Hardware

by Linda Barnes

Please, I thought, don’t let Marvin commit a felony with my piece. Please, God, let it come home to its drawer unfired.

  I heard him scramble up the hill as I artfully arranged myself in the grass and closed my eyes.

  “Call Gloria,” I said. “First thing.”

  I couldn’t make out his reply.

  Things I do for Gloria, I ought to get my head examined. Picked up three guys. Forced me off the road. Nope. Nobody’d buy that one … I’d never pick up three guys, not in my right mind. Temporary amnesia, only way to go.

  At least I didn’t have liquor on my breath.

  I lifted my leg and massaged my ankle, gritting my teeth. It occurred to me that here I was, remaining at the scene like a righteous citizen, the way I hadn’t waited when I’d actually been a victim. Maybe that’s why I’d volunteered—not for love of Gloria and Sam and G&W, but as an act of crazed atonement.

  I envisioned myself explaining it: See, Mooney, I was shot at from this black van, and I didn’t report it, so then a few weeks later I pretend to be a crime stat.

  I ought to schedule an appointment with the shrink almost next door.

  I wished I’d caught a glimpse of the drive-by shooters. I could describe them to the cops as the guys who beat me up and dumped me in the prickle bush. The prickle bush … Would the cops trace my descent, catch me in a lie?

  My ankle throbbed. Liquid, presumably blood, continued to trickle from my nose. I recited multiplication tables slowly, made it well into the nines before I heard the slam of a car door, unrecognizable voices. Cherry lights flashed.

  I closed my eyes. Amnesia was my savior. Let the cops figure it out. With my eyes shut I muttered a silent prayer for Marvin. Drive carefully. Don’t pass out on the road. Don’t use or lose my gun. Find a good, quiet disbarred physician.

  Do doctors get disbarred? Why do people think prayers are more likely to be answered when they scrunch their eyes shut?

  The dark night was my friend. So were the cops and paramedics churning the ground, calling out to one another.

  “This way,” a voice shouted. “Down here!”

  I wondered if Marvin and I shared the same blood type. Would the cops see anything beyond a simple auto accident? I willed my body limp, tried to stop my mind from exploring every possible avenue of discovery and failure.

  I cheered myself with the thought that what had really happened was too unlikely for the cops to guess.

  TWELVE

  I played possum while cautious paramedics immobilized my neck and lifted me onto a backboard, then a gurney, for the slow uphill march. I made a brief return to “consciousness” in the ambulance, lingering long enough to demand Beth Israel over Boston City. Beth Israel’s nurses are the best. Besides, nobody comes to visit at Boston City Hospital; they’re scared of getting shot en route. I also vetoed blood transfusion. Not that I needed it, but you can’t be too careful.

  I listened to the paramedics chatter about which fast-food joint they’d patronize on their next break—and tried not to curse out loud when they jostled my ankle. Swaying in the overheated ambulance, I started sweating till my shirt was soaked, molded to my body underneath my coat. Blood and mud and perspiration and prickles everywhere. I couldn’t breathe through my nose, which worried me.

  When the police officer bouncing along in the jump seat asked what happened, I wearily closed my eyes.

  I’d decided to stay knocked out for admission. My wallet was in my hip pocket; they could locate the appropriate ID and insurance cards without my help. I spent the travel time visualizing the contents of my wallet, so I’d know if any of the staff suffered light-finger syndrome, whether or not to stop credit on my Visa.

  I attempted to salve my conscience. First I told myself that my ankle would have required orthopedic attention anyway—probably not in such dramatic circumstances, but definitely not during regular office hours. An emergency-room visit is an emergency-room visit.

  Then I tried reminding myself that if not for my intervention the hospital would have been stuck with Marvin. Marvin’s more serious injuries would assuredly bill higher. I tried not to think about my insurance deductible.

  Wham. The doors opened and the show began.

  My headache escalated from simple pounding to full bass drum. I was indoors. Lights burned down on me. Voices surrounded me.

  “Get her vital signs.”

  “Accident! Full level-one trauma protocol!”

  “Find the surgical resident!”

  “Okay, let’s go. Type her blood and cross-match for six units.”

  “She’s out.” A deep voice cut across the rest. “Have to establish an airway.”

  Someone stuck a cold metal scope into my mouth and I came up spluttering. “Quit that!” I said.

  “I think we’ve got an airway,” the man with the deep voice said. He was a little past middle age, cocoa-colored and silver-haired. Handsome. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you move your right hand?”

  I did.

  “Good. Your left?”

  “It’s my ankle,” I said. “Left.”

  He ignored me. I repeated myself, but he was occupied with my forehead and my nose. Evidently head wounds took top priority.

  “Get her to X-ray,” he said. “Whole body. Skull films. She was unconscious for some period of time. After X-ray, move her right to the CAT scan.”

  Bright white lights and machinery everywhere. My stomach felt queasy. Had I fallen into poisoned brambles? I heard more sirens approaching and closed my eyes in case they were police units, not ambulances.

  Gloria was at my side when I woke, massive, dark, and silent in her wheelchair. As soon as I opened my eyes and allowed them to focus, she held a warning finger to her lips. I blinked and shook my head. Some anesthesiologist must have wiped me out. I had no idea what time it was.

  The room had two beds. The second was vacant, blank and sterile as a clean sheet of paper. The wallpaper was sky blue. A pattern of tiny yellow-and-white buds crawled up toward the gleaming white ceiling. The curtains echoed the cheery yellow. Yuck. A sink was tucked into a tiny alcove, a paper-towel dispenser overhead. Two wall-mounted tissue boxes held latex gloves.

  I could smell again. I sniffed deeply and wished I hadn’t. Even the best hospitals smell of rubbing alcohol and tidied-up death.

  I lifted a hand to my head. Gauze and tape covered a two-inch patch above my right eye.

  Following Gloria’s pointed gaze, I glanced at the doorway. A stolid cop on duty. Thanks, Mooney, I thought, less than gratefully.

  “How’s he doing?” I murmured to Gloria.

  “She awake?” The cop demanded at the same time.

  “Hush,” Gloria said, ostensibly to the cop, but I could tell she was worried I’d blurt out the real story. Maybe she thought the anesthesiologist dealt in truth serum as well as morphine.

  “You fooled them, told them you were my sister, right?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Your momma,” she answered dryly. “Sam’s away again or he’d be here. Paolina, now … she’s been haunting the waiting room.”

  Paolina! I used the guardrail of the bed to haul myself into a sitting position.

  “Where is she?” My head spun. Too late, I remembered that hospital beds came equipped with controls to gently raise and lower the patient.

  “Carlotta, calm down! I told her you’d be fine. Told her you’d visit as soon as you could. She’s gone home.”

  “Thanks,” I said, easing myself back onto the pillow. My stomach felt like somebody was mixing a vodka collins within.

  “I’m the one to say thanks,” Gloria murmured.

  “Miss?” The door cop had managed to locate a pencil and flip open his notebook. “Can you describe the men who attacked you?”

  So. I hadn’t passed muster as an accident victim. Some forensic digging had been done. I can’t say I was astonished, not with a cop at the door.

  Gloria stared at me. Hard.

/>   I said, “Where am I?”

  I’ve always wanted to say that: “Where am I?” like in an old black-and-white film. I suspect I may have fluttered my eyelashes. Who-eee. Whatever did that anesthesiologist stick me full of? I felt fine as long as I was lying down. Just fine.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Gloria choking back laughter. She recovered nicely, said, “Officer, maybe you ought to tell the nurse she’s awake.”

  “I’m supposed to write down everything she says.”

  “You get the part about ‘Where am I?’?” Gloria inquired.

  “Maybe you could fetch the nurse,” the cop said huffily.

  “Maybe,” I said brightly, “I could press the call button.”

  “I need to talk to the lady alone,” the cop said to Gloria, stressing alone. “If you could locate her doctor, please …”

  “And call Paolina,” I whispered.

  “She might be in school.”

  “Leave a message with Marta. Phone the school.”

  “Sure thing,” Gloria said. She gave me another searching once-over.

  I returned her gaze steadily. One thing I learned from my years on the force: Stick to the Big Lie. “I don’t remember anything.” That was my story, and it was a good one. Strong alibis are simple alibis. You start messing with little bits and pieces here and there, like the phase of the moon, or who you picked up last, and you’ve got a whole stack of lies to memorize. Stick to basics. I don’t remember. The end.

  Gloria wheeled herself out.

  “Uh, what’s your name?” the cop asked. A waste-of-time question, I thought. Not a cop question, a doctor question. Right up there with shining lights in my eyes and checking to see that my pupils matched. Mooney must have assigned my case a low priority.

  “Carlotta,” I said. “Carlyle. Like the nineteenth-century British essayist.” I wound up spelling it.

  “Now, Carlotta,” the cop said. That’s why he wanted my name, so he could get chummy with me. “I want you to think back and tell me the last thing you remember.”

  I wrinkled my brow in utter concentration. “You asked me my name,” I said triumphantly.

  “Before that,” he said. “Before the hospital.”

  “So that’s where I am,” I said, eyes wide with phony relief.

  “Do you know why you’re in the hospital?”

  “Uh, am I sick?”

  “Think back.”

  “I can’t seem to recall …”

  “Let’s try this. You were driving …”

  “Did I have an accident? Hey, something’s wrong with my leg.”

  He was writing it down, his tongue clamped between his teeth. You’d think they’d have sprung for a tape recorder.

  “You hurt your ankle,” he said. “It might have happened when you tried to run for help.”

  “I tried to run for help?” No way Mooney had trained this bozo. What kind of rookies were they getting these days? Maybe if I let him prompt me enough, he’d tell me the whole story. Then I could ID some suspects. He probably had handy mug shots available.

  “We have reason to believe you may have been assaulted,” he said firmly.

  “Not an accident?” I murmured.

  “Were your assailants black?”

  A probable racist to boot. I wished Gloria would come back. “My what?” I asked.

  He lowered his voice to a more confidential level. “Guys try to rape you? It’s okay, you can tell me. I’m a cop. You can talk to me about anything.”

  Why me? I wondered. Why do I rate the jerk who missed the sensitivity-training class?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I don’t even think you’re a policeman. You get any closer, I’m gonna start screaming.”

  “Lady—”

  “Carlotta, remember? I mean it. One more step—”

  “Look, I just want to know what happened.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I’m asking the questions here.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, go ahead.”

  He glanced down at his notebook, flustered. “Uh, do you have any recollection of the events of the night of December fourteenth?”

  Dear Lord, a graduate of the Agatha Christie Police Academy and Charm School.

  “What’s today?” I asked.

  “The fifteenth.”

  “What time is it?” I was having fun. I was asking the questions again. The doctor and Gloria interrupted.

  The handsome cocoa-colored gentleman was still on duty.

  “You’re going to be using crutches for a while, young lady,” he said.

  Crusty, I bet that’s how his patients described him.

  “Doctor,” I said. “My name is Ms. Carlyle. How do you do?”

  Those little backless johnnies make me revert to the strictest formality. I didn’t remember changing into any goddamn johnnie. Where were my clothes? It’s not that I’m immoderately modest. It’s that I dislike being inspected like a lamb chop. I’d rather be treated like a sex object than a chunk of damaged meat.

  “Broken?” I asked, indicating my ankle.

  “Severe sprain. You were lucky.”

  “I feel okay. I can handle crutches. When do I leave?”

  “We’ll have to decide that.”

  “We?” I said, my voice taking on the edge it reserves for the royal pronoun. “My vote’s for right now. What time is it anyway?”

  “A little past noon. You were brought in this morning at five.”

  He did the light-shining bit and asked me where I was born and tricky stuff like my mother’s maiden name. Probably in cahoots with my imagined wallet-ransacking admissions clerk. Wanted the information to fake out a jewelry store with my credit card.

  With my line of credit, he’d have to shop Kmart sales.

  “Where’s my stuff?” I asked.

  “The police have it,” the cop said.

  “All of it? They’ve got my underwear?”

  “Possible evidence.” The cop smirked. “I’ve got a receipt you can sign.”

  “Terrific.”

  “With head injuries we prefer to keep the patient overnight for observation,” Doctor Crusty said after testing the reflexes in my good leg. “I don’t believe there’s any residual trauma or interior bleeding, but since you were unconscious when you were brought in, it would be unwise to release you until tomorrow.”

  “What if I had a friend spend the night?”

  He smiled as if I’d told a particularly funny joke. “A friend who’d wake you every two hours and take your blood pressure? A lawyer, I presume?”

  No way was I getting out with Doc Crusty on call. He departed to flirt with other patients, and I resigned myself to my fate. I strongly suggested that the door cop call in the amnesia report and return to meaningful work in his chosen profession.

  He stayed put. Gloria and I conversed in quiet verbal shorthand.

  “M?” I asked.

  “Okay. Take it.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Dollar. You once told me you needed a dollar to—”

  My fingers closed on the bill. “Where am I gonna put it, client? Hang on to it for me.”

  “Babe, what it is, I think, somebody might be trying to close me down.”

  “Close down G and W?”

  The cop approached and we segued into meaningless chatter. Gloria stayed and I was grateful for her reassuring presence. She gossiped about weather and friends. I drifted in and out. The day started to take on a rhythm. When my ankle throbbed, I’d press the call button. A nurse would appear with a tiny paper cup of pills. Just ibuprofen, but they worked.

  Paolina came by at three, which meant she’d cut her last class. I didn’t mention it. I didn’t have a chance.

  With a contemptuous glance at the cop, she started rattling away in Spanish.

  “Whoa,” I said. “I can’t keep up. Despacio, por favor. And please, before you
yell at me, give me a chance to apologize. I’m sorry I scared you. I’m hardly hurt at all, and I was careful. Sometimes you can be careful and still get messed up.”

  Her words spilled out in an angry rush, English this time.

  “Look at your leg. What about volleyball? There’s a game tomorrow. At school. I was counting on you. You promised,” she said furiously. “I thought that now you weren’t a cop, I wouldn’t have to worry like I used to. Sam’s right. You’re crazy to drive a cab.”

  “That what you and Sam were chatting about at the Y? Deciding my future for me?”

  “The way you try to do for me? No. We said nothing about you. Nada.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Sit down, baby. Please. I don’t want to fight.”

  “Don’t call me ‘baby.’ I always tell you that.”

  Gloria said, “Girl, I still call her ‘baby,’ and she’s bigger than most.”

  I was grateful for the interruption. It took some of the wind out of Paolina’s sails. She was geared for battle, eyes flashing. Storing her fear and anger since early morning, letting them simmer and come to a boil. She’d dressed for confrontation, in her most grown-up outfit, a dark sweater and matching skirt. I preferred her in bright colors.

  She was right. I wanted her to stay a baby. If not a baby, young. Very young for a very long time.

  The hell of it was, I understood her fury. As a child, she’d been too often abandoned, dumped with one relative or another so her mother could try out a new live-in boyfriend without the added burden of kids. She’d see my hospitalization as another in a series of betrayals. As a horrid reminder that I could die, become another transient “aunt” in her life.

  “Paolina,” I said. “I’m sorry. There’ll be other games. I promise. My ankle’s not so bad. I’m not out for the season—”

  “I hate you,” she said, her low voice charged with emotion.

  And stomped out of the room.

  I swallowed. Twelve years old, I probably said that to people. To my mother. And I wasn’t Paolina’s mom, just her adopted Big Sister.

  I shook my head, stirring the rumbling ache under the bandage. She didn’t mean it. I knew she didn’t mean it, but the cold fist that closed around my heart made me want to apologize to my long-dead mother all the same.