The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  “It’s about Amy McFadden.”

  “Uh—” Andrew paused, glanced at Lily. “What about her?”

  “You know we’ve been investigating her disappearance.”

  “Yes, yes, your partner, Harkman, was it? He mentioned it before. Has she been found?”

  Spencer was silent. “No. But—this is the thing. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Amy McFadden?”

  “What do you mean? She was my sister’s roommate.” Andrew continued to look at Spencer.

  She tried to smile, but she couldn’t through her hammering heart.

  “Well, that’s right. Congressman, why did you tell my partner that you could not recall who Amy was?”

  “What? I don’t think I said that.”

  “You did.”

  “I couldn’t have said that. I’m sure I said I knew her in passing.”

  “No, Congressman. The records of his conversation with you are very clear. You said you did not recall her.”

  Andrew laughed. “Then I must have misunderstood his question. It was very loud in my office. I couldn’t hear. I thought he was asking me about phone calls. I could never have said I didn’t recall Amy. It would’ve been untrue.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I was perhaps responding to a question he did not ask.”

  “He was very specific. Do you know Amy McFadden was his question.”

  “I don’t think I heard him properly. Obviously it was not the question I answered.”

  “No, it obviously wasn’t.” Spencer glanced at Lily. “So what were you answering?”

  “I don’t know. But Amy was Lily’s friend, and they came to my house for family parties, they came to see me in Washington. I mean, this is just absurd. It’s so patently a simple misunderstanding. Either I misspoke, or he misheard.”

  “You did not say, I do not recall her?”

  “Of course not!”

  But, Miss Quinn, doesn’t it niggle you just a little bit why Amy would want to keep her love life a secret from you? Spencer had asked Lily back in June.

  Oh my God.

  Lily groaned. Both men stared at her. “Would you excuse me,” she said. “I’m not feeling well.” She hobbled out without drawing breath into her lungs until she was in the bathroom, where she sat, rocking on the John, with her hands covering her aching legs. The pain was akin to the needles your legs had after they woke from forced sleep. Something like that, except these weren’t needles, these were knives, and the legs didn’t wake, and the pain did not stop. She sat in the bathroom and groaned and rocked.

  Andrew and Spencer remained in the office.

  “Is my sister all right? She looks terrible.”

  “I don’t think she’s feeling well. She’s been under the weather lately.”

  “She looks it. Detective, is there anything else I can do for you? I’m happy to help. I didn’t know Amy well, but like I said, I knew of her through Lily. They were very close. My sister was always talking about her.”

  “Congressman, did you ever go up to visit your sister at her apartment?”

  “Yes. Not often. But I’ve been there once or twice.”

  “You won’t object then if I take a hair sample from you? We have a couple of unknown hairs we’ve been trying to match.” Spencer took a plastic bag out of his jacket pocket, a scraper, and a pair of small scissors.

  “Of course. That won’t be a problem at all.” Andrew bent his head so that Spencer could cut some hair from him. “But it won’t show you much. I’ve been to the apartment.”

  “Absolutely. We just want to eliminate all the family and friends to see what we’re left with.”

  Spencer thought Andrew was a charming man. He was neutral toward charming men. Their charms were not lost but wasted on him.

  “Did Amy ever come to visit you by herself?”

  “What?” Andrew took a step away from Spencer and narrowed his eyes.

  “Congressman, it was a simple question. Did Amy ever come without Lily, to visit you by herself?”

  “Visit me where?”

  “Anywhere. Here in Port Jeff. In Washington. In New York City. The question was, did she ever come by herself to see you?”

  “I don’t know,” Andrew said. “I can’t recall. You have to understand, detective, I deal with hundreds and hundreds of people a week. I can’t remember each and every one who comes to see me. I just don’t recall. She may have come to my office here, perhaps stopped by to say hello. Doesn’t her family live in Port Jefferson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then. Perhaps she did. I have no memory of her doing that, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t. It’s just something I didn’t keep track of.” He smiled politely.

  “When do you think was the last time you don’t recall Amy stopping by?”

  “What?”

  “You have not answered a single question I’ve asked you directly. Not even this one.”

  “If you’ll pardon me, this one was particularly convoluted.”

  “Meant to be ironic. When was the last time you saw Amy?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a while since I saw my sister, so a while ago.”

  “When was the last time you saw Amy on her own, without your sister?”

  “I told you, I can’t recall.”

  “Would anyone in your office be able to confirm Amy’s visit to your Port Jeff office? Your office manager perhaps? Your assistant? Your receptionist?”

  “I don’t write down impromptu visits from my constituents in my log book, detective.”

  “Amy was not your constituent. She lived in New York City.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “How often did Amy stop by…impromptu!”

  “Detective, she didn’t. What is this?”

  There was a knock on the door. “Andrew?” It was Miera. The door opened. “Sorry to interrupt. But something is wrong with your sister. She is…I don’t know what’s the matter with her. She’s in the bathroom, and she sounds like she’s being cut open.”

  In the car on the way back, after miles of miles of flat Long Island around them, miles and miles of the Long Island Expressway, somewhere around Westbury, after fifty minutes of silence, Lily spoke. How did Lily manage to suppress a groan, how did she do it? The pain in her legs was unrelenting. In as calm a voice as she could manage, she breathed out, “You see, Detective O’Malley, I told you there was a simple explanation.”

  Watching him grip the wheel and say nothing made the agony inside her only more acute.

  Her brother and Amy flew above Lily that night, piercing her with their separate life, separate sharp trials. Lily’s trials were in her bed, where she lay hurting so badly, screaming to Andrew, to Amy, to Joshua, to Spencer, and to the empty walls, screaming for her mother, for relief. What was it in her body that was shooting her up like this, what was that in her abdomen? Her stomach felt like it was repeatedly being punched by a steel ball from the inside.

  Finally, after hours of twisting, she called her sister Amanda, who didn’t call back. She called her sister Anne, but Anne was away and not answering, no one was answering, yet Lily needed somebody desperately. She could not call her grandmother, who could not go out of her house and could not help her, and she could not call her mother, who could not help her and didn’t want to. Lily called the one person she knew would not come. She called Joshua. “I’m sorry, Lil,” he said. “I’m still at work and then we’re going out. Can it wait till tomorrow?”

  She called the only person who would come.

  She called Spencer.

  It was the deep of a Friday night. She rang his beeper and he called her back within minutes.

  “What’s wrong?” He sounded like he’d been sleeping.

  “Spencer,” Lily whispered, “please could you come and take me to the hospital?”

  “I’ll come, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. But something is the matter with me.” She dropped the pho
ne. “Please come now…”

  He came now. With his arm around her she got herself downstairs, and slowly, supported by him, they flagged a cab and went to St. Vincent’s Hospital on 12th Street.

  As the triage nurse was hooking up the blood pressure cuff to Lily’s arm, she said, “What are you in for?”

  “Have a stomach ache,” breathed out Lily, her left arm still clutching her abdomen.

  “Hmm. Blood pressure’s low,” said the nurse.

  “How low?” asked Spencer.

  “Are you the husband?” The nurse glanced skeptically at Spencer and Lily’s unadorned ring fingers.

  “Just answer the simple question,” he snapped. “How low?”

  “Eighty over forty. I’ll get the doctor.”

  She left, and they waited.

  “That’s low, Lil.”

  “I know.”

  Spencer wiped his forehead. Lily was wearing blue sweats. “Aren’t you hot?”

  She was bent over her knees. “I don’t know.”

  The nurse came back. “Let me weigh you. Take off your shoes.”

  Spencer helped her. She got up on the scale. The nurse moved the weights down from 120 to 100. Lily was 102 pounds.

  “How tall are you?”

  “Five-four.”

  For the first time the triage nurse glanced at Lily with a note of what may have been concern. “Are you taking any controlled substances?”

  “No.”

  “They’re going to give you a blood test, they’ll find out, you know.”

  “I want them to find out.”

  Finally they took her to a room. Spencer stepped out until she put on a hospital gown. When he came back she was lying on her side, eyes closed, arms entwined around her stomach.

  “Lily,” he said in a shocked voice. “What in God’s name happened to your legs?”

  Her thighs had bruises the size of grapefruits. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you fall?”

  “No.”

  “Did someone…hit you?”

  “Of course not,” she whispered.

  “So what is it?”

  “I don’t know. Black and blue?”

  “From what?”

  Soon the doctor came in, middle-aged, thin, short, indifferent. “I’m Doctor Mladek. What seems to be the trouble?”

  Lily was screaming. The pain had come back.

  He put a hand on her. “Stop screaming, just tell me what’s going on.”

  She was screaming and couldn’t stop. Mladek asked her if she was pregnant. Lily shook her head. Spencer sank down in a chair by the curtain separating her cubicle from the rest of the emergency ward.

  “When was your last period?” Mladek was reading her pulse.

  She had to think about it. “May, I think.”

  Mladek let go of her wrist. “This could be an ectopic pregnancy,” he said to her.

  Lily shook her head.

  “When was the last time you had intercourse?”

  She hadn’t been with Joshua since early April and this was August. She narrowly escaped first date sex with the cutie-patootie from Brooklyn. Was she four months pregnant and didn’t know it? She didn’t think so. Didn’t ectopic pregnancies happen in the first few months?

  “Let me feel your stomach please.” She turned on her back. “How long have you had this pain?” He was feeling through her hospital gown.

  “Since this afternoon,” she replied.

  “Could it be a ruptured appendix?” asked Spencer.

  “Could be,” Mladek said without stopping his examination. “Quite likely, in fact.”

  “That would be a miracle,” Lily said when she could speak. “Because the appendix was taken out twelve years ago.”

  Mladek asked her if she could walk to X-ray. It turned out she couldn’t. They put her in a wheelchair.

  Her bones were fine. But…they saw something in her lungs and refused to tell her what it was. They took her blood, they asked for a urine sample.

  Finally they made her drink a quart of blue sickly sweet water. “For a CT scan.” Lily couldn’t, she kept throwing it up.

  Mladek performed his own ultrasound exam, and said in a pensive voice, “That’s odd. Looks like you may be bleeding internally. Which would explain the abdominal pain.”

  “Why would I be bleeding internally?”

  “Were you hit? In an accident?”

  “No and no.”

  Mladek left. Lily was still on the ultrasound table. Spencer was silent by her side.

  “I don’t have a doctor,” she said. “I don’t even have insurance. How am I going to pay for this? ER, X-rays, ultrasounds, doctors’ fees.”

  “Self-pay,” said Spencer.

  “With what?” she whispered.

  “With eighteen million dollars.”

  “I told you I’m not cashing in that ticket until Amy comes back.”

  “All right, Lily.”

  They waited.

  “What do you think it is, Spencer?”

  “I’m a detective, not a doctor.” He fell mute, and looked away.

  The pain inside her abdomen came in waves. Internal hemorrhaging, what, why?

  Mladek came back with a nurse. “I’m going to administer a morphine drip,” he said. “You need some relief.”

  Lily didn’t care for a moment what happened to her, all she heard was the word relief. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Relief from what?”

  “Look, we’re going to have to transfer you to another hospital. We’re going to move you to Mount Sinai.”

  “Why?”

  “They have better facilities.”

  “Facilities for what?”

  “For a bone marrow biopsy.” Mladek’s face was no longer indifferent. “Your white blood cells are out of control. Have you been sick?”

  “I haven’t felt well.”

  “Your astonishing numbers of white blood cells, depleted red cells and barely any platelets…your leg bruises…how long have you felt not well?”

  Lily didn’t answer. For months?

  “Why didn’t you go to a doctor?”

  “I thought it was just a cold.” She stopped to take a breath. The wave crashed into her abdomen again. Where was that morphine? “Then I thought it was psychological. I’ve been…under some stress lately.”

  “Have you had a cold that you just could not shake?”

  “A little pneumonia last month. Is that what’s on my lungs?”

  “No blood tests?”

  “For pneumonia? No. I went to a clinic. They listened to my chest, gave me antibiotics.”

  “Have you had any cuts or bruises that have not healed or that took a long time to heal?”

  Lily glanced at Spencer, recalling from months ago the cut on her finger that oozed blood for days, her infected burn a few weeks ago. “Yes. I thought it was psychological,” she replied quietly.

  “Oozing blood is psychological?” Mladek asked. “Exhaustion, loss of appetite, loss of weight, irritable bowel, headaches, those can be psychological. But bleeding?”

  “I had a lot on my mind,” she said. “I’ve been sick before. I thought I would just get over it.”

  The nurse was starting an IV, as Lily lay there with her arm outstretched.

  Mladek raised her gown slightly to expose her thighs. He stared at her black grapefruit bruises, silently, and then walked out of the tent.

  They were left alone. Spencer wasn’t looking at her.

  “Spencer?” she said. “What do you think?”

  “I’m not thinking,” said Spencer.

  They remained side by side, glucose slowly dripping into her veins, her left arm still around her crushed abdomen; Spencer sitting on the chair, slightly hunched over, looking at his hands.

  “Thank you for staying with me,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Were you sleeping when I called?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Were you with…
Mary?” she asked.

  “Yes. Lucky for you I was.”

  Lily didn’t know what he meant by that—and suddenly there was commotion and Spencer had to get up and leave. She extended her hand to him, but he didn’t see.

  She didn’t remember getting to Mount Sinai. She hoped they took her by helicopter; how cool would that have been. The hospital halls, the walls, the smells were all filtered through the fog of morphine. The stomach stopped hurting. She heard someone say they were going to administer a general anesthetic. “A little oxygen for your leg,” a doctor said to her, with a smile, and she felt the knives in her leg again. Catching her breath, she said, “What is that, what is that?” and fell away.

  …Into blackness, from which she came up an eternity later, she woke slowly and was groggy. Nurses mutely fussed around her, lifting her arm, checking her blood pressure, her pulse, adjusting her IV, refilling her plastic bag, straightening her pillows. Something hurt in her hip, a new pain despite the morphine, through the morphine.

  One nurse was black and looked as if she enjoyed her food. She smelled faintly of burgers and Milky Ways and cigarette smoke. She smiled at Lily. The other was Filipino and Lily could have been tuna for all the compassion in her eyes. She wanted to ask for Spencer, but was afraid that he had left. Please, be here. She was not thirsty but her mouth was cracked, her throat was parched. She asked for a drink; the black nurse brought it to her lips. There was no pain anymore, except for the discomfort in her hip. She whispered, “The pain is gone,” and the black nurse said, “It’s not gone, with morphine everything is hidden.” And it was true, everything was hidden.

  Everything.

  And in the hidden space, between the blackness and the hospital room, in the recesses and nooks of senseless pain, Lily remembered the cold damp—it was in Times Square, it was so rainy, so cold. She wasn’t alone that time, she was with Amy, they were waiting for Andrew, a long time ago—finally Lily was going to introduce her new friend to her brother. She saw him walking down Seventh Avenue to them. The brilliant billboards were behind him and his raincoat was wet. A black umbrella was over his head, and he was smiling. And when Lily turned to Amy—she was smiling, too.

  Libera me Domine. Free me from having to think about it again. Lead me down my way, with no numbers, no steel pipes, no concrete blocks in my bridle path. What joy it was. My whole life on metaphorical morphine.