I could hear the mounting roar of a fainting spell rising around my ears. I longed to sit down and put my head down between my knees. I took a deep breath, shaking my head in hopes of clearing it.
Still squinting, she tied the sash of her pink chenille robe as she emerged. “What’s this about?” she said, crossly. “What’s the matter with you?”
I held up my hand. “I need help.”
TEN
Cecilia dialed 9-1-1 and reported the break-in and the subsequent attack. The dispatcher said he’d send an ambulance, but Cecilia assured him she could get me to the hospital in the time it would take the paramedics to arrive. She threw on her sweats, a coat, and running shoes, and put me in her ancient Oldsmobile. To give her credit, she seemed properly concerned about my injury, patting me occasionally and saying things like, “You hang on now. You’ll be fine. We’re almost there. It’s just down the road.” She drove with exaggerated care, both hands on the steering wheel, chin lifted so she could see over the rim. Her speed never exceeded forty miles an hour and she solved the problem of which lane to drive in by keeping half the car in each.
I no longer felt pain. Some natural anesthesia had flooded through my system and I was woozy with its effect. I leaned my head back against the seat. She studied me anxiously, no doubt worried I’d barf on the hard-to-clean upholstery fabric.
“You’re dead white,” she said. She depressed the window control, opening the window halfway so that a wide stream of icy air whipped against my face. The highway was glossy with moisture, snow blowing across the road in diagonal lines. At this hour of the night, there was a comforting silence across the landscape. So far, the snow wasn’t sticking, but I could see a powdering of white on tree trunks, an airy accumulation in the dead and weedy fields.
The hospital was long and low, a one-story structure that stretched in a straight line like some endless medical motel. The exterior was a mix of brick and stucco, with a roof of three-tab asphalt shingle. The parking area near the ambulance entrance was virtually deserted. The emergency room was empty, though the few brave souls on duty roused themselves and appeared in due course, one of them a clerk whose name tag read L. LIPPINCOTT. I was guessing Lucille, Louise, Lillian, Lula.
Ms. Lippincott’s gaze flicked away from the bristling bouquet of digits. “How did you fall?”
“I didn’t. I was assaulted,” I said and then proceeded to give her an abbreviated account of the attack.
Her facial expression shifted from distaste to skepticism, as though there must be portions of the story I’d neglected to tell. Perhaps she fantasized some bizarre form of self-abuse or S M practices too nasty to relate.
I sat in a small upholstered chair, reciting my personal data-name, home address, insurance carrier-while she entered the information into her computer. She was in her sixties, a heavy-boned woman with graying hair arranged in perfect wavelets. Her face looked like half the air had leaked out, leaving soft pouches and seams. She wore a nursy-looking pantsuit of waffle-patterned white polyester with large shoulder pads and big white buttons down the front. “Where’d Cecilia disappear to? Wasn’t she the one brought you in?”
“I think she’s gone off to find a restroom. She was sitting right out there,” I said, indicating the waiting area. A new-found talent allowed me to point in two directions simultaneously-index and insult fingers going north-west, ring finger and pinkie steering eastnorth-east. I tried to avoid the sight, but it was hard to resist.
She made a photocopy of my insurance card, which she set to one side. She entered a print command and documents were generated, none of which I was able to sign with my bunged-up right hand. She made a note to that effect, indicating my acceptance of financial responsibility. She assembled a plastic bracelet bearing my name and hospital ID number and affixed that to my wrist with a device resembling a hole punch.
Chart in hand, she accompanied me through a doorway and showed me a seat in an examining room about the size of a jail cell. She stuck my chart in a slot mounted on the door before she left. “Someone’ll be right with you.”
The place looked like every other emergency room I’d ever been exposed to: beige speckled floor glossy with wax, making it easy to remove blood and other body fluids; acoustical tile on the ceiling, the better to dampen all the anguished cries and screams. The prevailing smell of rubbing alcohol made me think about needles and I desperately needed to lie down that instant. I set my jacket aside and crawled up on the examining table, where I lay on the crackling paper and stared at the ceiling. I wasn’t doing well. I was shivering.
The lights seemed unnaturally bright and the room oscillated. I laid my left arm across my eyes and tried to think about something nice, like sex.
I could hear a low conversation in the corridor and someone came in, picking up my chart from the door. “Miss Millhone?” I heard the click of a ballpoint pen and I opened my eyes.
The ER nurse was black, her name tag identifying her as V LaMott. She had to be Rafer LaMott’s wife, mother to the young woman working as a shortorder cook over at the Rainbow Cafe. Was theirs the only African American family in Nota Lake? Like her daughter, V LaMott was trim, her skin the color of tobacco. Her hair was cropped close, her face devoid of makeup. “I’m Mrs. LaMott. You’ve met my husband, I believe.”
“We spoke briefly.”
“Let’s see the hand.”
I held it up. Something about her mention of Rafer made me think he’d confessed to her fully about his rudeness to me. She looked like the kind of woman who’d have given him a hard time about that. I hoped.
I kept my face averted while she completed her inspection. I could feel myself tense up, but she was careful to make only gingerly contact. There was apparently no nurse’s aide on duty so she checked my vital signs herself. She took my temperature with an electronic thermometer that gave nearly instant results and then she held my left arm against her body as she pumped up the blood pressure cuff and took a reading. Her hands were warm while mine felt bloodless. She made notes on my chart.
“What’s the V stand for?” I asked.
“Victoria. You can call me Vicky if you like. We’re not formal around here. Are you on any medication?”
“Birth control pills.”
“Any allergies?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have you had a tetanus shot in the last ten years?” My mind went blank. “I can’t remember.”
“Let’s get that over with,” she said.
I could feel the panic mount. “I mean, it’s really not necessary. It’s not a problem. I have two dislocated fingers, but the skin wasn’t broken. See? No cuts, no puncture wounds. I didn’t step on a nail.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I felt my heart sink. In my weakened condition, I hadn’t thought to lie. I could have told her anything about my medical history. She’d never know the difference and it was my lookout. Lockjaw, big deal. This was all too much. I’m phobic about needles, which is to say I sometimes faint at the very idea of injections and become giddy at the sight of a S-Y R-1-N-G-E. I’ve been known to pass out when other people get shots. In traveling, I would never go to a country that required immunizations. Who wants to spend time in an area where smallpox and cholera still run rampant among the citizens?
What I hate most in the world are those obscene newscasts where there’s sudden minicam coverage of wailing children being stabbed with hypodermics in their sweet, plump little arms. Their expressions of betrayal are enough to make you sick. I could feel the sweat breaking out on my palms. Even lying down I was worried I’d lose consciousness.
She came back in a flash, holding the you-know-what on a little plastic tray like a snack. In my only hope of control, I persuaded her to stick me in the hip instead of my upper arm, though lowering my blue jeans was a trick with one hand.
“I don’t like it either,” she said. “Shots scare me silly. Here we go.”
Stoically, I bore the discomfort, which truly wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. Maybe I was maturing. Ha ha ha, she said.
“Shit.”
“Sorry. I know it stings.”
“It’s not that. I just remembered. My last tetanus shot was three years ago. I took a bullet in the arm and they gave me one then.”
“Oh, well,” she said. She inserted the syringe into a device labeled “sharps” and neatly snapped off the needle, like I might snatch it away and stick myself with it six more times for fun. Ever the professional, I took advantage of the opportunity to quiz her about the Newquists while we waited for the doctor. “I gather Rafer and Tom were good friends,” I said, for openers.