Independence Day

by Richard Ford

  “Bascombe,” I say softly, still grateful. “Frank Bascombe. My son’s Paul Bascombe.” (A good attitude can oft-times, Gypsies believe, deflect bad news.)

  “I’m Dr. Tisaris.” She consults her chart again, then fixes me with perfectly flat blue eyes. “Paul’s had a very, very bad whack to the eye, I’m afraid, Mr. Bascombe. He’s suffered what we call a dilation to the upper left arc of his left retina. What this essentially means is—“ She blinks at me. “Was he hit with a baseball?” This she simply can’t believe; no eye protection, no helmet, no nothing.

  “A baseball,” I say, possibly inaudibly, my good attitude and Gypsy hope gone, gone. “At Doubleday Field.”

  “Okay. Well,” she says, “what this means is the ball hit him slightly left of center. It’s what we call a macula-off injury, which means it drove the left front part of his eye back into the retina and basically flattened it. It was a very, very hard blow.”

  “It was the Express cage,” I say, squinting at Dr. Tisaris. She is pretty, svelte (if short) but sinewy, a little athletic Greek, though she’s wearing a wedding ring, so conceivably it’s her husband the gastroenterologist who’s the Greek and she’s as Swedish or Dutch as she looks. Anyone but a fool, however, would feel complete confidence in her, even in tennis clothes.

  “At the moment,” she says, “he has okay vision in the eye, but he’s having bright light flashes, which are typical of a serious dilation. You should probably have a second doctor take a look at him, but my suggestion is we repair it as soon as possible. Before the day’s out would be best.”

  “Dilation. What’s a dilation?” I am instantly as cold as mackerel flesh. The nurses at the admissions desk are all three looking at me oddly, and either I’ve just fainted or am about to faint or have fainted ten minutes ago and am recovering on my feet. Dr. Tisaris, however, model of rigorous antifainting decorum, doesn’t seem to notice. So that I simply do not faint but grip my ten toes into the soles of my shoes and hang onto the floor as it dips and sways, all in response to one word. I hear Dr. Tisaris say “detachment” and feel certain she’s explaining her medical-ethical perspective toward serious injury and advising me to act in a similar manner. What I hear myself saying is, “I see,” then I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste dull, warm blood, then hear myself say, “I have to consult his mother first.”

  “Is she here?” Clipboard down, a look of unbelief on Dr. Tisaris’s face, as if there is no mother.

  “She’s at the Yale Club.”

  Dr. Tisaris blinks. There is no Yale Club in Oneonta, I think. “Can you reach her?”

  “Yes. I think so,” I say, still staggered.

  “We should try to get on with this.” Her smile is indeed a detached, sober, professional one containing many, many strands of important consideration, none specific to me. I tell her I’d be grateful for the chance to see my son first. But what she says is, “Why don’t you make your call, and we’ll put a bandage on his eye so he won’t scare you to death.”

  I look down for some reason at her curving, taut thighs beneath her smock and do not speak a word, just stand gripping the floor, tasting my blood, thinking in amazement of my son scaring me to death. She glances down at her two legs, looks up at my face without curiosity, then simply turns and walks away toward the admissions desk, leaving me alone to find a telephone.

  At the Yale Club on Vanderbilt Avenue, Mr. or Mrs. O’Dell is not in. It is noon on a bright Sunday before the 4th of July, and no one, of course, should be in. Everyone should be just strolling out of Marble Collegiate, beaming magisterially, or happily queuing for the Met or the Modern, or “shooting across to the Carlyle” for a Mozart brunch or up to some special friend’s special duplex “in the tower,” where there’s a hedged veranda with ficuses and azaleas and hibiscus and a magical view of the river.

  An extra check, though, uncovers Mrs. O’Dell has left behind a “just-in-case” number, which I punch in inside my scrubbed, green-and-salmon hospital phone nook—just as stout-fellow Irv wanders in again, scans the area, sees me waving, gives a thumbs-up, then turns, hands in his blue sweatpants’ pockets and surveys the wide world he’s just come from through the glass doors. He is an indispensable man. It’s a shame he’s not married.

  “Windbigler residence,” a child’s musical voice says. I hear my own daughter, bursting with giggles, in the background.

  “Hi,” I say, unswervingly upbeat. “Is Mrs. O’Dell there?”

  “Yes. She is.” A pause for whispering. “Can I say who’s calling, plee-yuzzz?”

  “Say it’s Mr. Bascombe.” I am cast low by the insubstantial sound of my name. More concentrated whispers, then a spew of laughter, following which Clarissa comes on the line.

  “Hel-lo,” she says in her version of her mother’s lowered serious voice. “This is Ms. Dykstra speaking. Can I be of any use to you, sir?” (She means, of course, Can I be of any service.)

  “Yes,” I say, my heart opening a little to let a stalk of light enter. “I’d like to order one of the twelve-year-old girls and maybe a pizza.”

  “What color would you like?” Clarissa says gravely, though she’s bored with me already.

  “White with a yellow top. Not too big.”

  “Well, we only have one left. And she’s getting bigger, so you’d better place your order. What kind of pizza would you like?”

  “Lemme speak to your mom—okay, sweetheart? It’s sort of important.”

  “Paul’s barking again, I bet.” Clarissa makes a little schnauzer bark of her own, which drives her friend into muffled laughter. (They are, I’m certain, locked away in some wondrous, soundproof kids’ wing, with every amusement, diversion, educational device, aid and software package known to mankind at their fingertips, all of it guaranteed to keep them out of the adults’ hair for years.) Her friend makes a couple of little barks too, just for the hell of it. I should probably try one. I might feel better.

  “That’s not very funny,” I say. “Get your mom for me, okay? I need to talk to her.”

  The receiver goes blunk onto some hard surface. “That’s what he does,” I hear Clarissa say unkindly about her wounded brother. She barks twice more, then a door opens and steps depart. Across the waiting room, Dr. Tisaris emerges again through the emergency room door. She has her smock buttoned now and baggy green surgical trousers down to her feet, which are sheathed in green booties. She is ready to operate. Though she heads over to the admissions desk to impart something to the nurses that makes them all crack up laughing just like my daughter and her friend. A black nurse sings out, “Giiirl, I’m tellin’ you, I’m tellin’ you now,” then catches herself being noisy, sees me and covers her mouth, turning around the other way to hide more laughter.

  “Hello?” Ann says brightly. She has no idea who’s calling. Clarissa has kept it as her surprise secret.

  “Hi. It’s me.”

  “Are you here already?” Her voice says she’s happy it’s me, has just left a table full of the world’s most interesting people, only to find even better pickings here. Maybe I could cab over and join in. (A conspicuous sea change from yesterday—based almost certainly on the welcome discovery that something has finally ended between us.)

  “I’m in Oneonta,” I say bluntly.

  “What’s the matter?” she says, as if Oneonta were a city well known for cultivating trouble.

  “Paul’s had an accident,” I say as quickly as I can, so as to get on to the other part. “Not a life-threatening accident”—pause—“but something we need to confer about right away.”

  “What happened to him?” Alarm fills her voice.

  “He got hit in the eye. By a baseball. In a batting cage.”

  “Is he blind?” More alarm, mixed with conceivable horror.

  “No, he’s not blind. But it’s serious enough. The doctors feel like they need to get him into surgery pretty quick.” (I added the plural on my own.)

  “Surgery? Wh
ere?”

  “Here in Oneonta.”

  “Where is it? I thought you were in Cooper’s Park.”

  This, for some reason God knows but I don’t, makes me angry. “That’s down the road,” I say. “Oneonta’s a whole other city.”

  “What do we have to decide?” Cold, stiffening panic now; and not about the part she can’t control—the unexplained wounding of her surviving son—but about the part she realizes, in this instant, she is accountable for and must decide about and damn well better decide right, because I am not responsible.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I hear Clarissa spout out officiously, as if she were accountable for something too. “Did he get his eye blown out with fireworks?”

  Her mother says, “Shush. No, he did not.”

  “We have to decide if we want to let them do surgery up here,” I say, peevishly. “They think the sooner the better.”

  “It’s his eye?” She is voicing this as she’s understanding it. “And they want to operate on it up there?” I know her thick, dark eyebrows are meshed and she’s tugging the back of her hair, picking up one strand at a time, tugging and tugging and tugging until she feels a perfect pin-stick of pain. She has done this only in recent years. Never when I lived with her.

  “I’m getting another opinion,” I say. Though of course I haven’t yet. But I will. I gaze at the TV above the waiting-area chairs. Reverend Jackson has vanished. The words “Credit No Good?” are on the screen against a bright blue background. Irv, when I look around, is still inside the sliding doors, Dr. Tisaris gone from the admissions desk. I’ll need to find her pronto.

  “Can it wait two hours?” Ann says.

  “They said today. I don’t know.” My anger, just as suddenly, has gone.

  “I’m going to come up there,” she says.

  “It takes four hours.” Three, actually. “It won’t help.” I begin thinking of the clogged FDR, holiday inbounds. Major backups on the Triborough. A traffic nightmare. All things I was thinking about on Friday, though now it’s Sunday.

  “I can get a helicopter from the East River terminal. Charley flies down all the time. I should be there. Just tell me where.”

  “Oneonta,” I say, feeling strangely hollowed at the prospect of Ann.

  “I’m going to get on the phone right now on the way and call Henry Burris. He’s at Yale-New Haven. They’re in the country this weekend. He’ll explain all the options, tell me exactly what’s wrong with him.”

  “Detachment,” I say. “They say he has a dilated retina. There’s no need to come right this second.”

  “Is he in the hospital?” I have the feeling Ann is writing everything down now: Henry Burris. Oneonta. Detachment, retina, batting cage? Paul, Frank.

  “Of course he’s in the hospital,” I say. “Where do you think he is?”

  “What’s the exact name of the hospital, Frank?” She’s as deliberate as a scrub nurse; and I a merely dutiful next of kin.

  “A. O. Fox. It’s probably the only hospital in town.”

  “Is there an airport there?” Clearly she has written down airport.

  “I don’t know. There should be, if there isn’t.” Then a silence opens, during which she may in fact have stopped writing.

  “Frank, are you all right? You sound not very good.”

  “I’m not very good. I didn’t have my eye knocked out, though.”

  “He didn’t have his eye knocked out really, did he?” Ann says this in a pleading voice of motherhood that can’t be escaped.

  From the door Irv turns toward me with a worried look, as if he’s overheard me say something bitter or argumentative. The black admissions nurse is looking at me too, over the top of her computer terminal.

  “No,” I say, “he didn’t. But he got it knocked. It’s not very good.”

  “Don’t let them do anything to him. Please? Until I get there? Can you?” She says this now in a sweet way that is tuned to the helplessness we share and that I would improve if I could but can’t. “Will you promise me that?” She has not yet mentioned her dream of injury. She has done me that kindness.

  “Absolutely. I’ll tell the doctor right now.”

  “Thank you so much,” Ann says. “I’ll be there in two hours or less. Just hold on.”

  “I will. I’ll be right here. And so will Paul.”

  “It won’t be very long,” Ann says half brightly. “All right?”

  “All right.”

  “Okay then. Okay.” And that is all.

  For two hours that turn into three hours that turn into four, I walk round and round the little color-keyed lobby, while everything is on hold. (Under better circumstances this would be a natural time to make client calls and take my mind off worrying, but it’s not possible now.) Irv, who’s decided to toss in the afternoon “drinks party” with the ’59 Sox and keep me company, heads out at two and forages a couple of fat bags of Satellite burgers, which we eat mechanically in the plastic chairs while above us on TV the Mets play the Astros in audio-less nontime. Now is not an action period for the ER. Later, when the light fails and too much beer’s been guzzled on the lake, an extra base attempted with bone-breaking results, or when somebody who knows all about Roman candles doesn’t quite know enough— then resources here will be put to the test. As it is, one possibly self-inflicted minor knife wound, an obese woman with unexplained chest pains, one shirtless, shaken-up victim of a one-car rollover come through, but not all at once, and without fanfare (the last chauffeured in by the Cooperstown crew, who frown at me on their way back out). Everyone is eventually set free under his or her own power, all emerging stone-faced and chastened by the sorry outcome of their day. The nurses behind the admissions desk, though, stay in jokey spirits right through. “Now you wait’ll tomorrow ‘bout this time,” one of them says with a look of amazement. “This place’ll be jumpin’ like Grand Central Station at rush hour. The Fourth’s a biiig day for hurtin’ yourself.”

  At three, a fat young crew-cut priest passes by, stops and comes back to where Irv and I are watching silent TV, asks in a confessional whisper if everything’s under control, and if not, is there anything he can do for us (it’s not; there isn’t), then heads smilingly off for the ICU wing.

  Dr. Tisaris cruises through a time or two, seemingly without enough to do. Once she stops to tell me a “retina man” from Binghamton who did his work at “Mass Eye” has examined Paul (I never saw him arrive) and confirmed a retinal rupture, and “if it’d be okay we’d like to prep him for when your wife gets here, after which we can shoot him in. Dr. Rotollo”—the Binghamton hired gun—“will do the surgery.”

  Once again I ask if I can see Paul (I haven’t since the ambulance left Cooperstown), and Dr. Tisaris looks inconvenienced but says yes, though she needs to keep him still to “minimalize” bleeding, and maybe I might just peek in unbeknownst, since he’s had a sedative.

  Leaving Irv, I follow her, squee-kee-gee, squee-kee-gee, through the double doors into a brightly lit, mint-colored bullpen room smelling of rubbing alcohol, where there are examining bays around on all four walls, each hung with a green hospital curtain. Two special rooms are marked “Surgical” and have heavy, push-in doors with curved handles, and Paul is housed in one of these. When Dr. Tisaris cautiously shoves back the noiseless door, I see my son then, on his back on a bed-on-wheels equipped with metal sidebars, looking very bulky with both his eyes bandaged over like a mummy, but still in his black Clergy shirt and maroon shorts and orange socks, minus only his shoes, which sit side by side against the wall. His arms are folded on his chest in an impatient, judicial way, his legs out straight and stiff. A beam of intense light is trained down on his bandaged face, and he’s wearing his earphones plugged into a yellow Walkman I’ve never seen before, and which is resting on his chest. He seems to me in no particular pain and to all appearances except the bandages seems unbothered by the world (or else he’s dead, since I can’t detect rise or fall
in his chest, no tremor in his fingers, no musical toe twitch to whatever he’s tuned in to). His ear, I see, has a new bandage.

  I would of course dearly love to bound across and kiss him. Or if that couldn’t be, at least to do my waiting in here, unacknowledged amongst the instrument trays, oxygen tubes, defibrillator kits, needle dumps and rubber glove dispensers: sit a vigil on a padded stool, be a presence for my son, “useful” at least in principle, since my time for being a real contributor seems nearly over now, in the way that serious, unraveling injury can deflect the course of life and send it careering an all new way, leaving the old, uninjured self and its fussy familiars far back in the road.

  But neither of these can happen, and time goes by as I stand with Dr. Tisaris simply watching Paul. A minute. Three. Finally I see a hopeful sigh of breath beneath his shirt and suddenly feel my ears being filled by hissing, so much that if someone spoke to me, said “Frank” again, out loud from behind, I might not hear, would only hear hiss, like air escaping or snow sliding off a roof or wind blowing through a piney bough—a hiss of acceptance.

  Paul, then, for no obvious reason, turns his head straight toward us, as if he’s heard something (my hiss?) and knows someone is watching, can imagine me or someone through a red-black curtain of molten dark. Out loud, in his boy’s voice, he says, “Okay, who’s here?” He fiddles sightlessly with his Walkman to kill the volume. He may of course have said it any number of times when no one was present.

  “It’s Dr. Tisaris, Paul,” she says, utterly calm. “Don’t be frightened.”

  All hissing ceases.

  “Who’s frightened?” he says, staring into his bandages.

  “Are you still having flashes of light or vivid colors?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “A little. Where’s my Dad?”

  “He’s waiting for you.” She lays a cool finger upon my wrist. I am not to speak. I am the virus of too much trouble already. “He’s waiting for your Mom to get here, so we can fix your eye up.” Her starchy smock shifts against the doorframe. I catch a first faint scent of exotica from underneath its folds.