“I remember something Mrs. Woolf said to me once,” I said to my mother. She wasn’t even listening. She was hurrying—running ahead of me—taking the hospital steps two at a time. “Mother, will you wait? I want to tell you something—”
“Now?”
“It’s important. I was talking to Mrs. Woolf—”
“Oh, damn, I’m all turned around,” my mother said. She stopped just inside the hospital doors. “Which way is Emergency?”
“It’s downstairs. We have to take the elevator.”
“I must be losing my mind,” my mother said. We went over to the elevators, and she punched the down button and we waited.
“Anyway,” I said, “she was talking about Jimmy—”
“Who was?”
“Mrs. Woolf. Mrs. Woolf and I were talking about Jimmy once,” I said. “And she told me Jimmy always bounces back.”
“Oh . . . Morgan . . .”
“I’m just telling you what she said.”
We took the elevator downstairs and hurried down the hall. I was getting a stitch in my side from walking so fast. We passed a lounge Jimmy and I had played cards in while we waited to take my aunt to dinner one night. He had beaten me roundly—he always did. I still owed him $4.80.
We turned a corner. My aunt was sitting there holding Mrs. Woolf’s hands and talking to her. I knew by the way she was talking that Jimmy was dead. Nobody had to tell me.
“No,” my mother said. “Oh, no . . .”
She went over and put her arms around Mrs. Woolf and I sort of shuffled off into the background. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what to do. Jimmy dead? I had just seen him a few hours earlier. I was still wearing his jacket. How could he be dead? I turned around and walked back down the hall. I didn’t know where I was going—I was just automatically walking. I went around a corner and bumped into a nurse—my aunt’s friend, Mrs. Getz. She tried to put her arm around my shoulders, but I pulled away and kept walking. I went into the lounge and sat down on a couch and tried to make my hands stop shaking and my heart slow down. I couldn’t think.
Suddenly I felt my aunt’s hand on the back of my neck. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said.
“I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.” I didn’t like not being in control. I know I place too much importance on the way I appear to the outside world, and I keep things inside too much. I don’t like to give pieces of myself away. There are very few people I’m willing to do that for. Jimmy was one. My aunt is one.
I looked up at her. She seemed very concerned. “I’ll get through this,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”
“Of course you will.”
My mother walked into the lounge and stopped and looked at me. Her mascara had run and made black half-moons under her eyes. I wanted to cry too, but I couldn’t. It was like there was a curtain of glass between the part of my brain that knew Jimmy was dead and the part that could feel anything about it.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said. I pushed my hands down into my pockets so no one would see them shaking.
“I think we’ll quiet you down a little,” my aunt said. “Betty?” She looked across the hall to Mrs. Getz. “I want to get ten milligrams of diazepam i.m. into Morgan.”
“I’ll go ask one of the emergency room nurses for it,” Mrs. Getz said.
My mother sat down in a chair and put her head in her hands. “Enid’s talking long distance to Jack,” she said. “He’s catching a late flight home from Cleveland, and I’m going to stay with her until he gets here.”
“Will she be all right?”
“Enid? I don’t know. I don’t see how she’s going to live through this, I honestly don’t.”
“I want to know how it happened,” I said. “I want to know how he died.”
“Oh, Morgan, no,” my mother said.
“I want to KNOW!”
My aunt didn’t say anything right away. She sat down on the couch and looked at me. “Jimmy was thrown about a hundred feet from his car. He was in a coma when they brought him in, and he never regained consciousness. He died of massive head injuries.”
“He was in a coma? When did he die?”
“About fifteen minutes ago.”
“Did you see him?”
“I was right there,” my aunt said. “I held his hand.”
“Where is he now?” I asked. “The body, I mean. Where is it?”
My mother took a bunched-up Kleenex out of her purse and blew her nose. She was crying again. “Loey . . . why is she doing this?”
“I have to know,” I whispered to my aunt. “Where is he?”
“The body is in the emergency room,” she said. “The mortuary is going to pick it up.”
“Oh.”
Mrs. Getz walked into the lounge and handed my aunt a capped hypodermic needle. I think I was a little nuts.
“I’m not going to take it off,” I said.
My mother stopped sniffling and looked at me blankly. “Take what off?”
“The jacket,” I said. “It’s Jimmy’s. I’m not going to take it off.”
My mother looked from me to my aunt. There was a mixture of confusion and worry in her face.
“It hasn’t caught up with her yet,” my aunt said. She unbuttoned the cuff of Jimmy’s jacket and pushed up the sleeve. “You don’t have to take off his jacket until you want to, honey.”
“My heart,” I said. “I can feel my heart.”
“I’m going to give you some sedation,” my aunt said, “and it’s going to make your heart stop pounding . . . and calm you down so the shaking will stop.” She tore open this little packet Mrs. Getz handed her and took out an alcohol pad and swabbed my arm.
“I don’t want that,” I said. I looked at my aunt. “I mean it. I don’t want a shot.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie—this is something you just don’t have any choice about.” She uncapped the needle and squirted a little fountain of liquid into the air. “Okay? It only hurts for a second.” She brought the needle down against my arm. I looked away. Damn you, Jimmy, I thought. Where are you and your lousy jokes when I need you? I felt a sharp sting, then bit by bit the shaking stopped. My heart slowed. I was able to breathe and see.
“It feels funny,” I said. “Like I’m . . . floating or something.”
“Mm-hmm,” my aunt said. She handed the empty hypodermic needle to Mrs. Getz and looked at me. “Are you feeling a little sleepy yet?”
“Sort of.”
“I’m going to take you home with me tonight, all right?” She pulled the sleeve of Jimmy’s jacket down and buttoned the cuff at my wrist. “Betty . . . would you have someone bring my car around?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Getz said.
My aunt put her arms around me and pulled me against her white coat. “Fay, do you want me to have someone drive you and Enid home?”
“No—we’ll be all right.” My mother cleared her throat. I could tell she was trying really hard to pull herself together. “Loey . . . she’s okay, isn’t she? For tonight, I mean.”
“. . . a walloping dose of a tranquilizer . . . she’ll sleep through the night . . .”
“And then?”
“. . . rough . . . for Enid, too . . .”
I could barely sort out what they were saying. I tried hard to focus on my mother, tried hard to concentrate.
“. . . should be getting back to Enid,” my mother said. She stood up and came over and kissed me.
“Fay . . . try not to worry. . . . I’ll call you in the morning. . . .”
My mother nodded. I must have slept: The next thing I knew, my aunt was shifting me from her shoulder, my mother was gone, and Mrs. Getz was standing there holding my aunt’s coat and medical bag and purse.
“Okay, come on,” my aunt said. “Let’s go home.” She took her coat from Mrs. Getz and threw it over my shoulders.
“I can’t walk,” I said. “My legs feel funny.”
“Make your knees stiff,” my aunt said. “Come on now. . . . Mrs. Getz and I have got you. . . .” We walked out of the hospital and up some steps to the car. “Betty, one more thing,” my aunt said. “Give my housekeeper a call and tell her we’re on the way.”
“I’ll call her right away,” Mrs. Getz said. She opened the door, and I slid onto the front seat while my aunt went around and got in on the other side.
“Aunt Lo, are those new?” I asked. “Your earrings—did you get them for Christmas?”
“Mm-hmm.” She reached over and pulled my seat belt across me and buckled it.
“Jimmy gave me tickets for a play next Tuesday,” I said. “What should I do with them?”
“Oh, honey.” She started the car. “Don’t worry about it now.”
Mrs. Rassin came out to the car as soon as we pulled into the drive. She opened the door on my side, and I could see her eyes were red rimmed and watery.
“Dr. Hackett . . . I just can’t believe this has happened.”
“I know,” my aunt said. “Give me a hand here, will you?”
“Is she all right?”
“A little unsteady,” my aunt said. “I sedated her. Is the bed in the guest room made up?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Rassin said.
The covers on the bed were turned back. My aunt sat me down on the bed and pulled her coat off my shoulders.
“Aunt Lo . . . Jimmy’s really dead?”
“Yes, honey.”
“You’re a doctor,” I said. “You’ve seen people die before.”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever get used to it?”
“No.” She bent down and unzipped my boots and pulled them off.
“Dr. Hackett,” Mrs. Rassin said, “I just put some coffee on.”
“How about something a little stronger?”
“I’ll get you a drink.”
“Come on, lie back,” my aunt said. She pushed me down against the pillows. “I want you to give that shot a chance to work.”
“I don’t feel sad or anything,” I said. “Is that wrong?”
“No, honey, it’s not wrong.”
“I don’t feel anything at all.”
Everyone had gone to pieces except me. Mrs. Woolf and my mother and Mrs. Rassin. Even my aunt. As soon as she pulled the covers up around me, she turned out the light and sat down on the bed. I saw the flare from her cigarette lighter.
She was smoking again.