by Ronald Malfi
“All right,” Josh said. “So she fibbed a little. She’s an old woman, that’s no big deal. Maybe she just knew of the game from one of the other women who played.”
“Right,” Mendes said, “that’s what I figured too. So I got in touch with them as well. And guess what?”
“Don’t tell me—none of them have ever heard of Nellie Worthridge?”
“Nail on the head,” the doctor said. He brought the cup of coffee to his lips with a shaking hand, took a sip, then set it down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t offer you any—”
“I’m all right, thank you.” Josh thought about what the doctor had just told him. “I see why this is strange,” he said, “but I’m not really sure what this means.”
“Neither am I,” Mendes admitted. “I wish I knew. Something isn’t sitting right, keeps gnawing at the back of my brain, you know? Like something I should be figuring out, only I can’t. And it’s frustrating.”
What Josh guessed was that Carlos Mendes felt more than just frustrated. Looking at him, Josh could tell he felt scared.
“You’re thinking this has something to do with your son?” Josh said. “Has something to do with Nellie saying your son’s name?”
“Yes. I can’t even sleep, can’t get that out of my mind. She knew it, knew that name, and the child hasn’t even been born yet. I’ve been waiting for her to say something else about it, something I can almost use to reaffirm what I know damn well she already said once, but she hasn’t spoken another word about it. And I’ve tried prompting her, but how can I open up conversation like that? How can I be subtle about something so profound?”
The incident where Nellie had yelled out the name of Mendes’s unborn son was peculiar, sure, but it was not at the forefront of Josh’s concerns. There was Kelly’s well-being, first and foremost…and with each passing minutes, he could feel the knot in his stomach pull tighter and tighter. Damn it, why couldn’t she just call him? Didn’t she know he was worried about her?
Mendes cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “There’s nothing more that can be done for her here,” he said, “so she’s free to go home. I just…part of me is grateful that she’s leaving, and I don’t mean to sound heartless—”
“Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Yes,” Mendes agreed. “Yet there’s another part of me—the doctor in me, I guess, or even the concerned husband and father—that wants her to stay so I can keep an eye on her, learn more about her, and come to understand how she knew that about my son.”
Josh swallowed a lump of spit that tasted like motor oil. “Has it been confirmed?” he asked. “Do you know for certain it’s a boy?”
“No,” Mendes said. “Marie doesn’t want to know until she gives birth. Says it is bad luck to know.”
“Have you told your wife about any of this?” But he knew just from the expression on the doctor’s face that he hadn’t.
“No. How could I? What do I say? And aside from that, I think she’d believe it. Superstitions, right?”
“Believe it just like you believe it,” Josh said. “With two believing it instead of one, it makes it all the more likely that her prediction will come true.”
Mendes tightened his lips. For a second, Josh thought he’d offended the doctor. Then Mendes smiled and stood from behind his desk. “She is going to be released today. Again, you’re not obligated to—”
“I’m here,” Josh said.
“Then you’ll see to it that she makes it home? That she has everything she needs and that she can contact you if she needs to?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” Mendes reached down and pulled a card from his desk drawer, handed it to Josh. “My number is on there. My office number, but also my home and beeper number. I want you to call me if anything—anything—appears out of whack. Even if she starts talking in her sleep, you give me a call and I’ll come over ASAP.”
“I didn’t realize doctors still made house calls.”
Again, Mendes smiled that tired, weary smile. “Only the truly concerned ones do, Mr. Cavey.”
Yes, Josh thought, and the truly scared.
Dr. Carlos Mendes thought, What’s inside your head? What secrets do you know, and how in the world do you know them?
The old woman looked at peace in the bed, tucked beneath crisp white sheets. Some color had returned to her face and her eyes looked more alive now than they had since her admittance. She smiled warmly when he and Josh both entered the room. They smiled back and she tried to articulate something to them, but it came out as nonsense.
“Don’t get yourself all riled up, Miss Worthridge,” Mendes told her. He took her temperature, her blood-pressure, adjusted the sheets about her waist. She was thin, the poor old thing, and she watched him plod around the cramped little room like some ancient amphibian incapable of human thought. The notion was not a cruel one—it was merely reflexive, looking at her staring up at him, that half-smile following him around the room.
What do you know? he wondered. What great magic lies inside your sweet, silver head?
“You feel all right?” he asked her.
Nellie nodded once, emphatically. “Yes,” she said, slurring. “I said so this morning.” It was difficult for her to speak.
“You look better,” he told her. “You sound better.”
“I’m talking like a child.” Curiously enough, she said this perfectly clear.
“Nonsense. Can I see you flex the fingers of your right hand, please?”
She flexed them with no difficulty: opened, closed, opened, closed. But his eyes were hardly on them; he was busy looking at her left hand, the hand that lay motionless and curled into a bony talon on top of the bedclothes. That hand had moved too. Would she be able to move it now? And could he even ask her to do such a thing without making the request sound like a cruel joke? After all, the woman had no recollection of moving her left hand. To ask her to try now would be insensitive, crazy. It would begin to confirm too much in his own mind…
He checked her pupils and thought, If there is anything hiding behind these eyes, come out now! If there are any secrets stashed away back there, I insist you expose yourselves!
Josh stood on the other side of Nellie’s bed, looking down on her. “I’m going to get you home,” he told her. “You’ll feel better once you’re back at home.”
“Home,” the old woman muttered, still struggling to smile.
Mendes nodded, replaced his ophthalmoscope, and clapped his hands together in a gesture imitative of content finality. “Well, now,” he said. “You’re in good shape. Ready to get back into the daily grind, as far as I’m concerned.”
Her smile widened—it was a sorry state of affairs, really—and she reached out to him with her tangled right hand, patted him on the arm.
“You’re welcome,” he told her.
Five minutes later, he watched from the nurses’ station as Josh and Daphne, the floor nurse, pushed Nellie Worthridge out of her room in a wheelchair and into the bustle of the hallway. Nellie’s eyes, he noticed, darted around the hallway until they found him. Again, she smiled. It made him feel cold inside.
Am I being ridiculous? Really, after all, am I just overreacting? She’s just a harmless old woman…
But he didn’t really believe that, and there would be no talking himself into it. Nellie Worthridge…
And what about her?
He didn’t want to think about it.
Daphne wheeled the woman over to the nurses’ station. Mendes couldn’t help but look at her then.
“Thank you, dear,” Nellie said.
God, he thought, just stop smiling like that. Please.
“My pleasure, sweetheart,” he said. Then he quickly brought his eyes back down to his paperwork. Too quickly? Maybe—he thought he caught Daphne raise her eyebrows at him. But he didn’t care. Anything to get the old woman to leave. The sooner, the better.
He only looked up again when he was certain
they were at the end of the hallway and about to get onto the elevator. He saw Josh Cavey leaning down while the old woman muttered something into his ear. Daphne was standing beside them, working the elevator button like a pump in need of priming, and smiling down at the old woman. When they finally disappeared behind the steel doors of the elevator, he felt a sizable weight lift from him, and he actually breathed a sigh of relief. He looked down: his hands were shaking. His stomach was upset too—there was a damned hamster in there running laps on his little clacking wheel.
Food, he thought, realizing he hadn’t yet eaten this morning. Food will settle my stomach.
He slipped out from behind the nurses’ desk and headed down the ICU corridor. He moved quickly. And before he could even realize that he was actually headed in the opposite direction of the cafeteria, he was already pushing through the men’s room door, kicking open a stall, and dry heaving into the porcelain bowl.
On the way home from the hospital, Josh had the cab pull over so he could grab some fresh bagels and cream cheese. Back at Nellie’s apartment, he helped the old woman get settled into her motorized wheelchair before preparing them a bagel feast. Nellie disappeared around the corner and into her little bedroom where she changed her clothes. The stink of hospital, she told Josh on the ride home, clung to you no matter what. It was all she could do not to fall ill in the back of the cab during the ride back home.
He toasted some bagels, applied the appropriate amount of cream cheese to four halves, and set out two plates around the small kitchen table. Searching the refrigerator for juice, he found none and settled on two tall glasses of cold milk. Then, recalling Nellie’s penchant for hot coffee, he brewed a pot. All things aside, they would eat like kings this morning. The thought made him smile a bit.
Nellie appeared in the kitchen doorway. The motorized gears of her chair had sneaked up on him. She looked a little tired, but overall she looked good. He’d been worried about her since her accident.
“Breakfast will be ready in just a minute,” he told her. He worked quickly to get the coffee into a mug for her.
“Are you hurt?” she asked him.
“Hmmm?”
“Your arm is hurt, dear.”
“What?” He finished pouring the coffee and set the mug down on the kitchen table.
“Your left arm.”
It was hurting him. It was the cold weather. Going out onto the fire escape earlier this morning had not been the brightest of ideas. There was a dull pain just below his left shoulder blade, and it ran the length of his back, nearly down to his buttocks. This was nothing unusual—dependent on the weather or a multitude of other factors, the dull throbbing pain was always popping up in some form or another—but over time, he’d gotten good at ignoring it. Most times, he didn’t even realize the pain had returned at all, his mind so busy somewhere else.
“Oh,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. He realized he’d been slowly rotating it in midair, working the joints. “No, I’m all right. It’s just…it’s nothing. Cream and sugar?”
“Black,” she said, inching the wheelchair closer to the table as Josh pulled up his own chair and sat down. “What happened?”
“What happened with what?”
“Your arm,” she said.
“The cold bothers it every once in a while. It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re too young to suffer from arthritis.” She was feeling him out.
“Right,” he said. “Long story. Something that happened to me some years back. Your classic case of Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.”
“And this is something you don’t like to discuss?”
“I just don’t talk about it.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Oh?” Her eyebrows arched. “Hooligan? Chased down by some neighborhood ruffians when you were a little pup?”
“Not exactly.” There was no real harm in telling Nellie any of this. Would she even understand? “I was shot,” he said. “About a year and a half ago, I walked into a convenience store while some kid was robbing the place. Guess I scared him pretty bad. As I came through the door, he turned and shot me twice. Here,” he said, pointing to his left shoulder, “and here,” he finished, pointing to his heart. “I lost a lot of blood and nearly died. Would have, the doctors said, but Sampers—the kid who shot me—missed my heart. It was a close call.”
Nellie just nodded, as if they were discussing local politics instead of his near-death experience.
“I hit the ground and was out. I only remember bits and pieces of everything after that, including most of my stay at the hospital. Sampers apparently freaked out, didn’t know what to do or where to run, and the police picked him up just a few minutes later, still standing in the convenience store. In a corner, shaking, eyes wide—that’s how the arresting officer described Sampers at the trial. I guess shooting someone had never really been on the kid’s mind. Probably figured he’d swoop in, grab what cash was in the register—what could it be, fifty bucks?—and take off like nothing ever happened. Didn’t count on my stupid ass waltzing in there, that’s for sure.” Then he blushed. “I’m sorry, excuse me.”
Nellie was not bothered by the profanity. “And this is something you’re embarrassed of?”
“No,” he said, “not that part.”
“Then what part?”
“The rest of the story,” he explained. “The parts that follow. Everything. Until recently. I didn’t leave my apartment for a long time. I didn’t ride the subway, didn’t even like getting into a cab. People on the street freaked me out. And to hell with going into a convenience store, you know what I mean?” He laughed nervously. “I just couldn’t get over it. What if that bullet had been, like, an inch closer to my heart? Or a centimeter? One minute I’m strolling down Twenty-fourth Street, and the next I’m lying in a pool of blood with cheese curls scattered on my chest and Coca-Cola in my hair, in my eyes.”
“Facing one’s mortality can be a sobering experience. Particularly at such a young age.”
He shook his head, looked down at his uneaten bagel and glass of milk. “I was embarrassed that I couldn’t get over it. And I was angry at myself too.”
“But you got over it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks to Kelly.” He felt himself smile. “I saw an ad posted at NYU about her project, this thing called and something about the way she advertised it piqued my interests. Something…it just made me feel invigorated to be a part of something again, a part of We the People that we’ve been working on, anything. So I figured what the hell and I went and met with her. And she was nice and pretty and maybe even a little eccentric, which I like, and just hearing her explain her ideas about the project just got me off one track and onto another. I’m listening to her, and I start realizing that she’s actually talking about me, that I’ve learned to overcome my own adversities…and I didn’t even realize it until that day sitting across from her at a Burger King.”
“She saved you, in a sense.”
“But it was something more. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I can see what it was now. She had secrets of her own too, and she wasn’t only talking about me, she was talking about herself. And to this day I still don’t think she knows it.”
“We all have secrets,” Nellie said and sipped her coffee. “Good,” she sighed.
He’d lost his appetite. “So my turn?”
“Turn?”
“To ask a question.”
“Oh,” said the old woman, “is that what we’re doing, now?”
“It’s a straightforward question.”
“Ask it, but eat too. Put some meat on those bones.”
Just like a grandmother, he thought, grinning. He took a bite of his bagel, swallowed it nearly without chewing, and said, “How come you told Kelly and I that you play bridge on Wednesday nights?”
Nellie’s eyes didn’t falter. If she realized she’d been caught in a lie she didn’t let her acknowl
edgment register on her face. Calmly, like one about to recite a poem to a group of young children, she said, “I’m a fanatic when it comes to bridge. Love the game. Always have. My father taught me to play before he died.”
“You gave Dr. Mendes the names of the women you play bridge with at the hospital,” he said. He felt ridiculous, questioning this old woman like a detective pumping a murder suspect for information.
“We were making small talk.” Slurred the S.
“He was concerned for your well-being. He phoned the women you mentioned to him.” He suddenly realized he was walking a thin line and didn’t want to offend this sweet old woman, but he’d come too far to turn around now. Besides, there was a burgeoning curiosity within him, like the inkling of a small but potentially powerful fire, and it excited him. “None of the women you mentioned to him have ever heard of you, Nellie.”
This time, he thought he saw a spark of—well, of something behind those stoic gray eyes. Not taking those eyes off him, the old woman shifted her weight in her chair and adjusted her immobile left hand in her lap.
He couldn’t help but back off. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, I just didn’t understand—”
“It’s all right.”
“No. It’s not my place and I apologize.”
“Don’t be silly.” She offered a warm smile. “I’m just surprised at the doctor’s…” she considered her words, “methods of extraction. I thought his small talk was genuine. I never realized he was so concerned.”
“He’s concerned for you, but he’s also concerned for himself too. Do you know what I mean?”
