Julian

by William Bell

  From my shirt pocket I pulled the scrap of paper with the scribbled directions I had been given over the phone.

  “This is it?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We just crossed the intersection you mentioned. The south side, you said.”

  “Can you wait?”

  The cabbie scanned the surrounding area. “Not for long.”

  I got out and looked around, heard a thump as the taxi’s door locks engaged. Not a human form to be seen, not a vehicle on the poorly illuminated roads. A sustained hiss of light traffic on the elevated expressway behind me. Unsure of where to search, I began to walk toward the flickering light, passing through long, dry grass strewn with litter, into the spindly, ragged-looking trees. Closer, the light turned out to be a small campfire. Four silent figures sat on logs, hunched around the crackling blaze, its light glimmering on their lowered faces. Along with woodsmoke I smelled cigarettes, weed, wine.

  Someone hissed, “Over here.”

  I followed the sound, finding a crude shelter made from a tarp stretched between trees. The shape standing beside it was one of the chess players from Grange Park. His clothing smelled of liquor and cigarettes.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  He nodded to the dark space under the lean-to. “There.”

  Dropping to my knees, I crawled under the tarp. I made out the forms of two figures stretched out next to a bundle of clothes, giving out soft snores. I peered at them, barely able to make out their faces. One was the second chess player; the other, a woman I didn’t recognize.

  “She’s not here,” I said. “Is this some kind of—”

  “That’s her, right there,” the guy insisted, pointing at the heap of clothes.

  I crawled a few feet farther. I heard a cough. Ninon was wrapped in her camo jacket, knees to chest, head tucked down, shivering despite the warm evening. Bits of dried leaves speckled her tangled hair. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her chapped lips slightly parted, and she was breathing raggedly. The odour of dried vomit and sweat seeped from her clothes.

  I turned on the chess player, but he held up his hand, cutting me off.

  “Cool it, man. She wouldn’t let us do nothing for her, or take her anywheres. You know what she’s like. She’s been here—what, a few days? Wouldn’t go to the mission. Or couldn’t. Then tonight she digs a phone number out of that bag of hers and asks me to call. I’m sorry, man. We done all we could. She’s bad sick.”

  I slipped my arms under Ninon’s body and got to my feet. She was as light as a little girl. Her head lolled against my chest as I set off.

  “Hold up!” said the chess player. He laid Ninon’s satchel on her stomach.

  The taxi was waiting just where I’d left it. When the driver saw me coming he hopped out and opened the back door. I put Ninon on the seat and ran around to the other side, got in and put my arm around her.

  “Julian,” she said, her whisper raspy and weak. “I knew you’d come.”

  And she drifted away again.

  I took her home, thinking the hospital Emergency ward was probably crowded and the wait for help would be long. They might think Ninon was just another addict. At my house there was a nurse right upstairs.

  I paid off the cab and carried Ninon to my apartment and laid her on the sofa, a pillow under her head. I brought her a tumbler of water but she managed only a few sips. Then I ran upstairs and tapped on Fiona’s door.

  “Fiona, it’s Julian.”

  A few minutes later the door opened a crack. Fiona peered at me over the taut safety chain.

  “Julian, what on earth—”

  “I need your help. My friend is sick.”

  “What? Your—”

  “Please hurry.”

  Fiona looked into my face, then closed the door. I heard the chain sliding in its track. The door opened.

  “Put the kettle on,” she said. “I’ll be down in a tick.”

  She bustled through my door a few minutes behind me, a thin housecoat over her nightgown, a stethoscope in one hand and her first aid kit—which I had seen before, when she fixed up my face—in the other. She squeezed onto the edge of the couch.

  “Shove over a wee bit, dear,” she said softly. “And let’s have a look at you.” Then, without looking up, “Julian, tea.”

  “I don’t think she—”

  “Not for her, for me. And a couple of acetaminophen if you have them. She has a fever.”

  I plugged in the kettle and tossed two tea bags into the pot. While Fiona took Ninon’s temperature and checked her blood pressure, I dissolved a couple of acetaminophen in half a cup of warm water. I watched anxiously as Fiona spent a long time with her stethoscope, moving it around Ninon’s chest and back, repeating, “Deep breath, now.” Finally, she stuffed the scope into the pocket of her robe and turned to me.

  “Put lots of sugar in that, too,” she told me. Then, to her patient, “What’s your name, dear?”

  The answer was barely audible.

  “Right, come on Ninon, let’s get you more upright.”

  We propped her up with cushions. It took a while, but she got down the water with the sugar and drug in it, then went to sleep again. Fiona tilted her head toward the kitchen. Over tea at the table she gave me the diagnosis.

  “She has a high fever, not dangerous now, but potentially so. The acetaminophen will help that. What’s more important, I think she has pneumonia. That’s what’s causing the cough, the shortness of breath and the shivers. It hurts her to breathe. Her blood pressure’s a bit low—also to be expected.” She lowered her voice. “She’s in bad shape. We need to get her to hospital—tonight.”

  I jumped up. “Should I—”

  “No need to panic, Julian. First, I’ll give her a bath. I can lend her some clothes. I’ll call Emergency and tell them she’s coming. I know a couple of people on the night shift. Unless there’s a big crisis, they’ll get to her right away.”

  Relieved to be with someone who knew what she was doing, I just nodded.

  “Now, let’s go over a few things. You have to know what to say when you take her in. Is she a minor?”

  “I don’t know her exact age, but she’s under eighteen for sure.”

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  I had to tell her, even if I was giving up secrets Ninon wouldn’t want told.

  “She’s an orphan, from Quebec. She’s a street kid.”

  “An addict?”

  “I’m almost certain she isn’t.”

  “Okay, when they admit her, there’ll be paperwork. She needs an address. Say you’re her brother. Otherwise, since she’s a minor, you’ll have social services visiting. Maybe that would be best.”

  “No way.”

  “Alright, go with what I’ve said for now. The main thing is to get her in. Does she have a health card?”

  “I’ll check her bag. She might. I don’t know.”

  “Now would be a good time to run the bath for her. I’ll just check on Roger and be right back.”

  While Fiona helped Ninon into the tub behind the closed door, I picked up the clothes she had tossed into the hall. They smelled so bad I stuffed them into a plastic bag. I’d wash them later. Lifting Ninon’s satchel to the kitchen table, I fought off a pang of guilt at invading her privacy, reminding myself it had to be done.

  Rather than rummage around the chaos inside, I took items out one by one and laid them on the table—her diary, two pairs of clean socks, a couple of novels, a few pairs of clean panties rolled up and held tight by a scrunchie, a big plastic comb, a small bundle of photos in an envelope, a packet of tampons, miscellaneous gum and candy wrappers and then the prize. A small zippered bag. Inside were a Certificate of Canadian Residency, a Quebec Health Insurance card, her French passport. I had all I needed to get her into the hospital with no strings. I put the certificate and health card into my backpack with my two cells and went to knock on the bathroom door.

  “Fiona, should I call an ambulance?”


  Her reply was tight. “No need. A taxi.”

  I did as she said, adding a book to my pack. I figured it would be a long night.

  TWENTY-NINE

  FIONA HAD MADE IT HAPPEN.

  An hour and a half later I was sitting in a chair beside Ninon, who lay sleeping fitfully on a gurney parked tightly against the wall of a narrow hallway in the crowded Emergency ward. A tube snaked up to a bag of clear liquid hanging on a rack rising from the corner of the gurney. How she was able to sleep in the din, I didn’t know. The corridor was a carnival of voices, bustling men and women in green scrubs or white coats, groans and cries of discomfort and pain from other gurneys lining the walls.

  I was now Ninon’s next of kin, her half-brother. The admitting secretary, a sour-faced, impatient woman, had almost caught me out of position when I told her Ninon was my sister. She commented, “Hmm, brother and sister with different surnames.”

  But I came back fast. “Different fathers,” I said. Next came my address and phony names for our non-existent parents, who were away on holiday, touring South America.

  “They’re out of touch for a few days,” I said, adding to the pile of lies.

  In the hallway, I sat with one arm resting on the cot, my hand in Ninon’s, holding my novel and trying without much success to read. Time seemed to disappear. I wasn’t wearing a watch and there was no clock in the corridor. Ninon floated in and out of awareness. She already looked a bit better. She wasn’t so pale and her lips had a blush of colour now. But every breath was an effort as she dragged the air in and pushed it out again. I got up and for the hundredth time kissed her forehead.

  After a long while a passing nurse stopped by the gurney and consulted a clipboard, then checked the name tag on the frame of the cot.

  “Ninon Bisset,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “We’re going to take her for some tests. You might as well have a break, see if you can find a place to sit in the waiting room. Check with the desk in about an hour and a half. After the tests, we’ll be putting her in a room. You can see her there when we have her set up. Any questions?”

  “She’ll be okay, right?”

  “The doctor will talk to you after the results come in.”

  He rolled Ninon down the hall and they disappeared into an elevator.

  I made my way to the waiting room. It was jammed, hot and depressing, so I went outside and sat down on a low wall outside the door and watched the traffic lights change on the street corner across the way. I couldn’t forget Fiona’s tight-lipped expression when she brought Ninon out of the steamy bathroom. She had noticed something about Ninon, something that wasn’t good. And she hadn’t told me what it was.

  Just after dawn a volunteer senior at Information directed me to the seventh floor. I found Ninon’s room easily enough. It was past the nursing station, at the end of the hall. Her bed, by the window, was the only one in a room that smelled of chemicals and wax.

  She lay asleep, cradled by pillows, her eyes closed, her thick hair combed back, her skin wan and papery. She seemed captured and trapped by the chrome bed rails, at the mercy of strangers and machines and the illness that held her down and stole her breath. An IV pierced the back of each hand, delivering blood to one and glucose to the other. Connected to an oxygen receptacle in the wall behind her, a hose fed into a plastic tubular head harness with a tiny vent under each nostril.

  The sight of her filled me with dread. That can’t be Ninon, I thought. Ninon has always been as free as a breeze, now here, now there, with me one minute and away the next, with the sun glowing on her skin and a sparkle in her eyes.

  I stood at the foot of her bed, replaying in my mind the image of Fiona’s face last night, just before I phoned for the taxi. I struggled to bring myself under control, then called Ninon’s name. Her eyelids fluttered, then opened, the green irises bright with fever.

  “Julien,” she rasped, using the French pronunciation.

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m in the hospital?”

  “I brought you in last night.”

  “Is there water?”

  I filled a tumbler from the water pitcher on her bedside table and stuck a bendable straw into it and held it to her mouth. After she got down some water her voice was stronger.

  “How am I?”

  “You have pneumonia and a fever. That’s all I know so far. But you’re safe now; you’ll be taken care of.”

  “All my joints ache et j’ai un mal de tête.”

  “I can fetch the nurse.”

  “Don’t go,” she said, closing her eyes. A moment later she was breathing evenly.

  I left the room and walked down the hall to the nursing station. A man and woman, both in baggy blue outfits, were doing paperwork at a small counter under a row of cupboards. When she noticed me the woman came to the window.

  “I’m Ninon Bisset’s brother,” I told her. “Could you tell me how she is? I mean, what’s wrong with her?”

  The nurse smiled and said, “She has double pneumonia. We’re treating her for that and for fever. And we’re waiting for test results.”

  Her musical Caribbean accent was calming.

  “What are you testing her for?”

  “Just routine.”

  Which was what the cops in the novels always said when a person being questioned asked, “What’s all this about?” The reply meant the cops didn’t want to reveal information. Or couldn’t because they didn’t know the answers themselves.

  “Any chance you’ll tell me what ‘routine’ means?”

  She smiled again. “As soon as more information comes in a doctor will speak with you.”

  I thanked her, then continued down the hall to a small lounge I had noticed on the way in. It was empty. I called the store. Mrs. Altan didn’t seem convinced by my sick relative excuse. After checking the Chang cell for a message and finding none, I returned to Ninon’s room and sat down in the chair between the window and bed. I felt useless. The room was hot, the air stale and dry. I yawned, reached for my book, tried to concentrate on the words on the page. I read the same paragraph four times before giving up.

  A janitor with a mop and a bucket on wheels came by and asked me to give him a few minutes to swab the floors—which looked clean to me. But I nodded and went to the lounge again. I flipped through a couple of two-year-old yachting magazines. When I returned, stepping past the bright yellow “Caution: Slippery Floor” sign in front of the door, the guy with the pail had gone. Someone had hung new IV bags on the poles and fluffed up Ninon’s pillows.

  Suddenly I felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude to the people caring for her, the men and women on her case. They knew what they were doing, I told myself. They’d help her. She’d be okay.

  I kissed Ninon on the forehead, drew my chair closer to her bed, lowered the side frame, laid my head on my forearms, and within minutes I slid into a troubled sleep.

  ——

  Ninon woke a few times during the morning. We talked a bit, but she found it hard to concentrate. Every little while she whispered, “Stay with me,” and I would try to reassure her. Lunchtime came. She drank some juice and managed a few spoons of jelly. Lunchtime went. A couple of orderlies came in, uncoupled her oxygen tube, released the brakes on her bed and wheeled her away down the hall to the elevator. Taking her for more tests, they told me. While she was gone the Chang cell vibrated in my pocket. I took the call in the lounge.

  A text message from “Number Withheld” read “Pickup 9:00 am tomorrow.”

  “I guess I’ve got my meeting with Mr. Bai,” I told the empty room.

  I didn’t care anymore.

  It was dark when I plodded up the stairs to my apartment and let myself in. I poured the coffee I had bought on the way home into a cup and put it into the microwave, then carried the bag containing Ninon’s clothes down to the basement and dumped them into the washer/dryer.

  The smell of the hot coffee when I returned to the kitchen reminded m
e that I had eaten next to nothing all day beyond half a cheese sandwich that tasted like plastic-wrapped cardboard. I found a can of beef stew in the cupboard and heated it on the stove and ate it with some soda crackers. Before I turned in I called the hospital and asked for the nursing station on the seventh floor.

  “This is Ninon Bisset’s brother,” I said. “How is she doing?”

  The male nurse on the other end said, “Since you left her less than an hour ago? She’s resting comfortably.”

  Resting comfortably. Did these people get their dialogue from TV shows? Then I told myself I wasn’t being fair.

  “Do you have my phone number handy?”

  He read the number to me.

  “That’s it. I’m being a pain, aren’t I?”

  The nurse chuckled. “You’re okay. Pain is why we’re here.”

  I crawled into bed and listened to the crickets in the yard. Damn, I thought. I didn’t check the street before I came to bed.

  “Ah, if they’re watching, let them,” I said to the crickets.

  THIRTY

  AS SOON AS I WOKE UP I called the hospital—a busy time on the ward. Doctors’ rounds, breakfast, pill distribution and more.

  I was folding Ninon’s clothes and putting them in her canvas bag when Fiona knocked on my door on her way to drop Roger at Trish’s place.

  “Any news?” she asked, shushing Roger, who was squirming in her arms.

  “I’m not getting any information out of anyone,” I replied. “That’s bad, isn’t it? I mean, if there was good news, they’d tell me, right?”