good for our case, but it doesn’t seem quite, I don’t know, natural.”

  “A doctor is molesting his patient while she is knocked out on anesthesia. Nothing natural about that.” Eileen said.

  “Don’t get me wrong.” I said. “We’re taking the hospital’s money. Just do me a favor and look at it again when you get a chance.”

  Michelle was standing in the driveway outside of the wrought iron gate when I pulled up to the house. Her overnight bag and a box that contained an infant car seat were beside her. There was a blue bow on the top of the box. She held a new, very small video camera in her left hand. She was nicely dressed, and I noticed from a distance that her hair was fixed and that she had put on makeup. I put the car in park, got out, and opened her door. I took her bag and the box with the car seat and put them in the back seat. Michelle was crying uncontrollably as she got into the car. Tears had smudged her mascara, giving her raccoon eyes. She clutched a wadded-up Kleenex in her right hand.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. A thought flashed through my head that Michelle had learned about the herpes, perhaps from a guilt-ridden Beth, or maybe Dr. Nathan had called, having given up on me living up to my promise to him, or (even worse) Michelle had experienced an outbreak of the disease.

  Between sobs, I managed to hear that Michelle had called Dr. Nathan’s office to tell him that she thought she was going into labor. The receptionist put her through to a nurse who explained that Dr. Nathan had suffered a stroke that morning. He was going to survive, but his optic nerve had been badly damaged. Arrangements had been made for another obstetrician to take over his patients on an emergency basis. Her name was Dr. Godsman. She would meet us in the delivery room at Methodist Hospital once Michelle was admitted to the hospital. “I don’t know her,” Michelle cried. “What if she’s not a good doctor? She doesn’t know anything about me or our baby. We don’t even know if she has had a chance to see my chart.”

  I tried to tell Michelle that everything would be okay, but I’m sure that my own concerns made my assurances sound hollow and superficial. I backed out of the drive, and we left for the hospital with my reminding Michelle to put on her seatbelt and telling her to calm down and that everything would be fine.

  PART III

  ALL IS SAID . . .

  . . . for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children . . .

  —EXODUS 20:5

  22

  THE AIRY, ATRIUM LOBBY of the Dunn Tower in the Methodist Hospital in Houston is as plush as the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, but the hospital is much larger than the hotel. Even during oil busts and economic downturns, there is constant growth and expansion in the Texas Medical Center, and the Methodist Hospital is one of the crown jewels in the sprawling complex. As I recall when we were there, the hospital had three buildings (Fondren, Dunn, and Main) on one side of Fannin Street and two (Scurlock and Smith) on the other.

  From the Fannin Street doors of the Dunn Tower lobby, the room is the size of a Little League stadium. To the right, where the first base dugout would be, was a long, curved, blood-colored granite reception desk. At first base was a large fountain. In the center of the fountain was a statue of a naked man playing a lyre with his left hand and riding a dolphin. The man’s right hand was held high in the air like a bucking bronc rider in a rodeo. I imagined that it once held a spear. In right-centerfield was a Starbucks, and café tables were clustered in right field. In left center, there was a statue of Jesus with a woman kneeling before him and an inscription from Matthew about healing the sick. At third base was a grand piano with a pianist that played requests. At shortstop, against a two-story support column, a bronze bust of Dr. DeBakey in scrubs peered down god-like over folded arms. Along the left field wall, stained glass windows divided the Wiess Memorial Chapel from the lobby. Thick carpet and gleaming marble floors provided pathways from the reception desk to elevator banks. Second-story glass walkways provided access between towers and parking garages. Quick-stepping valet attendants parked and returned cars, but unlike the Four Seasons, they rejected gratuities.

  A round female attendant in a striped smock at the reception counter asked Michelle to sit in a wheelchair and wheeled her away to the elevators while I filled out the paperwork on a clipboard that another woman in a striped smock at the counter gave to me. Michelle had stopped crying, although she was still clutching the Kleenex and was obviously upset.

  I sat on one of the leather-covered barstools next to the reception counter to complete the necessary paperwork. I assume it was because of the way my hand was shaking when I attempted to complete the forms that prompted the somewhat overly friendly receptionist to ask me if this was our first baby. Weakly, I circled the correct items on the form, checked the proper boxes regarding past medical history, filled out the biographical and insurance information, and indicated the reason for our visit.

  As I nodded in response to the woman’s question, I didn’t speak to her. I could tell that she was speaking to me, trying in vain to make conversation, but I couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying.

  I didn’t feel well. It was as if the room was closing in around me. I could tell that other people were around me, yet I could only make them out as shadowy shapes. I tried to focus on the lady in the striped smock who had handed me the clipboard, and then I looked back at the forms. The words on the pages were beginning to swim together, and I couldn’t seem to get the pen that I had been provided and my insurance card to stay clamped under the clip at the top of the board. Still talking, the woman extended her hand toward me as I passed her back the clipboard, but I dropped it short of her hand as I tried to give it to her. It crashed on the granite countertop between us and the noise echoed across the vast lobby. I could feel the other people in the lobby looking at us the same way everybody in a restaurant looks at the waiter who drops a tray of dishes.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. She spoke in a calming, soothing voice. She picked up the clipboard and thumbed through the pages checking to see that I had completed the appropriate sections. “People have babies here every day. Have you been up to the maternity floor before?”

  “Yes,” I managed to say, “during Lamaze classes. We toured the unit. It’s in this building, isn’t it?” My mouth was suddenly very dry—almost like the cottonmouth you get from running wind sprints after baseball practice. I looked across the room at the elevator bank. Nothing triggered my memory as far as having been in this room before. I wondered if there was a water fountain nearby.

  I could remember bits and pieces of the building tour. It had been at the end of one of the few Lamaze classes that I had been able to attend. A dozen or so women in varying stages of pregnancy and their husbands, boyfriends, and significant others strolled through the beautiful hospital admiring the state-of-the-art facility. Jonathan had accompanied his sister on those occasions when I was out of town.

  The highlight of the building tour had been the scene in front of the newborns’ window. On the far side of the glass, sleeping infants wrapped tightly in pink or blue blankets squinted at happy grandparents and extended families that laughed and pointed at the window. You could almost feel the warmth on the visitors’ side of the glass that came from the lights being used to ward off any jaundice on the babies’ side of the window. Our tour guide had pointed out where the neonatal intensive care unit was as well as where surgical deliveries took place, but I couldn’t at that point remember where those rooms were located in relation to the general maternity rooms. I remember being a little nervous in one of the elevators into which, being deep enough to transport a
patient on a gurney, the entire Lamaze group had managed to cram. It wasn’t so much claustrophobia as fear that one of the ladies might go into labor at any minute that caused me to be nervous.

  “Maternity is on the sixth floor of this building, the Dunn Tower. Your wife is going to be in room 624,” the receptionist said. “Take a deep breath Mr. Jessie. I’m sure everything is going to be okay.” She smiled at me when she spoke and continued to sort through and stamp the various pages of paper that were in front of her, but there was a look of concern on her face.

  I nodded that I understood, but when I opened my mouth to speak nothing would come out.

  “Are you feeling okay, Mr. Jessie? You look very pale.” She said looking up from her papers long enough to assess my condition. She handed me back my insurance card and I fumbled with my wallet as I tried to place it into the little slot between my credit cards.

  I put my wallet back into my hip pocket and stood up from the stool on which I was seated at the reception counter. As I stepped away, I could feel my head spinning and knew that I was falling forward. I don’t know if I passed out before or after I fell into the reception desk, striking my forehead on the edge of the granite. I don’t remember the emergency medical personnel putting me on a gurney and taking me to the emergency room located in the adjacent tower called the Main Building.

  I don’t know how long I was out. It must have been some time. I had been dreaming my baseball dream. In my baseball dream, which I have been having since the time I played Little League at age eleven, the stadium lights behind the outfield form a cone that stretches from home plate to the outfield. I am playing shortstop and I am playing deep, almost to the outfield grass. Because they’re at the far end of the cone in my dream, I can’t make out the batter at home plate or the catcher and umpire or the people in the stands behind home or my dad who is in the dugout along the third base line, but I know that they’re there.

  The runner on third base breaks toward home at the crack of the bat because there are two outs. I move instinctively to my right, but I do not yet see the ball as it comes out of the cone formed by the backstop and the foul lines and the lights behind me. I hear the bat and I feel the crowd in the darkness behind where I know that home plate is suspended as the energy level rises with the contact of the hit. My dad doesn’t say anything, but he steps to the screen that protects the dugout. He has hit me a thousand, maybe ten thousand, ground balls at short, and I hear his silent admonition to move to the ball, to play it in front of my body, to play it, and don’t let it play me.

  I can’t really see him, although I can tell that the batter has thrown his bat behind him and started to run to first base. He’s fast and running well and I can feel his speed as he strides down the line. I pick up a view of the ball as it comes out of a high, chopping bounce in the infield. The ball is taking too long to come down out of the bounce as I drift back toward the hole behind third base. I feel the runner on third reaching toward home. I will never get him out before he scores. The catcher, like a distant figure seen through the wrong end of a telescope, rips off his mask and blocks the plate shouting at me to throw it home. I know that by the time the ball comes down it will be too late for me to get the runner at home. Still, because there are already two outs, if I can get the runner at first base, I can avoid the run scoring. My only play is at first base.

  The ball grows larger as it topspins out of the darkness toward me. I can make out the spin and even the seams on the ball as it falls out of the night sky. I position my body to make the throw as soon as the ball hits my glove, but the ball is taking too long to come down, and I know I’ll never make the throw in time. Still, if the runner stumbles, or maybe if I put a little extra on the throw, there is a chance that I might throw him out at first. I turn my body almost parallel to the third base line. I’ll catch the ball at my right shoulder and throw it to first in one motion if it will just come down. I stand there in the hole behind third waiting for the spinning ball to land in my glove over my right shoulder.

  As I woke up, I felt a young emergency room physician patting me on my right shoulder. I was in a sterile hospital room with the attendant stitching together the laceration in my forehead. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, and I couldn’t feel the needle piercing my skin. Somehow I had the impression that he was sewing my forehead.

  I was still groggy, and it took a moment for me to become aware of the fact that I was lying on my back with the young doctor pulling the stitches through and tying them off. He held the last stitch with a pair of forceps in his right hand, and he patted my right shoulder again with his left hand. He paused from his work to catch my eyes with his before resuming the completion of his sewing.

  “Easy there,” he said trying to get me to relax. “You took quite a spill. I’m just about to finish closing a two-inch tear in your forehead. You’re going to have a little scar, but most of it will be above your hairline.” He turned his attention away from my eyes and focused on his stitches. Then he gently turned my head from side to side to admire his handiwork and nodded approvingly.

  I started to sit up.

  “Don’t get up, yet,” the doctor said, with an air of authority. He didn’t appear to be any older than I was.

  “I have to go to the maternity floor,” I said, trying to push myself up on my elbows before collapsing back down on the upholstered table.

  “Yeah, I know,” the doctor said. “Your wife is doing fine, and we’ll have you up there in just a minute. She called down here to check on you. I told her that you were going to need a few stitches. I’m wondering if I should have used a few more. I put one long loop on the underside to try and minimize the scarring. Now I’m second-guessing myself about whether one or two more in the surface layer of your skin might have been better.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said. “How long have I been here?” I asked trying to remember what had happened at the reception desk. My head was beginning to throb with pain, and I had the urge to scratch at the stitches with my hand. I could remember being at the reception desk and thinking that I was beginning to fall forward, but I couldn’t remember anything after that. As I lay back, I found myself scanning the ceiling involuntarily for video cameras. There was one on the ceiling in the hallway outside the room.

  “You’ve got to keep your hands away from those stitches,” he said, gently taking my hand and placing it at my side. “It’s probably been an hour or so since you fell. In addition to talking to her, I’ve gotten a couple of reports on your wife from her doctor. Your wife is fine and resting in her room. Apparently her delivery is progressing according to the book. You might be surprised, but this kind of thing happens fairly often. New fathers pass out all the time. Usually, it’s the first sight of blood in the delivery room that causes the dad to faint. In your case, I wonder, when was the last time you ate?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. when I tried to think back to my last meal, I couldn’t remember it. “I’m sure I haven’t had anything substantial in several days.” I thought to myself that I had probably been surviving on coffee and scotch with very little sleep. “I really do have to go to my wife’s room now,” I said. “I’m worried about her, and I need to talk to her about something.”

  “Let me finish this up, and I’ll get an orderly to take you up in a wheelchair, if you’ll promise to come back later and let me look at how this is holding. It’s a rather jagged tear. I’ll give you some written instructions for wound care at that time,” the doctor said. He placed the instruments that he had been using on a rolling tray, peeled off the latex gloves he was wearing, and threw them in a trash can in the corner of the room. An attendant came into the room as the doctor released the trashcan lid with his foot. The doctor paused before going out of the room and looked at me.

  “I promise,” I said to both of them. “But where am I?”

  They both laughed, and the young doctor told the attendant how to get to the maternity ward.

 
“One more thing, doctor, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “What are cameras like that one for?” I asked pointing at the camera on the ceiling outside the room.

  “Oh that,” he said. “I don’t really know. To tell you the truth, I forget that it is even there. I’m not sure it even works . . . I think it is like one of those dummy cameras in department stores that are meant to deter shoplifting. You know, we get all kinds of activity in an emergency room.”

  I sat in the wheelchair on the elevator with my blazer draped over my lap. The wheelchair attendant took me from the Main Building through a series of hallways over to the Dunn Tower, stopped at the elevator control panel, and pressed the button for the sixth floor.

  The Methodist Hospital buildings on this side of the street did not have thirteen floors, but the two buildings on the other side of the street each had more than twenty. Taking depositions before in those buildings, it had struck me as odd that neither had a thirteenth floor. Certainly there was no thirteenth floor in the bank tower where the law firm’s offices were located. I can’t remember ever seeing a thirteenth floor in a hotel. At the Peabody, the thirteenth floor was labeled “S”—I guess for “skyway” or maybe for “where ducks Sleep.” However, it seemed to me that a building constructed with religious donations and that was dedicated to the performance of the healing arts of medical science could avoid leaning on superstition. Maybe whatever company made the elevator control panels just didn’t make one with a thirteenth floor option. Or maybe the Methodists were covering all of their bases. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, the Muzak piped into the elevator played an instrumental version of The Beatles’ In My Life. I hummed along with the tune interrupted only by the gentle “bing” of the elevator as we whisked by floors.

  As the elevator moved upwards, I thought about how, despite our enhanced understanding of the physical world, we continued to think about heaven and hell as if we lived in a cheap, low–rise apartment complex. Hell was located in the basement parking garage, we lived on the ground floor because it was easier to move your stuff in and out of the apartment, and God lived on the next floor up, which had a better view. Sure, we can rationally explain that at the earth’s core is molten magma and beyond the atmosphere is an ever-expanding universe of galaxies, but I defy anyone to find a picture of Jesus praying when He’s not looking up as if the angels in the apartment above Him had just dropped something heavy on their floor/His ceiling that landed with a thud.