Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

  I went straight to his room, but he was still down in the cath lab having his defibrillator implanted. The procedure had been delayed, according to Rolanda.

  I busied myself until he returned to 613, roaming the hospital with my magazine cart. I stopped on three to see Bree Wiley and ended up reading to her from Gone with the Wind. Yes, she was only ten but very precocious, as I’ve said. She’d seen the movie and asked her mother to take the book out of the library for her. She was much too tired to read it that Saturday, let alone lift it, so I was happy to oblige. At one point, she interrupted and asked me how long I thought it would be before she got her new liver. I tousled her golden curls and told her I was sure it would be very soon. I was full of shit, since I had no idea when they’d find a donor match for her. I only knew that my answer seemed to soothe her for the moment, which was the best I could hope for under the circumstances.

  On four, I arrived just in time to say good-bye to the woman who’d had the hysterectomy—the one who reminded me of a bulldog. She was dressed in overalls and seated in a chair, waiting for her doctor to come and discharge her. She was clutching her handbag as if it had millions of dollars in it. For all I knew, it did.

  “You must be excited about going home,” I said.

  “I am,” she said with a shrug of her strong, solid shoulders, “but I’m still in a lot of pain.”

  “It takes a while for the tissue inside the abdomen to heal,” I said, sounding silly even to myself. I was a volunteer and a recovering hypochondriac, and neither qualified me to make medical pronouncements. “But before you know it, you’ll be back to your regular routine.”

  She nodded. “You’re so nice, Ann. Every time you visit me. I won’t forget you, I swear.”

  I was oddly touched by her comment. I’d never considered myself unforgettable.

  Eventually, I was back on six again. I was so keyed up about what might be my last chance at Malcolm that I wasn’t watching where I was going and T-boned an oncoming gurney with my magazine cart. Luckily, the gurney was on its way to pick up a patient, not in the process of dropping one off, so nobody was hurt. Still, I reminded myself to calm down.

  “Hey, you’re all defibrillated,” I said, greeting a fully conscious and extremely good-humored Malcolm, judging by the big smile. Maybe they were giving him happy juice along with the antibiotics, or maybe he was just relieved the procedure was over.

  “All wired up and ready to rock.” He tugged on the neck of his gown to show me the proof: a small bandage just under his left collarbone. “They put the thing in, shocked me a few times to make sure it was working, and sewed me together. I can have the stitches out when I get home.” He nodded. “Yep, by this time tomorrow, I’ll be outta here.”

  Okay, hotshot reporter, I said silently. This is it. No time to waste. It’s now or never. Get to work.

  “Mind if I pull up a chair, since this will probably be our last visit?” I asked, already pulling up the chair and planting myself in it before he could tell me not to.

  “As long as you don’t try to force a magazine down my throat,” he said. “But all bitching aside, this place is great. A definite must for the sophisticated traveler, although they need to put less starch in the sheets.”

  “You can sleep in your Frette linens when you’re back in Miami,” I said. “Heartland General is interested in making people well, not bathing them in luxury.”

  He shook his head. “There you go again, lecturing me.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Why did I keep doing that? I was supposed to be softening him up.

  “No, actually, I like it,” he said. “It’s kind of refreshing. It’s that honest, Midwestern sensibility of yours. Don’t ever apologize for it.”

  My honest sensibility. Sure. “Well then,” I said, settling into the chair. “Why don’t we have a little chat?”

  “What would you like to chat about? The Middle East? Gun control? Social security?”

  “All worthy subjects, but I was thinking more about you, about your life. I meet so many people in my capacity as a volunteer, and each person has a story, a set of experiences that makes him or her unique. Since you’re just passing through and we’ll never see each other again, I was hoping you’d talk about yourself, about where you grew up and the events that shaped you. Did you watch movies as a child, for example?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Why would you ask me that?”

  Oh God, I thought. He suspects that I recognize him, and why wouldn’t he? I sounded just like James Lipton. “Probably because most people tell me they watched movies as kids,” I said casually. “I, on the other hand, was raised in a very strict household without any sort of mass media—a total hayseed. I never went to the movies. Still don’t. I vaguely know the names of celebrities, but only from the magazines I’ve got in my cart.”

  He seemed to go for it, relaxing his head onto the pillow. “The truth is, I was mesmerized by movies as a kid. I grew up in New York City and there were theaters on every block.”

  “Really? What drew you to them?”

  “Escape. I was an only child with parents who couldn’t stand each other. I wasn’t much of a student and I never wanted to go home after school, so I’d hang out at the theaters and watch whatever was playing. As soon as the lights went dark and the images popped up on the screen, I was hooked, every time. I loved being swept away into other worlds, other lives.” He rolled his eyes. “Big cliché, I know. Every Joe Blow says he grew up losing himself in movies.”

  “No. Lots of men say they grew up losing themselves in sports,” I pointed out.

  “Not me. I didn’t like the competition. It felt too much like my parents arguing.” He laughed. “Of course the movies I’m most attracted to are heavy dramas involving people in conflict. I guess we gravitate toward what’s familiar. My shrink says that’s why I create my own dramas, because it’s all I learned.”

  He doesn’t need a shrink to get him to stop creating dramas, I thought. He needs a walk around this hospital so he can see what real dramas are—people with brain tumors and rotting livers and AIDS. His dysfunctional family was small potatoes in comparison.

  Still, he was definitely opening up to me. The interview was going well so far. Better than I’d hoped.

  “You said you weren’t much of a student,” I continued. “And yet here you are, a success in real estate.”

  “I didn’t say I was stupid. I just said I didn’t like school.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I was the type who sat in the back of the classroom and prayed I wouldn’t get called on.”

  “Because you didn’t do your homework?”

  “No, because I was painfully shy.”

  Oh, please, I thought. Almost all actors claim they’re shy, and then they go out and perform in front of millions, sometimes with their clothes off. “You don’t look shy now,” I said, trying to keep my cynicism in check.

  “What does ‘shy’ look like?” he said. “Should I stutter, blush, stare at the floor when I talk to you? Shy is a state of mind, an internal disability. Others can’t always see it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Fears don’t have to be visible to other people.”

  Well, he had me there. I’d tried to get by without anybody knowing I suffered from phobias and panic attacks. I knew firsthand that it was possible to have fears and not broadcast them. “What sort of fear brings out shyness?” I asked, sort of amazed that I was having this conversation with the almighty Malcolm Goddard. Who would have guessed that we had anything in common?

  “Fear of being scrutinized, exposed, criticized. It can be very debilitating to be shy. You overcompensate for it by acting like an arrogant jerk. Well, some of us do.”

  So he’d been Hollywood’s biggest brat because he didn’t want anybody to know how frightened he was inside? Was that why he had such an aversion to the media? Because he was afraid of revealing how self confident he wasn’t?

  “You’re not an arrogant jerk,” I sai
d in what was my best acting performance to date, because it was his arrogance and his jerkiness that had cost me my job.

  “Thanks.” He flipped over on his side and faced me. “Now let’s talk about you. About your life and the events that shaped you.”

  I waved him off. “I’m much too boring, believe me. I’ve spent my whole life in Middletown doing the usual things.” I needed to get back to him. The clock was ticking, and all I had so far was some stuff about his parents’ crummy marriage, his early interest in movies, and a lifelong shyness that he masked with bravado. It was all usable, but not enough.

  “So? Let’s hear,” he insisted. “It’s not as if you’re conducting an interview. You said we were having a chat.”

  “An interview,” I said with a dismissive laugh. “Fine. I’ll talk about myself, but it’ll put you right to sleep.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, I grew up here in Missouri, as I said.”

  “Siblings?”

  “Nope. The apple of my parents’ eye.”

  “What’s your dad do?”

  “He used to work at the bank.”

  “Laid off?”

  “Lung cancer.”

  His face sagged. “He died?”

  “He did.” What were we doing talking about me, for God’s sake?

  “You miss him, huh?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do, Luke, but—”

  “But you Midwesterners don’t moan and groan about everything, I know. You just pick yourselves up and do what has to be done. I admire that, Ann. I really do.”

  Sheesh. Now he admired me. Or admired who he thought I was. I didn’t know what to say, was flustered by his interest, so I stood up, fluffed the pillow behind his head, tried to look very busy. When I’d found my equilibrium, I started asking him questions again. I was in the middle of the one about his favorite movie when a voice came over the loudspeaker.

  “Code red. Code red,” said the voice, indicating that there was a fire hazard on the floor.

  Crap. I knew code reds didn’t necessarily mean that the hospital was about to go up in flames. Sometimes, they merely indicated that a drill was in progress. Still, my job at that moment was to reassure Malcolm that everything was okay and then march out to the nurses’ station and find out what I was supposed to do. My interview with him would have to be put on hold, in other words.

  “You have to evacuate,” said Rolanda. “Now.”

  “What about my cart?” I said.

  “Leave it in the hall,” she said. “Take the stairs to the ground floor, and exit the hospital. There’s no fire, but you still have to follow the code rules.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said into the air after she ran off and abandoned me. “If it’s just a drill, why can’t I stay with the patients?” As in: one particular patient. A patient who is being discharged tomorrow and will no longer be able to tell me his life story.

  “Those are the rules for volunteers,” snapped one of the other nurses. “Deal with it.”

  “Okay, okay, but can I come right back?” I said, again to nobody in particular. I was at a crucial point in my conversation with Goddard. If I left now, I might never get another crack at him.

  “Go!” somebody scolded me. “And use the stairs!”

  Fine, so I used the stairs. When I reached the ground floor, I joined the other “nonessential personnel” of the hospital and hung out in the plaza in front of the main entrance, waiting for the prescribed period to be over.

  As soon as it was, twenty minutes later, I rode up in the elevator to six hoping to pick up with Goddard where we’d left off. Unfortunately, Jonathan White was in with the patient, having some sort of consultation. I waited in the hall, leafing through the various magazines in my cart, rehearsing the questions I would pose once we resumed the interview. And waited. I figured that Jonathan was examining Malcolm after his procedure earlier and discussing the plans for his discharge the next day. There had to be details to work out, especially since Malcolm would be going from the hospital to the airport. Perhaps he was asking Jonathan what would happen when he went through the metal detector. Perhaps he was asking whether he would require aftercare once he got home. Perhaps he was complaining about the starch in the sheets. All I knew was that they were taking forever.

  When Jonathan finally emerged and spotted me lurking, I said hello and asked him to say hello to his wife, Eleanor, and made the requisite small talk.

  “It’s great that you’re keeping up with the volunteering,” he said, patting me on the shoulder.

  “I enjoy it,” I said.

  I had launched into a cheesy speech about what a do-gooder I’d become when I noticed that Rolanda was taping a “No Visitors” sign on Malcolm’s door. I was so rattled by this development that I could no longer focus on Jonathan. “I know I’m not supposed to ask,” I blurted out to him, “but is everything all right with the patient in 613?”

  “Oh, sure. We’re sending him home tomorrow,” he said. He didn’t wink. He didn’t give me a nudge. He didn’t show any indication that he knew that I knew that the patient was a big fat superstar. Richard must not have told him I knew. He leaned in and whispered, “Sort of a handful, that one. Says he needs his beauty sleep and doesn’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the day.”

  Doesn’t want to be disturbed? For the rest of the day? I was dumbfounded. Malcolm and I had been communicating, connecting, clicking—or so he’d led me to believe. How dare he issue a directive to shut me and everybody else out of his room? Did he think it was okay to pull a diva act now that he was in the clear, healthwise? Or did he mistake Heartland General for the kind of hip hotel where he probably put a “Do Not Disturb” sign outside his door as a matter of course? Well, Heartland General wasn’t a hip hotel, and beauty sleep wasn’t the point.

  Fuming. I was absolutely fuming. Stupidly, I thought he had actually come down off his throne with all that talk about being shy and afraid, but his sense of entitlement was as huge as ever. Yes, it was his perfect right to be left in peace if he chose, but he’d told me he found me refreshing! He’d seemed engaged in our dialogue! He’d given me the impression—gullible me—that he liked me!

  “Ann?” said Jonathan. “I know volunteers don’t work shifts on Sundays, but if you really want to visit with him, I’d come back tomorrow. I’ll probably be discharging him midmorning.” He smiled. “Eleanor makes me egg-white omelets on Sunday mornings. She adds just a touch of low fat cheese along with turkey bacon, and I have to tell you, it’s as good tasting as it is good for you.”

  So he was just as boring as his wife. But my bigger concern was Goddard. If I didn’t get to him before he left in the morning, I’d be writing for the Crier for the rest of my pathetic life. I’m not saying chimney sweeps aren’t fascinating, but—Well, yes I am.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Sunday morning, I put on my uniform and stole out of the house before anybody was up. I didn’t want to have to answer the big question: Why was I going to the hospital on a Sunday when volunteers didn’t work on Sundays? I figured I’d deal with it later, hopefully with a computer full of meaty new material. The important thing was to hop into my Honda and get to the hospital fast—before Malcolm was given a clean bill of health and escorted out the door and into a waiting limo.

  I was zooming along at a brisk clip, about five minutes into my drive, when I was pulled over for speeding. Yep. I was so worried about missing Malcolm that I’d pushed it.

  “You were doing fifty in a thirty,” said the cop, who turned out to be Ken Culhane, a boy I knew from high school. Even back then, he was sort of cop-ish with his thick neck and crew cut—the type who was always keeping kids in line by beating them up.

  “Do you remember me, Ken?” I asked, fumbling in my purse for my license. I was totally unnerved, both by the fact that the class bully was now a member of Middletown’s Finest and by the delay he was causing me. I had to get to the hospital right away. I didn’t need a ticket. Or a knu
ckle sandwich. “I’m Ann Roth. We went to school together.”

  “Sure, I remember,” he said with a snicker. “Miss Hollywood with the stars in her eyes.”

  “Listen, Ken,” I said as I gazed pleadingly at him through my open car window. “I was driving too fast. I acknowledge that. But, as you can see from my uniform, I work at Heartland General now. I was on an urgent mission to see a patient who, sadly, is on his way out.” No lie there. “Can you cut me a break just this once and let me go? For old time’s sake?”

  He appeared to consider my request. For several long minutes. I was so antsy I almost drove off without waiting for his answer. But he finally gave me one: No. Speeding was speeding, he said, and wrote me a ticket for seventy-five bucks.

  SINCE THE VOLUNTEERS office was closed on Sundays, I didn’t have to sign in, didn’t have to make conversation with Shelley, didn’t even have to tell her I’d come in. I could simply sneak in under the radar, not have to exchange pleasantries with any of the other volunteers, and get my big get once and for all.

  Unfortunately, the elevators were annoyingly slow. The volunteers may have been off duty but the friends and families of the patients were very much on duty, and the hospital was filled with visitors toting flowers, balloons, and teddy bears.

  I was standing there at the bank of elevators, pressing the Up button for the thousandth time, when somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned.

  “Ann?” said Claire, who bounced on the toes of her shoes and would have been an interesting diversion on another day but was an unexpected roadblock on this one.

  “Claire,” I said, my heart thumping with adrenaline as I tried to smile at her. She was not in uniform. She was wearing a fleecy sweatsuit, the kind with a hood. “Uh, what are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you that too,” she said, taking my elbow and steering me away from the others. She was pretty strong for a small person. “What’s the deal?”