“I’d be plenty comfortable if I could just make that call.”
“Yes, of course.” He puts the phone on the rolling table and positions it next to the bed. “Dial six to get out.”
I pick up the phone and realize I don’t know Mari’s number—or anybody’s, for that matter—by memory. But god damn it, that has nothing to do with my disease and everything to do with me being reliant on technology, like everyone else.
I watch Kitasaki mark a code on the nurses’ whiteboard. I don’t know what it stands for and so I don’t want him to go without getting at least one good answer.
“Doctor?”
“Yes?” He stops.
“What did my brother say, when you called?”
He shrugs. “We couldn’t reach him.”
I put down the phone and I’m disappointed, because I don’t know why the hell I expected a good answer to that one. I admit, “He’s not actually someone I’d call.”
“I know what it’s like,” Kitasaki says. He looks at his hands, the rash. “Nobody expects doctors to have problems, either.”
“Does it itch?”
“I was talking about my student loans.” He smiles. “I’ll come back after breakfast to go over the test results.”
“I’ll be here,” I say, though I’m not at all happy about it.
I sit back, let the IV do its thing, and try to believe my world is still intact. Yes, it’s necessarily built on a few false hinges, and yes, I’ll lie my ass off to keep them well-oiled and working. Who can criticize? So I’ve got a name for what’s wrong with me. I’ve got an idea about the expiration date for my legs. Does that make me less fit for the Job? I’m in better shape than most cops I know. I take care of myself and I’m not walking around, my heart ticking like a time bomb or my blood sugar tempting diabetic fate. I know my limits.
At least I thought I did.
Still. I will not let an off-duty favor gone to shit ruin me. I will not let a bad guy hurt me in my off hours. If I can just keep cool a little longer and reasonably demonstrate I have an acute, work-sustained injury, I’ll bet I can get on my way by noon with a prescription, a PT referral, and permission to get back to work.
I close my eyes and try to imagine I’m at home with Isabel. We’re in bed and she’s still asleep, cuddled up, her hair tickling my nose. Or else she’s at all angles, restless, her feet in my face.
But when she wakes, I’m there. I’m the first one to see her moon-eyed smile.
I think of Isabel at Maricarmen’s this morning. Waking, wondering where I am.
I can’t sit here until noon.
I swing the IV cart around the bed and use it, a crutch, out to the hall. I need it: though I’ve experienced this numbness before, I will never get used to feeling my legs move at the same time I can’t tell where my feet land.
At least I know it will get better; thankfully, these past two years, it’s never been much worse than the first bout. A relapse is what it’s called, though the term makes me think of an addict who is trying not to feel anything. For me, a relapse is more like a charge: I have to fight the numb.
That means I have to prove I’m all right.
I push the cart down the corridor and turn it around and do it again and I don’t see anybody. Even the nurses’ station is empty.
On the third pass I decide I feel pretty good, the steroids smearing a nice thick salve over my symptoms. I’m not a fan of the stuff, though—not after trying to break up my brother’s romance with painkillers. George prefers the numb; he’d rather be soothed than try to be strong.
Up ahead another patient exits one of the rooms, her own IV cart in tow. She has a pretty pronounced case of kyphosis and as she moves, she leads with the top of her white-haired head.
I take my cart the other way, toward the elevators.
On the fourth floor, the door to Kay St. Claire’s room is half-open. I roll in. Opposite the bed, the Sacred Heart logo beats on the computer monitor. Along the far windows the curtains are open, and outside, dawn is starting to fill in spots the parking lot lights don’t.
And in the bed, St. Claire is asleep. Her form is tiny underneath the sheets, except for where they’ve bolstered her legs. She is still—so still, in fact, I have to step closer to see the slight rise and fall of her chest.
Machines behind her assure me she’s alive in winks and spikes, keeping hospital time. Judging by the number of ports connected to her IV line, she’ll stay just this still as long as they like.
I move to the foot of the bed, and from this perspective I see two perfect arcs over her legs—over, not under. I lift the sheet. Her ankles are cuffed. They have not tried to make her comfortable; they did not give her time to calm down. They drugged her and they restrained her.
And that just pisses me off.
There’s another reason I don’t tell anyone I have a neurological disease: because what’s inherent in the diagnosis is that you’re a victim. And when you’re a victim of your own body—whether you’re twenty-nine or seventy-nine, and whether your breakdown is physical or mental—you are pitied. You are pitied, and pandered to, and exploited.
Doctors use different words. Care. Compassion. Treatment. But softening the language doesn’t change the fact that it’s a fight you aren’t going to win. And right now, forget semantics. St. Claire is fucked.
“Please,” she says.
I step back like I’ll disappear that way, but she doesn’t see me to begin with. Her eyes are closed.
“Please,” she says again, the word drug-thick and slow.
I don’t know if she’s dreaming. I don’t say anything.
“I need help,” she says. “They’re taking everything.”
A doctor would diagnose paranoia. Or delusion. Dementia. Or confusion.
Looking at her, restrained and medicated, it sounds to me like she knows exactly what she’s talking about.
“I will help you,” I say. Because she is also the victim of a crime, and I’m the one who’s supposed to stop the son-of-a—her son—from doing the victimizing.
She reaches for me—toward me, anyway—so I take her hand. It is warm and dry. I can feel her bones. She holds on, even though consciousness slips away.
I hold on, too. I stay there with her until the sky brightens over the parking lot. Then I stay a few minutes more, because in the light of day, I see myself right where she is, someday. And I won’t want to be alone.
3
When I wake up again, the sun up and glaring at me, I’d kill to wash down a couple Tylenol with a press pot of Dark Matter, my usual migraine buster. The fact that I’m able to think about coffee without wanting the pink dish is an improvement from last night. Still, my head feels like someone replaced my cerebrospinal fluid with dry-mix cement. Yes, there are the real drugs I know Kitasaki and company would love me to take to get comfortable. But I can’t get comfortable.
I like the nurse even though her perfume makes my eyes hurt. Her name is Victoria and she has colored rubber bands in her braces that match the breast cancer awareness ribbons patterned on her scrubs.
At five after seven, someone in standard blue scrubs brings breakfast. I don’t want it. I ask for a newspaper instead, since I figure I’d better show everyone I feel well enough for bad news.
When I get today’s Tribune, I stare blankly at the headlines while I mentally regurgitate what I’m going to say to the doctor. Kitasaki or whoever. Then I turn to the Nation and World section, where it reads JAPAN TO WEAN ELDERLY OFF TUBES. The article is as shocking as it sounds: in the face of government cutbacks, a quarter of a million old Japanese people are about to get starved to death. I wonder what the coroner writes for cause of death. Liberal Democratic Party?
I flip to the Chicagoland section so I can feel bad about our own politics but really, I’m watching the clock tick toward eight. At eight, still nobody. I can’t wait. I use the room phone to call information for Metzler’s office number, and I dial him.
“Doct
or Rick,” I say to voicemail, “it’s Regina. Sorry I haven’t been in touch; I’ve been really busy with Isabel.” An obvious and disappointing excuse, but, “We’re doing well. And hey, we’d love if you’d come by, see the house? It’s, well, we’re making it home…” I pause, but I can’t go on. Metzler has known me my whole life; he’s known my family since he was stationed with my dad at Fort Bragg. And so he knows all my shit, and also when I’m full of shit. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I hate asking for favors. But I was involved in a work-related altercation yesterday, and I’m in the hospital. Sacred Heart, on the west side. I’m sure you know it. Anyway I’ve had tests and I’ll have more tests, and I’m fine, I just—since you know me, I’d like you to be my advocate. And obviously I’d like to keep this between us. Okay. I’m in room 210. Please call.”
I hang up and imagine Metzler shaking his head, wondering once again why he ever made a single promise to my dad.
It’s not about me anymore, though. This is for Isabel. Did I say that, in the message? I should have said that. Metzler knows. I hope he knows.
A minute later, the phone rings.
“Doctor Rick?” I say, and I feel a surge of relief.
“It’s Andy.”
My partner. “This is your fault.”
“Yet you’re still speaking to me. I’m stuck on the Kennedy, but I should be there before the doctor.”
“I’m well enough to leave, and you’re just now getting up the nerve for a visit?”
“I was there—you don’t remember?—I was there until ten o’clock last night. I didn’t leave your side until Iverson got a uniform outside your door. And you weren’t well. At all.”
“I’m fine now. And there’s no uniform here.”
“There’d better be. A suspect who beat up three women and one’s his mom and another’s a cop? Iverson said she’ll make sure you don’t leave that place with so much as a hurt feeling.”
I want to tell Andy that there was nobody out there this morning, but I don’t want another reason to be accused of being confused. I let it go, because, “I’ve got to get out of here. I miss my baby.”
“Isabel is fine, G. I just talked to Maricarmen. They’re baking galletas. Isabel’s morning is a rainbow of sprinkles.”
“That makes me feel so much better.”
“Good,” he says, ignoring the fact that I didn’t mean it. “Listen: when you were sleeping last night, I counted sixteen people I’d never seen before waltz in and out of your room. Even with a star outside, I’ll bet there’s at least one young journo who’d tuck his smartphone into a borrowed lab coat for a story. Or some bowtie administrator who’ll try to talk you into signing on the dotted line over a lawsuit. If they get in, you make like you’re suffering from that head injury.”
I hadn’t added the media or the hospital into the equation. Still, “You don’t have to worry. All I plan to say is that I’m ready to go home.”
“Good,” Andy says again.
After we say goodbye, I get curious about the supposed cop outside my door. I roll my cart out there and find a kid in uniform, nameplate SHANNON, sitting in a hall chair playing a game of Yahtzee on his phone. There’s a crushed white paper bag stuffed into a foam coffee cup on the seat next to him, and he may as well have powdered sugar on his face.
“Hi,” I say. He doesn’t say anything, though there’s no one else around I could be talking to. So he’s deaf, or else an asshole who thinks a hospital detail may as well be a snipe hunt. Either way, I’m standing here, so—
“You know where the donut shop is, right? Actually I’m not really in the mood for donuts. I’ll take hash browns. And a sweet tea. And what the hell, a dozen Vanilla Kremes. For when I am in the mood. Then maybe I won’t say anything to Iverson about where you’ve been all morning.”
“What?” He looks up and when he sees who I am his lips find their way to a pout. But that’s because he’s on his way to get some more donuts.
“You can run over there now,” I say. “Obviously I’m fine all by myself.”
“You look fine,” a man says behind me.
I close my eyes and pray my gown is tied tight in back.
“Shannon,” the man says; his tone tells me he doesn’t like Shannon much.
I pivot the IV cart and turn to see Ray Weiss, a cop I don’t like at all.
“Hello,” I say, and then, “goodbye.” I decide to forget the bit with Shannon; I just head back to bed, cart-first.
I know Weiss from when I was on the Evidence Tech Team’s North Unit 377 and he was patrol in 24—we worked the same crime scenes. Mostly, though, I know him from the old days at Union Park. I used to party and I could hold my own over there, beer for beer.
I remember one night in particular, with Weiss. It was right after I was diagnosed, and the last time I went to the Union. A group of cops dwindled to us two. I was only there to finish my drink; I’d already pegged Weiss as a guy who was aware enough of his physical advantages—excellent arms, full head of hair, a real smile—to assume he had a free pass on his attitude. His attitude was crap. He was argumentative and proud of it. And he bullshitted me like I was one of the guys.
That night, I had plenty of booze in my system and enough left in my glass to decide to call him on his attitude. He was talking football—or more correctly, arguing—that players who suffered long-term cognitive issues caused by concussions shouldn’t be compensated—when he leaned over and very drunkenly glanced down between the open plackets of my dress shirt. As though I had just unbuttoned it for him.
When I caught him looking, he said, “So.”
Then I realized I did miss an all-important button, and that was because I couldn’t feel my fingers, and that was because my brain was no healthier than a pro bowler’s. No way I was going to explain that to some guy who figured me for a friendly fuck and a fist bump. I got up and left.
The sick part of it was, I liked Weiss.
I quit the Union after that. Had to. For one, I was getting a reputation as a real stumbling drunk. The stumbling was true. Two, a rumor had started about me sleeping with a witness. It wasn’t entirely false.
I only saw Weiss once after that night. It was the Fourth of July party at Keegan’s Pub; a cop’s cousin owns the place. Tom was busy so I brought my brother along as my date and that’s when my brother got introduced to Weiss’s date, Soleil Devere.
And she is the real reason I don’t like Ray Weiss.
I’m back in bed and I want to pull the covers over my head when Weiss comes in. Instead I say, “You don’t have to stay. I’ll be released just as soon as I talk to the doctor.”
“I’m not here for the door,” Weiss says. “I’m here about Johnny Marble.”
“You’re fuge app? I thought you were never leaving the beat car.”
“It’s not that different. Now I just look for particular shitbags.” He smiles at me. “It’s been awhile, Gina.”
“Nineteen months.”
“Nineteen—? How do you know that?”
“Because that’s when Soleil came into our lives. Who could forget? She’s so wonderful.”
Weiss looks down at his feet. “If it matters, I have never been able to stop people from doing what they want to do.”
“Is that your excuse for why you just do whatever you want to do?”
“I’m here to help you.”
“You mean you need my help. Finding Marble.”
“He’s my shitbag.” He sits on the daybed. I know the trick; he’s getting on the level, literally.
Whatever. “I can’t help you.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
I don’t answer.
“I’m sorry. I was told you hit your head. If you can’t remember—”
“Oh no. I remember.” I’ve got the story down, every detail, backward and forward. I know what I’ve got to say to the bosses, the doctors, the medical section, the media—it’s not the truth, exactly. But it’s what’ll get me out of here. It’s w
hat’ll get me back to work, and back home to Isabel.
Still, to lie to Weiss, right now; it feels against the grain. I mean, I should be on his side.
The problem is, I don’t know if he’s on mine.
“You do know it’s a game,” Weiss says, “looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found.”
“Guess you’re losing,” I say. I gaze out the window at the same shitty parking-lot view St. Claire has upstairs.
Weiss stands up. “I’m sorry. I wish Soleil wasn’t all you remembered about me.” He gives up on a smile and heads for the door.
Damn him, throwing down that old card. A fold.
Before he gets out the door he has to step aside because—
“Ms. Simonetti?”
I see the gurney first, then the large black man in green scrubs who’s pushing it. He wears an orderly’s tag but I can’t read the name. He locks the gurney wheels and checks his paperwork. “I’m here to take you to your MRI.”
My voice falls down my throat. “I’m going to hold off,” I try to say, “I’m waiting for my primary physician.”
“Who’s your primary?”
“Richard Metzler.”
The orderly flips the page, creases it at the staple, and shows me: “Metzler is the ordering. He called it in.”
“He can do that?”
“You just said he’s your doctor, ma’am.”
“I haven’t even talked to him.”
“He musta spoke with the hospitalist.”
“What the fuck is a hospitalist?”
The orderly doesn’t look bothered by the question, but Weiss does. He tries to slip out around the gurney.
“Weiss—wait,” I say, because I don’t want him to know I’m panicking about the MRI—a test that’ll give my MS and me away—so I say, “Johnny Marble looks like his booking photo. He runs like a suspect. He smells like your locker room. He’s got my gun. I don’t think that’s much of a map, but his mother is upstairs. Kay St. Claire. Room 406. Maybe she can help.”
Color Weiss surprised.
“Also,” I say, unable to stop any of this from coming out of my mouth, “you should talk to the security guard who found me. His name is Calvin. He was there in the stairwell with me. He might have seen something I didn’t.”
The Lies We Tell Page 3