Reality Check

by Leslie Carroll

  Finally, someone appeared at the triage window. We must have waited for upward of twenty-five minutes, by which time I was so itchy I could have scratched all my skin off with my fingernails, my throat felt even more constricted, and now I was beginning to get nauseous again. Except that I couldn’t throw up because I could hardly breathe. Jack tried to explain the situation to the nurse, a Latino with an overworked, harried, but kindly expression. The nurse started asking me questions. I pointed to my throat. “She can’t speak,” Jack told the nurse. “Her throat seized up. And she’s got this rash. Liz, roll up your pants leg and show him. Your sign says we’re not supposed to . . .”

  The nurse stood, peered out of the little window of his cubicle at me, then motioned for us to come in and sit down. “When did this start?” he asked.

  I looked at Jack, who answered for me. “Maybe an hour or so ago. We were eating dinner and suddenly—”

  The nurse interrupted him. “What were you eating?”

  “Lobster.”

  “Have you ever had an allergic reaction to shellfish before?” the nurse asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “It can happen at any time,” the nurse told us. “Let’s get her inside. Do you have insurance?”

  I nodded my head yes. I took my insurance card out of my wallet and showed the nurse several other vital pieces of information, including the phone number to call in the event of an emergency, in this case my home number to reach Nell or Jem.

  I was then shuttled to a “payment” window where a woman affixed a plastic bracelet to my right wrist and told me I was good to go.

  I felt like I was getting closer and closer to seeing the Wizard of Oz. The next room they made me wait in was at the edge of the ER itself, where they seated me in a spectacularly uncomfortable chair. For what seemed like hours, no one even came to look at me. Jack valiantly scoured the halls trying to attract some attention on my behalf. No one even asked him who he was, what his relationship was to me, or why he was wandering around the ER. Finally, I went to a semicircular nurse’s station and pointed at my rash and my throat. “I can’t breathe,” I tried to tell them. I showed her my bracelet.

  A young Filipino nurse, strikingly beautiful, flipped through a series of clipboards at the station. “Well, why didn’t somebody say something before?”

  My sentiments exactly.

  “Come with me, Ms. Pemberley.” She took me over to a pale pink vinyl chair that looked a bit like Barbie’s Barcalounger. The sweet-faced nurse sat me there and told me a doctor would be right with me. Her voice was soothing as she told me not to worry. I didn’t believe her.

  I think I waited another twenty minutes or so before someone came over. When I wasn’t panicking, I spent the time watching the staff and patients pass to and fro, and assessing the depressing condition of the facilities. In the bay next to mine, an addict appeared to be detoxing. He emitted various unpleasant guttural sounds while in a state of deep repose.

  The area was practically as filthy as Shea Stadium’s dank cement corridors by the concession stands after a Mets game. The floor of the ER looked like it hadn’t been properly washed in a decade. I spied the odd foil gum wrapper and even a cigarette butt ground into the linoleum below the NO SMOKING: OXYGEN IN USE sign.

  After what seemed like an eternity, a tall man appeared to me in a white light. Or maybe I just thought that because his lab coat was so bright. He wore his stethoscope with a jaunty air of confidence. He was extremely tall and, from what I could tell, very well built. He also had a way, when he was talking to my pretty nurse, of keeping his left hand thrust deeply into the pocket of his white lab coat, thereby burying the gleaming gold wedding band.

  “I’m Dr. Michaels,” he said, extending his right hand. “Drew Michaels.”

  The nurse smiled. “You’re in good hands.” She beamed reverently at Dr. Michaels.

  “And this is Lila.” The doctor officially introduced the nurse.

  Lila handed Dr. Michaels my admitting chart, which he perused thoroughly. I didn’t like his frown.

  “Have you ever had any reactions to eating shellfish before?”

  I shook my head. I’d already given that information. It should have been on my chart. The doctor read my expression. “Don’t worry, it’s all here.” He tapped the clipboard. His hands were beautiful— surgeon’s hands. “I was just double-checking.”

  I wished that the allergic reaction hadn’t rendered me so ugly. Dr. Michaels was the kind of man who made every woman want to check her lipstick.

  “We’re very lucky that you came right up here. If you don’t catch this in time—”

  I motioned for something to write on. Lila brought me a prescription pad and a pencil. “I’ve been waiting in the ER to see someone for about three hours, I think!!” I scrawled.

  Dr. Michaels emitted an angry rumble and mentioned something about being woefully understaffed that evening. “Well, you’re here now, Ms. Pemberley, and we can nip this thing in the bud with a shot of adrenaline. If you’d gone untreated too much longer, you might have gone into anaphylactic shock.”

  When words failed again, I wrote them down on the pad and showed the page to Dr. Michaels. “What’s that? It doesn’t sound pretty.”

  “It isn’t. You could have ended up dead.”

  My heart must have skipped several beats.

  The doctor reviewed my admitting form. “Lila will call your roommates and tell them where you are. I think we should keep you here overnight, just to be on the safe side. We need to give you an immediate injection of epinephrine, which we’ll do through an IV. That’ll open your air passages and your blood vessels. Then we’ll give you a shot of cortisone to halt the progress of the rash, followed by a big dose of Benadryl to stop the itch. If, after an hour or so, it still itches, let us know and we’ll give you a second Benadryl injection. The swelling should start to go down by then. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay on this very attractive lounge chair; we don’t even have a proper bed to put you in down here. We’re all full up.” He retrieved a thin white cotton blanket from a metal storage cabinet, draped it over the lower half of my body, and placed a reassuring hand on my forehead.

  The cortisone coursing through my veins emitted a sharp, almost alcoholic odor when they gave me the medication through my IV. It felt like every pore of my body was giving off fumes. I was in and out of sleep for hours. The Benadryl had knocked me out completely, yet somehow I was still able to hear the sounds of the ER . . . the hum of hushed conversation, the whoosh of the dingy curtains being parted or drawn around a patient, and the squeak of gurney wheels amid the myriad smells that permeated the lowceilinged, claustrophobic corner of the room. I had no idea what had happened to Jack. Given his visceral adverse reaction to hospitals, perhaps he’d left. Poor guy. If he was still out in the waiting area, he may have needed more reassuring hand-holding than I did. If I’d been able to, I would have gone out there to see how he was holding up.

  Time has a funny way of passing in the ER. I began to tell the hour by the number of bags of clearish liquid Lila attached to the hat rack–like stand that supported my IV. After a while, I deduced that it took approximately one hour for the bag to empty into my veins. The light never varied in the windowless room. It could have been midnight, dawn, or noon.

  I felt a gentle touch on my forearm and opened my eyes. Nell was standing by my chair wearing an expression of extreme concern. “Hey there, girlfriend,” she said. She placed a plushy turquoise teddy bear in my hands. “The gift shop just opened.”

  “What time is it?” I asked her hazily.

  “A little after eight-thirty in the morning. Jem is in the waiting room. They would only allow one of us in at a time. Your majorly cute doctor told us that you had a really bad scare and it could have been super dangerous, even deadly, but that he caught it in time, and you’ll be fine from now on, as long as you never eat anything with shellfish in it.” She took a printed list from her pocket and handed it
to me. “You can’t have anything on here, and if you aren’t sure, you’re supposed to ask. Like I know you like to order mee krob in Thai restaurants. Well, you can’t do that anymore even if you pick out the shrimp and don’t eat them, because the shrimp are in there to begin with.”

  “That sucks,” I replied, realizing for the first time that I had my voice back. I practiced a swallow or two. Silently, I thanked God and Dr. Michaels. “No more mee krob for the rest of my life.”

  Nell squeezed my hand. “Let’s put it this way. You could either eat mee krob and maybe end up dead, or you could watch your diet from now on.” She looked at her watch. “It’s Jem’s turn. Time to switch. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  I was exhausted and closed my eyes again for a few moments. I heard the retreating click-click of Nell’s stiletto heels on the linoleum. What was probably less than a minute later, Jem’s appearance at my chair announced itself in a cloud of Thierry Mugler’s “Angel,” her signature perfume. Her cool hand brushed my forehead.

  “Hey, I don’t have a fever, Jem.” I opened my eyes. “Apparently I had shellfish poisoning and it’s permanent.”

  Jem bent over to whisper in my ear. She was convinced that Jack had deliberately tried to poison me, to take me out of the running on Bad Date.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t even start taping until . . . tomorrow.”

  “Precisely,” Jem said. “Imagine if you were laid up here and missed the first episode. Or worse.”

  “You mean like imagine if I were dead?”

  “They’d have to find another contestant at short notice, Liz.”

  I reminded Jem that Jack knew nothing about how pathetic my personal life had been. You’d have to know me as well as she and Nell do in order to understand that the catalogue of my hellish experiences with men is thicker than the Manhattan phone book. I’m the poster girl for women-who-do-far-too-much-for-undeserving-men-who-don’t-appreciate-them. Yet, I am compulsive. Liz Pemberley—who loved not wisely but too well. Nell once described me as the kind of woman who is naturally one part Martha Stewart Living to three parts Sharon Stone–loving. This is why: In addition to the great sex, I’ll knit a guy a sweater, cook both gourmet meals and comfort food, do his laundry, shop for his demanding mother, and follow the stats of his favorite football team.

  Jem touched my hand. “Hey there, you drifted off to sleep while I was talking to you,” she said softly.

  I realized I’d been on a dream rant. “I’m not surprised. I’m filled with Benadryl, I think. And who knows what else has been coursing through my veins all night? Plus, I didn’t really sleep. I didn’t nod off on you on purpose, believe me.”

  “I’m just wondering if it’s all right to take you home.”

  “Hi there, kiddo. How’re you feeling?” Dr. Michaels approached my chair. “We can discharge your roommate when this drip has finished,” he told Jem. “Your other roommate has the list of things Liz should avoid from now on in her diet. It would help if you were aware of the items as well.”

  “So we can be the food police?” Jem smiled.

  “You may have to be,” I countered weakly. “I have lousy willpower.”

  Dr. Michaels dropped his more or less jovial demeanor. “Well, young lady, last night’s episode should have scared you senseless. Not that you could ever have predicted it, because this kind of allergic reaction can strike anyone at any time, but there’s no such thing as ‘just one’ shrimp being harmless from now on.” He placed his hand on my leg and surveyed the state of my rash. “Much better. You might want to wear long sleeves and pants for the next couple of days, though. I’ll start the ball rolling on your discharge process. The paperwork should take about a half hour at this time of the morning and by then”— he checked the liquid in the bag hanging over my right shoulder—“this should be done, Lila can remove your IV, and you’ll be all set.” He shook my hand.

  “Thanks. You’ve been wonderful,” I said, as I watched him walk away.

  “By the way,” Jem said after Dr. Michaels had gone down the hall, “Jack Rafferty is out there. At least he was when Nell and I arrived. He was surrounded by Milky Way wrappers, using his jacket as a pillow, and was sound asleep, sprawled across two chairs and practically bent in half like a pretzel when we got here. Nell woke him up and started firing questions at him about what happened. Then Dr. Michaels came out and talked to us and Jack got really upset. He wanted to know why they hadn’t bothered to tell him what was going on with you in here as soon as they diagnosed you. The doctor told him that Nell and I were listed as your emergency contacts and it was hospital policy to call the emergency contacts first and explain everything to them—us—when we got here. Jack was pretty pissed off that he’d been waiting all night to find out what the hell was happening and whether you were all right. He thought that someone on staff could have had the courtesy to keep him apprised of your condition.”

  “I have to admit he’s got a point, Jem. He was wandering the halls looking for someone who could take care of me for hours before they finally took me back to see a doctor. No one questioned his presence then.”

  “They probably hadn’t yet looked at your admitting form to see that you had emergency contact names listed. When they saw that you had put down Nell and me, they went back to playing by the rules.”

  It must have been a big deal for Jack to duel with those hospital demons he harbored and spend the night contorted in a chair in that awful waiting room on my account. It was comforting to know how much he cared for me as a friend, but I felt like I really owed him one. “Is Jack out there now?” I asked. The poor guy had waited there all night with no one giving him any information; then, when my roommates arrive, the girls treat him like a pariah because they’ve concluded he was trying to kill me to keep me from competing on a reality television show.

  “As far as I know,” Jem said. “When I came back to see you, Nell started talking to him. He missed his eight A.M. flight back to Miami because he was adamant about not wanting to leave without being sure you were okay. I don’t want to tip our hand, Liz, because we’ve all got to do the show with him, but we don’t trust him.”

  “We?”

  “Nell and I. Mostly me, actually.”

  “Jem, he’s a very nice guy. You can’t begin to imagine how nice. We had a wonderful time last night . . . before I got sick. And he was an angel afterward, too.”

  “You shouldn’t be friends with him.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Liz, it’s in our contract. ‘No fraternizing with other contestants.’ ”

  “Obviously, being roommates is fraternizing, too. And the network knows the three of us live together.” But Jem refused to listen to any explanations or rationalizations. I felt sorry for any of her students who might try to weasel their way out of being downgraded for a late assignment. She was intractable.

  When Lila finally discharged me and I went back out into the ER waiting room, seeing sunlight for the first time in hours, all three of them were waiting for me. I wanted to rush into Jack’s arms and give him a hug, glad our mutually nightmarish ordeal was over, but I could feel the scowls of my girlfriends burning into my back like lacerations and I had no intentions of subjecting either of us to another earful of negativity from my roommates. But I came as close to him as I felt I safely could and gently touched the back of his hand. I hoped the expression in my eyes would convey to him what was truly on my mind and in my heart.

  “You’re looking better,” he said.

  “You look like hell,” I replied woefully. He was a rumpled mess, his pants totally encrusted with dried breadcrumb-crustacean mixture, and he smelled faintly of a fishing vessel. Small wonder people had been steering clear of him. “Are you all right, Jack?” I asked softly.

  “I’ve had kind of a bad night, Liz. So I guess I’m as ‘all right’ as anyone can be who’s spent several uncomfortable and interminable hours waiting for a doctor’s verdict on a friend. I didn’t mean to
scare you with my own hospital issues, Liz. It’s just that there have been far too many times in my life where I’ve brought friends and relatives in to an emergency room and they didn’t make it out.” He looked over at my roommates who were straining to hear his words. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore; it’s too depressing. The point is, you’re going to be fine . . . and I’d give you a big hug and a kiss, but your roommates would probably have a fit, you’d never hear the end of it, and you need as little stress as possible right now. Plus, I really need a shower. By the way, you should be pleased to hear that I very successfully substituted stuffing my face with chocolate for cracking my knuckles.” He pulled a crumpled Milky Way wrapper from his jacket pocket and tossed it in a nearby trash can.

  “I’m surprised you managed any sleep at all, on such a sugar high,” I said, smiling at him. “Look, thanks for . . . everything,” I whispered. “Sorry I screwed up our . . . date.”

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered back.

  I felt reassured.

  He raised his voice enough to be heard halfway across the waiting room. “It wasn’t a ‘date.’ It’s in our contract. No fraternization with other Bad Date contestants. It was just a getting-to-know-one-another-better kind of thing.”

  My empty stomach lurched. Considering he’d just mentioned a hug and a kiss, I hoped he was protecting what had passed between us in his hotel room . . . although . . . I barely knew him, while my roommates and I had been thick as thieves for years, and I wasn’t feeling well enough at the moment to visit the subject from a carefully reasoned perspective. “I’m sorry you had to miss your flight,” I said, attempting to match the businesslike shift in Jack’s tone.