“Calvin,” Weiss says, as the orderly helps me out of bed.
“Or Curtis,” I say, because what the fuck, I do have a brain injury.
“Thanks,” Weiss says, “I’ll come by later—let you know what I learn.”
“Don’t bother,” I say, “I’ll be home by then.”
He waves over his shoulder without looking back and I think that means he’ll see me later, no matter what.
* * *
I know the drill when they prep me for the MRI. I have had three in two years.
“No,” I’m not claustrophobic. Nor do I have a pacemaker, tattoos, or any history as a metal worker. I have no bullet wounds. I am not allergic to gadolinium. I am not pregnant.
The radiology tech has a lazy eye.
It is freezing in the scan room.
The tech gets me on the flat bed and gives me earplugs. He secures my head in a coil. He puts a pillow under my knees. He offers me a blanket.
I know he does this twenty times a day and I appreciate the gesture but there’s no getting cozy, here. I decline.
He tells me the test will take forty-five minutes, and that there’s an intercom in the tube so he can tell me what to expect and when to hold still.
I wish he could tell me what to expect and when to hold still after this.
He’s already out of the room when the bed moves into the tube. I close my eyes and I won’t open them again until it’s finished; I know there’s a mirror I can look into to see my feet, but I can’t feel my feet.
The tech’s voice sounds like it’s coming through a tin can when he asks, “Are you comfortable?”
A ridiculous question.
I say I am.
“This first test will run about two minutes.”
I know. I wait for the knocking.
I try to be still. As the machine works its way around me, I wonder if it captures images of the tears that slip from the corners of my eyes.
4
When they take me back to my room it’s a different room and an old cop with a thick white mustache is now on the door. I can’t read his nameplate but he stands up when I roll by; unlike Shannon, he’s probably attended enough cop funerals to respect the fact that I’m still with us. And he probably appreciates an easy afternoon.
I’m on the fourth floor now, just around the corner from Kay St. Claire’s room. Apparently I no longer need intensive care, though I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference since the minute I get off the gurney, I’m cared for pretty intensively. In the first hour, at least a dozen people come and go. Only one of them isn’t some kind of medical professional and she’s delivering a bouquet sent by someone in the department who doesn’t know I hate to watch flowers die. And all of them ask some version of the same innocuous question: How are you feeling?
I remember Andy’s warning, and tell them all I’m fine.
When Kitasaki asks, I say I’m great.
In between people I take a few minutes to enjoy the Coke and fries Andy brought from Greek Corner—I was in the tube when he came by and though he didn’t stick around, he was astute enough to know I’d be starving. And he knows the two things I can stomach no matter the circumstance—Coke and fries, after a murder or the morgue. Also, Shannon left food—bravo—but the hash browns went cold and the sweet tea got warm, so I pitched them. The point was made anyhow, and the donuts will keep for Maricarmen.
When a nurse comes in and asks how I’m doing, I tell her I’m going to sleep. I’m not tired, but I don’t want to have to say I’m fine again. Not until Metzler arrives.
It’s just after three o’clock when he does.
“Regina,” he says and pulls me into his arms. I hold on; it’s been a long time since I got a hug from a grown-up.
He says, in my ear, “Your brain looks like Swiss cheese.”
“My brain looked that way before. I feel fine.”
“You’re having an exacerbation. When did it start?”
“When I woke up.” I don’t say which day. “What happens now? Now that the other doctors know? They know, don’t they?”
“I’m sure. I’m also sure they don’t care. They’re in the life-and-death business, and you’re going to make it.”
“But don’t they have to intervene? Or disclose findings?”
“HIPAA laws prevent your diagnosis from being disclosed to anyone other than you or your power of attorney. And your insurance company.”
“Pretty sure I just met my deductible.”
“I’m glad you still have your sense of humor.” He sets me back, holds my shoulders, sizes me up. He looks just as good as the last time I saw him, and not a day older. He’ll be a hundred years old and look just like this: pleasant and kind eyed. Well-fed and well-rested. And always like he knows just a little bit more than he lets on, but wouldn’t get any satisfaction from saying so.
“Tell me, Regina,” he says in a stern voice that sounds like a bad impression of my dad.
“It’s a relapse. It’s nothing new. I’ll be fine.”
“An injury signals a body’s immune system to fight. You know your immune system is already fighting your nervous system. You need to start treatment for your disease.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You’ll run yourself into the ground.”
“I know my body.”
“I know you.”
He stops arguing—if that’s what I can call it—to give me his routine exam: finger to my nose, tuning fork to the toes, all that. I think I do okay.
When he’s through, he takes my hands and looks them over. He asks, “How can you hold a gun?”
“Not very well, obviously.”
“How can you hold Isabel?”
“That’s totally different.”
“Yes,” he says. “A child’s life is a steady trickle of hysterical strength.” Then, while he’s holding my hands, he looks into my eyes: the real exam. “What about your own life?”
“Before this, I had almost all the pieces in place.”
“Tom?”
“I said almost all.”
“It doesn’t sound to me like he fits.”
“He doesn’t. But he continues to pay his half of the mortgage, so I can’t write him off completely.”
“And George?”
“He hasn’t come around. Still giving it up to God, I guess.”
“He isn’t as willful as you are.”
“I’m not willful. I’m rational.”
“I want you on medication.”
“I can’t be sick all the time.”
“There are new options. An oral dose—”
“I read about that one. Side effects may include a heart attack? Forget it.”
“Think about the future, Regina. Think about what is happening in your brain that you can’t feel or know.”
“I could walk out of here and get hit by a bus. I can’t feel or know that, either.”
“You claim you’re nothing like your brother, but you both got your father’s contentious disposition. You sound exactly like him—”
“And, same as my dad, I’m asking you to help me. Even if you don’t agree.”
“What is it you want me to do, Regina?”
“I want you to write this up to the medical section as an acute brain injury and let me go back to work. And to Isabel.”
“Without regard for what I know as your physician.”
“With complete regard for knowing everything about me, as my friend.”
He looks down at his own hands. Thinks about it. Probably thinks about my dad. Says, “Okay.”
He takes out his prescription pad and starts writing. “I agree with Dr. Kitasaki—he wants to get you started on a five-day corticosteroid treatment for the TBI. You’ll get the first IV now and then a nurse will come to your home for four more days.”
“I can go home today?”
“After the treatment.”
“That’s great,” I say. “I miss Isabel more than my feet.”
I make light of it so I won’t cry.
He tears off the scrip and hands it to me. “I’ll write up the report for the medical section just as soon as you fill this.”
It’s for Avonex, the interferon I took when I was first diagnosed. It’s awful. No way. “What if I refuse?”
He tucks his pad away. “As your friend, I don’t want to screw up your life, but as your physician, I can’t let you screw it up. Fill it and face this. If only for Isabel.”
He hugs me again and I feel so, so weak.
But. Isabel. Of course I will.
I wipe the tears that came anyway. I say, “Okay.”
Metzler gets up. “Be willful now, Regina. It will make you well.”
When he leaves I fold the scrip in two, and two, and two again. My ticket out of here. It’s going to be a shitty trip.
* * *
I get my first dose of steroids and then they spring me—or rather, they stick me in a wheelchair so they can get the bed ready for someone else while I wait for my discharge papers. After a little small talk I ask Flagherty to leave—he’s the old cop—and he’s pleased since it’s a half hour from the end of the shift and he can waste the time he’s got left on the clock in the can and head straight to choir practice.
Yet another someone in scrubs gives me a printout of the steroids protocol—who to call and what to expect—along with a hospital-stay satisfaction survey. If these people were smart, they would have given me some M&Ms and some fucking Fritos. I’d have checked five stars all the way.
Sitting in the wheelchair makes me insane. I keep replaying and deconstructing this sentence, as stated by Tom: I don’t know if I can handle a baby and a wife in a wheelchair. The first thing that’s fucked up about it is that Isabel isn’t his kid and nobody asked him to handle her. Second, we never talked about me being Mrs. Sheridan number Two. Third, this came out of the mouth of a forty-year-old guy who takes heart medication and anxiety medication and sleep medication. I was twenty-eight when he said this. I never took so much as Pepto-Bismol up till I was diagnosed, and until he said it, I hadn’t allowed myself to entertain the wheelchair idea. So the only part of the sentence I can figure to be accurate is I don’t know.
I hate sitting here.
There’s a shift change, so all the old doctors and nurses split and the fresh crew busily ignores me. I sit, like an invalid, as the clock ticks past Isabel’s dinnertime. I didn’t order dinner. I was hoping I’d be home. I was hoping we’d have those donuts, a special dessert.
I’m thinking donuts might be my dinner when someone says, “Miss Simonetti?” and I hope to God it’s the guy who’s going to roll me out the door.
His tag tells me he’s Calvin.
My face probably tells him I think he’s finer than frog hair.
He’s dark-skinned, mixed race, tall, and tight as a rail. His arms look like they could carry me a mile and his smile makes me glad I’m already sitting down. I obviously didn’t get a look at him in the stairwell, because I would have known his name for certain, and I wouldn’t have minded his help at all.
Yes, clearly, I just mainlined pharmaceutical hormones.
“Are you ready to go?” he asks, rounding the back of the chair.
“Can I walk?” I don’t want him to see me like this.
“Sorry. Policy says you have to be escorted.”
“Then please, steer me to where I can override it.”
He wheels me to the elevator. I try not to find the silence awkward.
On the way down he asks, “Is there someone waiting for you?”
“Yes,” I say. “A friend is picking me up.” I lied to the nurses about this, too—even faked a phone conversation—so I wouldn’t have to call in favors to get my car home. I’m parked in the lot. I can drive.
I watch the elevator’s floor indicator like strangers always do and I want to strike up a conversation, I don’t want Calvin to be a stranger, but everything I think to say seems stupid. So when we descend from three to two I err on the side of the law and ask, “Is Kay St. Claire still here?”
“I think so. But, like I told your partner, the only time I hear anything about patients is when the nurses are sweating.”
“Andy was here?”
“If that’s the cop who came by and asked about you again.”
“About me?” Again? That wasn’t Andy.
“He wanted to know if I knew anything, since I’m the one who found you in the stairwell. I guess he thought I could tell him, since I’m not a doctor.”
It had to have been Ray Weiss. Why the fuck was he asking about me?
Calvin must peg me as panicked because he says, “I didn’t tell the guy anything. It’s hospital policy—I don’t say what I see.”
The elevator stops on Two and a woman gets on, phone to her ear. While she has the I’m in the elevator, I might lose you conversation with whoever’s on the other end, I decide we both need to shut the fuck up.
Once we’re off the elevator and approaching the front doors, I ask Calvin, “May I borrow your pen?”
I detach the HIPAA disclosure from my discharge papers and write my number on the back. Then I hand his pen back clipped to the HIPAA and I say, “I don’t know what hospital policy is regarding you helping a patient.”
“So…” he starts, obviously wondering about the number.
“So,” I say, slipping off my ridiculous no-slip socks, the red-rubber-hearted soles keeping me from winding up on my ass. “I was here to talk to St. Claire. I’m very concerned for her well-being. Because as you know, Mr. Marble was able to get to her here, and that’s pretty brazen. He is, obviously, a danger.” I get up from the chair and pull on my boots and turn to face him. I still have to look up, but from here he’s perfect. Per-fect-shun. And I swear I feel just fine.
“So…” he says again, since I still haven’t mentioned the phone number.
“So, I need you.”
Calvin looks about as interested as he does unsure, which is better than I expected.
“I need someone—you—to keep an eye on St. Claire,” I explain, pressing my fingertips to the HIPAA disclosure he stowed in his shirt pocket. His chest is solid. “Would you call me?” I ask. “If anything seems screwy? You don’t even need to tell me what it is. Just call.”
“Okay,” he says, though he’s definitely unsure, now. He hands me the plastic bag one of the nurses packed with all my stuff.
“Okay, then.” I turn and leave and I try to be smooth about it.
When I get to the parking lot, I stand there like an idiot while I try to remember where I parked. Then I hear—
“Miss Simonetti?”
And Calvin jogs up next to me with the box of Vanilla Kremes he rescued from underneath the wheelchair. “Are these yours?”
“Oh, I forgot.” I take the box. “Probably seems cliché.”
“No. I’d say this is all pretty unusual.”
“I don’t know if that’s better or worse.” I’m embarrassed, so I turn and wave, pretending I see my ride waiting just as far away from him as I can get. I hope I’ll find my car nearby.
“Bye,” I say, over my shoulder—over my shoulder enough to see he’s watching me walk. I wonder how my ass looks. I wonder how he thinks it looks.
I wonder if it’s Calvin or the exacerbation that makes it so I can barely feel my feet beneath me.
* * *
Isabel is waiting for me in Maricarmen’s doorway. I swear she’s taller. I put down the donuts and grab her up in my arms and I have never been so happy.
“Mama,” she squeals. I don’t correct her.
“Mama,” Maricarmen says, different meaning, “Are you okay?”
“I’m better, now.” Maybe not physically. But, I’m barefoot again, and, “I’m here.” I press my lips against Isabel’s head.
“Okay,” Maricarmen says, gathering Isabel’s stuff, “You gotta get her home. But you want to know there was a man outside your place this morning.”
�
��What do you mean?” I try to keep the fear out of my voice, but I can’t keep it from making the rest of me tense, so I hug Isabel some more.
“I don’t know,” Maricarmen says. “I put the baby pool in the front and I was watching Isabel swim. But then I see this man, down by your house, and I figure it’s a delivery or something, because he had the hat. I thought he was lost, so I yelled down there. That’s when he took off. I called to Geraldo—my cousin? He was here for lunch—and told him to stay with Isabel. I went down there, and that’s when I saw there was no box or nothing. He wasn’t there to deliver nothing but trouble.”
I put Isabel down and she goes straight for the donuts. It’s after eight, and she shouldn’t have any more sugar, but I don’t stop her. She takes two.
I ask, “What did the guy look like?”
“He had dark clothes, like the hat, black, or brown—”
“What about the man, what color was he?”
“I don’t know, Mama, on this block, everybody looks Mexican to me.”
“Was he younger than me? Older than you?”
“Everybody is younger than me.”
“Was he taller than me? Shorter than you?”
“He was tall.”
But. Maricarmen is 4'11". Tall is also everybody.
“How about facial hair?”
“I don’t think so? He had a lot of hair on his head, though.”
“I thought he wore a hat.” My own hair stands on end.
“Under the hat. It just, it stuck out to me, I wanna say.”
“I’m sure it was nobody.” I say this because eyewitnesses always confabulate evidence. And my questions were leading. And, I don’t want her to worry. No sense in both of us doing it.
She takes Isabel’s other donut. “You want my boys to come past, make sure it’s nobody?”
“I’ve got a whole police force for that.” Johnny Marble knows my name, but he’d be a fool to find me. Wouldn’t he?
“I just worry,” Mari says. “You girls home alone—”
“Home?” Isabel asks, looking up at me and smiling, her face vanilla-frosted.
“We’ll be fine.” I hope I sound believable. I grab Isabel’s bags. “Come on, baby.”
The Lies We Tell Page 4