by Sung J. Woo
Oh, you want test? Good. You pay test.
His unspoken words rang in her ear. She could hear their bitter cadence, every ugly syllable spitting out of his mouth. He’d made her complicit in her mother’s death by saying nothing. This was why Judy was now stuck in this hospital bed: simple karma. Whatever other acts of misfortune awaited her, she deserved them.
“Okay,” Dr. Chang said, and he nodded to himself in approval. “That’s the last antivenin delivery.”
“Thank you,” Judy said. “I heard you had to fly here in a helicopter.”
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t like them; they’re very loud. But they’re fast.” Now that he was done with his job, he seemed relaxed, almost jovial. But then Judy heard a faint buzz, and Dr. Chang reached for the cell phone hanging off his belt. He scanned the readout, and his business demeanor returned.
“Another helicopter ride?”
“No, this one’s drivable, over in Connecticut.”
“You’re like a superhero, hurrying from crisis to crisis.”
“Antivenin Man,” he said, posing his arms like Superman before takeoff. “Be well. Let’s hope we never meet again.”
She watched him leave and realized she was wrong. He was actually nothing like her father. This man was a successful doctor, he possessed a sense of humor, and most of all, he wasn’t nearing the end of his life.
According to Kevin, the average wait for a kidney to become available off the national waiting list was between three and five years, and her father’s nephrologist predicted that within six months, his liver would fail without a kidney transplant.
“Ms. Lee?”
Standing at the door was a woman in a black business suit, about her age. As she approached, Judy saw her high heels underneath the cuffs of her pants, stabbing the floor with every step. Her hand thrust forward, her lips stretched into a forced smile, and she introduced herself as Connie from AR.
“That’s accounts receivable. I don’t know if you remember this, but you gave this to us when we admitted you.”
In her hand was Judy’s insurance card, the one provided by her temp agency.
“I don’t even remember riding in the ambulance,” Judy said. “But since you have it, I guess I must’ve given it to you.”
“Are you still employed by the company?”
It wasn’t so much a question but an accusation. With each passing second, Connie was transforming into her true self, a bill collector.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Judy said, defiant.
“Because according to the insurance carrier, your policy was terminated last Friday.”
Which was when she’d walked out of her last assignment. Judy had dodged a flurry of phone calls that day from Beverly at the temp agency, but three days ago, there had been more calls from her. Judy had been certain Beverly was still trying to berate her, but maybe she’d wanted to tell her about something else. Like continuing the coverage of her health insurance. Even with insurance, hospital stays were expensive, but without it? How much did it cost to be in this bed? Probably thousands. Judy felt panic prickling her skin.
“Could you get my purse for me?” Judy asked, pointing at the chair.
Connie brought it over for her. When she saw Judy taking out her cell phone, she said, “You’re not supposed to use your cell phone here.”
“Oh,” Judy said, snapping the clamshell shut.
“But since this is important, just keep it short. I’ll be back in an hour for a status update.”
There were eleven messages on her voice mail; the first one was from two Fridays ago, from Beverly, as Judy had suspected, her high-strung voice coming through as clearly as if she were standing right here, barking into her ear.
“Judy, goddamnit, call me back. Right now!”
Judy deleted it and moved to the next one, recorded fifteen minutes after the first.
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you fucking walked out. It’s incomprehensibly irresponsible. I mean, you are an adult. It’s one thing if you’re being mistreated or something, but you just walked out, without telling anybody there. Do you have any idea what you did? You—”
Judy pressed 3-3-7, and poof, the abuse disappeared forever. It gave Judy a modicum of pleasure to cut her off. Beverly wasn’t saying anything Judy hadn’t heard before.
The next four messages were also from her ex-boss, the last one telling her that because she’d left the last assignment, Judy had failed to make thirty-two hours for the sixth consecutive week, which meant her medical policy would be canceled unless she took the proper course of action. Judy could opt to get on COBRA and pay for her own insurance, but she had to get back to HR before the end of the week. It had been her final warning.
That was Friday. Judy remembered the notice that came in the mail, a certified letter she’d tossed onto the pile of to-dos that became don’t-cares. Before she could sort out the terrifying implications of what she’d just learned, the next message played on, from her brother.
“Hey, it’s me. I’ve run into some complications here—the guy I was supposed to meet, Vincent, he passed away. Great timing, right? I know that sounds crass, but there it is. So it sounds like I’ll be here probably until the end of next week—Vincent’s daughter is flying in from Minnesota, but I can’t get her on the horn. The funeral will be held on Tuesday, the day I’m supposed to fly back, so I hope I can count on you to keep taking care of Snaps. Thanks, sis. I’ll be in touch.”
Holy shit, the dog. By now it must’ve peed and crapped all over the house, upturned the garbage can in search of food, howling night and day to broadcast its injustice to the world. Snaps wasn’t in great physical shape to begin with, and this was just the sort of thing to push the beast over the edge.
“Hi, Judy, it’s Roger. I’m right here at your brother’s house. I guess you stepped out or something? I’ll be here waiting for you.”
She should’ve never checked her messages, because this was turning out to be a running log of her recent failures. Poor Roger—she hadn’t even thought of him until now. She’d had such high hopes for their night together.
The last three messages were all from Roger. The first was from yesterday morning, where he expressed his concern for her continued absence. The second one was from that night, where he told her he called the police and discovered her whereabouts. Emotional highs and lows, and yet Roger spoke with his usual brand of quotidian calmness no matter the situation. It was nice listening to him talk, especially the final recording from this morning, made from this very room.
“They say you’ll wake up soon,” he said. “I have to go to work now, but I’ll be back for lunch. It’s strange talking to you like this, because you’re right here and you can’t hear me. It’s feels like we’re in a play or something. Anyway, Snaps is all taken care of, so don’t worry about anything. Just be well.”
“No cell phones, miss.”
Judy thought the nurse was coming to take the phone away from her, but instead he snatched up the empty vial of antivenin from the stainless steel tray to the right of Judy.
“Connie said it was okay,” she said.
The nurse, a skinny black man with wild hair like Buckwheat, peered at the vial in his hand. “If Connie said it was okay, that’s not good news. You got bitten?”
Judy poked her right foot out from under the covers for him to see. “That’s the eleventh one they gave me.”
“Six thousand dollars.”
“Jesus,” Judy said. “That’s almost six hundred dollars per bottle.”
The nurse shook his head. “Each.”
Judy stared at the empty bottle in the nurse’s hand. Six grand. She’d never earned more than thirty-five thousand dollars a year any time in her life, and now two years’ worth of her best earnings was coursing through her bloodstream to keep her living. The concept made sense—you take the drug to fix you—but six thousand dollars for the liquid in this tiny bottle . . . was it made from crushed diamonds?
>
“Don’t mean to scare you or nothing,” he said.
“I think I have three hundred dollars in my savings account,” Judy said.
A little later, when Connie returned, she brought the estimated bill in an envelope. The total was $109,125.47.
“That’s if you’re discharged this evening,” Connie said.
What made Judy laugh out loud was seeing the last two digits of the unfathomable total, forty-seven cents. Well, that, she thought, that I can pay. It might as well have been a million dollars. Connie, whose job no doubt entailed breaking ruinous financial news to the underfunded and the overwhelmed, said nothing as she stood by with her arms crossed, shifting from foot to foot ever so slightly, like an elm swaying in the wind.
16
Kevin tried talking to the manager, then that manager’s manager, but he got nowhere. The rate he’d gotten for his stay at the Stanford Court Hotel was a special deal that was no longer being offered, and if that wasn’t bad enough, his credit card was denied when he tried to settle up the current bill.
“There must be a mistake,” he told the hotel associate at the desk, who handed the now-tainted Visa back to Kevin. As soon as he’d said it, he wondered how many others had relied on the same exact phrase, the same sad song of the financially blighted.
“Of course, Mr. Lee,” she said. “Would you like to use our phone to contact your bank?”
From behind, Kevin heard a wail. A couple with a young boy were waiting to check in. The mother was trying to shush her kid, but he ignored her, throwing up his arms in protest.
Kevin held up his cell phone. “Why don’t you take care of these folks while I straighten this out?”
He dragged his suitcase over to the cluster of latte-colored leather chairs and dialed the number on the back of the card, where he learned that his credit limit had been reduced from ten thousand dollars to two thousand.
“Aren’t you guys required by law to tell me that before you do it?”
“Yes, but not if you have a variable-rate credit card, Mr. Lee. Which is what yours is. As a courtesy, we do send out a letter to you, but it usually takes about a month after the adjustment.”
“That’s useful,” Kevin said.
The rep told him it was nothing he did, that it was part of risk management that the company had enacted across the board, to all their customers. Kevin asked for an emergency extension of credit, and after being put on hold for a good five minutes, the guy returned with more bad news.
“I think if you hadn’t missed that one payment back in January, we might allow it, but the officers are vigilant nowadays. I’m sorry, Mr. Lee.”
That was the month his divorce became final, when the last thing on Kevin’s mind was making sure the check got sent to the bank. He thought about mentioning this but decided against it. It didn’t feel right to use one failure to fix another.
Kevin hung up and opened his wallet. He could attempt to use his debit card to pay for the hotel, but he was fairly certain he didn’t have enough there, either. His final check from the tennis club wouldn’t be deposited until Friday. He had some savings bonds he could cash in, but that took days.
In restaurants, when you ate without paying for the meal, it was called dine and dash. What would it be for what he was about to do—snooze and split? They had his credit card on file, so it wasn’t like he was completely bagging them, but still, he felt terrible. The couple with the angry son was taking the hotel associate’s full attention, making her recheck their reservation. Kevin rose from his seat, pulled on his suitcase, and crossed the length of the lobby. Hotel employees were everywhere, from the concierge behind the podium to the bellhops rolling their archway-shaped brass luggage carts, and Kevin made himself look at each and every one of them in the eye, a smile plastered on his face while the grip on his suitcase turned clammy.
“Hope you enjoyed your stay at the Stanford,” the doorman said. He was big enough to tackle Kevin to the ground if the woman behind the counter yelled out to him.
“I certainly did,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
The doorman pulled the door open, the gust of wind knocking Kevin back.
“It’s nippy out there, sir,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”
Kevin turned left and walked away at a reasonable, normal pace, even though every part of his body wanted to run. Like the road leading up to the hotel, the one he was on now was also cresting up a hill, though gentler. Kevin hazarded a glance back at the hotel and saw the doorman out on the street, looking as if he was trying to find someone. Most likely he was hailing a cab for a patron, but Kevin picked up his pace anyway.
Whether it was from guilt or fright, Kevin managed to miss the gray elegance of the enormous church until he was standing at the foot of its multitiered steps. From the front, Grace Cathedral resembled Notre Dame, with its rising towers and the round rose window in between, and he recognized the tall front doors, too, ten bronzed panels called the Gates of Paradise. He’d seen both of these original structures on his honeymoon. Alice had always wanted to go to Europe, and that was reason enough for them to empty their savings accounts to spend two weeks in France and Italy. As he stood in front of this church now, seeing a bit of Paris and Florence here in San Francisco made the world smaller, more intimate, and all he had done was be physically present in both locations. Like the saying went, half of life was just showing up.
They’d both shown up, as a newly minted couple, watching the throng of people gathered in front of Notre Dame, snapping photos, buying trinkets, offering prayers. He remembered Alice’s hand in his hand, their fingers interlocked, her cheeks apple red from the spring chill, and her face, childlike in its display of joy, how back then her happiness had been his happiness. And so, when he felt a buzz from his cell phone amid the swirls of good memories, Kevin was certain it was Alice calling him, their hearts fused together through time and space, but it wasn’t a phone call but a graphic of a yellow envelope in flight, shooting into a gray mailbox.
READ TXT NOW?
backhand sux 2day. help! wish u were here.
He clicked on the Reply button and leaned against the railing as he struggled to type on his microscopic keypad. He persevered to compose a response, except instead of sending the message, he somehow turned it into a draft and couldn’t figure out how to edit it.
He dialed Alexa’s number, and she picked up on the second ring.
“I bet you gave up trying to text me back,” she said.
Listening to her familiar voice, he felt homesick. He thought of his house, Snaps nestled in her corner of the kitchen, her nose tucked under her bushy tail. Which reminded him, he hadn’t heard from Judy, but then again, he hadn’t expected to.
“You’re turning your shoulder early,” he said. “Your backhand. Just slow down your stroke and you’ll see what you’re doing wrong.”
“Bill’s schedule doesn’t coincide with mine, so Artie’s my hitting partner now.”
Artie wasn’t the best, but he wasn’t the worst, either. “He’s a good guy. He played Boris Becker once, did he tell you?”
She laughed. “Twice today, which makes it something like a hundred times altogether.”
A gust of wind came out of nowhere, and his suitcase teetered. From above, church bells rang to signal the start of a new hour, their resonance felt as much as heard.
“Those bells,” Alexa said.
“It’s a beautiful city.”
“So my mother says.”
“Listen,” Kevin said, and he told her of his hotel escape. If aliens came down from their spaceships and wanted to know what human happiness was, Alexa’s laugh would be an apt example.
“Snooze and split, I love it,” she said. “So maybe you’ll take up that offer to stay with Mommy dearest?”
Was he really going to do this? Go to the house of a complete stranger and crash on her couch like some kid on break from college? His bank account would appreciate the sacrifice, but it felt like y
et another failure in what was quickly becoming a string of failures on this trip out West. But desperate times . . . desperate measures.
“Are you sure it’s okay?”
“I already told her you might be coming, so this will make her day. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, though. You will pay with your sanity.”
“The funeral’s later this afternoon, so it’ll just be for a couple of days.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
From Grace Cathedral, it was almost two miles to Alexa’s mother’s place, nineteen streets away, information easily retrieved by Alexa’s phone, which was able to provide Kevin with step-by-step instructions via Google.
“Walk over to Sacramento. That way, you’ll pass by Lafayette Park, which looks pretty cool. And after that, go up another street to Clay, and four intersections later you’ll see Alta Plaza to your right. I can see the Street View, but only the steps leading to the park. Looks like you’ll have some pretty good views. I wish I was there.”
He was never great with directions, but he thanked her and promised to send her phone photos. By the time he reached Lafayette Park, he received another text message, this time with a snippet of a map, complete with a translucent blue line that led him to Alexa’s mother’s house, marked with a green lollipop. For the first time this trip, he relaxed. Now that he could see where he would have to go, he could enjoy the scenery.
By the time he climbed the multitiered steps of Alta Plaza, the afternoon sun hid behind a flock of fluffy clouds, like a flashlight shining through a bedsheet. The view here was as spectacular as Alexa had promised, the busy expanse of the city’s buildings scattered in front of the low hills beyond. It felt very Californian, and Kevin took out his phone and took a picture for Alexa. When he passed by a group of pug owners with their squishy-faced companions off their leashes and frolicking in the grass, he took two more and sent them, too. The dogs of his youth—Samson and Delilah were the ones his family had way back when, and Kevin could almost see his father chucking tennis balls for them, two at a time to keep them both happy. His old man wasn’t so old then. Kevin hoped he was having one of his good days today, that he wasn’t in too much discomfort.