| |
A YEAR AGO LIFE WAS going great; one of Maggie’s papers was published in a biomedical journal, Advanced Techniques in Biology and Medicine, and Danny and Kevin were promoted to the highly classified lab which included a moderate raise. Danny started to spend less and less time in the apartment he shared with Kevin and spent most of his free time with Maggie at her place or with her parents. On one occasion while running errands he found himself pausing in front of a jewelry store and gazing at a selection of rings.
A month after Danny and Kevin’s promotion things began to sour. First Maggie’s dad, Arthur, began to feel run down and had an early check up, “Just to keep the ol’ lady off my case, not to mention the Burger Barn is within walking distance of the doc’s office.” Maggie’s mother Joyce had banned Arthur from the Burger Barn due to the incredible amount of calories in even their smallest (1-1/2-pound) entrees. She’d heard rumors the “Colossal Burger” went into four digits. All Burger Barn burgers came loaded with the works and a side of fries or onion rings; a measly 50 cents more also got you nachos with chili; and a shake or malt was a given as a beverage. No Burger Barn customer would dare order water or, God forbid, a diet anything. If a cardiologist hoped to buy a new vacation home in the Hamptons, this was a dream meal for his or her patients, not to mention the fact of the Burger Barn’s proximity to the Physician’s Group. Joyce also had a feeling that if she spent enough time and energy, she would be able to track the actual owners of the Burger Barn to the Physician’s Group.
Arthur had tests run regarding his weight loss and lack of appetite. He told the doctor that he hated to come in just for a lousy back or a belly ache, but when he didn’t want to tear into Joyce’s dinner’s, he figured something was up. Sure enough, pancreatic cancer was what was up and in a horrifyingly short amount of time, Arthur was gone.
Maggie being an only child, had to make all the funeral arrangements. With Danny’s help, she was able to navigate through the worst of it with only half of the cursing and much less violence than her friends had predicted. Danny surprised everyone by handling all the little details. He stood by Maggie and Joyce and amazed everyone.
Six months later, things were getting back to a somewhat regular routine. Joyce was back to smothering Danny with nearly the same enthusiasm as she had before Arthur’s death. She was also back to driving Maggie crazy with helpful kitchen advice Maggie had tuned out years ago. But just as things were returning to normal, life once again had to bitch slap the Penny family.
On a Thursday, Joyce had just left Kitchen Heaven, a grocery store, and was in a foul mood. She had a blinding headache that came out of nowhere, and the spacey checkout clerk hadn’t helped; she just kept staring at Joyce like she was speaking a foreign language and kept asking her to repeat herself. When Joyce finally got out of the parking lot, nothing looked familiar. “What the hell is going on? I’ve been this way a hundred times. Why doesn’t anything look familiar?” Her blinding headache went from pretty damn annoying to white-hot pain and then blissfully gone.
Maggie was called out of her advanced biochemistry class and was notified that her mother had been in a car accident on the highway. While driving at light speed to the hospital, Maggie left a message on Danny’s phone: “Mom is in ER, car accident, on way to hospital now.”
Danny received the call, thought for a second, brightened slightly and called Maggie back. “Hey, whose Mom? Our Mom, or my mom?” Danny hesitantly, hopefully asked, and then immediately regretted thinking and saying that aloud.
“Our Mom. Almost there, can you come?”
“I’m in the Lexi parking lot, leaving now.”
“Danny...?
“Yes, I’m here. I guess I should’ve told someone that I was leaving. Kevin was on break when you called. I’ll call him right now. See you soon. Maggie??”
“Yes.”
“Um well you know, um well you know...”
“Yes, Danny, I love you too.”
Danny pulled into the ER lot, sat for a second, put the volume on high to whatever was playing on the iPod, gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could, and chanted “You can do this, you can do this” over and over again. He then got out of the car carefully, did two slow knee bends, and then threw up in some nearby bushes.
“God, why did I have spaghetti for lunch?” he gasped as a mother and two small children walked past him toward the entrance. “Mommy, Mommy, can we have spaghetti?” asked the smaller of the two youngsters as his horrified mother, having witnessed the lunch tossing, hustled him on.
“No sweetheart, I don’t think we’ll ever have spaghetti again.” With that, the ER doors swallowed up her and her youngsters.
Danny stuck his tongue out at their retreating backs and slunk back into his car for more chanting. He also hunted around for a breath mint or reasonable substitute, settling for a dust-covered cough drop he found stuck to the interior of the glove compartment. Its paper had become one with the lozenge but, after scraping the wrapping off of the unknown flavored cough drop with a dirty fingernail, Danny popped it in, immediately decided that licking the floor mats would’ve been more sanitary and definitely more flavorful.
Once again Danny breathed deep and chanted. He gripped the steering wheel as if it was trying to escape out the window. “OK, I can do this. I can do this for Mom and most of all for Maggie.”
He exited the car and strode quickly and purposefully into the ER feeling more in control of himself. He explained to the young man at the desk he was looking for a patient, Joyce Penny, and her daughter Maggie. The volunteer looked down at his computer, pushed his tortoiseshell glasses up on his pug nose, looked at a clipboard on his desk, then back at the monitor. The volunteer, whose nametag read “Prescott” asked for Joyce’s name again and then for Maggie’s. “They have the same last name, Prescott It’s Penny, Prescott,” said Danny trying to sound helpful but sounding a hairs breath from a bad Jack Torrance impression. “Penny like the currency, Penny like ‘in for a penny, in for a pound,’ like a penny arcade, like the girl from Lost in Space” He then slammed down a pocketful of change onto the counter spilling Tiger football paraphernalia everywhere. “See, these coppery things. Pennies. But only one. Penny.”
“Oh, Penny. Like Penny Widmore from Lost,” said Prescott. “No, we don’t have any woman named Penny here.”
“The last name is Penny, not the first. Joyce the name is Joyce.”
“Penny, Joyce, Penny, Joyce,” Prescott muttered to himself while drumming his fingers on the table. He looked at Danny and then, with brow furrowed and lips pursed, sighed deeply and punched some keys on the keyboard. “I’m not seeing anyone with the last name Joyce-Penny. What was the first name?”
“That’s it, I’m coming over, Pisscott!” Danny shouted as he started to vault over the counter.
Just then, he saw Maggie coming out of a doorway at the end of the hall. “Maggie!” he shouted and ran toward her, but not before ripping the tail off the MU stuffed tiger sitting in the center of MU memorabilia on Prescott’s desk.
“Geez, I would’ve ripped Prescott’s head off ages ago,” remarked the twenty-something man who was behind Danny in line to the elderly woman standing behind him.
“Just wait until it’s my turn,” she replied. Prescott had just given her directions to the ladies’ room that had led her straight to the boiler room. Something in the woman’s expression and the way she was holding her wooden cane caused the twenty- something’s smile to freeze on his face, and he slowly shuffled a few feet away from her.
“I was trying to find you, and numb-nuts at the desk couldn’t find Mom’s name.”
Maggie grabbed Danny’s hand and led him into a small waiting room containing three chairs and desk.
“Oh, God, no Maggie. Not the small room. Nothing good ever comes from the small room.”
Maggie didn’t say a word. She just held onto Danny’s hand and gave an almighty squeeze.
“We should leave this room. If we aren’t in the small room, then no bad news can get to us. Right Mags? So what do ya say we leave here and find Mom and let her know we are here, and then she’ll know, and before anyone knows it she’ll be fine. Right? She’ll be fine because Mom is indestructible. If she survived you for the past what, 60, how old are you now, 65 years? You’re collecting social security checks now, aren’t you? Maggie the cougar, that’s what they call you at the university. Didn’t you know? Cougar Penny and I’m the....,I don’t know the prey?’
“You’re rambling, babe,” laughed Maggie. “Thanks, I really need you right now. For your information, I’m two years younger than you. Physically you just turned 33, but mentally I think you reverted back to 12 years old.”
The door opened and, just as Danny predicted, nothing good was ever said in a small ER waiting room.
“Miss Penny, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I’m afraid your mother passed away before her car came to a complete stop in the accident. It appears to have been a massive stroke. It was all very quick. She ran off the road, and her car came to a stop at the base of a tree according to paramedics on the scene. They did everything they could for her at the scene, but they were unable to bring her back. I’m very sorry.”
Danny could hear someone talking but the voice turned into a soft hum, and all he could see was a blurry white coat with a clipboard. Does everyone around here have a fucking clipboard? Before you can begin work, you must have your clipboard with you at all times and a stack of papers. I bet there aren’t even any medical documents clipped on that thing, it’s all probably crosswords or Sudoku puzzles, Danny thought as his vision and hearing shut down.
“Danny, she’s gone,” cried Maggie with tears streaking down her face.
“She’s not she can’t be, don’t you see Doctor, Joyce can’t be dead, for God’s sake, her husband died six months ago. She can’t be gone too. The woman was a freaking dynamo, she was in great shape, she ate healthily. Tell me how someone in her fifties who is in great shape and eats healthy can die. It can’t happen. You’re wrong. Go look and make sure you have the right woman. Christ you have the wrong woman. The brain donor at the front desk couldn’t find her, so she must not be here. Maggie don’t you see, it was all a big mistake. She is probably home right now cooking something with a million vegetables in it, and we’re sitting here like idiots.”
Danny grabbed Maggie’s hand and tried pulling her out of the room.
“No, baby, she’s with Dad now,” Maggie said softly and pulled Danny to her.
“I’m sorry,” said the white-coated blurry doctor, but if Prescott, and when you said ‘brain donor’, that could only be one person. If Prescott told you he couldn’t find Mrs. Penny, then she obviously is here. If he had found her name, then I would suggest we double check.”
“Why would you keep someone like that, even if they were a volunteer?” asked Maggie as she comforted Danny.
“Offspring of one of the hospital’s largest donor. Has, aspirations for medical school, despite being, from the shallow end of the gene pool,” said the white coat to his clipboard.
“Oh, I see,” said, Maggie. “Well, Danny, honey would you like to see Mom?”
“Yes, yes I would.” And with that Danny the organizer again resurfaced and slowly came to life.