Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

  “True. I was only saying that—”

  He patted my knee. I noticed that I’d missed a section shaving. There was a tiny island of leg hair just below the hem of my shorts. “Why don’t you hand out magazines and we’ll handle the medical evaluations, okay?”

  “Sure.” He was right. What did I know?

  A while later, I decided to go for a walk along the water to escape my relentless companion. “I need to stretch my legs, but I’ll be back soon,” I said, hoping he would take the hint and not jump up to come with me.

  “Have a good walk,” he said with a salute.

  I was about to go when I suddenly remembered the time we’d been together at the Caffeine Scene. I’d gone to the counter to get us coffee and had returned to find him poring over my computer screen.

  I knelt down and shut the computer off this time, then went on my way. Yes, Richard was an okay guy, but, as I knew only too well, he had privacy issues.

  ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON, I put on my uniform and headed to the hospital for my regular shift. As I was signing in at the volunteers office, Shelley stuck her head out of her cubicle and waved me inside.

  She was holding a yellow Post-it with “Room #613” written on it. “This patient made a special request,” she said, handing it to me. “He’d like some magazines.”

  I couldn’t hide my surprise. For one thing, I thought maybe Malcolm had gotten better since I’d last seen him and been discharged. For another, I certainly didn’t expect him to ask for magazines.

  “Did he say which type?” I said, knowing he had nothing but disdain for the sort of publications we offered.

  “No, but he asked for you by name.”

  Interesting, I thought. What could he possibly want with me? Well, there was the fact that I could have saved his life by calling the code blue. “Then I’ll load the cart and start my shift on six,” I said.

  She smiled. “You’re developing quite a fan club around here.”

  “I wouldn’t call one patient a fan club,” I said.

  “How about two patients?” she said. “Actually, this one’s a former patient on four. She called this morning and left a message asking for ‘Ann, the nice magazine lady who talked to me about adoption.’”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, nodding. “She went home last week after surgery.” Yeah, I thought. Another patient who’d had a hysterectomy. I wasn’t crazy. There were a lot of them.

  “You must have made quite an impression, because she wants you to call her.” She handed me another Post-it, this one with the name “Isabelle Sawyer” written on it, along with a phone number. “Some of them view the volunteers as friends and try to keep in touch. It’s entirely up to you whether you reciprocate.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, not sure that Isabelle and I would have much more to talk about. “See you later, Shelley.”

  I restocked the cart with magazines, then took the elevator up to the sixth floor. I can’t deny that my heart was beating just a little faster as I approached 613. Yes, the project was dead, but I was curious about Malcolm, about why he’d asked for me. Maybe he did want to thank me or maybe he wanted to threaten to break my kneecaps if I told anyone he was a celebrity.

  “Knock, knock,” I said as I tapped on his door. “It’s Ann, from volunteer services. May I come in?”

  “Please do,” croaked an astonishingly weak voice.

  I parked the cart in the hall and ventured inside the room. What I saw stunned me. Malcolm, who had looked relatively robust when he’d first been admitted, was deathly pale—a shade of whitish gray. His eyes were glassy and his lips were parched, and when he lifted his head to acknowledge my entrance, the small physical act seemed to sap all his energy. Despite my antipathy toward him, I was deeply concerned.

  “Hello,” I said in a soft, low voice. “Malcolm.” He had the lights turned off and the curtains drawn. This was a sickroom now, not a pit stop between movie shoots, I realized. It looked and smelled like a place where life was ebbing away. “How are you feeling?”

  He nodded at the IV bags on the pole next to his bed. “They’re giving me blood,” he said almost in a whisper. “Lots of bags of the red stuff.”

  Blood? Oh God. “Because you fainted on Friday morning?”

  “I guess.” He blinked his eyes slowly. He was a little disoriented, I noticed. Groggy. “They found out I’m bleeding internally.”

  “From the fall?” I asked, even though he’d only slid to the floor rather than made a crash landing. He hadn’t hit his head, hadn’t collided with the chair, hadn’t gone down hard at all. It didn’t make sense that he was bleeding.

  “No,” he said. “It probably happened—” His eyes closed again. He was out for a few seconds, then revived. “During the implantation of the defibrillator last week, they might have nicked a vein somewhere. They came up with this theory after they checked out my blood tests. My hemoglobin was, like, six.”

  “Oh,” I said. I had no idea what was normal for hemoglobin—ten? twenty? a thousand?—but clearly six was not. “I’m sorry to hear it. But hopefully the transfusions will fix you up and you’ll finally get out of here. I know how eager you were to leave.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said as his eyes closed again. I waited silently until he had the strength to continue talking. “I was about to shoot a movie when all this happened. They had to shut down production because of me. I’m costing them money, screwing up the schedules of the other actors, giving the media more reasons to attack me.”

  No mention of my keeping quiet about his identity. Either he really did trust me or he was delirious. “Your health is more important than any movie,” I said, because it was true and because my compassionate side overtook my I-hate-Malcolm side. “You’ll get better and you’ll pick up your career where you left off.”

  “If the morons at this hospital can figure out where the bleeding’s coming from,” he said, his old hostile attitude returning. The difference was that I could understand his anger this time. If some doctor had clipped one of my veins during a routine procedure and I’d started bleeding internally, I wouldn’t have been too thrilled about it either. I wondered if risk management would be calling Richard about Malcolm’s case.

  “What are they doing to find the bleeding?” I asked.

  “CAT scan, other tests. Meanwhile, I’m stuck here wondering what I did to deserve this nightmare.”

  He deserved plenty for all the grief he’d put others through, but not this. Not even overpaid, self-absorbed actors deserved this. “Sorry,” I said again, feeling the need to apologize for my hospital. “Is there anything I can do? You didn’t really want a magazine, did you?”

  “No. I wanted a friendly face.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know anybody here. I’m totally lost. You’re the only one who seems to care about me.”

  “Everybody in this building cares,” I said. Again, I felt an allegiance to the hospital, an allegiance to Shelley’s core of volunteers too. They all cared, even Claire. Even me.

  “Then why am I still here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I needed to get to the bottom of why Malcolm Goddard was “still here,” of who was responsible. I was a reporter and I wanted answers.

  “I’ve got to run an errand on another floor,” I told him, “but I’ll be back to see you a little later. Okay?”

  “Promise?” he said, his voice barely audible.

  “Promise.”

  If anyone had told me that Malcolm Goddard would be depending on me for moral support and that I would freely give it, I wouldn’t have believed them. But, as I was discovering daily, life was full of surprises.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I stowed my cart back in the storage room and marched down the hall to the administrative offices where Richard’s was located. His was a spacious corner office, as opulently decorated as Harvey’s, minus the spiritual aids. With its marble desk and cushy leather chair and abstract paintings on the wall along with all the
diplomas, it befit the man of authority that he had become. I knew his duties didn’t include micromanaging the doctors, but on this particular Tuesday I needed him to do just that.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said after his assistant told me he was off the phone and free to see me. He’d been in meetings for most of the morning, and I’d had to leave and come back several times.

  He rose from his chair and greeted me, fiddling with his bow tie, self-conscious yet preening. “You’ve been looking for me?” he said with obvious delight.

  “Sorry, but it’s not a personal visit,” I said, not wanting him to get the wrong idea yet again. “I’m worried about a patient.” I moved closer to him so I could whisper, “Malcolm Goddard.”

  “You mean Luke Sykes,” he whispered back, nodding at his assistant, who sat well outside his door and couldn’t have heard me.

  “Fine, then it’s Luke Sykes I’m worried about,” I said, playing his silly game.

  “Jonathan’s on the case. No need to be worried. Unless—” He wagged a finger at me. “You met our special patient. You’re smitten.”

  “Richard.” He talked like somebody’s grandfather.

  “Well? He’s very handsome and quite the muscular specimen. Should I be jealous?”

  “This isn’t funny,” I said, surprising myself by how earnest I was, by how I had come to serve as an advocate for Malcolm, of all people. “It turns out that he’s bleeding internally. He told me it probably happened while they were implanting the defibrillator.” I paused. “But then you must know that. You know everything that goes on in this place, don’t you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I was wondering if the hospital could have been at fault. With his bleeding.”

  “The hospital?” He chuckled, the way he had at the lake when I’d mentioned the hysterectomies.

  “Isn’t that a possibility?” I said. “That’s why Heartland General has a risk-management department, isn’t it?”

  Another chuckle, this one accompanied by a shake of his head. “Ann, you still think like a reporter. I bet you were terrific at that magazine the way you—”

  “Richard, can’t you just answer my question without all the flattery?”

  “Of course. Risk management contacted me about Mr. Sykes’s situation a little while ago. Because they’re thorough. Because we have checks and balances at this hospital. Because things happen during invasive procedures, especially when you’re running a catheter up into the heart area. That’s why the patient signs consent forms, because things happen even under the best conditions.”

  “And?”

  “And a member of the department just came back from interviewing him about what might have caused his bleeding.” He waved a hand at his desk. “The report is over there.”

  “What does it say?”

  “That someone was at fault.”

  “Oh God,” I said with dread in the pit of my stomach as I thought about the monumental lawsuit Malcolm would undoubtedly file, even if it did create a media circus. I felt terrible for him, terrible that he had come to Middletown and gotten more than he’d bargained for. “You have to fire the doctor responsible, Richard, or at least conduct an investigation. Was it Jonathan? Or someone less experienced? A nurse? Who?”

  “Mr. Sykes did this, Ann. To himself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He nodded again at the file. And then he explained. It turned out that after being pressed by risk management, Malcolm suddenly remembered that he’d had a headache the day before the procedure and, against his doctor’s orders, had swallowed a couple of the aspirin that he’d stuffed into his jeans pocket before leaving L.A.

  “Aspirin causes bleeding, which is why we strongly advise against taking it prior to surgery,” said Richard. “Mr. Sykes may have forgotten he took it until we jogged his memory, but the bottom line is that he caused his own complication. Jonathan warned me that he was a hothead.”

  I was dumbfounded. Absolutely stunned. How could Malcolm have disobeyed his doctor’s warning? Was he so arrogant that he thought he knew what was better for him than a trained cardiologist did? Did he think he was above the rules because he was a celebrity? Was he so reckless, so hotheaded, that he believed he could do anything without consequences?

  Richard sat back down behind his desk. He opened the folder and skimmed what was in it. “Jeepers, it’s completely out of bounds for me to share this with you, but his CAT scan shows a retroperitoneal bleed.”

  “Could you be a little less technical?” I said, still wondering how Malcolm could have jeopardized his own health.

  “It means there’s a hematoma—a clot—in his back, near the kidneys. They’re giving him medications and he’ll be fine in a few days.”

  “Oh. Good.” I was so relieved. If Malcolm had died—Well, I’m just saying that the film community would certainly have missed him.

  I SPENT AN hour in the cafeteria, drinking bottled water and trying to cool off before returning to Malcolm’s room. I’d promised him I’d come back, but I had to get control of my emotions first. I was angry with him for putting himself at risk, but regardless of how he’d gotten that way, he was sick and I had to be mindful of that.

  When I arrived at 613, he seemed glad to see me and even looked a little less pale, less toxic. Maybe the drugs and transfusions were having the desired effect and he would, as Richard predicted, be well enough to go home soon.

  “Here you are.” He straightened his gown, which had twisted in the sheets. “There’s been some good news. The CAT scan showed the doctors where the bleeding is.”

  “I know,” I said, standing at the foot of his bed. I was afraid that if I stood any closer I’d strangle him. “I also know that you took aspirin before they put the defibrillator in. You were pretty quick to blame this hospital, Malcolm.”

  He lowered his eyes, like a guilty child. “I totally forgot about those aspirin when everything went downhill and they started sticking needles in me again,” he said. “I was focused on how lousy I felt. That’s why I screwed up.”

  “But why did you take the aspirin in the first place?” I said, my exasperation building in spite of myself. “Your doctor specifically warned you against it.”

  He shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think it would be such a big deal. Obviously, I was wrong, and now I’m paying the price.”

  “That’s it?” I said, throwing up my hands. “That’s your excuse?”

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be my friend,” he said. “The only one I’ve got around here. Why are you so mad about this? Why do you even care? It’s not as if I did it to you.”

  He had a point. He’d done other things to me, but not this. Still, he needed a tongue lashing—had been crying out for a tongue lashing—and in my capacity as kindly, clueless, down-home Midwestern gal, I was just the person to give it to him. I’d waited months for the opportunity. Now here I was, all pent up with someplace to go.

  “It’s your attitude I’m mad about,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Since you’re a movie star, you probably surround yourself with yes people, right?” I began, reprising my Spago speech.

  His eyes narrowed, as if he wasn’t sure what was coming next. “I have people who handle stuff for me, yeah.”

  “And they tell you whatever you want to hear, right?”

  “I wouldn’t put it like—”

  “For instance, you probably have a publicist,” I went on, reliving how shabbily Peggy Merchant had treated me over the years.

  “I do.”

  “Has he or she ever been critical of anything you’ve done?”

  “No, but it’s her job to—”

  “Promote you to others,” I said. “But what about in your private conversations with her? Has she ever questioned your judgment? Challenged your actions? Suggested that you might be wrong about something?”

  “I—Well, not that I recall,” he said warily.


  “And there must be someone who picks out your wardrobe and someone who buys and cooks your groceries and someone who drives you around. Oh, and someone who watches over all your houses, however many you have. They don’t challenge you either, right?”

  “No, because they work for me.”

  “I see,” I said, nodding like a prosecutor in a courtroom. “So you have all these people who tell you you’re wonderful—people you hire to tell you you’re wonderful. At the same time, you avoid contact with the outside world.”

  “No. No. It’s the media I avoid.”

  “Right, but when you avoid the media, you’re also avoiding us regular folks who want to know more about you. Take coming to this hospital, for example. You eluded the media, but you also lost the support you would have gotten from your fans, who don’t have any idea what you’re going through. Plus, you told me you’re estranged from your parents and aren’t ready to commit to your girlfriend. So that brings us back to the yes people, the only ones you listen to.”

  “Okay, just hang on a second there.” He pointed his finger at me, the one with some digital medical contraption taped to it. “You’re making it sound—”

  “Like the truth,” I said. “I don’t know anything about Hollywood, as we’ve established, but from what I’ve read, it seems to me that you and other celebrities are so insulated, so pampered, so removed from reality that you think the rules don’t apply to you. You behave badly and there’s always someone on your payroll to clean it up, to spin it. Well, not at Heartland General, Malcolm. You behave badly and you end up with an IV pumping blood into your body.”

  He didn’t say anything. Not for several seconds. He just stared at me with this odd, completely bewildered look on his face. If I’d been the one in that bed, I would have stared at me too. Who was I, anyway? Yes, I’d been dying to tell him off, but I was my mother’s daughter. I’d spent too many years making “nicey-nicey” with everybody. For some reason, though, I didn’t hold back when I was with Malcolm. I let him have it without worrying about whether he’d like me. Of course, while I was standing there waiting for him to say something, I did wonder whether he’d yell for a nurse and have me tossed out of his room.