STILL UNABLE TO sleep, I was reading when my cell phone rang. This probably meant medical emergency. I exhaled, fearing the unimaginable.
“Neil, it’s Chrystie, I’m on the way back into town with Tracee. She fainted. She’s revived now, but I think she needs to see you. You met her tonight. Very pretty, fine features. Half-Indian, half-American. The food critic.”
“Oh, yeah. You said she’s conscious?”
“But weak. She has a problem when she drinks because she doesn’t eat much. She’s anorexic.”
“OK. I’ll be at my office in fifteen, twenty minutes.”
I didn’t want to wake Chandon, who was asleep outside in the servant’s small room, so I called a taxi.
I got to my office and they were already there. No Charlie. Tracee’s heart and blood pressure were fine. Her pulse was thready. Her tongue showed signs of deep dehydration. Chrystie helped her into a gown and onto a table in one of the examining rooms.
“I’m going to hook you up to an IV with dextrose solution, potassium, and other minerals.”
“How about punching it up with some liquid Demerol?”
“First, I need to take a blood test.”
She flinched. Her complexion blanched. “I hate needles and I will faint again. I really need a tranquilizer.”
“And I really need to see just how low your nutrients are.”
She bowed her head in acquiescence. I put on a pair of surgical gloves, took her blood, and then inserted the IV.
“That was almost painless.”
“Almost? Now rest. I’ll be in the next room.”
Chrystie and I walked into my office. She reeked of alcohol but seemed perfectly in control of her senses. She balanced her weight between her hips and inhaled as if she wanted to say something. Nothing came out but an exhale of whiskey breath. She mustered a flat, “Good night.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine if she starts eating.”
She scrunched her eyebrows. I shrugged. She left and I sent the blood work over to the International Hospital with one of the Indians who was always on duty. I lay down on one of the couches in the waiting room.
Six hours later, the messenger awakened me when Tracee’s blood tests came back. I called over to the lab to double-check the results. They were sure. I tiptoed into the examining room. Tracee was still asleep. I needed to take out the IV before it started to back up. She didn’t need another bag.
I nudged her awake and unhooked the IV. She let out a pipsqueak “Ow.” She was slightly dizzy, so I helped her to the bathroom, where she dressed and called out, “Can you get me a driver to the Hyatt Regency?”
“Is that where you live?”
“I want to go for a swim.” She walked out from the bathroom under her own power. “They have a nice pool.”
Her flippancy surprised me and I must’ve looked bug-eyed stupid.
“I live there part time. It’s the only easy way for a single woman not living with her family. I have an apartment in New York. I’m going there next week. I do a food column for Cosmo: ‘Tracee (double e) Murkagee’s Art of Anorexic Cooking.’” She laughed and against my will, so did I. “I do write a column on food for them.”
“One of the embassy drivers will take you. First …” I reached out and pointed to my office. I held her blood test results in my left hand, “First, Tracee, we should talk. Please, come sit in my office.”
“Uh-oh. Bad news comes in sit-down talks in offices. But since I don’t work for you, you can’t be firing me. So, I can eat. Really, I can.”
“It’s not that.”
She sighed and suddenly looked much older. Her body became concave, her face almost magically falling, surrendering to gravity. “I don’t have to sit and we don’t have to talk. I know. I am HIV positive. How did you suspect? How did you know?”
“I didn’t. The tests are routine here.” Not only were they routine, they used the newest and fastest test.
She eyed me suspiciously. We stood in the suspended animation of the examining room. “Ethically I won’t, can’t, tell a soul. You have to help yourself. Soon. I’m assuming you’re not taking any medication either.”
She looked at me as if to say, Why should I?
“There are many drugs that can prolong your life. Please stop drinking and smoking. Get a damn good diet. Eat. Exercise, for Christ’s sake.”
She ignored me. I leaned over a table and wrote down the name of a doctor I knew in New York. “He’s terrific. He isn’t closed to alternatives or anything.”
She snatched the paper without looking at it. “You want to know how I got it?” Her eyes suddenly teared-up; empty of the spark of life and filled with the dread of oncoming death.
I didn’t. Still, it was best to let her talk.
“My husband. Half Indian, half white American from a wealthy family. Big deal in the art world. He worked for galleries and museums as their Asian expert. Blue chip, all the way. I thought he was a good mix of cultures like me. Nobody warned me, and I was too blind to see that he was a perfect candidate for a secret life of the dickhead variety. What a hypocrite. Idiot that I was I was honest with him and told him I’d slept with a few guys. What was I thinking? He’d get drunk and call me a ‘whore’ and ‘slut.’ Then this.” She pointed to her vagina. “Every time that shit got five feet away from me he took up with cheap hookers. He’s dead, so I’ll shut up.” She spoke without self-pity, only self-loathing.
“You did nothing wrong. Life is just … well, it’s fucking unfair.” I didn’t like my platitude. “Once, in the ER in New York I had a patient, a famous comedian, I can’t say who, he almost died from freebasing cocaine. We pulled him out of it. Later, I got a call from him.” I attempted to insert TV-style animation in my voice. “He said, ‘Thanks doc, that night I realized I better be careful and enjoy whatever time I got left cause I’m gonna be dead a billion fucking years, forever!’”
“Most un–Hindu-like attitude.” She managed a small laugh. “Besides, I enjoyed myself. Sort of. Would you believe I never had an orgasm? And I tried.”
I’d gotten used to confessions of the most intimate sort in the ER from people I’d met for ten minutes and might never see again. I’d lost the ability to absorb, be genuinely compassionate and move on. It was one more reason I couldn’t work there anymore.
“Too much sex and not enough food, the irony of my life. God is a very funny person with a sick sense of humor.”
I wanted to hug her and comfort her and say, It’s gonna be fine. But it wasn’t and I couldn’t.
“Don’t look so sad,” she was trying to console me. “You are very caring, despite what they say.”
“And what do they say?”
“That you are angry.”
“They are right.”
“Yes, but with justice.”
“Justice—a word that often now means just the opposite.”
“Maybe, but be quiet and listen. After you left last night there was a row between Chrystie and Charlie. Olivier began complaining about how he could take you but you surprised him.”
“Now, you do look upset.” I gritted my teeth. “Chrystie told Charlie she wanted you fired for hitting one of her guests. Charlie said over his dead body and he’d even help you beat the shit out of Olivier. They were both drunk. That’s when my flair for the dramatic intervened, and Chrystie got upset with me.”
I didn’t give a shit about the job and Charlie kept proving to be a better friend than I thought. “I applaud your timing. But why did she get upset with you? I don’t get Chrystie.”
“Getting is Chrystie’s job. She is not so complicated. She wants, she gets, or she gets mad.”
“She was nice enough to bring you here.”
“She intends to move to New York and I know many people she would want to know. She has great pretensions to live up to.” Her eyelids drooped in fatigue.
“OK, time for you to go. Please rest and eat. Call me if you have a problem. Drink water. Eat. No caffeine. But get some help. You can live a long life if you—”
“Please, no more advice.” She leaned over and her lips parted wistfully. “You are cute—before—too bad we did not meet before.”
I laughed at her mix of stoicism and goofiness. “Before, I was a faithfully married man.”
I took her arm, she was still weak, and escorted her outside to an awaiting car and then I went home.