C H A P T E R • 16
Harlem Hospital was an experience in sensory overload. A drunk maybe ranted, although I’m not sure what that is, and definitely raved, on a bench in the corner where nobody was paying him any mind. He was wet and swollen and seemed to me to need hospitalization.
Somebody’s grandmother was sitting slumped on a chair looking like she was asleep. But how unlikely is it to come out of your house to go to sleep in the ER? I hoped she wasn’t dead. At least she wasn’t making noise. Everybody else seemed to need to moan or holler about something. And, even knowing my neighborhood hospital is famous for successfully treating gunshots and other trauma, I couldn’t imagine. There was too much opportunity for disaster. I kept slipping under my senses to occupy the place where dread lived. The herd of police was growing and getting louder and they were making it worse. It would have been a good time to rob a bodega way south of 135th Street.
Viola showed up and I watched her stamp in flat shoes across the tile floor to the window where two nurses sat. They let her go around to the back where they wouldn’t let me go. I heard her back there yelling.
When she came out, she was holding her jacket, and she sashayed slowly now in front of the watching cops, like the point was to show them her ass in the tight jeans and the skin on her back and shoulders—high yellow, red-boned contrasting against her off-the-shoulder black sweater.
“Drop this trank. It’ll help you keep a lid on it,” she said in her deep singer’s voice and she held the big pill in one palm. Her nails were a startling red around a little cup of water.
I felt it coming out as a scream. “A lid on what? What did they say?”
She sighed. “Honey, to calm you down. I think he’s going to be good as new. You know I’m psychic.” And she averted her eyes.
The instinct of the psychic? I took the pill and I had to make a fist around the empty paper cup with both hands to keep them from around her neck.
“Why are you here anyway?”
“I heard about the shooting at the Kat and I didn’t want you to be here alone. One of the nurses at the desk over there is a regular at the bar. She let me go into the back and talk to them and they gave me the four-one-one. Said the bullet went into his shoulder and didn’t come out. But it didn’t hit the artery.”
I felt the next breath calming me a little and took a few more with the same intention.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
“Obsidian said he was investigating Cecelia’s accident and I was going to give him some documents she left about the bank. But the bank paper was stolen out of the safe. And whoever did it shot Obsidian.”
“Bless his heart.”
Hearing her say the blessing thing connected me to all the women in my life who say it at such times and it gave me my tiny share of comfort.
But then I was up, pacing, distracted by the disturbing possibilities swirling around in my mind.
She patted the seat beside her. “Pearl, you sit back down.”
“Do you understand I can’t just sit here?”
“Do you understand you can’t do anything else?”
“Viola, do not start your bullshit. Not tonight. In fact, why don’t you go back to the bar. I think I’d rather sit here alone.”
“I can’t leave. My being here can help both of you. You’ll see. And I need to be here when we find out he’s going to be well.”
In truth, I know acting and her routine of concern was not half bad, nervous and full of flutter. I sat and I breathed.
“I knew it was something important when my new bartender gave me the message you called on a Wednesday,” she said. “Your father had me trained not to bother him when he was putting his paper to bed.” She stopped. “God, I miss that man.” Her voice caught in a little sob.
“I miss him too.”
Blah, blah blah is what else she said as far as I could tell. And I just sat. And I hated everybody.
Finally, a doctor went out of his way to find me and made me ashamed of myself for what I was thinking about my neighborhood hospital.
“He was lucky. The bullet is deep but high in his shoulder. I was able to relieve the resulting hematoma,” he said. “We’ll operate to remove the bullet as soon as he’s stable.”
“Can I see him?”
“Not yet,” he said. And he turned back to the room full of his responsibility.
“I would like a drink, Pearl. Can I come over to the house for a drink?”
“Yes,” I said because I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.