THE POLICY

by Bentley Little

  Beth’s house was newer than his and bigger, but it wasn’t one of those Mediterranean lookalikes that seemed to be proliferating at an alarming rate on every side of the city, and it wasn’t part of a gated community. It was a long, low pseudo-Santa Fe home on a lot large enough to have a vegetable garden on the side and a flower garden in back. She wasn’t renting, she owned the place, and he found himself spending more and more nights there, to the point where Beth finally asked him if he wanted to move in. He could take care of half the monthly mortgage payment, she added quickly, worried that he might be offended by an offer of free rent. But while part of him definitely wanted to move in with her, he still wasn’t ready to commit so fully so quickly, and he told her in mock macho tones that he was a man who needed his freedom. She laughed, but she understood the truth behind the joke, and she didn’t press him.

  So they dated and they had fun.

  Eileen had not been much of a music fan. Even when they first started going out, she’d gone to concerts only out of obligation and only when he couldn’t scare up some buddies to go with him. After they got married, they never attended a single live music performance together.

  Beth was exactly the opposite. Over the years, Hunt had become lazy and set in his ways, more comfortable remaining at home and listening to CDs than venturing out. But Beth loved the nightlife, and through the Internet, the alterna-press and a host of mailing lists, she religiously kept up with the ever-changing schedules for both small clubs and large concert venues throughout the city. In their first three months together, he heard more live music than he had in the preceding decade.

  One Saturday night, they were exiting a Santana concert when they saw a group of Chicano gang members with shaved heads and blue-ink neck tattoos standing in a circle outside the arena, pushing a geeky gangly guy wearing bright purple clothes back and forth between them. Hunt led Beth in the opposite direction as several policemen emerged from the arena, billy clubs drawn.

  They saw the geeky guy again, four days later, outside a movie theater. It was an art house adjacent to the university, and they’d gone to see a French romantic comedy that was supposed to be one of the year’s best films but bored them both to tears. There’d been no parking in the front lot so they’d parked behind the building, and while the rest of the audience headed back up the aisles, they left through a side exit in order to save time. The heavy door shut and locked behind them, and only then did they notice the commotion at the top of the stairs.

  He had on the same purple clothes, but a different gang was attacking him this time—a foursome of bearded, overweight, denim-clad bikers who yelled rough obscenities as they punched him in the face and stomach, and then kicked him after he fell to the ground. He was probably a drug dealer, Hunt thought. But drug dealer or no, Beth was outraged by what they were doing. “Leave him alone!” she demanded, hurrying up the stairs. Hunt went after her, cringing, expecting to be beaten to a bloody pulp, but to his surprise the four bikers took off running, obviously afraid of being identified. The man they’d been beating was curled up, clutching his midsection, his face a grimace of pain. One or more ribs were probably broken, but that was not what frightened Hunt. It was the blood issuing from the man’s ear—a shocking amount that was still seeping onto the dirty cement of the sidewalk and puddling in an irregular pool that looked like an upside-down map of the Americas.

  “Oh my God.” He fumbled for his cell phone. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

  “No!” the man shouted through moans of pain. “No cops!”

  “There’s a hospital just down the block,” Beth said. “Or maybe a couple of blocks away at the most. It’ll be faster if we take him there.”

  “I don’t think we should move him.”

  “No doctors!”

  “Blood is gushing out of your fucking ear!” Hunt said. “You may have brain damage! You may die!”

  That seemed to get through to him. Wincing, crying out, he rolled onto his side, then pushed himself to his knees, holding a hand over the bleeding ear. “Take me there, then. But no ambulance. No cops.”

  The doctors would ask what happened and would probably be required to inform the police, Hunt knew, but he’d let the man find that out himself. He handed Beth the car keys, and she ran through the parking lot behind the theater. He helped the man to his feet and supported him as they walked to the edge of the curb where Beth was pulling up. She had already taken a handful of napkins out of the glove compartment, and gave them to Hunt when he opened the rear driver’s-side door. “Use these to stem the blood,” she said. Hunt handed the man the napkins, which he promptly pressed against his ear. “Press hard,” Beth said. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  The man lay down in the backseat, rolling instinctively on to his left side, and crying. Hunt slammed the door, ran around to the passenger side, hopped in front, and they took off.

  Desert Regional Hospital was indeed close—less than a block away—and Beth sped up to the emergency entrance, parking in a spot usually reserved for ambulances. She dashed inside, and before Hunt could help the man get out of the car, two attendants wheeling a gurney emerged from between the sliding glass doors and expertly removed him from the backseat, placing him on the soft pad atop the cart.

  Hunt followed them through the open entrance, but they were all stopped by a severe-looking woman leaning out of a windowed office who refused to buzz open the security door separating the waiting room from the medical facility. “I’ll need insurance information before the patient can be admitted,” the woman said. Beth stood next to the window, looking angry and exasperated.

  “I don’t have insurance,” the injured man wailed.

  “Then I’m sorry,” the woman informed them, “you’ll have to go to County General. We are no longer taking indigents.”

  “I can pay,” he moaned. “Look in my pocket.”

  “We do not accept patients without insurance.”

  “You have to take him,” Beth said. “This is unconscionable.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He was beaten severely and he’s bleeding from his ear. There might be brain damage.”

  “Like I said, he’ll have to go to County—”

  “Fine,” Hunt interjected. “Then stop arguing with us and get him there. The man’s hurt.”

  “You have to take him,” she explained. “We can’t spare any ambulances, and it’s not our responsibility. We’re not responsible for the fact that you brought him to the wrong hospital.”

  “You don’t have to be such a bitch about it!” Beth snapped. She turned toward the two attendants. “Can you help us get him back in the car or is that not your job either?”

  The gurney was wheeled out back the way it came, and the embarrassed attendants placed the man in the backseat in as comfortable a position as they could arrange, leaving a pad from the gurney under his head.

  Hunt got in the driver’s seat this time, but he didn’t know where they were going. “Do you know where the hospital is?” he asked.

  Beth nodded. “It’s about ten minutes away if we hit all green lights. Get going.”

  They took off. There was silence from the back, and Hunt readjusted the rearview mirror. The injured man’s eyes were closed. He’d lost consciousness. Hunt was driving the speed limit, but he pressed down on the gas pedal and pushed it up another ten, half-hoping that a police car would try to pull them over and then end up giving them an escort to the hospital.

  No such luck.

  They hit a green light, sped through a yellow light, and were stopped by a red light. From that point on, they were trapped in traffic, forced to go five miles below the speed limit.

  Their passenger woke up several blocks before the hospital. He cried out in pain as they passed a supermarket.

  “Are you all right?” Beth asked.

  “Of course not!” he shouted.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Just drop me off,” he ordered.


  “You need to be seen by a doctor,” Hunt said. “You might have internal injuries or—”

  “I’m going to the hospital!” the man said through gritted teeth. “I know I need help!”

  “Well, you didn’t want to go at first.”

  “I’m in pain here! It hurts like a motherfucker!”

  “We can’t just drop you off and leave.”

  “I don’t have insurance. This one might turn me away, too. If you just dump me and run, they’ll have to take me. I’ll pretend to pass out. They’ll have no choice.”

  He was right, Hunt thought. He might be turned away again. Where would they take him then? Did Tucson have any more hospitals?

  Hunt glanced over at Beth, who gave him a “What do you think?” look.

  He pulled in to the hospital parking lot and drove up to the brightly lit EMERGENCY sign.

  “Help me in. Leave. I’ll take it from there.”

  There was no time to argue or chat. “Okay.”

  “Hunt—” Beth began.

  “They’ll have to treat him.”

  The two of them supported him on either side and helped him hobble into the ER waiting room. After every few steps, there was a sharp intake of breath. Once he cried out.

  “What’s your name?” Beth asked as they approached the front desk.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  The nurse staffing the station glanced at them with concern. Already she was withdrawing a clipboard with some forms. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ll be fine,” the man said. “Go. And thanks.”

  Hunt grabbed Beth’s hand and pulled her away. “I was in a fight,” he heard the man say behind them. “I think a couple of ribs might be broken, and my ear’s bleeding and…”

  Then they were out the door.

  “This isn’t right,” Beth said.

  “We’ve done all we can. More than most people would do. And we have no choice.” He unlocked the car, got in. “We should have called an ambulance in the first place.”

  “But would they have taken him?”

  He didn’t know.

  It was long after midnight and they were closer to his place than hers, so Beth came home with him. The assholes next door were having a party. Vehicles were parked up and down the block, and several pickups had recklessly pulled in to the cotton fields across the street. Redneck rap/rock blasted from an impossibly loud stereo. The party had obviously been going on for quite some time and showed no signs of slowing down. Some of it was spilling over onto his lot, but it was late, he was tired, and Hunt just wasn’t in the mood to confront a horde of drunken white trash over property boundaries.

  He and Beth ignored the revelers, went into the house, locked up, and went to bed. Too tired even for sex, they kissed chastely, then retired to opposite sides of the bed where they promptly fell asleep.

  In his dream, Beth had been stabbed by the geeky guy in the purple clothes. Increasingly frantic, he drove her from hospital to hospital, from Tucson to Phoenix to Los Angeles.

  But no one would take her in.

  3

  “Jesus,” Joel said. “That’s hard to believe.”

  Hunt nodded.

  “What the hell happened to the health care system in this country? I mean, when we were kids and we were sick, we always went to the doctor. And when I broke my arm and when you had to have stitches, we went to the hospital emergency room with no problem. And our parents weren’t exactly rich. It makes no sense to me that we have the best doctors and hospitals in the world, the researchers and companies who produce all of the breakthrough drugs, yet we can’t even take care of beating victims and accident victims and people with simple treatable problems. Who was it that said a country should be judged by how it takes care of its least fortunate citizens? It’s true, man, it’s true.”

  “Yeah,” Hunt said, but his mind was on Beth. How good was her insurance? he wondered. He hadn’t asked, but he should have. Especially after that horrible dream.

  “The whole damn medical process is being co-opted by insurance companies and run by accountants. Health care should not be a profit-making venture. It’s a necessity, and it should be available to everyone.”

  The two of them were sitting in Joel’s living room, listening to an old Meat Puppets album, which Hunt had chosen after sorting through a stack of vinyl records on the floor. Lilly ran through with a friend on her way to the backyard, and a second later, they heard Stacy’s voice from the kitchen yelling at the girls to stop running in the house.

  “There has to be some sort of consumer advocate I could complain to. Hell, maybe I’ll write to our congressman and senators. They’ve got to be good for something.”

  Joel laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You. Same old Hunt. Remember back in junior high? When Mrs. Halicki made you move your desk into the hallway and take your midterm outside because you were wearing that Ozzy T-shirt? And you started that petition to get her fired?”

  Hunt chuckled. “Yeah. Only Mrs. Halicki found it and gave me a referral.”

  “You and all of us who signed it.”

  Lilly poked her head into the room. “Daddy! Do you and Uncle Hunt want to play basketball with us?”

  Joel looked at Hunt, who smiled. “Sure.”

  “It’s me and Uncle Hunt against Kate and Daddy!” Lilly announced as they walked out to the backyard.

  “Hey! You don’t want to team up with your old man?”

  Lilly laughed. “Sorry, Daddy.”

  “That’s it, then, girly. You’re going down.”

  “What goes around comes around,” the saying went, and while Hunt had never been exactly sure what was meant by that ubiquitous phrase, he thought it probably applied to the fact that his best friend from childhood was once again his best friend as an adult—after a nearly fifteen-year gap. His parents were happy to hear that he and Joel had met up again, and they reminded him of quite a few incidents involving the two of them that he had forgotten.

  He was surprised at how easily he and Joel had reconnected. And he was grateful. It had made the transition much easier—so easy, in fact, that he suffered no pangs of regret and no lingering feelings of homesickness, not even for the beach. He was happy he’d returned to Tucson, and as far as he was concerned, everything had turned out for the best—everything was going great.

  It still amazed him that Joel had married Stacy. Moving to California with Eileen and cutting himself off from his roots, he’d been unable to observe the natural progression of postschool life for his old friends and acquaintances. His mind-set was still the same as it had been fifteen years ago, and something like a Joel-and-Stacy matchup seemed nothing short of miraculous. He felt like someone whose life had been put on hold while everyone else’s had continued on. But he was making up for lost time, and it seemed as though he was on the phone to his parents two or three times a week with surprising news: Mr. Llewelyn had died two years ago! Hope Williams turned out to be a lesbian! Dr. Crenshaw went bankrupt!

  His parents, his mom especially, loved to hear news from Tucson, but neither of them liked the fact that he was working as a tree trimmer. He’d known what their reaction would be and purposefully held off telling them for as long as he could before he finally came clean. He thought about saying that he’d taken this job only because there was nothing available in his field and he needed immediate funds, but while that was factually correct, it wasn’t really the truth. The truth was that he had stopped applying for computer operator positions. This was his job. Maybe something would open up in the county’s MIS department, but maybe not. Either way, he wasn’t worrying about it. He’d take things as they came.

  He and Lilly beat Joel and Kate in a game up to twenty. Afterward, Joel asked him to stay for dinner, but he begged off. He’d already eaten at the McCains’ twice this week, and he didn’t want to wear out his welcome. Besides, he was still tired from the night before. He just wanted to go home, call Beth, watch some mi
ndless TV, and go to bed.

  In his mailbox when he arrived home was a letter from United Automobile Insurance. He tore open the envelope, frowning. What did they want? His bill wasn’t due for another two months. He’d had no tickets or accidents recently. Was this about the rear windshield? He’d ended up not even using insurance for that. His deductible was two hundred dollars, and it had cost only a hundred and twenty-five to replace the cracked glass, so he paid for it out of his own pocket.

  Hunt scanned the letter. He might not have used the insurance company for his rear windshield, but he had informed them, so they were required to act on the information provided, according to the letter. Although he was not at fault for the incident that resulted in his cracked window, the damage had occurred while in his care, while he was covered by his current policy, and the company had no choice but to adjust his policy accordingly.

  He shook his head in disgust as he looked down at the last line of the letter.

  His “good driver discount” had been revoked.

  4

  Beth and Stacy walked slowly through? Mall, talking and window shopping. A few steps ahead of them, Lilly drank an Orange Julius as she glanced into Victoria’s Secret. The girl shot a furtive look back, then turned bright red as she saw her mother watching her. Facing forward, she continued on to the Bath and Body Works next door.

  Stacy motioned toward the lingerie store as they passed by. “Need anything?”