On Wednesday Rebecca threw herself into her work at the office. An upswing of flu and strep throat was making the autumn rounds. Children, their mothers, and elderly women colonized her waiting room. By noon, Iris, usually fresh-faced and perky, was flushed from the endless caravan of cranky patients.
Iris usually took an hour for lunch at one of the local restaurants, but today she and Rebecca had brought sandwiches and ate in Rebecca’s private office.
They left the door of the office suite unlocked so people could walk in and sit down, though no one was there to greet them. Iris never scheduled appointments between twelve and one, insisting they needed a break.
At 12:40, Iris sauntered to the washroom down the hall. A few minutes later she slunk back.
“You won’t believe this. The waiting room’s full. They must’ve come early for their appointments.”
Rebecca finished her coffee and stood up. “It’s a dangerous precedent, but let’s start early.”
Iris shook her blonde head in disapproval, but stood to follow Rebecca. “They’ll think they can come in whenever they want.”
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. Rebecca swabbed a lot of throats for culture and prescribed antibiotics for people with obvious infections.
When the last patient had left, she realized she hadn’t called Susan all day, or spoken to Ben. She rummaged in her purse for her wallet and pulled out the slip of paper on which she’d scribbled Jeff Herman’s number. What was the point of calling her? Rebecca doubted anything had changed since yesterday. Susan would still refuse to speak to Ben. Who would still not understand her anger or how to deal with it. Part of Rebecca thought her sister was ungrateful for what she had. Had she herself ever been that angry with David? They hadn’t been married long enough. Theirs would always be a storybook marriage because her prince had died young. What would she give up to have David back again? Her career? Her self-esteem? Her right arm?
The anniversary of his death had passed in October, shortly before the Jewish New Year. She had lit the twenty-four-hour Yahrzeit candle in its glass base and placed it on the stovetop. For a few moments she’d stood clutching the edge of the counter, watching the flame flicker in the darkening kitchen. This was all that was left of him, then. Shadows on the enamel. Pain like a sword through the heart. And images that came unsummoned. David setting up his easel in the backyard and painting a tangle in the garden. A moody piece she had always loved. Down in the basement now along with all the other paintings she couldn’t bear to look at.
She sat down near Iris at the adjoining desk behind the front counter. A mound of paperwork awaited them.
“How’s the baby?” Iris asked while they both worked filling out forms.
“Holding her own. She’s a fighter.”
Iris smiled sideways at her and nodded, her blonde hair held up in stiff waves with what must have been impenetrable hair spray. Rebecca hoped she wouldn’t ask any more questions and Iris complied, searching through patient files for what she needed.
Rebecca hadn’t informed her about Susan going AWOL. She told herself it was private, but really she was embarrassed. She preferred to keep it to herself, a family failing that might seem inexcusable to an outsider. Not that she excused. But she knew what it was like to lose all hope, so how could she condemn Susan? All she could do was watch her sister’s drama unfold. Listen as Ben let himself in the front door at eleven-thirty after spending the evening at the hospital. He was leaving Friday to drive back to Montreal and the three little boys who waited for him. How was he going to leave Miriam?
The paperwork wasn’t finished, but by 6:45 her head felt heavy. She would come early tomorrow and finish it.
She threw on her coat and waved goodbye to Iris. “I’m going to visit Miriam.”
Iris managed a tired smile over the paperwork, her hair holding up better than the rest of her. “Give her a kiss for me.”
Rebecca opened the front door of the medical building and plunged into the cold evening air. One thing she hated about the slide toward winter was the encroaching darkness. In the middle of November it was dark at six o’clock. By the winter solstice, in another five weeks, night would fall before five. Her mother had taught her that every season had its own beauty. But her mother loved life and had managed to pass on that optimism temporarily to both her daughters when they were young. It was the tragic arc of Rebecca’s life that had annihilated joy. Not the slow passage of time with its disappointments, but a spectacular shooting out of the sky of the magic optimism with which her life had begun. Everything had changed when David died. She could divide her life into B.D. and A.D. Before David and After David.
Even in this post-David era, she had to adjust to the weather. Her feet were cold. Time to give up shoes and haul out the leather boots.
She crossed Beverley Street to D’Arcy and approached the backyard encircled by the hedge. She had been too busy and distracted the last few days to stop by and check on the homeless woman. Not that it made a bit of difference. Another disaster for which she had no solution. The woman wouldn’t even take the food she offered. Rebecca would just pop her head in and say hello.
The house was dark when she stepped around the hedge into the backyard.
“Excuse me,” she said, not to alarm the woman by her sudden entrance.
The convoluted hedge obscured much of the street lamp’s illumination. She headed for the glowing red element of the space heater near the shed.
“Hello?” she said. “Where are you?”
All at once a form separated from the shadows and jumped toward her. She caught her breath and dodged to the right, adrenaline pounding. But the form didn’t stop. It kept running with an odd waddle out the opening of the hedge. A gust of sour perspiration floated past her. She leaped out of the yard and searched the street — the ugly homeless man from a few days ago was shuffling across Beverley Street toward Spadina as fast as his game legs could carry him.
She turned back toward the yard, her heart still racing. “Hello?”
Intently, she searched the shadows on the ground from where the man had vaulted. Why didn’t the woman answer? A metal leg glinted: the kitchen chair lay turned over on its side. When she bent over to pick it up, her hand brushed against something firm in the shadowy mound next to it.
Her throat went dry. She put her hand out and felt a leg. Her fingers fumbled sorting out the person from the fabric. A skirt? A coat? Another coat? Her hands shaking, she found the woman’s head. Her heart fell. The hair was matted with something sticky. Rebecca didn’t need to see it to know it was blood. She bent her cheek close to the woman’s mouth, feeling for breath. A tiny flutter. She found a limp hand. Was there a pulse? Very weak. The skin was cold, but that didn’t mean much out here in the dropping temperature.
“Birdie!” she called out. “Birdie, can you hear me?”
Suddenly a light went on in the house and streamed into the yard. Rebecca looked down at the woman: her head was covered with blood.
“Help!” she cried toward the house. “Please help!”
A curtain moved aside in a back window.
“Call an ambulance!” Rebecca shouted.
Finally the back door opened and out stepped a middle-aged woman with short greying curly hair. “What’s going on?”
“This woman’s been hurt. Call an ambulance. I’m a doctor.”
The woman ran over to stare at the figure sprawled on the ground. “My God!” she muttered.
“After you call for help, please get a blanket. And a flashlight.”
The woman hurried back inside the house, leaving the door open. Rebecca could hear her on the phone.
She returned with a blanket, arranging it over the prone figure. “Is she still alive?”
“Barely.”
“I told her not to stay out here,” the woman whispered.
“You know her?”
“She’s been here a while.”
“You let her stay in the yard?”
Rebecca took the flashlight from her and lifted Birdie’s eyelids. Her pupils were unresponsive. Bad sign.
“A sick old woman. Should’ve been in a special hospital, you know.” She touched her head with her finger. “But she was very stubborn. I told her it was dangerous to stay out here at night. At least we got her the little heater. She wandered around. Who knows the kind of people she met? Crazy as her. But I didn’t expect this.”
The woman had a bit of an accent. Was it German?
“I saw someone running away,” Rebecca said. “A homeless man. He was here before. Maroon ski jacket.”
The woman nodded. “I’ve seen him. I can’t believe it. I didn’t think he’d do this.”
They both stared at a rock that lay nearby, outlined in the light escaping the house.
“She had nothing. What was the point of attacking her? Who but a crazy person?”
“What’s her name?”
The woman looked at Rebecca as if she had asked an unreasonable question. “They called her Birdie.”
A siren approached in the night, its forlorn wail winding toward them.
The woman looked down again. “How will I tell him?”
“Who?”
“My husband.”
“He’ll be upset?”
She shrugged as if she had said too much. “He’s sensitive.”
The young paramedics beamed a light at the yard. “Who called for an ambulance?”
“I’m a doctor,” Rebecca said. “Over here.”
They moved toward her with their equipment.
Rebecca reported: “Elderly woman, around seventy, with evidence of head trauma. Breathing and pulse weak. Pupils fixed and dilated.”
One of the men bent over Birdie with a stethoscope, shone a light in her eyes. “Let’s get her out of here pronto!”
They fixed a brace around her neck, then lifted her carefully onto a board. The board went onto a gurney, which they placed in the back of the van. The woman climbed in and sat beside her but looked away from the mangled head. The paramedics were taking her to Toronto General.
“I’ll walk up and meet you there,” Rebecca said to the woman. “What’s your name, so I’ll know who to ask for?”
The woman looked dazed, kept her eyes off the body beside her. “Sentry,” she said. “Johanna Sentry.”
The ambulance pulled away, its siren startling in the night.
Rebecca sailed through the evening air along D’Arcy past McCaul Street, along Elm, to the wide boulevards of University Avenue. She hovered at the edge of the sidewalk waiting for the light to change, Mount Sinai behind her. The ancient monolith of Toronto General stretched along the other side of University, south from College Street. Downtown trauma cases were brought here.
The emergency waiting room was filled with downcast people waiting to be seen. Johanna Sentry sat in a corner, arms across her chest. They had taken the old woman into a trauma room right away. Mrs. Sentry looked up as Rebecca approached. Her grey-brown hair lay in short curls around a face severe with no makeup.
“You didn’t have to come,” she said curtly.
Neither did you, Rebecca wanted to say as she sat down in the seat beside her. “I wish I’d done more for her. I could’ve called social services.”
“You were there in the yard before? You spoke to her?” Her dark eyes filled with recrimination, as if Rebecca had invaded her privacy. Which she had.
“I went in a few times. She said alarming things out loud. Violent things. I thought she needed help.”
“Very public-spirited, I’m sure. But it wouldn’t have made a difference. We tried to help her. She didn’t listen. I’m not going to blame myself.”
“No one’s blaming you,” Rebecca said.
“We both work. How much can we do?”
“What do you do?” Rebecca asked, trying to steer her away from guilt.
“I’m a teacher. People think teachers work till three-thirty. But I coach five days a week and don’t get home till seven. My husband coaches in the evenings at the university. We’re hard-working people. How much are we expected to do?”
Yes, it was a German accent. Rebecca always felt uneasy when she heard one. This woman was old enough to have seen the war.
“Nobody’s blaming you. In fact, most people wouldn’t have let her stay in their yard. You were very generous.”
The woman’s heavy eyebrows knit together in thought.
Every now and then a name was called out. After half an hour, a handsome man in his thirties walked into the waiting room. Mrs. Sentry raised her arm energetically as if she were in class.
“There’s my son. I shouldn’t have called him.”
He stepped toward her, a dark wave of hair falling over one eye. He wore a navy wool pea jacket and leather boots. The seats were all taken so he stood in front of his mother.
“What happened?”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“Of course I came. How is she?”
“Someone hit her over the head. It’s very bad.”
When he glanced at Rebecca, Mrs. Sentry said, “This is the lady who found her. Dr. —”
“Rebecca Temple.”
“This is my son, Dr. Sentry.”
“Erich,” he said, watching Rebecca with observant brown eyes. “It must’ve been a disturbing experience. Are you all right?”
His mother gave him a dirty look. “You didn’t ask me.”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Are you all right, Mother?”
“I’m upset.”
“Of course you’re upset. It’s a horrible thing, finding her like that.”
“I won’t sleep all night.”
“Take something. I know you don’t like to, but this is a special circumstance.”
He addressed Rebecca. “Do you practise near here?”
“Almost across from your parents’ house. On Beverley Street.”
“GP?”
She nodded.
“You should give my mother your card. Their doctor’s moved north. Though they’re both in excellent health,” he gave his mother a guarded glance, “it’s good to have someone close by in an emergency.”
“They could call you,” she said, digging in her purse for a card.
“I’m a pathologist at St. Mike’s. Only used to corpses. Anyway, it’s unwise to treat family.”
Rebecca handed the woman her business card.
A male voice boomed out, “Johanna Sentry!”
They looked up. Two uniformed policemen, one tall, one average height, scanned the waiting room until Mrs. Sentry stood up.
“Follow us, please.”
The woman glanced nervously at her son.
“Don’t worry,” said Erich. “Just a police report. It was a crime. You’ll have to answer some questions, that’s all. You should go too, doctor, since you found her.”
His mother’s eyes beckoned him. He followed them down a hallway out of view of the ER.
The young policemen stopped and turned toward them, one with pad and pencil in hand. “Who found her?” asked the tall one.
“I did,” Rebecca said.
“Come with me.”
He led her further down the hallway past a corner.
“Tell me what happened.”
She explained how the week before she had come across the old woman talking to herself and had gone into the yard tonight to check on her. “On Sunday a man came to see her when I was leaving. The same man was in the yard when I found her. He ran away when I came in.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He looked homeless. Weathered skin, broken nose. In his sixties at least. He was wearing a dirty maroon ski jacket and a woollen hat. Grey. He has some problem with his hips. A waddling kind of walk. Probably arthritic. And he was pulling along one of those bundle buggies.”
“Did you catch a name?”
“No.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Yes. He had a very distinctive face. Extremely unpleasant. But he seemed to be her friend. He called out and said he was bringing her a present. Mrs. Sentry has seen him before.”
“The woman who owns the house?”
“Yes.”
“You say the injured woman was talking to herself. You think something’s wrong with her — mentally?”
“I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’d guess schizophrenia. She seemed to be hearing voices.”
“There are a number of those people on the street.”
He took one of her cards for contact information and accompanied her back to the waiting room. A doctor with an operating room mask pulled down around his neck led Mrs. Sentry and her son into the ER, stopping close to the door. Rebecca stood watching through the glass pane. She had seen enough doctors conveying bad news to recognize the posture, the head angled downward, the veiled eyes.
Erich looked up, saw Rebecca and shook his head. He motioned for her to enter.
The OR doctor was saying, “... she had a fractured skull and lost too much blood. I’m sorry.”
Johanna Sentry stared at the doctor, blinking, until he turned and walked away.
“I’ll try to reach Dad,” Erich said. “He’ll want to come down.” He put an awkward arm around his mother’s shoulders, as if they were unused to such intimacy.
“I’m very sorry,” Rebecca said, feeling clumsy, as usual, around death. “Did she have any family?”
Erich opened his mouth to say something, but his mother answered first. “We don’t know.”
He glanced at his mother but said nothing more. Rebecca watched him, wondering if her adrenaline was working overtime. Were they hiding something?
“It was nice meeting you,” Rebecca said. Mostly out of politeness, since the mother was a prickly sort.
Rebecca excused herself and headed for the exit to University Avenue, surprised not by the death, but how these strangers had reacted to it.