The first time I was called to the hospital for Gloria, I went so casually I even stopped to grab a bagel on the way. This time I bolt from the office, shouting back to Andrea where I’ve gone and why, and race directly there. I’ve read enough about pneumonia in patients on ventilators, how common it is and how hard to fight, to know exactly how bad this could be.
Please, I think, please no. I’ve been through enough. We all have, with Anthony and everything. Please, let her be okay. Please let it all have meant something.
I don’t know who I’m begging, since what little belief I’d had in God vanished after Anthony’s death, but I beg anyhow all the way to the hospital.
I burst in through the front doors and slip on the freshly washed floor, only catching my balance by grabbing the edge of the information desk.
“You all right, dear?”
“No,” I say. “Not at all.”
The volunteer behind the desk gives a sympathetic nod that makes her thick curly gray hair bounce around her chubby face. “It’ll be all right. You want the fifth floor, third door on your left.”
Gloria’s on the fourth floor. “What?”
Her eyes widen. “You’re not here for the ED clinic?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She recoils. “I’m so sorry, dear, but you’re so thin and I thought…”
“I know where I’m going,” I say, not sure what she means by ED but not wanting to listen to her discuss my weight for another second, “and I only look thin to you.”
I storm off, leaving her fat self behind, and enter the elevator with a crowd of other people. Some demon inside me makes me check the floor directory for something called “ED clinic”. I don’t find it, but I do find what she must have meant.
Eating disorder clinic.
What does she know anyhow?
A bunch of us get off on the fourth floor, and as I walk forward someone bumps into me and again I nearly fall. I regain my balance and raise my eyes from the floor in time to look up over a woman walking toward me. Her bare knees below her green dress are bony, and her body under the dress is terrifyingly thin, her hipbones pushing against the fabric and her collarbones standing out sharply above it.
Her bones?
My bones.
To my shock and horror, I realize I’m looking into a mirror.
No wonder the woman at the information desk thought I had an eating disorder.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think I did too.
*****
I’ve gotten somewhat used to the sight of Gloria in her hospital bed, but she now looks flushed and uncomfortable, and her breath rhythm seems… wrong somehow even with her ventilator.
A nurse followed me in, and she says softly, “Be gentle with her, okay? Her breathing is scaring her, we think.”
I nod then turn to my sister. “Had a little setback?” I say, trying to sound unworried. “It’s okay, Gloria, you’re tough. You’ll fight it.”
“Good,” the nurse murmurs, then says more loudly, “Let me just set up a new feeding bag for Miss G here, and I’ll leave you two to chat. Oh, and when we called your parents they said they’ll be here in…” She glances at her watch. “About half an hour now.”
I nod, trying not to look as worried as I feel at the fact they specifically called in my parents on a day they’d been planning to catch up on things at home, and step back and watch as the nurse efficiently unattaches the old bag and sets it down on the end of the bed while she hangs the new one. Writing on the old one catches my eye, and I read, “Gloria Malloy, 700 calories, 3x/day”.
Gloria, unable to get out of bed, is taking in 2100 calories a day?
I stare at the bag, trying to get my head around this, until the nurse whisks it away. “There you go. Take it easy, ladies.”
She pats me on the shoulder with her back to Gloria, the sadness in her eyes sending terror through me, and leaves, and I take my chair beside the bed and try to push away the thought of how little I’m eating compared to Gloria. She needs the calories to help her fight the pneumonia. I need to not have them to do the same thing. Plus, I’m still functioning so I must be fine.
“I know you’ll be okay,” I say. “No question. You have to be.” Misery fills me. “I’ve already had the three troubles. You can’t be a fourth, it doesn’t work that way.”
Her eyes, duller than usual, lock onto my face and her eyebrows go up.
“I didn’t get the promotion,” I confess. “I tried so hard, but it didn’t happen.” I sigh. “Everything’s gone wrong. People think I have an eating disorder, Jaimi got the job instead of me, I can’t talk to Remy any more and I miss him…”
A sudden blaze of anger lights me up and I don’t even try to resist it. “It’s all gone wrong since you got hurt,” I burst out. “Everything. And I tried to figure out why you were there and I can’t. Why were you there? Why’d you lie to me and Leah, why were you out alone so late, why were you at the ferry at all? Nothing in your stuff is telling me anything, nobody seems to know… I can’t stand it. It’s out of my control and I can’t stand it and I need to know!”
Gloria shuts her eyes and a single tear slips out from beneath her lashes. This doesn’t stop me. “I have to know, Gloria, I do. I have to know what I did wrong.”
Her eyes fly open and she gives her head the tiniest shake.
“But I did. I must have. I’ve tried so hard, and you were getting better. But now you’re not. So what did I do?” Some part of me wonders how I’ve switched from ‘why were you there?’ to ‘what did I do?’ but the rest is too upset to care. ‘What did I do?’ is the one I really need answered, anyhow. It’s the only one I can fix.
Gloria tries to take a deeper breath and can’t, and I see fear in her eyes and I panic. “I can’t let you— I need to help. I don’t know what I did. You have to tell me. You tell me what happened and I’ll take care of it. I will, I’ll fix it. I’ll do anything. You just have to—”
“Valerie!”
I spin to see the nurse, not looking anywhere near as friendly as before.
“Valerie, what are you doing? We can hear you all the way down the hall.”
I hate that people can hear my desperation, and I feel my cheeks blaze with embarrassment at the thought, but I can’t stop talking. “I need to know why she was there. I need to help her, need to fix it. I have to—”
“You have to calm down,” she says, firmly but with sympathy in her voice. “I know you want answers, but Gloria’s in no shape to provide them right now, and frankly they don’t matter anyhow.”
I stare at her. “Of course they do.”
She shakes her head. “What matters is that Gloria recovers. Why she was there, what she was doing… none of that is worth upsetting her over. We need her to rest and relax and get her strength back.”
I have to admit this is true. “Right, and then I can find out what happened, why—”
“You can’t,” the nurse says bluntly. “If she wants to tell you she will, but you’re clinging to the wrong thing. Don’t worry about why she was there. Be glad she’s here now. Enjoy your time with her.”
She doesn’t say, “Because you might not have much more,” but I hear it in her voice.
I stand frozen, for one awful second allowing the possibility that nothing I can do will save Gloria, then turn and flee.