by Pamela Morsi
“Let’s try,” Irma said. “If we can’t make it, I’ve got my cell phone, we’ll call a cab.”
“A cab?” Mrs. Stanhope found that thought amusing. “It’s only three blocks away.”
“We can call a cab to take us thirty feet if we want to,” Irma said.
“Yes,” Mrs. Stanhope said, nodding. “We’ve got the money now. We can do whatever however we want.” The woman hesitated a moment. “If we can make it home, I think I just want to lie down.”
She didn’t tell Ellen goodbye. Mrs. Stanhope seemed to have forgotten her existence completely. Irma did leave her with a nod of thanks.
Ellen watched them walk down the sidewalk of the wide, tree-lined street, before turning back to retrace her steps to her own very real and ordinary world.
Max didn’t come for lunch at the Empire Bar the day after Wilma had admitted knowing about his ranch. His open, easy friendliness had immediately disappeared and he’d excused himself.
“I have to go back to work,” he said. “But I’m sure you know that.”
Wilma didn’t have any idea as to what to say or how to explain. Not unless she confessed all and she certainly wasn’t ready to do that.
After a mostly sleepless night, smoking cigarettes between bouts of oxygen use, Wilma decided that the only thing she could do was tell the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but at least enough of it to make her confession credible.
She was fully prepared to do that. But it seemed as if she wasn’t going to get the opportunity. The first day he didn’t show she wrote it off as a fit of pique. The second day, she was surprised that he could hold a grudge. By the fifth day, sitting alone nursing her beer and chain-smoking in their booth, she knew she’d made some kind of irrevocable mistake.
Wilma felt queasy. She wanted to go into the ladies’ room and throw up. But she knew her stomach was too tied up in knots. She was getting a cold or something. She hadn’t felt quite right for a couple of days. She was tired and she should have just stayed home.
But she’d come anyway. She knew in her heart that he wouldn’t be here again today, but she’d come anyway, just hoping.
She’d lost men before, she told herself. Somehow that was no comfort. Max was special. He was funny and interesting and he was a man whom she felt was her equal.
That was a curious thing she thought had always separated her from other women of her generation. They were always trying to be equal with the men they married. Wilma had never been married to even one whom she’d considered smarter, emotionally stronger or more determined. In her whole life, she’d never met a man whom she honestly felt could do her justice. Finally, she’d met her match. And he’d left her at this table like so much loose change.
Wilma tried to sort out where she’d gone wrong. How could it have worked out right? She went over and over their entire time together. She tried to remember everything that had been said. Every look that passed between them, every joke they shared. She second-guessed herself on every move she made.
Maybe being Ellen’s mother wouldn’t have caused a problem. He was not the kind of man to be bothered by such. And if Ellen had caused trouble, surely she could have handled her. Wilma could have been honest with him from the beginning. Let him know who she was and where she was coming from. But then what could she have given as an excuse for seeking him out? That she was trying to rope in a new husband. Not many men would have found that to be particularly titillating.
Wilma’s head began to pound. And not at her temples, like a typical headache, but on the crown of her head, like something had hit her. She didn’t feel like herself. The queasy feeling was now accompanied with dizziness. She took a couple of deep breaths. They didn’t seem to help. She needed her oxygen.
She glanced down at her watch to see how close it was to pickup time. Her vision was blurry. She squinted and got two images of the watch dial, neither of which she could actually read.
Wilma leaned back in the booth. The room spun as if she were drunk. She looked at the half-empty glass of beer still sitting on the table. Alcohol was not the cause of this.
She motioned to the waitress.
“I’m not feeling very well,” she said. “A young man is supposed to pick me up. Could you look and see if he’s waiting outside. He drives a gray Tahoe.”
“Sure,” the young woman said. “You want to settle up now?”
She gave Wilma the check, but Wilma had to ask her to read it. Painstakingly she counted out the money. It was like her brain wasn’t working. She couldn’t seem to think, she couldn’t seem to count.
“He’s not there,” the waitress said, when she came to pick up the cash.
“Can you keep an eye out for him?”
“Sure,” the girl said. She glanced through the money on the table. “You want change from this?”
Wilma had no idea if she was leaving a great tip or none at all.
“Please, just keep an eye out for that gray Tahoe.”
By the time she was informed that Brent was out at the curb, she knew something was very wrong. It wasn’t just that she felt old, tired, and disappointed. Though all those things were true. Wilma was not at all herself. She was gasping. Taking in huge volumes of air, but somehow it wasn’t working. It wasn’t helping. All it seemed to accomplish was to stir up huge volumes of phlegm. Walking outside to get in the car was not a possibility.
“Tell him he has to come in here and get me,” she said.
Within a few minutes, Jet came running up to the booth, bubbling and excited.
“Wil-ma, we had a picnic!” Jet announced. “We went to the park and ate sam-witches. I fed the ducks in the water and…”
Her little voice trailed off.
“What’s wrong Wil-ma? You look kinda funny.”
Brent was beside her then and he was looking at her as well.
“Let’s get Wil-ma some oxygen,” he said.
Wilma didn’t argue, she was gasping for breath. It was as if there was no air around her. It was so strange. Everyone else in the world was breathing fine. But she was suffocating. With no water in sight, it still felt like drowning. She just felt so strange. And she was just so tired. It was as if everybody was talking from a long way off. All she wanted to do was go to sleep. She thought she could just fall asleep, right there in the Empire Bar.
She woke up and Brent was holding her in his arms.
“What happened?”
“You fainted,” he said.
“The last time I fainted, I was pregnant,” she told him.
“Look, I’m going to carry you to the car, okay.”
“If I can just lean on you,” Wilma suggested.
“Just put your arms around my neck,” he said. “Jet, you pull the oxygen bottle behind us.”
“This is not necessary, I can walk,” she told him.
Fortunately, he ignored her. Wilma felt like a limp dishrag and she couldn’t seem to snap out of it. She’d had plenty of tough days when she was short of breath and feeling exhausted, but the oxygen always fixed that. Just connecting up would perk her up immediately. But she was breathing it in now and it wasn’t helping much at all.
She was drawing it into her lungs in huge gasps and then choking and coughing.
“Did you carry me out here?” Wilma asked.
“Yeah,” Brent answered. “But I promise not to make any jokes about you putting on weight.” His joking was deliberately lighthearted, but nonetheless, he sounded a little strange.
“Where are we going?” Wilma asked.
They were not on their usual route home, but near the bus station on Soledad Street.
“I’m taking you to a hospital,” Brent said.
“No, no, there’s no need for that. I’m fine,” Wilma assured him.
He wasn’t buying it. “We’re going to a hospital, Wilma,” he said. “And we’re getting you checked out.”
“Brent, it’s nothing,” she repeated.
“If it’s nothing, then they’l
l let you go home,” he told her.
She adjusted the ear curves on her breathing tubes. “But not before they nag me crazy about the cigarettes. I just had a moment of weakness, in there. I’m fine now.”
“You were absolutely gray,” Brent said. “I’ve never seen anybody that color who was still alive.”
“Don’t kid yourself, kid,” Wilma told him. “I’m going to outlive you.”
She tried to add a chuckle to the boast, but it deteriorated into a cough. And a minute later she was close to exhaustion again.
“I’m just getting a little cold,” she told him. “Nothing to worry about.”
In her peripheral vision she caught sight of Jet, her dark eyes as wide as saucers.
“I just have a cold,” she repeated to the child. “Sometimes you get a cold, don’t you?”
Jet nodded. “Do you have a temperature, Wil-ma?”
“No, I’m fine,” she assured her. Even to her own ears the words sounded false. She was tired. And she’d been smoking too much. She’d cut back for a few days and she’d feel better.
She began gasping again. Wilma knew how it must sound to the two young people in the car with her. It was as if she were fighting for her life and they were helpless, watching the whole thing.
She fainted again and when she awakened the Tahoe was parked in a strange parking lot. Brent was talking on his cell phone.
“We’re at the emergency room at Christus Santa Rosa,” he told someone on the other end of the conversation. “Jet’s with me. She’s fine. I don’t have your mother’s number, you’ll have to call her.”
He glanced over in Wilma’s direction.
“She’s waking up,” he said.
“Don’t talk about me in third person,” Wilma said.
“I’m the third person,” Jet chimed in.
“We’re going in now,” Brent told the caller.
It sounded like a tired line from an old Hollywood war film.
“I’ll let you know,” he finished, and snapped the lid closed on his phone.
“Over and out,” Wilma told him. “You should have said over and out. It sounds much more official. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
Brent ignored that. “Okay,” he told her. “So here’s the deal, I’m coming over there and you’re getting out.”
He turned to Jet. “Stay here with Wilma for a second while I get a wheelchair,” he told the child.
“I’ll take care of her,” Jet promised.
“I don’t need any wheelchair,” Wilma protested. “I can walk.”
“You just want to test out whether or not I can carry you across this parking lot,” Brent told her. “Believe, I can do it. But I’m not about to risk my position on the lacrosse team.”
His teasing made her feel a little better, but Wilma was very aware that she was being taken to the emergency room. That couldn’t be a good thing.
She glanced back at the child still secured in her car seat. Jet looked scared. She wanted to soothe the little girl’s fear.
“So, have you decided what you want for your birthday?” Wilma asked.
Jet shook her head.
“Well, whatever you want, you just tell Wil-ma. I’ll move heaven and earth to see that you get it.”
Jet nodded. “Can you breathe, Wil-ma?” she asked. “Brent told me it was hard for you to breathe.”
“I’m better now,” she assured the child, but it was a lie. She was gasping again, finding it harder to talk. It was by sheer strength of will that she tried to hold on until Brent was back with the wheelchair.
He was within sight when she allowed herself to ease into the blackness.
Wilma floated in an out of consciousness with only quick glimpses of the world around her. A circle of strangers moved her from the wheelchair to a gurney. A light was shining in her eyes. People asked stupid questions.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Can you tell us your name?”
But mostly no one talked to her, they simply talked to each other.
“We’ve got a blue bloater here. As soon as we get her stable we want to move her to MICU.”
“Sats are seventy-eight percent.”
“Have we got an ABG on her yet?”
“Her lung reserve is still good, we’re getting a lot of wasted ventilation.”
Wilma slipped in and out of consciousness. Sometimes she wondered if she was even there. Or if she was there, did anyone know it?
“I’m cold,” she said once.
Almost immediately a warm fluffy blanket was tucked in around her. At least I’m not dead, she thought as she drifted down to the bottom of the gray again. If she was dead, they wouldn’t wrap her in anything warm.
“Mrs. Post! Mrs. Post!” A loud voice caught her attention.
She opened her eyes to a familiar face.
“Mrs. Post, I’m Dr. Reberdi, do you remember me?”
“I’d like to forget,” she told him.
He ignored the sarcasm and gave her no credit for humor.
“You’ve got bronchitis,” he said. “We’re going to admit you and keep you here until you’re feeling better.”
“Bronchitis?” Wilma said. “Can’t you just give me some pills and send me home?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Do you have any family here with you?”
“I…ah…yeah, I think so.”
“Her daughter’s out in the waiting room,” a nurse informed him.
She was glad the doctor was leaving. She was too tired to carry on a conversation.
The next time she opened her eyes she was in a dimly lit room. It was night. How did it get to be night? A good-looking young man in green scrubs and latex gloves was trying to read numbers on a huge green plastic bottle attached to the wall.
“We’re going to give you an inhalant,” he told her. “It’s going to help your lungs do a better job and get more oxygen into your body.”
Wilma put a hand to her face and encountered a big mold of plastic. “Where’s my oxygen lines?” Wilma asked.
“We can get more to you with the mask,” he told her. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she assured him. “I feel fine.”
He laughed a little at that. Wilma wasn’t sure why. She did feel fine, she wasn’t in a lot of pain, she wasn’t even gasping for air. The only problem she seemed to have was holding on to consciousness. It was like a dream that wasn’t a dream. She couldn’t really go to sleep. But she couldn’t seem to wake up either.
14
The waiting room was noisy and crowded. Jet, who had been so good, was getting bored, tearing pages out of magazines and scattering them over the floor. Amber probably should have scolded her and made her sit. But she didn’t. As long as the child’s temper tantrum remained fairly mild, Amber was going to let her get away with it. If she could, Amber would have cheerfully begun ripping and throwing stuff herself.
She hated hospitals. She’d spent way too much time in them. And her family’s batting average had not been good.
It felt strange to be sitting here, not working, just waiting. She’d expected Carly to give her a hard time about getting off.
“My grandmother’s in the hospital” was one of those excuses so lame it was like a running gag.
To her surprise, Carly was extremely gracious. Volunteering to work her hours and suggesting that she stay with her family as long as she was needed.
“Thank you, Carly,” Amber said, more than a little embarrassed by her supervisor’s deliberate kindness. “I won’t stay any longer than necessary.”
“Hey, I know that,” Carly said. “This place would fall down around my ears if I didn’t have you to pull up the slack.”
She said it like a joke, but with enough sincerity to catch Amber by surprise.
“I appreciate how hard you work for me,” Carly told her. “I’m glad to get a chance to return the favor.”
Amber didn�
�t know quite what to make of that. She’d always thought Carly to be the bogeyman in her working life. Having her act like a concerned friend sort of put the world on a tilt.
She’d met up with her mother at the crosswalk on Commerce Street in front of the mall. Ellen’s expression was one Amber always described as “white zone.” Her mother always claimed that she was praying. Whatever her excuse, Ellen was obviously operating on automatic pilot, actual thought processes were engaged elsewhere. But they managed to find the emergency room as well as Jet and Brent.
“We don’t know anything,” he told them. “She was just really gray looking and she kept gasping and choking.”
“I’m just so glad you were there,” Ellen said. “Normally she and Jet are at home alone. I can’t imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t come by.”
Brent shot Amber a look that was pure question. Should they enlighten Ellen as to where Wilma had been and what exactly was going on? Amber would have voted “no” but she didn’t make her feelings known fast enough. Brent was already explaining.
“She wasn’t at home,” he said. “And I was baby-sitting Jet.”
Ellen’s brow furrowed, bewildered.
“What are you talking about?”
“Wilma has been meeting some guy for lunch for the past several weeks,” he said. “I’ve been watching Jet for her.”
“Wilma has been meeting some guy?” Ellen’s incredulity faded quickly and she shook her head in resignation. “I should have suspected something like this. Wilma always thinks men are the answer to everything.”
Ellen glanced over at Amber accusingly. “Did you know about this?”
“Only what Brent has told me,” she assured her mother. “Wilma didn’t say anything to me. I don’t know why she felt like she had to keep it such a secret.”
“Who knows how Wilma thinks? If she actually does think. When it comes to men I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that my mother marries them first and thinks about it later!” Ellen replied. “I should have known she’d be up to something like this. It’s her m.o. The last thing we need is for her to get involved with another sick old coot who happens to have a house we could live in.”
“Maybe it’s not like that,” Amber said. “He might be some really nice guy and they have tons of things in common.”