Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

  “The deal,” I said, dying to fling myself into the elevator that had finally arrived in the lobby, “is that I wanted to say good-bye to a patient who’s going home today. After that, I’m off to the lake. This is the first warm day since I came back to town, and I’m planning to take a chair, soak up the sun, and relax.” I really was planning to go to the lake. Much later.

  “Are you going with Richie Grossman?” she asked in a singsong voice.

  “What?” I said, shaking my head. “Why would you think that?”

  “He’s telling everybody you two are dating.”

  Oh God. “He’s a very nice guy, but we’re not dating, Claire. I had dinner with him a couple of times. As friends.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.” I surreptitiously checked my watch. Nine o’clock. There was no telling when Jonathan White would show up in Malcolm’s room. Some doctors made their rounds at the crack of dawn. Others were more leisurely about it. How was I supposed to know when Eleanor would feed her husband his egg-white omelet with low-fat cheese and turkey bacon? He’d said he’d be around “midmorning.” But what did that mean? He could be up on six right now. More heart thumping.

  “Aren’t you gonna ask what I’m doing here on a Sunday?” said Claire.

  “Yes. Sorry,” I said. “Why are you here?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Mike got into a fight at the Hole in the Wall last night. Ten stitches on his chin. He looks like Harrison Ford now. I wish.”

  “I hope he’ll be okay,” I said to the accompaniment of the ding of the elevator arriving—the elevator I needed to be on.

  “Hey, I bet he’d love to see you,” she said. “Why don’t you stop by his room and say hello. He’s in 510.”

  “Oh, gosh. I’d like to but—”

  “No, really. He always said how he thought it was cool that you went to Hollywood and all.”

  “Right, but it’s that patient I mentioned,” I said quickly. “I have to make sure I catch him before he’s discharged. I really do want to wish him luck.”

  “Whatever.” She nodded and steered me back to where we’d started. “I’ll ride up with you.”

  I couldn’t lose her. Swell.

  We entered the next elevator. She pressed five, then asked me which floor I wanted.

  “Six, please,” I said.

  The doors closed. Up we went.

  “Which patient on six?” she said.

  “I forget his room number,” I said, because we weren’t supposed to discuss the patients among ourselves and because I didn’t want to even hint that Malcolm might be more than your average local and because more than anything in the world, I didn’t want her tagging along.

  Mercifully, it was a quick trip to the fifth floor. As the doors opened, Claire held them for a second and looked back at me. “If it’s the guy in 613, I doubt he’s in the mood for good-byes. He’s cute but what a sourball.” She stuck her tongue out. “I tried giving him a magazine the other day and he said, from out of nowhere, ‘Media people are parasites!’ Weird, huh?”

  “Incredibly weird,” I agreed and asked her to send Mike my best regards. My aunt would have killed me for that.

  When I got to six, I went straight to 613. The door was open just a crack and there wasn’t any sort of sign on it, so I knocked. No answer. I knocked again and said, “Hi, Luke, it’s Ann. May I come in?” Still no answer. I knocked a third time and said, louder, in case he was in the bathroom and couldn’t hear me, “It’s Ann! I wanted to give you a friendly Midwestern bye-bye before you go back to Miami!” Not a peep.

  Violating one of Claire’s cardinal rules, I opened the door without an invitation and stepped inside the room. And then I gasped.

  No, the patient wasn’t having sex like the last time I’d walked in on somebody without permission. On the contrary. The patient wasn’t there.

  The second I saw the empty bed, I didn’t even bother to snoop around the room. I flew out into the hall in search of a nurse, a tech, Jonathan, someone who could tell me whether Malcolm had left the building, as I feared. Just as I was cursing myself for stopping to talk to Claire, for getting caught speeding, for allowing myself to fantasize about staging a comeback at Famous, I spotted my prey. He was way down the hall, still in his hospital gown but minus the IV pole, walking slowly toward me. I experienced a bizarre feeling: I was happy to see someone I detested.

  He’s still here, I thought with enormous relief, telling myself to breathe normally. I haven’t missed my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity after all.

  “Hey,” he said when he finally made it back to the room. He looked winded and pale as he grabbed hold of the doorknob to steady himself, but he was smiling. “I was just stretching my legs while I wait for the doctor to give me the thumbs-up. He told me he’d be here this morning, but no sign of him so far. When’s checkout at this place?”

  “It varies,” I said. We were standing face-to-face for the first time since he’d been admitted, and I suddenly felt winded myself. Even in the drab gown, even with the grubbiness, even with the brown eyes and receding hairline, Malcolm Goddard radiated the kind of star power that had flustered me at Spago. But I recovered quickly. The memory of that night snapped me right out of it. “Why don’t you sit in the chair until he comes and we’ll have a last visit?”

  “Why not?” he said cheerfully. “I’m so glad to be a free man that I’ll talk as long as you want. There’s definitely something to be said for being handed a new lease on life.”

  Talk as long as I wanted? I could hardly contain myself. “Let’s get you settled first,” I said, hoping Jonathan was only beginning to sink his teeth into his omelet and that I’d have an uninterrupted one-on-one with Malcolm. “At Heartland General, we like our patients to be comfortable right up until they leave us.”

  He started to walk toward the armchair next to the bed, but instead he stopped and cocked his head at me, as if he were trying to size me up, the way he’d done before. “Can you keep a secret?” he said, lowering his voice a bit.

  Well, I wasn’t expecting the question, obviously. I reacted by saying that yes, of course I could.

  “I thought so,” he said, still standing, still appraising me. “You strike me as the trustworthy type. No pretenses. No angles. No agendas. Just straight talk. You don’t want anything from me, except my good health, and you just might be the only person on this earth who doesn’t.”

  “That’s very nice of you to say,” I managed, “but I’m not perfect or even close to—”

  “See that? You’re modest too. It’s that Midwestern thing, I guess. You’re real. You’re authentic. You’re grounded. You’re not all about how you look.”

  Instinctively, I reached up to touch my face and hair. So he thought I was—what?—hideous?

  He laughed. “I think you misunderstood me. You’re a beautiful woman. I’m just saying you don’t parade it out there, and it’s such a switch from what I’m used to.”

  I didn’t have time to process the compliment. I was trying desperately to follow where this was going. “The women in Miami are different?”

  “The women in L.A. are different.” He took a step forward in my direction. We were face-to-face again.

  “L.A.?” I said, utterly bewildered. “But I thought—”

  He placed his forefinger across my lips. He was that close to me. “Shhhh,” he whispered. “Here’s the secret. I’m only telling you because you don’t care about the movies or Hollywood or any of that. Well, and because I’m leaving any minute, so none of this will matter anyway.”

  “None of what?” I said, although I knew. I knew but I didn’t believe it.

  “My real name is Malcolm Goddard,” he said proudly, as if he’d announced that he was the king of a major monarchy.

  As the thumping in my chest came in faster, louder beats, I tried to figure out how to respond. Surprise? Excitement? Reverence? Nonchalance? I was completely thrown by his disclosure and what its implications for me
might be.

  “So then you’re not really Luke Sykes?” I said, going with a combination of surprise and nonchalance. What were the implications for me, for my plan? What did all this mean?

  He shook his head. “I use that alias when I don’t want the media to know where I am. I’m one of those reclusive movie stars you read about, so don’t tell anybody until after I’m gone, okay?”

  “Sure, sure,” I agreed, trying not to look as if my whole world had just caved in. Which it had. The realization hit me the instant he’d said the word “reclusive”: My shot at getting the big get was over. Yes, he’d blown his own cover, because he was leaving and because he figured I didn’t give a damn who he was. But now that he had, he would never open up to me, not about anything worth putting in a magazine. That was the irony. His guard would be up—the same stupid resistance that had made interviewing him impossible in the first place. When I’d posed my questions to Luke Sykes, he’d found them innocuous enough to answer. But posing them to Malcolm Goddard? Forget it. Malcolm Goddard didn’t let people in. Malcolm Goddard didn’t believe anybody had a right to ask him about his thoughts and feelings. Malcolm Goddard was an asshole, and at that very moment I had an urge to set his hospital gown on fire.

  “Might as well sit down,” he said, turning back toward the chair and shuffling away from me. “I’m kind of tired from my little marathon. Maybe you could ask the nurse to bring me some juice or something. I think her name’s Rowanda.”

  “It’s Rolanda,” I said, more sharply than I intended. Well? I was crushed, absolutely reeling from defeat.

  “I’d love some OJ,” he said as he approached the chair. “Or maybe some cranapple, if they have it.”

  He’s giving me his drink order like I’m his personal assistant, I seethed as I watched him take another step and then fall.

  Fall?

  Oh my God! He sort of swooned and then crumpled to the floor in a heap!

  I ran over to him, careful not to do anything that was against the rules. But I had to see if he was…dead. Oh my God!

  His eyes were closed and his jaw was slack, but he was breathing. At least it seemed that way when I held his wrist and felt a pulse. Or was it only my own that was throbbing?

  “Help!” I said, getting up off my knees and scrambling to the phone next to the bed. I’d made my share of procedural mistakes since I’d started volunteering, but this wasn’t a fire and it wasn’t a security breach. That much I knew. With trembling fingers I punched in 111.

  “State the nature of the emergency,” said the operator.

  “Code blue,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty

  “He’ll be all right. He just fainted,” said Jonathan after Malcolm was back in bed and resting. We were standing in the hall at the nurses’ station. The crisis was over and the patient was stable, but I was a wreck.

  “I thought he was dead,” I said wearily, propping myself up against the wall. “One minute he was walking around, champing at the bit to go home. The next he was down on the ground. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You did what you were supposed to do,” he reassured me. “Now we’ll take over.”

  “But what’s wrong with him? Why did he faint? Is there a problem with the defibrillator? Did he have more palpitations?” Questions. Lots of questions, as usual. It wasn’t my place to ask them, but I did anyway.

  “His heart seems fine,” he said. “The EKG looks good. The chest X-ray looks good. The device’s leads are in place. The rhythm is normal.”

  “Then what’s the matter?” I said.

  “We’ll know more when the blood work comes back. Not to worry.”

  As he continued on his rounds, I decided I’d had enough of Heartland General and left the patient in the hands of the professionals. As I drove home, I called Tuscany with the bulletin that Malcolm had confessed his true identity and then taken a dive.

  “I nearly died when ‘Luke’ told me who he really was,” I said wearily. “But, as it turned out, he was the one who nearly died.”

  “What? Why?” she said.

  “He passed out right after letting me in on his big secret,” I said. “He’s stable, but they don’t know what’s wrong with him. Looks like he’ll be staying with us longer than he expected.”

  “That’s awesome!”

  “Tuscany.”

  “Not that he’s sick. Just that you’ll have more time with him.” She squealed. “It’s like he wants to give you the interview without even realizing it.”

  “No, the only reason he told me the truth is because he thought he’d be back in L.A. by now. And because he thinks I’m real.”

  “You are real,” she said. “A real reporter who’s determined to get her story.”

  “The story is that he’s Malcolm again, the guy who will go to any lengths to keep inquiring minds away. Which means I’m washing my hands of the whole thing. I won’t humiliate myself by chasing after him. Not anymore. I’m abandoning my little project.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  “I have no choice. He won’t open up to me now.”

  “Ann, you’re the only journalist in the world who knows where Goddard is. That’s still huge.”

  What was huge right then was my headache. I couldn’t wait to get home, change my clothes, and head to the lake for some peace and quiet. The sun was shining, the breeze was light, and the temperature was climbing to a forecasted high of seventy degrees. Perfect conditions for trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, now that Famous and I really were history.

  WHEN I ARRIVED at the state park, I was further bummed to find that I had lots of company. With all its recreational opportunities—boating, fishing, camping—the area had always attracted hundreds of people, but I hadn’t anticipated that they’d all be there so early in the season. Then I remembered that “the season” started as soon as the snow melted. Or, as my father used to say, the four seasons in Middletown were: Snow, Almost Summer, Summer, and Still Summer.

  I positioned my canvas folding chair in the sand facing the water, set my tote bag next to the chair, and plopped myself down, exhaling a disconsolate sigh as I did. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and my arms and legs were an unsightly fish-belly white, but I didn’t care.

  I sank into an exhausted person’s nap, dozing off for about twenty minutes. I felt fairly renewed when I woke up—so renewed that I thought, Oh, go ahead and play with your laptop. I pulled it out of my tote bag and rested it on my legs. Yes, I was finished with the idea of duping Malcolm into giving me an interview, but I hadn’t entered my last real conversation with him into the computer, so I decided it couldn’t hurt to type it in. Just to tie up loose ends.

  My fingers were moving quickly over the keyboard when I suddenly felt a shadow cross my body. I looked up, expecting to see a cloud obscuring the sun momentarily, but there, instead, was Richard. He was in baggy white shorts and a pink polo shirt, and he was wearing white socks with his brown sandals. He had a large towel under one arm and his computer under the other, and his face was slathered with white sunscreen that he hadn’t managed to rub in.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked.

  Well, yes, I did mind. I’d been enjoying my solitude. Sure, there were lots of people around, but I didn’t have to actually talk to them. “I’m not very good company today,” I said, because I couldn’t just come out and hurt his feelings. “I’m kind of doing my own thing.”

  “I understand completely,” he said, planting himself right down next to me, spreading out his towel and making himself comfortable. “I’ll let you get back to whatever it is and give you your space.” He chuckled. “That’s a very Hollywood expression, isn’t it?”

  A thousand years ago, I thought. Clearly, he didn’t understand, but what was I supposed to do?

  “I’ll leave you alone, Ann. Really,” he promised. “It’ll be fun just to sit together.”

  I smiled and went back to my laptop. I was typing up the part wh
ere Malcolm/Luke had confided that he was shy.

  “Quirky weather, isn’t it?” Richard said only seconds later. “I mean, jeepers, Middletown is so strange. We can go from heat to air-conditioning in the same day and how about all this bright sun? But then you probably got used to the sunshine when you lived in L.A. Heck, you probably went to the beach every chance you got. Or did you lounge around the pools of the rich and famous? Everybody has a pool there, don’t they?”

  Okay, maybe I could ask him to put a sock in it without hurting his feelings. “You know, Richard, I was hoping we could each concentrate on our work and not have to—”

  Just then his cell phone rang. It had one of those incredibly irritating ring tunes better suited for a child’s birthday party.

  “Dr. Grossman,” he answered in his authoritative voice, as opposed to his “jeepers” one. The signal he was getting while splayed out on his towel must have been bad because he got up and kept asking “Can you hear me now?” until he finally found the right spot.

  “It was the hospital,” he announced when he came back and sat down again.

  “Everything all right?” I said, wondering if they really needed him on a Sunday or if he just wanted me to think he was indispensable.

  “It will be. The risk-management department was calling about a patient who’s making noises about suing. It happens all the time.”

  “Does it?”

  “At every hospital in the country. People want somebody to pay for their pain and suffering.”

  “Is there any merit to this patient’s complaint?” I asked, figuring that if he’d been so cavalier about sharing Malcolm’s personal information, he would probably be just as indiscreet about a lawsuit.

  “Of course not. She had a hysterectomy three months ago. Now it’s sunk in that she can’t have kids and she’s lashing out at us. I feel for the woman, I do, but jeepers.”

  “It does seem as if Heartland performs a lot of hysterectomies,” I said. “More than I would have thought.”

  “Ann.” He chuckled. “You’ve only been a volunteer for—what—a week?”