Exposure

by Therese Fowler

  “Stop it. You aren’t doing anything.”

  A dozen miles before the border, pretty much where they’d need to split off from the interstate anyway, they came upon signs for a town called Newport. “I’m taking this,” he said. “If they don’t have any walk-in clinics, they might have an ER.”

  “Okay,” she said in a tight voice. “I guess you’re right. The pain, it just isn’t going away.”

  He let go of her hand and put his hand on her hair. It was damp from when she’d leaned out of the car. He smoothed it down and lifted a section over her shoulder, repeatedly stroking the path it made. She seemed to find this soothing. She closed her eyes and leaned closer so that he could put his arm around her shoulders.

  A few miles farther and there was the exit. He pulled off at the first gas station, parked and left the car running while he ran inside and asked an attendant where he could take Amelia. “T’ hospital,” the man said. “Only other places are all closed by now. Go down-street a ways to Western and there yuhl see a sign getting you there. That out there turnin’ to sleet?”

  “Some. A few snowflakes mixed in, too.”

  “Yup. Saying by weekend we’ll have snow deeper than a tall Swede. Where you comin’ from anyway?”

  “New York,” Anthony answered truthfully.

  “Well, good luck with it all.”

  He found Amelia in the car wiping tears from her face. “Hey now,” he said, reaching for her and pressing his forehead to hers. “There’s a hospital close by. We’ll get you taken care of.”

  She nodded, then he let go of her and put the car in gear. It was a short drive to the hospital—easily found, as promised—where he pulled into the ER entrance driveway. In the light from the building, Amelia looked ghostly pale. She kept both arms wrapped around her middle, with her left laying at the spot where her right hip sloped toward her belly button, a spot he admired very much under better circumstances.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Not really. I don’t think there’s much choice, though.”

  He kissed her forehead, then opened his door onto another dilemma that he could never have foreseen.

  The last time Anthony had been in an ER was when a wrong-footed leap on the soccer field at age fourteen landed him on his left arm. The radius bone had snapped clean in two, sidelining him for a couple of months. That had been when he’d begun reading the Bards intentionally, and working to make sense of their poems and plays. To understand them he’d needed to know the Greek dramas, so he read those, too, and discussed everything with his grandfather, whose probing questions made Anthony see how life now was not all that different from life then. Same stage, different players, as the saying went. Or, he thought, to be more precise, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Merely actors, Grandpa Phil had explained, in parts written for them at the start of time. Which role you played was not fully up to you—might not be up to you at all, he’d said.

  Anthony and Amelia were merely players in this drama the Fates had designed for who knew what purpose other than their own amusement—that’s what he thought as he waited. Amelia, in so much pain that she couldn’t walk upright, taken away for triage while he sat, cold and scared, in a strange lobby in a strange hospital in a strange town a mere four miles away from Canada. She’d given a fake name, fake birth date, told the story of having lost her ID, and might have been discovered on the spot when asked for her address—they hadn’t thought of that, what would she say?—if not for another wave of pain and nausea that encouraged the nurse to take her in first and settle the other questions later. He’d thought for a second that she was acting—but no. The panic in her eyes was about what was happening to her body, not about what to tell the intake clerk.

  He held his phone as he waited, turning it end for end, then side for side, then sliding it open and snapping it closed repeatedly, until he noticed the clerk eyeing him. She looked like his third-grade teacher, Mrs. Preston, with her wide shoulders and round face and glasses that in this case sat crookedly, due, he noticed, to her having uneven ears. Standing near her at the counter was a man who might have been her brother, in an olive and black deputy’s uniform, with stove-black hair that had been cut like Hitler’s. “ ’Specting that cold front’ll be through anytime now,” he was saying. “You bring thet casserole? Not turkey, I hope. Ten below, thirty with the wind, thet’s what they’re saying.”

  The three of them were the only people in the room. Noting that the deputy was armed, Anthony wondered whether the cops here in Newport (population 1,511, the sign had said) would be looking for “the fugitive teens.” The deputy was watching him, too.

  The wide door through which a nurse had taken Amelia ten minutes earlier swung open now and the nurse came through, without her. He watched as she stopped at the desk and got a clipboard, then came toward him. She was a tall woman around his mother’s age, white-blond, sturdy-looking, wearing neatly pressed scrubs. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen scrub pants with such knife-sharp creases.

  “You’re Luc?” she said as she reached him.

  Anthony drew a blank, then remembered that yes, if Amelia was Marie, he was Luc. “That’s right,” he said.

  “She’s doing okay. She’s asked me to bring you in to keep company while she waits for tests.”

  He stood and followed the nurse, who said, “You’re not local. Where’s home?”

  “New York.”

  “Oh? Whereabouts?”

  “City.”

  “Mm. And where are you bound for?”

  He paused again, trying to decide whether saying “Canada” was too vague and thus suspicious. And he didn’t want to tell the truth, in the unlikely case that someone came looking for them later. But put on the spot this way, he was unable to think of another city’s name anywhere nearby. “Montreal,” he finally said, certain that the pausing before answering was itself suspicious, but she didn’t call him on it.

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “Just a quick trip to, you know, see a friend.”

  “Not very good weather for a visit, until this rain here turns to snow.” She glanced at him and added, “Hope you brought a warmer coat.”

  He was wearing his black fleece jacket. “Yeah,” he said, feeling foolish. Northern Vermont in late November, icy rain outside, and here he was dressed more for Vermont spring. “This one’s fine for—” He stopped, having almost said North Carolina. “Fine for New York,” he finished.

  “Boots would be smart, too.”

  He nodded politely. A lot of things would be smart—most of which he wished had occurred to him several months back, when being in love had made him feel as if he and Amelia were untouchable.

  The nurse led him to a glass-fronted room where Amelia sat hunched forward on a narrow hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown. She smiled wanly when she saw him.

  “They don’t think it’s a virus.”

  The nurse pulled the curtain across the glass wall. “We’re going to need to take some blood and maybe do some imaging—a CT scan, to confirm what is presenting like appendicitis.”

  “You’re sure?” he said.

  “That it’s appendicitis, or that we need to run the tests?”

  “The tests.”

  “Oh, no question. The scan lets us see inside her abdomen—it’s the most amazing tool, I’ll tell you. First, though, we need a white blood count, a pregnancy test—”

  “I’m not pregnant,” Amelia declared.

  The nurse looked at her, then at him, then asked Amelia, “No exposure?”

  Amelia’s face pinkened. She said, “I don’t have insurance. How much will all that cost?”

  “Don’t worry on that now,” the nurse told her. “But while we wait for the tests—which are necessary, yes—let’s get the rest of your information down, all right?”

  Amelia looked up at Anthony, eyes wide with questions he had no answers to either.

  He asked the nurse, “What if
you’re right, that it’s her appendix? What then?”

  “Then most always it’s surgery.”

  “We can’t pay for that,” Amelia said, looking at him.

  The nurse was filling in information on a chart. “Maybe Mom and Dad will help you—”

  Amelia shook her head and said, “No. It’s just us.”

  She said it too quickly maybe, or maybe when the nurse looked up she saw in Amelia’s eyes what Anthony was seeing, because then the nurse asked, “Tell me your birthday again?”

  “February eighteenth, ninety … ninety-two.”

  Anthony closed his eyes briefly. She tried, he thought.

  “And your home address?”

  “I … It’s, that is, I don’t have one just now. Right, Anthony, because we’re moving? To Montreal.”

  “Not just visiting a friend, then … Anthony?”

  Amelia, realizing her mistake, looked at him miserably. Just then, a technician arrived with a blood-draw tray, and the nurse said, “Luc-Anthony, step outside with me?”

  “Be right back,” he told Amelia.

  The nurse slid the door closed behind them and told him, “You pret-near had me, but I guess you two didn’t have a chance to get your story on straight.”

  He said, “Can’t you just treat her either way? It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated how? She’s underage, I know that.”

  “It isn’t what you think. I can’t really say more.”

  “You look like good sorts, both of you. Yes, we’ll treat her, no question. But this is my one job, and my husband, he’s got no work right now, so I can’t go risking it all by bending rules. I have to report this.”

  “To who?” he said, imagining some kind of hospital authority whose job it was to verify identities, prevent fraud, that kind of thing.

  “You saw him, Roger, the deputy out there.”

  “To the law? Come on,” Anthony said. “We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “It’s procedure, not personal. And if you haven’t done anything, nothing’s what’ll happen, right?”

  Anthony bowed his head. It was all over now. The unfeeling gods and their sycophantic chorus watched them from the heights, keen to see what the poor mortals’ last act would be.

  He sighed heavily and asked, “When will you know for sure—about Amelia? That’s her real name, Amelia, and I’m Anthony.”

  The nurse gave him a tight smile of approval. “Well, we got labs, then I’ll set her up with something for the nausea and the pain. The doctor needs to see her, we’ll do the scan, get it read—some hours. If it’s the appendix, she might see surgery by two, three o’clock, depending.”

  “Will you at least wait—to report us, I mean? She’s not going anywhere.”

  The nurse pursed her lips, then she said, “My son, he’s about your age. I’m off at eleven, so I can give you till then.”

  An hour. “Thank you,” he said.

  The technician was leaving as Anthony returned to Amelia. He slid the door closed so that they could talk privately. “She said they’re going to get you some medications so you’ll at least feel better while they figure out what’s wrong.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “That we’re not such good actors as we needed to be. Not in those words, but she knew we weren’t being straight with her.”

  Amelia looked scared. “It’s my fault.”

  “It’s my fault. On the way from the lobby I flubbed my lines. I’m sure that’s what tipped her off to start.”

  Amelia shifted, winced, said, “Now what?”

  “Now we get you fixed up.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “She has to report us, to the deputy, she said—you probably didn’t notice him when we came in, but he’s hanging out right there in the lobby. I asked her to wait, and she said we’ve got an hour. After that … well, I doubt it’ll be very long before he gets my ID, looks us up, figures it all out. I’ll stay with you as long as they’ll let me.”

  The door slid open and the nurse came in carrying bags of IV fluids. “These will calm your stomach and get some fluids in you. After the doctor’s been in, we’ll add something for the pain.”

  Amelia stared at Anthony sorrowfully while she held her arm out for the nurse. She was obviously exhausted, and now this burden was laid upon her as well. Redness rimmed her eyes and tears pooled in them. He wanted to cry, too. What a shitty night she was having. Pain. Tests. Surgery, probably, and then, thanks to their slipups and a heavy dose of rotten luck, a demeaning journey back to North Carolina in police custody or possibly with the FBI, and then jail for who knew how long. Thanks to capricious Fate, she was facing the annihilation of her dream to go to Tisch, to one day be the woman whose name decorated the marquee and headlined the program, whose voice delighted audiences who came to see her and who bought her recordings so that they could relive the passion, the joy, or sorrow. Thanks to Fate, his own future was an equally empty one. He loved her beyond anything. She loved him. Why wasn’t that enough to conquer all? Reality was tragic and wrong.

  The nurse finished with the IV and said, “The doctor should be here in a minute.” She patted Amelia’s knee, then left them alone again.

  Amelia fingered the IV line where it emerged from the tape near her wrist. “There’s still time. I could take this out and we could leave.”

  “Not with that deputy out there.”

  “I’m sure there are other exits.”

  Anthony took his jacket off and draped it over a chair, then sat on the bed beside her. “Yeah, okay, but suppose we do leave, and then your appendix ruptures?” He’d heard of that; his grandfather, as a young child, had nearly died that way because his home was a half day’s drive from the nearest surgical center.

  She said, “Okay, well … maybe I’ll have the tests and it won’t be my appendix—or anything serious—and we can still get out of here before she tells him.”

  “Have you been in ER before?” he asked. She shook her head and he said, “Nothing moves that fast. Even if you’re the only patient they’ve got right now, you won’t be diagnosed in an hour.”

  Her face crumpled. “Why do you have to be so negative?”

  “I’m sorry.” He put his arm around her and tipped his head to rest it against hers. “I’m trying to be real, that’s all.”

  “I don’t want real. Real sucks.”

  “Shh,” he said, kissing her temple. “The important thing right now is you feeling better.”

  There was a knock, then the door opened again and a young, sandy-haired man wearing a doctor’s coat said, “Hey, so it sounds like we’ve got some abdominal pain interrupting our plans.”

  Amelia said “Ha,” her voice breaking, as Anthony slid from her side and moved to give the doctor room to examine her. He watched as the doctor lowered the bed and had her lie back. She looked so thin, so vulnerable as this stranger, this doctor, put his hands where only Anthony’s had been in recent years—in recent days, too, a memory that felt distant and bittersweet now.

  When the doctor pressed down heavily near her right hip then let up again, her entire body seemed to pull inward as she cried out in pain.

  “Sorry for that,” the doctor said. “But that’s the one that tells us the most. I suspect we’re going to need you to leave that appendix here with us before you go.” He smiled, clearly a fan of his own lame humor. Amelia didn’t smile. She gingerly straightened her gown, and the doctor raised the bed upright again. As he made to leave he said, “Cindy will be back with some morphine, then we’ll get somebody to wheel you down to Radiology. Take care.”

  “So,” she said when he was gone. That was all. So.

  He said, “Yeah.”

  The nurse came in with the morphine. Neither Amelia nor Anthony spoke while she injected a port and told Amelia, “This will help you get comfortable. Have you thought about getting in touch with your folks? They might want to be here, ’specially if surgery’s in order.”


  Amelia shrugged.

  “Think it over. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Amelia laid her head against the bed and closed her eyes. “I hope the morphine works fast.”

  “It should.”

  “Lay here with me?”

  “Sure.” He reclined the bed and got in it, lying on his side with one arm under his head and the other wrapped around her.

  “This is good,” she said.

  “That was fast.”

  She smiled. “No, this is good,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. “You are good. And I am so, so sorry.” A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and began to roll down her cheek.

  “Me too,” he answered softly, and caught the tear with his lips.

  Her hair smelled of shampoo and rain. He kissed her where the tear had been and fitted himself closer to her side, and they lay like this, not speaking, just breathing together, her eyes closed—restfully this time. He closed his, too.

  Maybe twenty minutes passed, Amelia dozing, Anthony turning their problem over and over in his mind, looking for another angle, another route, some strategy they hadn’t considered that would prevent the Fates from having their way. And finally it came to him, the solution. He didn’t like it—God no, he hated it in fact, but the more he thought about it, the more relieved he felt that something could be done after all. Something big. Something that, if he set it up right, would almost certainly stop the runaway train. Now all he needed was the fortitude to do it.

  A noise outside the room caught his attention. He raised his head and saw a young woman in peach-colored scrubs pushing a wheelchair to the doorway. “Hey, lover girl,” he whispered in Amelia’s ear.

  “Mm?”

  “It looks like your ride to Radiology is here.”

  Her eyes fluttered open and she looked into his. “I love you, Anthony.”

  “No one could love you more than I do,” he said. He kissed her, ran his hand along the side of her face, then brushed her lips with his fingertips. He put his nose in the cleft between her neck and shoulder and breathed in her scent, then kissed her there before getting up to stand at her bedside. The aide began sliding the door open. Anthony leaned down to kiss Amelia once more and said, “I’ll see you later.”