by Eric Ellert
The teacher looked down at a paper on her desk as if it was very important, holding them all in silence, like dancing horses with one foot in the air. She looked up and stared at some point at the back of the room. "And Moren, deary, we're so sorry your mother is in critical condition. It'll be touch and go for quite a while. We're so sorry."
Moren watched the second hand on the clock, refusing to believe the teacher had been speaking to her. She tried to look at the kids on either side of her without moving her head but it didn't matter, they were all staring. "What did you say?"
"You didn't know? Whatever goes on in that house of yours? One moment. Children, someone open the window. It's hot in here."
Moren's ears hurt as if she'd just heard a big noise. She felt her throat tighten. She shouldn't do it; she told herself she wouldn't do it, but she heard herself drop the f bomb. It must have been the f-bomb because the teacher slammed both hands on the desk so hard one of her chandel-earings fell off, bounced off the desk and into her wastepaper basket. She stared straight ahead as if Moren had somehow engineered this and ever so slowly opened the creaky desk drawer, and pulled out a green pen, sucking on the end as if to be sure it worked without a delay and dug it into a pink slip. Without looking up she whispered. "And she's dead, I think. That's how they tell us to tell you so we don't get sued."
Moren dropped the super F-bomb, three times like they did in the movies when they ran out of script.
Chapter 3
Faudron got out of the Expedition, scanned the street and tried to stop a passerby, then another, but no one would look at her. She walked a block. It might have been Philadelphia, the two story buildings were so intricate, as if the bricks had been carved, but they weren't nineteenth-century, just forced to look that way. Most of the facades were concrete over cinderblock, she guessed, not pre-war, during-war, when they built fast and cheap when government employee towns sprang up to hold thirty-thousand, then died like boomtowns with spent silver loads. Dad had taken her on detours to more than a few. 'Weird history' he called it. He'd grown up in such a town, grandpa's doing, where they made stuff for the bomb. Now that would have been a tour worth the gas, she thought. If she picked a little radioactive stuff up on her shoes, she could track all the steps of her life.
The streets were too clean, so clean they might have been polished, but there were so many broken windows, both cars and buildings and so many empty shops. Those grey boxes were everywhere, most of them open. A guy with a little white pick-up just ahead of her stopped to fill one. He pulled a grey poncho from the pickup bed, snapped it out and folded it up with the care people gave to folding a flag and placed it in one of the boxes.
"Excuse me," Faudron asked. "Is there a doctor's office close by?"
He jerked his thumb at a guy in a poncho with raccoon eyes from a broken nose, staggering down the street. "Follow him. Looks like he had an easy night."
"You think? Aren't you going to help him?"
"Aren't you? They won't even talk to you if you're a stranger."
"Thanks." She backed up a few feet to be polite then followed the guy in the poncho, but slowly so she wouldn't get too near, hoping the box man would watch her down the street. The poncho guy didn't seem to be wearing anything underneath.
The box man opened the pick-up door, sat inside and pulled out a thermos, drinking straight from it. "Go home. Do yourself a favor, Faudron."
She spun around to get a look at the poncho guy. He was hurrying away, good. She took a step toward the box man then a step back. "You know me?"
"I know everybody. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody hates everyone else's guts." He smiled as he jerked his thumb in the direction of the main gate as if to show that he wasn't really one of them.
"OK." Faudron backed off, spun around and hurried down the block.
She passed the bloodied, poncho guy careful not to look. He seemed more embarrassed than weird and went in the opposite direction as she passed.
She found the hospital two blocks away. The emergency room driveway was lined with old, hearse-style ambulances unloading injured-people in ponchos. The building had been built with orange, WPA brick, from when hospitals tried to look like quaint apartment buildings you went to die in. Inside, the emergency room was full of men, women and teens in poncho's. "Poncho's Villa," Faudron said to one of them, but didn't get a smile and felt wrong about joking with the smell of blood and anesthetic in the air. She tiptoed past their sprawled-legs, knocking some of the magazines on an end table over, afraid to pick them up because she'd have to stoop near one of the waiting patients, who all stopped talking when she'd entered.
She crossed the room, wishing she'd had the nerve to pick the magazines up to get another look at the nearest man's neck. Was that a bite mark? She forced the thought away for a moment and dinged the desk's bell four times.
The receptionist's desk was empty, so after a ten minute stand, and no one getting admitted, Faudron slipped through the door marked Do Not Enter Until Admitted and passed open doors on empty offices until she found a doctor.
He smiled when he saw the hand.
"What's sup doc? Didn't you always want to say that?"
"Corpsmen, actually."
She should have noticed but she hadn't expected to see the forest-style chamis and the old-style black boots. He was probably from an under-funded National Guard unit, under-trained as well.
"Let me look at that."
Faudron felt bad cutting in line when she guessed he was the only one on duty, and it wasn't just a hospital, it was military, her people, she ought to behave better. The sound of groans filled the air from rooms farther down the hall. The smell of antiseptic mixed with blood, the pink, pink, pink of heart monitors and the faint smell of bandages made her want to disappear. "There's worse? I could wait."
"Nah. They'll be fine. They just come in here, trying to remember last night. They heal up good on their own, most of them. The others..." He squeezed her hand. "That hurt?"
She was sure doctors enjoyed doing that. "I could scream."
"I'll trust you. Just a sprain. I don't want to examine you without a nurse present, you being a stranger and a female stranger but you been...punctured?"
"Pardon me?"
"Bit, were you bitten. If you were, you'll need the rabbis shots."
The very word made her shuffle from foot-to-foot. She'd think of any lie in the world he'd believe to just not hear those two words again. Mom, dad and Moren received those shots five years ago. Even then, Faudron believed that you should stay on the lawn. She wondered if you could get rabies from a tick bite, though she wasn't sure what a deer tick looked like. "No, I'm fine."
"Aha," he said, checking another patient's chart then looking away as if this was his mini-coffee break. He leaned against the desk and stared at the wall as if staring through a window. When he looked back he smiled as if they were two of a kind. "Army?"
"Dad's in the Airforce, or was."
"They're all scum, but I won't hold it against you."
Faudron smiled. He had big ears like a clown and a big kid's face with freckles. "I thank you for that."
He set her wrist in a prefab cast and held up his stethoscope when he was done. "Door's open."
"Yeah, go ahead."
He listened to her heart. "Sounds about right. Listen. you probably never noticed, but it beats on a four note. One, two, three, four, see?" He pulled the stethoscope away and spun the end round and round in the air to makr her feel comfortable. "Airforce pukes and their kid's hearts beat like that. Science doesn't know why. Science isn't interested, they're pukes. If it starts beating on threes, you come in. Promise?"
For a second she got the rabies shots willies and pictured the Merc Manual that floated in her mind whenever a doctor suggested there might be something wrong with her heart, which they did two out of three times. "If it's beating, I'm alive. Haven't given it much thought other than that." She reached into her pocket, pulled out her id card and held i
t up.
He slipped it across the card reader on the desk computer three or four times without getting a beep. "Now that ain't right. Nothing comes up." He held the card up to the light and noted where Faudron had scribbled on the magnetic strip. "Tell me, Falkirk, you're not a tinfoil hatter?"
She got Goosebumps when he spoke her last name as if he'd known her a long time and worse, he hadn't meant anything by it. He must feel it too, like he was one of those guys on base you happened to run into each morning, until you nodded though you never stopped to talk. He's ok, she's ok, one day I just might say good morning. "I have no idea what might be on that magnetic strip."
He swiped a fingernail over the strip and flashed the card back and forth beneath the examination light. "Crayon?"
"Before that."
"This is why I discourage literacy in the young. It leads to Hermione-think. All my nieces suffer from it. If the big G, my niece Charlottes' words, thank you, wanted to know your business, it would know your business."
"Sorry, when I can't sleep, I listen to Art Bell."
"He's retired."
"I call it Art Bell, ok. Coast to Coast Am is a mouth full and I'm not sure if George Noory isn't actually in on it."
He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his neck and smiled at the overhead light.
Faudron liked him. He hadn't checked out the wet t-shirt. He hadn't thanked her for her dad being an Astronaut, as if he hadn't clawed for the job. She'd have to ask dad to help get him a transfer. He could do that type of thing; the local Congressman back in Connecticut was crazy about him.
The corpsmen sucked on the bottle of Pepto-bismo on his desk and dropped the empty into his drawer, where it echoed against what must be the hollows of yesterday's and it wasn't even noon.
"What about the ponchos? Can I get one?" Faudron asked.
He smiled and rubbed his face, playing stupid. "Yeah, I know about you; when you turn twenty, do yourself a favor and get the rabbis shots, anyway. Make it easier for you when you leave." He'd said when you leave as a tv doctor would say, you'll live, maybe.
Rabbis shots? He hadn't been hinting earlier. She pictured mad doctors in lab coats, reflectors on their heads chasing her with foot-long needles, doors locking, lights going out. It wasn't fair; she'd stayed on the lawn her whole life. "Why would I want to leave?"
His face looked all burnt-out all of a sudden. "I would."
"You don't live here?"
"Heck, no." He jumped out of his chair, crossed the room and leaned on the examination table as if Faudron was worth talking to. There was a little attraction in the air, but so natural she felt comfortable, as if she was back in Connecticut. She was just thinking of a way to mention coffee, outside coffee, just down the block coffee, but when he leaned forward, she saw a scar all around the back of his ear, as if it had been stuck back on. It didn't make any sense; they'd make you a good pair of ears if you lost them. She looked away, glad he hadn't noticed her gawking at the gawkable ears, but all the ideas of coffee evaporated in the air and her eyes teared a bit from the scent of cleaning fluid outside.
Outside, someone smacked a mop against the wall.
"I show up in the a.m., pick up the mess till noon, then I'm back on regular duty. Got a nice place a mile outside the fence. Strangest thing too. I had a doctor when I was a kid who ran that place as a boarding house when he was in medical school."
"Don't like your duties?" Faudron knew he didn't, but he'd appreciate being asked.
"These? All a bunch a bastards and don't worry about your dad, Space Station's old, not broken. They'll get him down." The smile dropped from his face when the smile dropped from hers. "You didn't know?"
Faudron knew something, but they had a family rule. You don't even react to something until that something makes a man in a dress uniform come to your door and tell you it really was something, or you'd never sleep. "Cable hasn't been installed. While we're on it, was my mom in here before she left? She's up at New Mt. Sinai in Philadelphia."
"Yeah, I gave her her rabbis shots. Just in case."
She felt sweat on her face. She wiped her forehead with the edge of the windbreaker but it did no good and she took the paper napkin the corpsmen pulled out of his coffee cup bag and offered. For some reason, every adult she'd ever known had told her the rabies shot horror story to warn her about petting squirrels and such when she'd been small – six long shots in the belly, so long they slammed into your back. Dad was the sane one, mom was just like Moren, or the other way around. She could picture her, during the first week in the new house, looking in the woods for a Christmas tree to chop down, wearing the L.L. Bean shorts. "That's awful." She hopped off the examining table so fast she tore the but paper and tried to press the edges together. "She told me she had gotten bit by a dear tick."
He squeezed her shoulder. Faudron hadn't noticed before but it was the first human gesture she'd felt in this awful place, except for Rau but he was just too strange.
"Faudron," the corpsmen said. "She didn't leave. I could double-check, but they're pretty good about keeping...those kinds of records."
She wouldn't let it sink in, or dwell on the code he was using.
"Name's Splinter, by the way."
Faudron laughed and said. "Coffee. Not really Pplinter is it? I can't say that."
"Just a nickname. Frank Splinner. Coffee sounds good." He handed her a card. "Call me at work when you get the chance."
Faudron almost ran to the door but paused at the doorframe. He had to say more.
"Faudron," he whispered, pointing at the pinprick camera on the computer monitor on his desk as he turned the computer off and placed his thumb over the camera. "Something you want to tell me?"
"You sure she didn't leave?"
He smiled as if humoring her. "Not by the front gate; no one does. But there could be a perfectly good reason. Could 'a left by the reservoir road; it runs on top of the damn, way down the end of the reservoir."
Faudron smacked her hand, sending an echo that made the guy outside in the hall with the mop pull his bucket along the hallway and through the double doors, slamming them.
The sweat poured from her forehead again.
Splinter held his hands up in that I don't give a damn it's not anything anyway way non-com manner. "I'll look right into it. I'm sure it's just an oversight and she went." He got up, crossed the room and reached for the edges of her jacket's zipper. "May I?" He fixed it.
"Thanks."
"Faudron?"
"Yes."
"I'm a vet. A veterinarian."
"That's not funny."
"People don't really move here for fun. They're sort of expected to move here. They all got a sickness, but your mom and your sister are different."
"And me?"
"You might be different. But if you ain't, you call me. They'll page me wherever I am, whatever the hour and we'll make it right. But just give your mom a couple days."
He sat at his desk, turned on the computer and peered into the screen and yelled, "Next."
***
The crowd in the waiting room had thinned-out and when Faudron got outside, the street was empty, the ambulances parked neatly on the lawn at the side of the hospital. She sat on the steps a moment and pulled out the to do list mom had left her. She wasn't about to worry. She'd get home, climb on the roof and call the NASA number. They took care of their own. Though, if this was their retirement community, she'd have to tell them to take a little bit better care of it. She unfumbled the wet list, wondering why mom didn't just e-mail her stuff, but she'd used good paper as if she knew it would get stepped on and soaked. It had. There it was at the very bottom in mom's tiny, block letters -- Mt. Sinai's address, room number, e-mail account, which she'd never check and room phone number. She hoped they'd turned it on already; maybe they hadn't. Staple, what was his name, Splinter, Frank Splinter, didn't know what he was talking about, probably just covering for some gate guard who had been sneaking a smoke or sleeping
or sucking on a whiskey bottle hidden in the bushes. Mom probably just wanted Uncle George to drive her and she'd gone to stay a day or two to get her courage up. She hated hospitals so much. Besides, three days or four days, if there was a snag, dad would be home and Faudron could get lost.
She scanned the list again, most of it was stuff she knew to do, common sense, garbage -- make Moren eat right, no parties, which was easy, she had no friends here. Remind Tree-Pros that the check would be six days late. She wasn't about to do any of it.
She wished there was a roach coach. She'd like a cup of coffee, maybe if she hung around, Splinter would take a look out the window and come out. She scanned the hubcaps on the cars to clear her mind, having a lifetime habit of gazing at the parked-cars as she walked to and from school. Hubcaps. Must be an old one, but they all had hubcaps. She stood to get a longer view down the block. It looked like a scene out of Serpico, big Buicks, and Cadillacs with the halfsy-leather puffy roof, sll of them kind of beat-up too, as if they were used every day.
Only they would do this. "Them." That's how she thought of the town. They had ponchos because they ran around naked at night, ending up in the ER, and did they do it again each night? All it was missing was Bette Davis calling them to worship the corn god in The Dark Secret of Harvest Home and with a face like Bette Davis' Faudron would bet good money that it had been a documentary. Dad had given her the movie because Rene' Aubergain had a small part. He got his tongue cut out in his tinker cabin, but landed on Voyager years later, anyway. Faudron had that set too. Dad gave her movies he liked so they'd watch them together. She gave him movies and television shows she liked for the same reason. They got watched in separate rooms, because when he did get home, she didn't want to hear it, the pilot talk. He wasn't a real astronaut; he was a Shuttle Astronaut. Grandpa had almost been a Gemini flyer, and even his few almost stories were better. Dad would tell a story about moths mating some grammar school dork had sent to space and promised that every town they moved to was going to be better and different than the last, but he never actually saw the town before they moved. Mom hit the quickie realtor and she and Moren packed. Now they were packed into an episode of the Rockford Files, same cars, same clothes, same trailer and she couldn't call him and dare not mention mom if she could.