by Anne George
“She needs something to calm her down.”
“You got a Valium?”
“No, but you do. There’s some in your medicine cabinet left from the Skoot ’n’ Boot when you got shook up.”
“Shook up? You call a fractured skull and God knows what else ‘shook up’? And what were you doing in my medicine cabinet?”
“Looking for aspirin, of course.”
“You know I keep the aspirin in the kitchen cabinet.”
“Aspirin should be in the bathroom.” Mary Alice pushed herself out of the recliner. “I’ll get you a Valium, Claire.”
Time was I would have stuck out my foot when Sister walked by. The urge was still there, but knowing Mary Alice, she would fall on me and break my hip. I refrained.
“I’ll get you something to drink,” I told Claire. “You want coffee or Coke?”
She nodded, so the decision was mine. I went into the kitchen and put a lot of ice into a glass. The coffee was decaf, but the Coke had caffeine. Maybe it would offset the Valium’s effects some.
While I was pouring the Coke, Mary Alice came into the kitchen. “What is this?” she asked, holding out her palm with a pink tablet in it. “Valiums have holes in the middle. Have you been mixing up your medicines again?”
“It’s generic. And I never mix up my medicines.”
“You do, too. You remember that time I took what was supposed to be penicillin and it was muscle relaxant that made me sick as a dog because you had it in the wrong bottle. Remember?”
“Mary Alice,” I said, “didn’t that teach you a lesson about taking other people’s medicine?”
“It taught me I can’t trust you to keep them in the right bottle.”
I got a napkin for the glass. “That’s Valium, but I don’t think it’s such a smart idea giving her one.”
“It’ll make her feel better.”
“I think she needs to go to the doctor.” But I followed Sister back to the den, where Claire was still hunched over like a question mark.
“Here, Claire.” Mary Alice handed her the pink tablet and I gave her the Coke. Except for that first glance upward, it was the first time Sister had seen Claire’s dirty, mascara-streaked face. “Oh, you poor thing,” she said. “Mouse, go get us a warm washrag.” She picked up part of the afghan that was sliding from the sofa and straightened it. “Wouldn’t that feel good, Claire? Your face and hands wiped with a warm washrag? Go get us one, Mouse.”
“You know where they are,” I said. I couldn’t resist it. Mary Alice turned and looked at me, and I headed for the linen closet. I wasn’t gone a minute, but when I got back, Sister was quizzing Claire about her attacker. Was it a man or a woman? What kind of knife was it? What did they say? Claire’s answers were little head shakes.
“For heaven’s sake, Sister,” I said. “The police will ask all those questions.”
And they did. In about two minutes, the doorbell rang. For a moment I thought it was Bonnie Blue. The woman standing there was as large as Bonnie Blue, and her skin was as dark. But I realized my mistake immediately. This woman was much younger, maybe thirty, and dressed in a police uniform.
“Mrs. Crane?” she said. “I’m Bo Mitchell. You have a problem?”
Bo Mitchell had the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. Fred and I had poured thousands of dollars into our children’s mouths trying to achieve this effect and had missed by a mile.
I explained that I was Mrs. Hollowell and that Mrs. Crane was my sister and that a friend of ours had been threatened or attacked the night before, I wasn’t sure which, and was right here on my den sofa.
“May I come in?” Bo Mitchell asked.
“Of course.” I realized I had been babbling like I do when I’m nervous. At least I wasn’t rhyming like I do sometimes. “Right through here.”
Claire was sitting up straight with her feet on the floor. She looked exactly like one of those big-eyed, dark-haired children with the sad expressions that you see painted on velvet. Sister had wiped the mascara and dirt from her face, and the pallor of her skin was startling.
“This is Officer Mitchell.” I introduced Mary Alice and Claire.
“I thought you policemen always went in twos,” Mary Alice said.
“Like Noah’s Ark?” Bo Mitchell smiled her fantastic smile. “Not always. Depends.”
“Can I get you some coffee or Coke?” I asked. Fred says if the Devil himself walked in, I would offer him refreshments. He’s probably right.
“No, thank you.” Officer Mitchell sat on the sofa beside Claire. “I assume the problem is yours, Ms. Moon?”
Claire nodded. “Somebody tried to kill me last night.” Her voice was faint but steady. “They were in my apartment with a knife.”
“Are you okay? Not hurt anywhere?”
“No. I would have been dead, though, if I’d put the night latch on.”
“How’s that?”
“If I’d had to stop to undo it. I heard the knife hit the door.”
Mary Alice and I looked at each other. Officer Mitchell wrote something on a clipboard. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get some basic information, Ms. Moon. Your address?”
“Seventeen twenty-nine Valley Trace.”
“Husband?”
“He’s dead. He was killed.”
“Here?”
“In California. On the freeway.”
I closed my eyes. I knew, from watching Haley suffer, the grief Claire had gone through.
“Your age?”
“Thirty.”
“Occupation?”
“I work at an art gallery.” Claire turned and faced Bo Mitchell. “Please, I’m so tired.”
“I know you are and I’m sorry. This is just routine stuff we have to have, though, before we get to the problem.”
Claire nodded and sighed.
“This art gallery,” Officer Mitchell said, “I’ll need its name.”
“The Mercy Armistead Gallery.”
Bo Mitchell looked up from her clipboard. “That’s the one where the lady died last night?”
“Who died?” Claire’s head came up.
“Mercy Armistead.”
Claire looked at Mary Alice and me. “Mercy’s dead?”
We nodded. “Claire,” I began.
“Mercy’s dead?” Her voice rose to a wail. “Oh, God. They got to Mercy.” Claire stood up, her arms before her face as if warding off blows. And just as quickly as she stood, she fell. The policewoman, in a remarkably agile move, caught Claire and eased her down, saving her from hitting the floor. Sister and I rushed to help.
“Prop her feet up,” Officer Mitchell said. Mary Alice grabbed pillows from the sofa and placed them under Claire’s feet. I knelt beside Mary Alice and rubbed Claire’s hands, which felt like ice. Her eyes were half open but the pupils weren’t visible. I touched her carotid artery to see if I could feel a pulse. I could. A faint one.
Bo Mitchell reached for the phone. “Need some help here,” was all I heard her say. I couldn’t have agreed with her more.
The paramedics came first, accompanied by a fire truck and all of my neighbors, who had probably been watching since the police car pulled up. I didn’t mind this; it wasn’t idle curiosity. We are a neighborhood of older residents who have been acquaintances and friends for much of our lives. After they were assured that all was well with Fred and me, that a visiting young woman had become ill, they left. It’s good to have people like that around.
Bo Mitchell led the paramedics into the den, where Mary Alice was kneeling beside a still-unconscious Claire.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I’m getting out of the way!” I heard Sister say.
“Can we help you up, lady?” one of the men asked.
“No. I’m fine.” Sister backed away on her knees to Fred’s recliner, turned, clutched the chair arms, and pulled herself up. For a moment, it could have been the chair down or Sister up. The gods smiled on Sister. She came to the door where I stood and rubbed her kne
es and straightened her raincoat. I had forgotten until then that she wasn’t dressed.
We tried to stay out of the way and still see what was going on. Blood pressure and heart monitors were brought out.
“You need to tell them you gave her a Valium,” I whispered.
“She decided not to take it,” Mary Alice whispered back.
“Well, thank goodness for that. You could have killed her.”
Mary Alice looked at the busy scene before us and at the still figure in the center. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Where are you going?”
Mary Alice held up the pink tablet. “To take the Valium.”
One of the paramedics, with “Rogers” embroidered on his shirt pocket, came over to me. “This your daughter, ma’am?”
“She’s a friend.”
“Well, we’re going to call an ambulance. Her blood pressure is jumping up and down like a yo-yo and her heartbeat’s erratic. She’s beginning to come around, and we can stabilize her pretty good, but she needs checking out.”
“Could a shock have caused this?”
“You mean like an emotional shock?” The young man scratched his head. “I suppose so, but in a healthy person, the body usually sends out stress signals and then calms down. You know what I mean?”
I nodded that I did.
“This lady’s signals are stuck.”
I loved his simplistic explanation. Why bother with such terms as adrenaline and arrhythmia. This lady’s stress signals were stuck.
“Who’s her doctor?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Anybody you can call?”
I realized there wasn’t.
“Where do you want the ambulance to take her?”
I didn’t know what to say. Fred and I have insured ourselves to the hilt for medical emergencies. Had Claire? Probably not, at thirty and working as an assistant in an art gallery. I felt terrible about it, but I couldn’t take on the medical bills of someone I hardly knew.
“Morgan?” the man asked, reading my thoughts, I was sure. Morgan is a charity hospital, an adequate hospital, but charity, nonetheless.
“Take her to Memorial,” Mary Alice said, coming up beside me. “I’ll be responsible.”
It’s times like this I forgive her for everything.
The ambulance arrived with much flashing of lights and wailing of sirens. The neighbors came out on their porches to watch Claire be lifted in.
“You can ride with her if you want,” the young attendant told me.
Claire had wakened some, and though she hadn’t spoken, she clutched my hand all the way to the ambulance.
“I’ll lock up for you,” Mary Alice said. “Let me go home and get dressed and I’ll come to the hospital.”
Officer Mitchell and the attendant shoved me up into the ambulance. It was a most ungraceful entrance, and I was glad I was still wearing my sweats.
My life has been, fortunately, a fairly uneventful one. At sixty, I had never ridden in an ambulance before. By the time we reached the hospital, I had decided that not riding in an ambulance was how I had made sixty. The driver, who had had his license for maybe a week, was a maniac. There was no other way to describe him. He sailed through intersections, sped along the shoulders of roads, shot birds at people who were frantically trying to get out of his way. And all the time, he flashed the light and blew the siren. The young man who sat in the back with Claire and me seemed unconcerned. He would check gauges and then thumb through a People magazine. A toothpick flipped lazily from one corner of his mouth to the other.
“Does he always drive like this?” I asked him as we went around a dozen cars and down the median.
He looked up from his People, took the toothpick from his mouth, and grinned. “He could win the Indy 500.”
I thought it best not to look out of the window. “Is she all right?” I motioned toward Claire, who appeared to be sleeping.
The young man squinted at the gauges. “I think so.”
No use pursuing this line of conversation.
Memorial Hospital is built on a mountainside, as most of the hospitals in Birmingham are. Which means that during a snowstorm we are cut off from emergency medical care. Emergency calls go out for people with four-wheel-drive vehicles, and the radio stations broadcast calls for help. Quite a few area babies have been born in four-wheel-drive vans.
The ambulance driver careened onto the incline that led to the emergency room, sped up it, and stopped abruptly at the emergency entrance. If the gurney Claire was on hadn’t been strapped down, and if I hadn’t been hanging on to it for dear life, I would have been the first one into the hospital.
“Shit!” I gasped.
The attendant grinned. “Sometimes,” he said, opening the door for the emergency crew rushing from the hospital.
“Don’t leave me,” Claire said. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.”
And I didn’t for about an hour. During that time a procession of doctors and nurses filed through the cubicle Claire was assigned, trying to get her medical history.
“Any history of diabetes?” they asked. Claire looked at them blankly. “Allergies? Heart disease? Hepatitis? Cancer? Lupus? Other inflammatory diseases?” The blank look.
Then each turned to me expecting enlightenment. I had accompanied her to the hospital. It was my duty to know these things.
“Sorry,” I said, actually beginning to feel guilty.
Finally, a young woman who introduced herself as Dr. Langford called me into the hall and said they were admitting Claire for observation and psychiatric evaluation. Perhaps a neurological workup.
“Someone tried to kill her last night,” I said.
“That’s what I heard,” the doctor said casually, waving to someone down the hall. “We’ll check on it.”
“You do that, Sweetie.”
The startled doctor met my schoolteacher gaze. To her credit, her face flushed. “We’ll take good care of her”—she glanced down at the chart—“Mrs. Hollowell.”
I patted her arm. “I know you will.”
“You’ll need to get her admitted.”
“Can I speak to her first?”
“Of course.” Dr. Langford and I both went back to Claire, who seemed to be sleeping again. An IV had been inserted into her arm.
“Glucose,” the doctor explained. “She was dehydrated. And a mild tranquilizer.”
No way I was going to tell Mary Alice about the tranquilizer.
“Claire,” I said, taking her hand, “I’m just going to get you checked in. I’ll be right back.”
She squeezed my hand, but her eyes didn’t open.
“You know,” Dr. Langford whispered, “she looks like somebody out of Gatsby, doesn’t she?”
There just might be hope for this young doctor after all.
Memorial Hospital is where Haley works in heart surgery. The odds were against my running into her. But as I walked through the door into the emergency room lobby, there she stood, dressed in her operating room greens and drinking a diet Coke.
“Haley!”
She turned, saw me, and froze. “Mama! What’s wrong? Is it Daddy?”
“No, darling. We’re fine.”
“Aunt Sister?”
“She’s fine. I’m here with somebody you don’t even know.”
Haley sat down weakly in one of the blue fiberglass chairs. “Lord,” she said. “Scare me to death.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Who is it?” She crushed the can she was holding, a habit I hate, and threw it into a wastebasket.
“A girl named Claire Moon. A former student of mine. I saw her last night at the party Sister and I went to and then she showed up sick on my steps this morning. She said somebody tried to kill her last night.”
“Is she hurt?”
“I suspect the doctors think it’s mostly emotional. They’re going to keep her for observation, though. Do some tests. I don’
t have any idea what’s wrong with her, to tell the truth, or why she came to me.” I sat down in the chair beside Haley. “What are you doing down here?”
“Waiting for a patient with a gunshot wound they’re bringing in from Anniston. The bullet’s touching his heart, so we’re doing the surgery.”
“Lucky man,” I said.
“Lucky man.”
“Come for supper tonight,” I said. “Vegetable lasagna.”
“You’ve got a customer.”
An ambulance pulled up to the door. “That’s probably me,” Haley said, jumping up and rushing to the door. I watched her oversee the patient’s removal, check his vitals. As they rushed by me, she wiggled her fingers.
“That’s my daughter,” I told an elderly woman who was sitting across from me knitting. She didn’t answer, but that was okay.
I followed the signs to the admitting office, though I knew I was going to have to wait for Mary Alice. Neurological workups and psychiatric evaluations sounded like more than Fred and I had in our combined retirement funds. Sister surprised me, though, by coming in the front door of the lobby just as I came in the side. She still had on her raincoat, but red leggings said she was dressed for her Mrs. Santa stint at the mall.
“I’ll have you know I missed my appointment at Delta Hairlines,” she greeted me. “Delta rescheduled it, but she wasn’t at all happy about it.”
“Tough,” I said.
“How’s Claire?”
“They’re admitting her for evaluation.”
“Well, of course.” Mary Alice looked around and sniffed. “They’ve got us by the short hairs here, Mouse.”
I thought of the man Haley had just rushed through the emergency room. “Thank God,” I said.
Getting Claire into the hospital was not an easy thing. We spent several minutes dealing with bureaucracy. Finally a social worker was called in—a “Patient Advocate,” her badge said, an apropos title, given her job. Somehow she worked things out so Claire was temporarily admitted, which didn’t sound very secure, until we were forthcoming with information and insurance cards, etc.
“What et cetera?” Mary Alice asked.
“Just et cetera.”
We took it, though the offer was almost withdrawn when Mary Alice asked for a pin to prick her finger so she could sign.