“I don’t understand why you’re holding me here.” Lenore couldn’t remember being angrier. She was belted into bed in a filthy room that smelled of urine and had nothing else, nothing, besides the bed, a barred window, a hideous door, and walls scratched with disturbing messages. Die, You Fuckheads. Why are you persecuting me? See you again in hell. And, strangely, I love you Loxi. She had a sharp pain in her bladder and the doctor, a young man she’d never seen before – his eyes were magnified enormously behind thick glasses, she would have remembered that – was spending more time looking at her chart than he was at looking at her. He was a tall man with sloping shoulders and a goatee. Why couldn’t men shave any more? “The operation is over, isn’t it?” Lenore asked. “You are going to let me go to the bathroom, aren’t you?”
“Do you feel like getting up?” the doctor asked.
“Well, if you must know, I’m ready to burst!” she said. “Untie me, for God’s sake!”
The doctor looked at her curiously, made a note on the chart – he had to hold it quite close to his face to be able to see it – then undid her straps.
“Where are my clothes?” Lenore demanded.
“You should probably stay in your gown while you’re here,” the doctor said.
“What’s your name, by the way?” Lenore asked. She sat up briskly.
“Dr. Halloway. Are you feeling better, Mrs. Carmichael?”
“I’m in considerable pain. Please turn your head if you won’t give me my clothes.” There was no curtain, even. This was the oddest sort of hospital room.
Dr. Halloway blushed suddenly, hesitated, then turned his head. Lenore struggled out of the bed, pulled off a blanket and wrapped it around herself, then hobbled to the door. She was so stiff and sore! It must be from the operation.
She tried the handle.
“Why have you locked me in? Do you want me to wet myself? No wonder it stinks in here!”
“I’m sorry! Of course!” Dr. Halloway said and hurried to unlock it with his key. “You’re feeling … quite a bit better, then?” he asked.
“Oh, for God’s sake, I have to pee!” Lenore said. “Which way?”
The young doctor led her down the hall. It was a madhouse. A ghastly relic of a man with vacant eyes and a permanently opened mouth – and no teeth, for that matter – sat in a padded chair repeatedly tapping the floor with his cane. A young woman in a stained, torn yellow sweatshirt twisted her hair around and around a pencil, appeared completely and lumpishly bound to her wheelchair until she turned to look at Lenore, then got up suddenly and disappeared into a room. A boy, barely a teenager, with a shaved head and sunken eyes, was staring gloomily at the wall of his room.
“I have private insurance, you know,” Lenore said to Dr. Halloway. “You didn’t have to bring me here.”
“The bathroom is this way,” he said.
“This is what health care has come to?” Lenore asked. “It was a success, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, health care?” the doctor asked.
“My operation!” Lenore said.
Dr. Halloway looked at his chart again. He doesn’t know what I’m in for, Lenore thought. They’ve bungled my file.
“You didn’t have an operation, Mrs. Carmichael,” the doctor said uneasily. “But you do seem to be much better than you were last night.”
They found the washroom then and Lenore hurried in. It had a single toilet and a sink but no lock; she was sure one of those psychological patients was going to burst in on her at any moment. So she hurried, felt great relief when her bladder released.
“Is there someone I can talk to?” she asked politely, when she got out. “Somebody who has some idea about what’s going on?”
“I think I can fill you in,” Dr. Halloway said. He started walking back towards the prison room, but Lenore stopped. She didn’t want to go anywhere near it again.
“You’re obviously very junior,” she said, trying not to be cutting. “You don’t even know about my operation, and you seem to have me confused with someone else.”
“I actually admitted you late yesterday,” Dr. Halloway said. “And I have consulted with your regular physician, Dr. Beamus. He was here last night to examine you. Do you remember that?”
Lenore bit her lip and tried to remain calm. He towered over her, it was unsettling.
“I came in last night with my husband,” she said firmly. “The operation was this morning. I do remember that very clearly. I counted backwards from one hundred, got to ninety-six before the gas took effect. Dr. Beamus did not perform the operation – he’s not a surgeon, is he? It was a different doctor. I’m afraid I can’t remember his name at this exact moment. But Dr. Beamus recommended him. When my husband comes back he’ll straighten you out. In fact he’ll probably want to pop you on the nose for your impertinence. Can you please get me my clothes? I really feel I should go.”
She clenched her jaw and looked at him hard with her head tilted resolutely. Her mother used to look that way; Lenore remembered learning it, practising in the mirror.
“Mrs. Carmichael, you haven’t had an operation!” Dr. Halloway said. Again he looked at her chart, as if confused. “You are much more coherent than last night, however,” he said. “Dr. Beamus has put you on a new drug, thorazinol, and it appears to have had a dramatic impact. Your speech is much better, your awareness of the present moment.”
“Young man, are you refusing me my clothes?” Lose your temper and no one will take you seriously. Daddy always said that. Lenore straightened up as much as she could – oh, but she was sore. Quite something to be on her feet after what she’d been through.
“Your daughter is coming to get you this morning. Why don’t you just rest until she gets here?”
“My daughter? My daughter?” Lenore said. “My daughter is eight years old!” And she turned in disbelief, in disgust – these broken people wandering the hall, the smell of this place, of disinfectant and lives coming apart. “There must be some mistake,” she said quietly, clutching the blanket around her.
“You are doing much better than last night,” the doctor said, gently touching her arm.
It was like a bad dream. Lenore closed her eyes, waited for it to clear, but it didn’t clear; when she opened her eyes again it was exactly the same. “May I please have my clothes?” she asked again with as much dignity as she could muster.
“Yes. All right,” he said uncertainly.
They walked back to the prison room. It really was like a cell, with the hulking great door, the tiny barred window. Dr. Halloway reached under the bed and pulled out a sorry-looking plastic shopping bag, like something you’d see a vagrant carrying on the streets.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He took out a dirty, wrinkled, beige dress that obviously wouldn’t fit her, it was so large, and anyway she never wore beige, her skin was too light.
“This is what you were wearing last night when they brought you in,” he said sadly.
“Oh!” she said sharply and she didn’t know where to turn. “You’ve taken my clothes!”
“This is what you were wearing -”
“Can you imagine me in something like that? It’s a tent, for God’s sake!”
“Your daughter will bring some better clothes, I’m sure,” he said. “How about some breakfast. Are you hungry?”
Lenore stood for what felt like the longest moment, so still and tense she thought she might shatter. It must be a dream, she thought again. If I just wait …
“You can put these on your feet,” the doctor said, handing her a pair of paper slippers. She’d never seen anything like it. Numbly she put them on. Her feet were marginally warmer but they made a slidey, rustling noise when she walked, and she felt as flimsy, as insubstantial as they were.
“I think I’ll just wait,” she said. Lenore sat motionless in the tired green three-seater with the chipped wooden armrests and flattened, tired cushions. The blanket was still pulled around her. A television was on across the room but she ignored it, as did most of the other patients, it seemed; they retreated into their own separate spaces while the broadcasting noises swirled around them like so much mist. Lenore fixed her mind on this thought: Trevor is coming soon to pick me up. He will have it out with the insurance people, who will sue the hospital, and justice will be done. It wasn’t the money; she simply didn’t want this to happen to anyone else.
He’ll be outraged, she thought. He’ll want to hit somebody. All that boarding-school boxing, you never got it out of a man, they were always doubling their fists and ready to lash out. But he’d be gentle with her, oh so gentle, he’d be loving and kind and after he got her home he’d bring her tea in bed with honey, a hot water bottle, would rub her feet and kiss her neck. Maybe it will be like that time, she thought. When she’s feeling better, when she’s completely over the operation. That one time she remembered so well. It was after Alex was born, a month or so, and Trevor had been so attentive, but there were his needs, you couldn’t get around it. He was a real gentleman, but the time comes.
But she’d been sore still. It had hurt to pee, to walk quickly, everything was so sensitive. It was a Saturday, no, a weekday; it seemed so long ago. He was home from work, had a touch of flu or something, but that was just an excuse. The baby was asleep in the next room and Julia was playing downstairs – oh, how she would organize those dolls, they each had a separate existence and character. Trevor was lying on the bed in his blue pyjamas, the old ones he didn’t like her to wash, they were already worn so thin and smooth, he was afraid they would fall apart. She’d just had her shower, walked into the room in her robe, let it fall off her as she closed the door.
It wouldn’t lock, wouldn’t stay closed. They had to be so quiet.
How he loved to look at her. You could tell in a man’s eyes. They could hear Julia singing something in the distance, stopped once because they were sure she was on her way up the stairs. But she wasn’t and they started again. It was just the way she wanted it and in the end she couldn’t keep quiet, she sobbed on him, it felt so good, and he laughed. He thought it was so funny, he laughed and hugged her, lit a cigarette, giggling, and stayed where he was, let her fall asleep on top of him.
She almost had the feeling again. She was within smelling distance of it, somehow, it seemed so close and real. He was coming to get her and he’d be gentle again because of what she’d been through. He might even try cooking a can of soup, serve her in bed with toast and a martini glass of milk. Lenore held herself in the blanket and waited for him to arrive.