by Pamela Morsi
Ellen was skeptical. “Wilma doesn’t work like that,” she said. “To her, husbands have never been helpmates, they’ve been meal tickets.” She turned back to Brent. “Who is this guy? Did you see him?”
Brent shook his head. “We always just met her at the curb. Today the waitress came out and said she was sick and needed help. Nobody was with her and I never got a look at the guy previously.”
“But she’s met him several times,” Ellen said.
“For weeks, every day, Monday through Friday, high noon at the Empire Bar,” he replied.
“The Empire Bar?” There was recognition in her voice.
“Yeah, does that mean something?”
“Maybe,” she answered. “It could be just a coincidence.”
“What?”
“I think I know who she’s been meeting,” Ellen said. “And why she kept quiet about it.”
The discussion of Wilma’s love life ceased abruptly as the receptionist called Ellen over to the desk to fill out forms and provide insurance numbers.
Amber took a seat. Brent sat beside her.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” Amber told him.
“I didn’t get dragged into it,” he said.
Brent shrugged. “Wilma gives me an excuse to hang around you and your family.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure dysfunctional is very entertaining,” she said.
“Your family seems to be functioning just fine to me,” he said.
Amber rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we’re doing great,” she told him facetiously. “We’re completely broke, practically homeless and I’m considering changing jobs so it will be easier for me to pursue a part-time vocation as a whore.”
She made the revelation exclusively for shock value. It didn’t have quite the effect she wanted.
Brent chuckled.
“You think I’m joking?”
He shook his head. “I think that no matter what you choose to do, even that, you’ll always be productive and successful.”
“Productive and successful.” She repeated the words with incredulity. “You’re being an ass, aren’t you?”
Brent shrugged. “Not any more than usual,” he answered. “I don’t think you get it, Amber, how much all of your friends admire you.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “They all want to work at the mall.”
“They all see that you’ve taken this really crappy situation of losing your dad and your family going broke and you’ve just rolled with it, never missing a beat. Even managed to have a kid in the process.”
Amber didn’t buy it. “Yeah, well I guess my old friends just admire me from a distance,” she said.
“Hey, none of us dumped you,” Brent pointed out. “You walked away from us.”
“I don’t have anything in common with you anymore,” Amber said.
“Nothing except friendship.”
“Look, you’re all in college and doing that whole scene,” she said. “I hang with people who are more like me.”
“More like you in what way?”
“They work, they party, they have kids,” she answered. “I hang with people who aren’t kids themselves.”
Brent chuckled but laid his hand upon his chest. “One direct knife to the heart,” he said.
“I would never stab you in the back,” she assured him, glibly.
“I can’t decide if you don’t respect us, or just resent us,” Brent said. Amber didn’t get a chance to respond. Jet came trotting up to them, book in hand.
“Read me this,” she demanded of Brent.
The worn dirty copy of Curious George Goes To The Hospital was missing its cover, but thankfully it seemed to have most of its pages.
“I’ll read it to you,” Amber said.
Jet’s brow furrowed stubbornly. “I want Brent to read it,” she said.
“He’s had to hang with you all day,” Amber said. “I’m here now, I’ll read.”
“I want Brent to read it!” The little girl raised her voice angrily.
“I don’t mind doing it,” Brent told Amber.
“Fine,” she said. “Jet probably thinks you read better because you go to college.”
“I’ll read to you, Jet,” Brent said, lifting the child to his lap. “But I think you should say ‘sorry’ to your mama for snapping at her.”
“Don’t tell my kid what to do!” Amber shot back. “You are nothing to her.”
“I’m her friend,” Brent said. “And friends tell each other when they are way off base. You’re out there, Amber.”
She knew he was right, but his being right was not exactly something she could welcome.
Jet apologized to Amber. But Amber didn’t apologize to Brent. She simply ignored him and pretended to read People magazine.
Curious George had just eaten the puzzle pieces when Ellen walked over from the counter. She was carrying Wilma’s purse.
“They don’t really know anything yet,” Ellen said. “They’ve called her doctor. Once he’s evaluated her, someone will come out and talk to us.”
Amber nodded. Brent went back to reading. Just the sound of his voice, low and calm, was somehow reassuring, soothing.
Amber didn’t want to be soothed.
“Hand me Wilma’s purse.”
When Ellen did, Amber opened it up and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“I’m going outside to have a smoke,” Amber announced.
Ellen immediately set her jaw in anger and frustration. “Those things are killing your grandmother,” she pointed out.
Amber shrugged. “Life’s not so great that I’d want to do it for that long anyway,” she answered.
It was a great exit line. Amber walked across the waiting room and through the automatic doors to the heat of a summer afternoon. She found an ashtray inconveniently located some distance from the nearest bench or shady overhang.
Amber stood in the sun and lit up. She was annoyed with herself and everybody else.
It’s not fair! She wanted to whine.
But who would she whine to? Her mother who’d lost so much and still kept working, hoping, praying every day? Her grandmother who was fighting for every breath? Her former friend who just wanted to help? Or to Jet who had the supreme bad luck to be born to such a mother as her?
Brent was right about Amber. She had pushed away the people who cared about her. She continued to do it. But she couldn’t seem to stop. Memories of her past, her family’s life together were all rosy tinged, dreamlike, unreal. And her future looked to be unending tedium and disappointment. She couldn’t even look forward to the excitement of going truly bad. She was not destined for prison or about to get herself hooked on drugs and alcohol. She was not brave or foolhardy enough to give in to the dark side of her nature. Even the partying life was more habit than pleasure.
Amber knew she would continue the very boring day by day struggle to get by. Nothing to anticipate and very little to regret.
Brent came up beside her, squinting without his sunglasses.
“Why are you standing in this heat?”
Amber pointed to the large metal receptacle full of sand and discarded butts.
“I believe this is the smoking section,” she said.
Brent nodded. “Yeah, that’s the thing about cigarettes,” he said. “You have to walk through the world dragging an ashtray behind you like a ball and chain.”
“Do you express these sentiments to Wilma?”
“She knows that I worry about her,” he said. “But I try to keep the nagging to a minimum.”
“Can I get the same deal?”
He shrugged. “If that’s the deal you want.”
Amber didn’t know how to answer. She ground out the rest of her smoke and moved to a shady spot near the doorway. Brent followed her.
“Is my mother watching Jet?” she asked, trying to see through the darkened windows of the waiting room.
“Yeah, another kid showed up,” he said. “The
two of them are trying to demolish the building, I think.”
Amber gave him a wry grin. “Well, as long as they are playing nicely together.”
He chuckled with her.
It was a cozy, almost intimate moment of sharing. The kind that they used to have together, back when they were really friends.
“I’m sorry about what I said to you in there,” she told him. “I do appreciate the kindness you’ve shown Jet.”
“I like her,” Brent said. “She’s a really neat kid. You’ve done a great job.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “That’s just it,” she said. “That’s why I got so pissed off. I’m not doing a good job. I’m not doing any job at all. I let Wilma and Ellen take responsibility for Jet, but then I resent the hell out of them for it.”
“I guess that means that you’re like, really human, huh,” Brent said.
“I’m human all right,” Amber said. “Not unique or accomplished or special in any way. When you look up ordinary in the dictionary, you see my picture.”
He laughed out loud at that. “You seem pretty exceptional to me,” he said. “And I think Jet would agree.”
Amber was thoughtful for a moment.
“I do love Jet,” she said.
“Oh, is that like a big secret?” Brent asked. “It’s written all over your face every time that you look at her.”
“I want the best for her,” Amber said. “She didn’t ask to be born. I chose to give birth to her and I chose to keep her with me. I really want her to have the best.”
“A mother who loves her is a good start at that,” Brent said.
Amber shrugged that off. “Wilma spends more time with her than I do. I love that old lady, but I wouldn’t describe her as a great role model. And she smokes around Jet, I know she does. Then when Wilma’s not there, it’s my mother. And that’s really scary.”
“You can’t fault your mother as a role model,” he said.
“No, although she’s too upbeat, and way too quick to see good in everything.”
“And that’s a fault?”
“It can certainly lead to a lot of disappointment,” Amber said. “And I see Jet being a lot like Ellen. They both have that happy, optimistic thing. What’s going to happen when Jet goes to school thinking the world is full of friendly people and she gets hit smack in the face by racism?”
“Maybe she’ll duck.”
“Oh, puh-leeze, I’m being serious here.”
“So am I,” Brent said. “Jet’s a smart, happy, self-confident little girl.”
“You think that will keep trouble from showing up at her door?”
“No, but it will give her something to fight back with when it does,” he answered. “Bad things happen in every life. In our own time, we all face our own share. The people who love us can only protect us so much. And then they have to just trust that we can take care of ourselves.”
“But the world can be so cruel and Jet is so little. What if she can’t take care of herself?” Amber asked.
Brent grinned at her. “You think Jet’s like your mother. But I think she’s a lot like you. And you’ve already proven that you’re up and ready to handle about anything life throws your way.”
A candystriper from the reception desk came through the doors.
“The doctor is coming out to talk to Mrs. Post’s family,” she said.
They hurried inside.
Ellen had white coat syndrome. That’s what medical people called it. An irrational fear of people wearing white coats. The sight of one could inexplicably raise the blood pressure, cause dizziness and heart palpitations.
Ellen was suffering all three as Dr. Reberdi came to give them the word on Wilma’s condition. She didn’t particularly consider her own reactions all that irrational. People in white coats had disappointed her more times than she wanted to remember.
It’s a raw deal. We’ve had enough. No more death for my family. Not for a while.
It was not a particularly rational prayer, but it was a very sincere one.
Jet, who had been happily building a magazine fort with a little boy, deserted the child to come stand next to Ellen. Her little hand clutched Ellen’s own, as if she recognized that her grandmother might need her.
Amber and Brent came inside. Both looking young and anxious.
“I’m Wilma’s daughter,” she told the doctor. “How is she?”
“She’s doing pretty well for a person who’s inflicted as much damage on herself as she has,” he answered.
Ellen felt her whole body relax.
“Thank God,” she whispered.
“She hasn’t quit smoking has she?” Dr. Reberdi asked.
“No,” Ellen answered.
“I think she’s cutting back,” Amber lied, as if tweaking the truth might help.
The doctor gave her an over-the-top-of-the-glasses look of disbelief, but didn’t dispute her statement. “She’s going to have to do better than she’s done,” he said. “I keep telling her that there are just so many little airways down there and only a finite amount of tissue, once she’s destroyed it all, there just isn’t any more.”
“She seemed to be getting along pretty well,” Ellen said. “The last few weeks she hasn’t been sleeping that well. She’s been under a lot of stress. But normally she seems fine.”
“She’s not fine,” the doctor said firmly. “She has emphysema. It’s a debilitating, often deadly disease.”
“I realize that,” Ellen told him. “But my mother is a very strong woman. And she has really good genes. Her mother lived to age ninety. She eats a balanced diet. And she’s getting around, getting a lot of exercise. As long as she uses her oxygen, she’s okay.”
“That’s the way this disease works,” Dr. Reberdi said quietly. “It’s insidious. You keep on doing the things that you do. Your lungs just keep working harder, making up for the damage. You wheeze a lot, get tired going upstairs, but you think you’re doing all right. You use more oxygen and then a little more, but you think that’s okay. Then one day, you get a little infection, a touch of bronchitis and you just don’t have any reserves. You’ve got no lung tissue left to take anything in. And you’re dead. That’s what’s going to happen to your mother. If she doesn’t stop smoking, completely and soon, she’s just not going to have anything left to breathe with. And then, well the end is inevitable.”
His tone was matter-of-fact, almost annoyed. Any compassionate bedside manner he might possess, had obviously been saved for the bedside.
Ellen swallowed hard. “I don’t think my mother can quit smoking, Doctor,” she said. “She’s smoked all her life. Or all her adult life anyway.”
“She told me she started when she was fourteen,” Amber piped in.
“Fourteen!” Even Ellen, who knew her best, was surprised at that. “That’s forty-seven years. You can’t quit something you’ve been doing for forty-seven years.”
The doctor didn’t seem impressed. “Everybody can quit,” he said. “They just have to want to bad enough. Maybe Mrs. Post isn’t that interested in having a future. If she’s not, then there is not anything that you or I or anyone else can do about it.”
The relief that Ellen had felt earlier had been very negatively tempered by the doctor’s pessimistic sense of doom.
“But this is a very slow, long-term disease,” Ellen said. “Emphysema can kill you, but it takes years and years.”
“What happened to her today, is a late stage of the disease process,” he said. “She’s not getting enough oxygen to the brain. She’s taking it into her lungs, but she doesn’t have enough alveolar wall to process it and get it into her blood.”
“How much does she have? How much does she need?”
“How much you need depends on the person,” he said. “Five percent, ten percent, she still might be able to have some quality of life. How much she actually has we don’t know yet. We don’t want to run a lung volume test until we get her in a little better shape.”
“So she is going to get better,” Ellen said.
“We’re giving her antibiotics to fight the infection and a bronchodilator which will help her absorb more of the oxygen she takes in. It should get her back on her feet fairly soon. But this is no cure. She is going to continue to decline as long as she continues to smoke.”
Ellen looked over at Amber. Her daughter met her gaze. They were going to lose Wilma and they both knew it. This was the beginning of the end. Just like with Paul, except then, Ellen had refused to accept it. Then she had insisted that Paul fight. She had no hope of getting Wilma to do the same.
“Mrs. Post is at a point here where she is not going to get any better,” Dr. Reberdi said. “And without some significant changes in her behavior, she will get worse, much worse.”
“Worser than a nicker-teen fit?” Jet asked. “Wil-ma hates to have a nicker-teen fit.”
The doctor ignored the little girl and Ellen hushed her as she patted her head, hoping that the child had not understood a thing that had been said. She’d forgotten Jet was there. This was no lesson that a child should be forced to comprehend.
“Is she awake? When can we see her?” Ellen asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“They are moving her upstairs, we’re putting her in an intensive care unit for the next several hours. They have a schedule, you can see her every hour for about fifteen minutes. If she doesn’t get worse, she’ll probably be moved to a regular bed early in the morning.”
Ellen nodded.
“I’ve told her and I’ll tell you,” the doctor said. “Quitting smoking these days is not like it used to be. We’ve got medications, patches, programs. It won’t be easy, but we can do a lot to make it more comfortable.”
Ellen nodded again, but she didn’t feel any sense of optimism. Wilma had never given even the slightest consideration to quitting. Ellen saw no reason for her mother to do so now. She was stubborn. She’d lied to get the oxygen. She’d probably lie to get some medication. But as soon as she was steady on her feet, she’d be lighting up in the hospital stairwell.
“Thank you,” Ellen responded. “I will certainly talk to her about it as forcefully as I can.”