Emergency Room

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “I’m eighty-nine!” he cackled. “Been in America seventy-two years! My wife died forty years ago! I have five children. They’re all dead!” He seemed quite proud of these facts.

  “What is your address, sir?” said Mary patiently.

  “None of your business.”

  “The doctor can’t see you until you tell me your address, sir.”

  “Whaddaya wanna know my address for? Next thing you’ll wanna know what boat I came on!”

  Diana felt as if she were watching a video game.

  Little windows of these people’s lives opened when she clicked the screen. She would see them for a minute, or an hour, and she would know only what they had to tell: name, address, phone number, next of kin, insurance. They were bodies accompanied by a few facts and some pain.

  She, Diana, was literally untouched by them. She would walk among them in her pink safety-zone jacket but she would do no suffering, answer no personal questions, pay no bills, see no doctors.

  “None of your business!” shouted the Russian again. “Whaddaya wanna know my address for? Next thing you’ll wanna know what boat I came on!”

  The Waiting Room had lost its terror for Diana. In fact, there was a curious companionship to the place now, as if Diana and this group were boat people together, hoping to hang on long enough to reach shore.

  And was one of the people here part of her own story?

  Stepmother.

  Never before had Diana let the word form in her mind.

  If your father abandoned you, the woman he married was not your stepmother, only his wife. Mary had said suppose we have fifty men named Williams here this year, we have to get the right one. So this was not necessarily the right one.

  I could look him up in the computer, thought Diana. That would spare me actually getting near him. What would I find in the computer? Date of birth, but do I know his date of birth? March, I think, but what year? Next of kin. Yes, that would be useful. It would give me Bunny’s real name.

  Diana never glanced at the young mother coloring next to her. Having babies when you were a teenager was so weird that Diana could not get into it. She knew she had nothing to say to such a person so she didn’t try.

  Right behind the crayoning table, two thin young men, extraordinarily well dressed compared to the rest of the waiting room, got to their feet. They shot their cuffs and synchronized watches, as if they were about to settle a business deal. They seemed almost giggly to Diana, who puzzled over it. Nobody else in an ER Waiting Room had anything to giggle about.

  In the very back of the room slouched a woman who was hugging her overcoat to her chest and eating Saltines. A surprising number of people were wearing coats in spite of the ghastly heat outdoors. Lots of them were also eating snacks. So there was nothing wrong with the woman having a snack. It was just that she was also eating the cellophane wrappers.

  “Please tell me your address, sir,” said Mary.

  “None of your business!” shouted the Russian again. “Whaddaya wanna know my address for? Next thing you’ll wanna know what boat I came on!”

  Diana was beginning to see why he got stabbed with a fork.

  “So what boat did you come on?” asked Mary, getting interested.

  The woman eating the Saltine wrappers suddenly adjusted the bundle in her lap. It was not a coat. It was a blanket. Inside the blanket was a doll. The woman held the doll so that its head hung downward and its little neck splayed awkwardly on her legs.

  Diana felt a chill of horror.

  It was not a doll lying upside down on that lap.

  The Third Hour

  The Waiting Room 8:01 p.m.

  THE WOMAN’S CHIN NODDED down over the baby and then snapped up. She arched her torso vertically, sank back, and then, separately, her feet jittered around — her lower part dancing while her upper part slept.

  Diana was deeply afraid. The woman was not behaving in an entirely human fashion. It was more as if that body were propelled by electrical impulses than by thought processes. And the baby was not lying there in an entirely human fashion, either. It was either dead or half dead. The woman belonged in the Psych Unit, but how did you get somebody in there? What did you do about a baby about to spill off a lap like a forgotten magazine?

  Diana struggled to think clearly, but got nowhere, as if she were thinking inside pudding. If the baby’s half dead, she said to herself, that’s what the Emergency Room is for. To save the baby.

  Diana looked around for help, but everybody seemed busy. From here she could see the ambulance bay outside, and it was filling with police cars. This seemed to be a police hobby — gathering, dispersing, gathering, dispersing. Barbie was conferring with Knika, both women half crouched behind the files, heads together, backs to the Waiting Room.

  Diana was afraid the baby would go headfirst onto the floor. She left the crayoning table, accidentally bumping into the puffy men who were wending their way toward the exit. “Sorry,” she muttered, steering around them. How did you mention to somebody that she was dropping her kid? “Ma’am?” she said finally. “May I help you?” She sounded more like somebody selling sweaters.

  The woman continued to rock, shudder, and hold the baby downward. She tore open a Saltine pack and squirted the two crackers into her mouth by crushing the back of the pack. Cracker dust fell on the baby.

  Diana sat down next to her and said loudly, “Have you seen the nurse yet?”

  The woman looked up. Her eyes were so out of focus they didn’t match each other.

  Diana swallowed in fear. The fear did not go down but began filling her mouth and nose and eyes like some noxious gas. Diana knotted her own hands to stop herself from touching the woman. I’m afraid to touch her, thought Diana. Do I actually believe in the evil eye? “Let’s have the nurse look at the baby,” she said very loudly.

  Now the Waiting Room stared at Diana with odd intensity, as if it were Diana behaving like a weirdo. Even the two puffy men stared at her, as if she had done something in very poor taste, knew nothing of Emergency Room etiquette.

  They don’t think I should shout, thought Diana. Just because she’s nuts doesn’t mean she’s deaf. But I don’t think anything will register in this woman unless I do yell.

  Diana was grateful for the practice on drunks. Yelling was not as uncomfortable as it had been. “Let’s go over to the nurse and ask her to look at the baby!” she shouted.

  The crazy woman nodded away. It was more of a bobbing action than a head action and, with each move, the baby’s head dipped lower and lower toward the floor. “He don’t smile no more,” she told Diana. “He not bright-eyed. So I come in.”

  Diana was desperate for help. She looked Barbie’s way, ready to give her hand signals or something. Surely Barbie had heard Diana bellowing.

  Barbie stood at her desk, which was unusual. Barbie, like Meggie and Knika, preferred to stay seated. But the look she shot Diana was truly exasperated. It was another of those you stupid college volunteer! looks. Diana wanted to cry. She knew she was doing the right thing to interfere with this crazy woman.

  A security guard wandered over, passing slowly between the crayoning table and the men who seemed so excessively annoyed that Diana had banged into them. As if they were God, and nobody stepped on their feet. The pathetic security guard looked at nobody, just shuffled toward Diana as if he knew he was of no use. At least he was coming. What kind of Emergency Room was this, where they couldn’t even respond to an emergency?

  The guard’s hand rested very lightly on Diana’s shoulder. He was black, but his hand was white. In the split second before she realized he was gloved, she could not think how this division might have happened. It was just one more fearsome thing in an inexplicable situation. “Glove up,” said the guard softly.

  Diana pulled gloves out of her pocket. She had meant to give them to the children at the crayoning table, so they could play doctor, or blow the gloves up to make balloons.

  To her amazement, Barbie �
�� who never left her desk; patients had to go to her; she didn’t come to them — was now beside them. “You did exactly the right thing,” said the nurse. Diana was thrilled until she realized that Barbie was not talking to her; Barbie couldn’t care less about the volunteer; she was talking to the woman. “Let’s just unwrap this blanket,” said the Admitting Nurse, “and —”

  “Don’t touch my baby.”

  Barbie’s voice was melodious and soothing. She sure never talked to Diana that way. “Okay. You hold the baby. I’m just going to take the baby’s temperature while you’re holding him, okay?”

  The woman rocked and twitched, grabbing another snack, plucking at the baby’s wrappings, one foot dancing by itself around the chair leg.

  Diana could not imagine what horrible disease the mother had.

  The baby’s eyes opened. It was alive, thank God.

  “Now what we’ll do is,” said Barbie comfortingly, “you and I will go to the doctor, too, because you don’t look like you feel too well either. Diana here’s gonna hold the baby for you.”

  Diana had never held a little teeny baby in her life. She was as afraid to take the baby as she had been of approaching the mother. How do I support its neck? What if I drop it? What if —

  But Barbie had already coaxed the baby out of the mother’s arms and was putting it in Diana’s. It did not feel like a real baby. It felt as light and unmoving as a doll. She pretended it was a doll and weirdly, after all these years, she could remember feeding her bedroom full of dollies, the ones that talked and wet.

  Murmuring gently, the nurse got the mother to walk on through the Waiting Room with her, heading through the thick glass doors into the treatment area. Diana sat in a panic with her arms like sticks, not supporting the baby a whole lot better than the crazy woman had.

  A black woman waiting for her son’s leg to be set (he’d broken it in baseball practice) slid over from three seats away. “Honey. Hold that young’un like this.” She moved Diana’s hands into a better position, and then the baby lay against her chest more comfortably. Diana relaxed a little. “That mama’s gonzo,” said her rescuer. “Wonder what she’s on.”

  Drugs! thought Diana, feeling both innocent and stupid. She had thought only of disease.

  “She’s not on ’em,” said another woman, turning around to face them from two rows over. “That’s the problem. She coming down off ’em.”

  The whole Waiting Room had been in on this soap opera. How weird. They had simply watched, as if it were TV, or a video game.

  “She knew the baby needed a doctor, though,” said Diana’s helper. “I give her credit. The mama needs a fix but first she gets here to the ER so they see her baby.”

  Diana stared down into the baby’s quiet little face. Your mama’s an addict who eats cellophane, she thought. What chance do you have?

  In the corner of her eye, she saw a whole raft of police coming through the weather lock and telephone area.

  A male nurse came out to take the baby to the pediatric ER. “Good, you’re gloved,” he said.

  “Why did I have to glove?”

  “Addicts mostly are HIV positive,” he said. “So probably her baby is, too.” Gently he scooped the baby into his arms. He held the child — they didn’t know yet whether it was a boy or a girl — and rocked it. He talked to the baby as he walked away, cuddling and nestling the tiny person the way the mother had not been able to. “Let’s get you fixed up, sweetheart.” He kissed its tiny forehead and snuggled the baby up to him as if it were his own.

  But right now, the baby is his, thought Diana, and she was filled with awe. He loves that baby. I want to be a good person like that. I want to love other people’s babies instead of being scared of them. Diana stared at her gloved hands.

  “Don’t worry,” said her friend. “You can’t get AIDS holding the baby. You’d have to share needles with the mama. You’re safe.”

  Diana’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. She felt like a little girl, not a college woman. “But what will happen to the baby?”

  The black woman put a gentle arm around Diana’s shoulder and said nothing.

  They both knew what would happen to the baby.

  It would die.

  The Emergency Room 8:01 p.m.

  “THIS PLACE IS SUCH a zoo,” said the angry couple. They had been taken to a treatment room, but nobody had ever come to administer any treatment, or even to look at their son. Back and forth they stalked in the tiny room, seething with fury. If there had been anybody to hit, they would have gotten into fistfights. But there was only Seth, and the color of the pink jacket told them Seth was nobody and could accomplish nothing.

  “I hate this place!” hissed the mother. “This disgusting zoo with these incompetent people!”

  Seth heard this constantly. “What a zoo,” people would say, as the flow and ebb of patients and professionals passed them by. “Is it always like this?” they would ask Seth, their lips curled in anger and shock.

  Sometimes they didn’t call it a zoo, but instead talked about how they hated this place. “I hate this hospital,” people said many times every night. “I hate everybody in it. They make you wait; they’re no good; they don’t know what they’re doing; it’s too crowded and it costs too much.”

  Sure enough the mother brushed tears from her cheeks and said in a high-pitched, nearly hysterical voice, “If I had known what a zoo it was going to be, I wouldn’t have come.”

  She had had to come. Her son was in such bad shape she had had no choice, and she knew it. Eventually, he would get the attention he needed, but the doctors weren’t free right now. That was that. But nobody could stand the idea that their child didn’t come first. Especially when their child was as desperate as this one.

  “I hate this place,” agreed the father.

  Only the son said nothing. How could he? The pain and fear must have been unbearable. He just sat very still on the edge of the stretcher, feet hanging down, holding his mother’s hand. He was about twelve. Seth had never even been hurt, let alone experienced anything like what this kid was going through. Would he have been this brave when he was in sixth grade?

  The father moved into the hall to do some more swearing, as if four-letter words would bring a doctor on the run. By now Seth knew that doctors really didn’t hear anything like that; their patient load was so heavy, and they had so many other worries, that the swearing and the anger just blended into the general chaos.

  Seth never knew what to say when people swore at the hospital. He loved this place. He loved everything about it, but most of all, actually, he loved the zoo-ness. So much to see and stare at and learn from! And although it probably was a mean and low comparison, there was something zoo-y about the patients on display in their many cubicles. Curtains instead of bars, doctors instead of keepers. It was a teaching hospital, and the patients really were exhibits.

  Sure enough, the medical students who a moment ago had been in the Family Room finding out how to tell elderly parents that their thirty-year-old son was permanently comatose, now gathered at the door of the Ophthalmologic Room. Gently maneuvering the parents out of their way, the specialist and the Attending began to lecture. “And this is an avulsed eyeball from a tumor.…”

  This. A terrified twelve-year-old whose brain tumor was pushing his eye right out of his head. This — his sobbing mother and his stunned father. Here, they were just people to shift over to make room for the medical students. This was just an eyeball. In this inner-city ER, there was no such thing as bedside manner. You counted yourself lucky to have a doctor reach the bedside at all.

  The very pretty medical student leaned over the boy, examining him with a sort of fascinated greed. Then she shifted, letting the nerdy one with the glasses have his turn. Nobody spoke to the boy, nor to his parents. They were concerned only with the eyeball. This time Seth had to agree when the mother whispered, “I hate this place,” and the father added, “It’s such a zoo.”

  Seth wanted
to tell them, “But even if we are a zoo, we’ll save your son!” But he could not, because he did not know if anybody or anything could save their son.

  Half wanting to catch the pretty woman’s eye — see if he rated an air kiss again — and half wanting to hear everything the Attending said, Seth slid into the lineup.

  The Attending gave Seth a look of pure annoyance. “We’re busy here,” he said coldly. “Go find an errand to run.”

  I hate them, too, thought Seth. A flush rose up on his face as he stumbled past the pretty doctor. She never glanced at him. Had she forgotten him? Did the pink jacket really turn him into so much volunteer wallpaper? Or was she, too, irked that he was taking up valuable floor space?

  He was deeply glad he had not tried to fake being a medical student; that particular Attending would have called the police.

  He glanced into the cubicle where Robert Searle lay.

  The space was empty. No bed at all, which meant the patient had been rolled to X-ray, or CAT scan, or Operating Room, or possibly admitted to a regular floor in the hospital. Had Diana ever spoken to him? Or even walked into the room just to look at the guy?

  He tried to imagine himself doing nothing in such a situation. Was not investigating a girl kind of reaction? Or an abandoned child reaction? Was Diana being very mature or very juvenile?

  He stared at the empty room. Many times in Seth’s childhood he had wished his father would disappear. His father had had such high standards: Whether it was soccer or algebra, doing dishes or writing term papers, Seth’s father expected the best. He had always been on Seth’s ease, hounding, nagging, tutoring, working alongside.

  In fact, on the September day Seth flew to college, the best thing had been leaving his father seven hundred miles away.

  He was stunned to find his eyes filling with tears. He who never cried. He who could not cry even if it was an assignment, like that weird time in psychology class when the professor actually required crying to see who could do it on demand. Most of the girls could. Most of the boys could not.