14
SAINT LUKE’S HOSPITAL
“You’re lucky,” the orderly told the Cochrans. “The Saturday night massacre doesn’t start until six. You can go in now.” A nurse opened the door and waved them into the examining area.
Cassy looked back to Alexandra. “I’ll wait out here.” Cassy nodded and went on with Michael.
“Pretty busy on Saturdays,” Alexandra said to the orderly. He nodded, scribbling on a clipboard. He looked up. He looked down. He looked up.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” Alexandra said. “I just moved here. From Kansas.”
He rested his elbows on the standing desk and gave her his full attention. “Ever run into Auntie Em?”
Alexandra smiled. “Yes. She’s very nice.” She scanned the waiting room. It was not a particularly uplifting room. But then, it is very hard to enliven any room whose purpose is to take in the ill, the maimed and the less than sane straight from the streets. It was an oblong room, with the orderly at one end, the door to the examining room on his left and the glass door to the outside on his right. Near the glass door, suspended from the ceiling, was a large color television set which, at this moment, was blasting a baseball game. The right wall of the room was made of a lively blue glazed brick, along the upper part of which were windows looking out at St. John the Divine across 113th Street. The left wall had a large glass partition where administrators and medical people were on view. The floor, though astonishingly clean, was still—no matter what they did—the same linoleum that one comes to associate with any form of American incarceration, from schools to prisons. There were many, many plastic chairs and the people sitting in them did not seem very happy, but neither did they seem very unhappy.
“Are all these people waiting to see a doctor?” Alexandra asked.
The orderly chuckled and pointed his pencil with discreet subtlety. “That one there,” he said in a low voice, “drops in when he’s lonely. That lady decided today’s the day she wants a physical. Those three are waiting for someone inside. That gal—the one with the sunglasses—is waiting around to see if she can buy any of the patients’ prescriptions from them. I have to wait until she tries before I can throw her out. And see the guy in the back?”
“Yes.”
“He’s writing a novel about a hospital. And that one—the girl on the other side—she’s working on her master’s degree on urban health care.” He smiled at Alexandra. “But don’t worry,” he said, looking at his watch, “we’ll be up to our necks in patients in about an hour.”
“And then...”
“And then,” he said, “the Saturday night massacre officially begins and it will be standing room only—until about nine tomorrow morning.”
Alexandra scanned the room again.
“Do you have enough doctors?” His head kicked back with a snort. “Ever see MASH?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what it’s like in this part of town. We don’t need more doctors, we need less wounded. Every since Crack Alley opened up—” He ran his hand through his hair. “You don’t live in Brooklyn Heights, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I swear I know you from somewhere.” He tapped his pencil. “Maybe that means I should know you.”
Alexandra smiled. “I guess I’ll sit down and wait for my friends now.”
The orderly bit his lip a moment, shrugged to himself, and went back to his papers.
Alexandra sat along the brick wall and watched the people behind the glass. In a minute or two a long wail of pain came from the direction of the examining rooms. It was a woman’s cry. When it stopped, the people in the waiting room uncomfortably exchanged looks but then, a moment later, lapsed back into their private worlds.
After a bit Alexandra got up to walk around. Through the glass door she saw an ambulance pull into the carport outside. She walked to the door and watched as a stretcher was unloaded and carried inside, a young woman trailing behind it.
Alexandra sat down again and tried to watch the baseball game.
“Channel 6 news!” the orderly suddenly yelled.
Alexandra turned. The orderly snapped his fingers and pointed at her. The entire waiting room looked at her. She got up and reapproached the desk.
“Alice, right?”
Alexandra shook her head.
The glass window slid open. “Alexandra Waring,” said a nurse, poking her head out.
“That’s it!” the orderly said, pounding the desk.
“The lady on the news,” the woman wearing sunglasses said, standing up.
“Who?” asked the old man who was lonely.
“In the subway ads,” the novelist called out.
The nurse came out to get Alexandra’s autograph, a request that was soon echoed by many of the people in the waiting room. The orderly donated his pencil and some paper and a corner of his desk.
“I was just talking to her,” the orderly was saying to the nurse. “I knew I knew her face—”
The door to the examining rooms opened and the small figure of a woman cautiously emerged. She briefly looked up at the commotion, at Alexandra, her eyes and face mottled with red. She quickly lowered her head, then circled around the people and slipped out the glass door.
A moment later a doctor’s head appeared around the door. Looking around, he said, “Clem—did you see Mrs. DiSantos?”
The orderly looked around. “No.”
“If you see her, tell her I need to see her before she leaves,” the doctor said. He frowned at the little autographing session. “What the heck is this? Clem, get these people to move outside. This isn’t Hollywood.”
Alexandra promised everyone an autograph on condition that they take their seats and be quiet. It worked and she went to work, moving from chair to chair until she met a woman who said she didn’t want her stupid autograph, and so then Alexandra reseated herself and tried to watch the baseball game.
Loud voices were emanating from the glassed-in area behind her. She turned in her chair to see the woman who had climbed out of the ambulance before. And then Cassy landed in the chair next to Alexandra, startling her.
“His nose isn’t broken,” Cassy reported, sighing. “They’re just giving him a couple of stitches in his cheek.”
“He’s okay,” Alexandra said.
Cassy nodded. “Yes, he’s okay.”
“Clem,” the doctor said from around the door, “did you find Mrs. DiSantos?”
Cassy sat up.
“She’s not here, Dr. Karrel.”
Cassy jumped out of her chair and went up to the orderly. She said something to him. He said something and then went back to the examination area. In a minute he reappeared and said something to Cassy. She drew her hand up to her mouth.
The woman from the ambulance came out of the door (looking very upset), crossed the room behind Cassy and went out the glass door. Alexandra saw Cassy cover half of her face with her hand and hurried over to her side.
“What’s wrong? Is—?”
“It’s not Michael,” Cassy said. I just—when they said Mrs. —I wondered—”
“Cassy?” Alexandra had taken hold of her arm.
“Our cleaning woman,” Cassy said, dropping her hand. “Her husband just died. In there. Just a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, no,” Alexandra said. “I’m sorry.”
A mother came in with a little boy screaming at the top of his lungs. The women moved out of the way so the mother could talk to the orderly.
“I didn’t know him,” Cassy said. “But Rosanne—she’s had such—” She sighed. “I can’t believe it.” She shook her head.
“Cassy,” a man’s voice said. They both turned.
“Howard,” Cassy said.
“I just left Henry. He’s going to Skipper’s. Is your husband—”
“He’s fine. He’s just getting some stitches.” Alexandra’s head was turning back and forth with the exchange.
“Is Amanda here?”
“Amanda?” Cassy said.
“They were bringing in a friend of hers—oh, what’s her name?—a nice old lady who’s a neighbor of hers. She fainted at the bookstall and they were bringing her here.”
“In an ambulance?” Alexandra asked him.
“Yeah.”
“I think I saw her,” Alexandra said. “If it was she, she just left.”
“Left for where?”
“I don’t know.” Alexandra pointed to the glass partition. “She was in there, before, talking to those people.” Howard walked over there.
“Poor Rosanne,” Cassy murmured.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me.” She yanked the clip from her hair, stuck it in her mouth, put her hair up, and clipped it back into place. “I wonder if I should go and try to find her.”
“Tomorrow might be better,” Alexandra said.
Sigh. “You’re probably right.” She looked at Alexandra as if she had just noticed that she was there. “You were wonderful to come up with us, but you should go on home now.”
“No,” Alexandra said.
Cassy looked at her.
“Unless, of course,” Alexandra said, “you’d like me to leave.”
Cassy smiled slightly. “God, no,” she said, touching her arm and turning away.
Howard came back. “Amanda’s at the main admitting desk up the block. You sure everything’s okay?”
“Yes,” Cassy said on an intake of breath. “Michael’s fine.” She hesitated and then took Howard’s arm and steered him toward the glass door. Alexandra watched as Cassy talked to him. Howard’s face blanched and he turned away from her for a moment. He shook his head, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose. Then he took off his glasses and wiped his face with a bandanna from his pocket. They talked a minute more and he left.
Cassy said something to the orderly and came back to Alexandra. “Get some fresh air with me, will you?” she asked.
They went outside and looked one way up the street and then down the other. Leaning against Alexandra, Cassy said, “I really just want to sit down anywhere but in there for a minute.” They settled on the curb outside the ambulance carport.
“Look at your stockings,” Cassy said.
Alexandra’s knees looked like the remains of a nuclear blast, with huge runs streaking up and down.
“And your beautiful dress,” Cassy sighed. She patted Alexandra’s hand and then held it. “Did you ever think, when you were in Kansas, that one day you’d be sitting on the sidewalk outside an emergency room in New York City, holding hands with the station manager of WST while she had a nervous breakdown?”
Alexandra brought her hand back to massage the back of Cassy’s neck. “Yes,” she said.
Cassy closed her eyes and softly laughed. “Oh, Lord, that feels good.” After a little bit she said, “That’s enough, thank you,” and let her head fall against Alexandra’s shoulder. In a moment she opened her eyes. “What’s going to happen to us all, I wonder?”
“I don’t know,” Alexandra said quietly.
Cassy closed her eyes again and they sat there like that awhile.
The glass door opened and Michael emerged, featuring a massive “X” of adhesive tape over his nose. He stood there, blinking, holding a cold pack to his cheek.
“Cassy,” Alexandra said, and Cassy’s eyes flew open and the two women got up to meet him.
At the main admissions desk, Amanda was in such a tangle of fear and despair that it took nearly ten minutes for Howard to make out what had happened.
They arrived at the hospital.
The doctor saw Mrs. Goldblum.
The doctor told Amanda Mrs. Goldblum appeared to be suffering from malnutrition and should be hospitalized for a week. The nurse told Amanda there was a problem with Mrs. Goldblum’s medical coverage.
Amanda told them she would take care of Mrs. Goldblum’s expenses.
They told Amanda to go to the admissions desk in the hospital.
At the admissions desk they told Amanda that Mrs. Goldblum had fallen in the examination room and had broken her hip.
Amanda was crying.
Howard led her away from the desk, forced her down into a chair and tried to calm her down. Amanda had to believe that everything would be all right. They would take care of everything. Mrs. Goldblum would be fine. What happened often happened with older women, and they should be grateful it was something that could be fixed.
“But, Howard,” Amanda wailed, “she was starving. Don’t you understand? She was starving to death.” She drew her legs up in the chair, bound herself up like a ball and sobbed.
Howard got up to talk to a nurse at the desk. He got on the phone with the doctor in the emergency room. He talked with the nurse some more and then went back to Amanda.
“Mrs. Goldblum was supposed to rest in the examining room until they moved her upstairs to a room. She said she would, but when the nurse left her, she apparently tried to leave, fainted, and fell. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
“I’ve got to see her,” Amanda said.
“She’s sedated now,” he said, sitting in the chair next to her. “They’re setting her hip and are going to move her into a room. You can see her first thing in the morning.” Pause. “Amanda,” he said softly, touching her knee, “she’s going to be fine. Really. Don’t be frightened. She will be all right.”
Amanda clapped her hands over her face. “How could I not have noticed?” she said. “How?”
“She wasn’t starving, Amanda. The nurse says it often happens with older people who live alone. They just stop eating balanced meals. Malnutrition doesn’t mean she was starving—just that she wasn’t eating properly. At least here, in the hospital, they can build her up and make everyone aware of the problem—most of all, Mrs. Goldblum.”
Amanda uncovered her face and Howard took the used Kleenex out of her hand, tossed it into the ashtray and handed her the bandanna from his back pocket. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
“Amanda.”
She looked at him.
“We’ve got to make some decisions about her room. We need to talk to the nurses. Do you think you can?’ She nodded, wiping at her eyes again. The nurse was waiting for them with a pile of forms. “Mrs. Goldblum doesn’t have any medical coverage,” Howard said, reconfirming the fact as it had been told to him.
The nurse nodded. “She’s not registered with Medicare or Medicaid. In fact, she doesn’t appear to be registered with Social Security.”
Howard looked at Amanda and she shook her head, holding the bandanna against her mouth.
“I think,” the nurse said, glancing at her colleague, “we can straighten this out while she’s here—technically speaking, she has no coverage whatsoever, nor, as she told them downstairs in emergency, does she have any means of paying.”
Amanda muffled a sob with the bandanna. Howard put his arm around her. “You heard what she said—we’ll straighten this out.”
“She had no money, Howard,” Amanda whimpered, looking away.
Howard looked at the nurse. “So what now?”
“Well,” the nurse said, trying to sound cheerful, “our policy is to help whoever needs our help.” She smiled. “So we’re not the biggest moneymaking hospital around, but”—she looked to Amanda—”we are one of the best. Really. Your friend will receive excellent care here.”
Howard nodded. “What kind of room can you put her in?”
“Well,” the nurse said, “under the circumstances, we’ll have to put her in one of the min-turn wards.”
“What’s that?” Howard asked. Amanda started to shiver and he pulled her tighter against him.
“An open ward.”
“No,” Amanda said. “Put her in a private room.”
“Well,” the nurse said with caution, “what we need for that is some sort of—”
“I’ll take care of whatever expenses there are,” Amanda said through the bandanna.
“What?” the nurse asked, leaning forward.
Amanda lowered the bandanna. “I said, I’ll pay for everything.” The nurse and Howard exchanged glances as Amanda looked down at her sweat pants and frowned. “I have nothing with me—what do you need?”
“Um—” the nurse said.
“American Express?” Amanda asked. “I have a gold card. I have a gold MasterCard. Dear God,” she said, voice breaking, “I’ve got all the money in the world.” She threw herself against Howard’s chest and he brought his arms up around her. “Why didn’t she tell me?” Amanda wept.