Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (17 page)

“Make sure it's labelled properly, Fiona. It's insurance blood.”

“You okay?” she asked. “You better start the pills.”

“No. No. Low risk, just a scratch. Maybe my watch, maybe not even his teeth.”

“The pills make you sick, don't they? But he's got tracks all over.”

“Sick like anything. I feel sick enough.” I remembered his puncture-scarred arms, his smell of life in decay. “Maybe I should take the prophylaxis. Yeah, sign one out to me. Tell resusc I'm going to be a minute. Ask that woman officer to come in.” I took one of the paper bags, shoved it in a pocket.

In the dispensing room there was a soft light that glowed from under the edges of the cupboards. This was to make it easier to count pills. I liked this room. You could see everything you needed to see. There was a knock.

The woman officer said, “Hi doc. Problem?”

“No problem. You know what? I don't think he's so crazy. He can go with you tonight.”

“But what about…” she said, unsure how to phrase her concern.

“What, about coercion and police brutality, all that stuff? About that stuff?”

“Yeah, that.”

“I wrote here in the chart that his account of the events changed from time to time and was inconsistent.” I showed it the officer. “I'm sure a judge would find you more credible than your prisoner. If he has the chance to tell a judge.”

“I'm sorry about the mess.”

“The bite,” I said. I smiled. “Like you said, gotta watch yourself. We both work with occupational hazards.”

“All the time.”

“About his head, I guess he fell on the car door, huh? That's what I'll write down, that he fell on the door of the cruiser while he was getting in. Clumsy.”

“That's exactly what we wrote. Exactly what happened.”

“You know what else? You may not have noticed this yet, but he's got multiple bruises on his limbs and torso. He was flailing around at some point. Hurt himself.”

“No, I hadn't noticed.”

“Well, here's what I saw. He's moving all four limbs well. No broken bones or anything, no cuts except for
the one on the head where we fixed him. But there's a lot of bruising that you may not have noticed yet.
Multiple bruises consistent with accidental injury.
That's what I'm writing in the chart. What was that ‘yummy yummy' nonsense anyhow?”

“I really couldn't say, doctor.”

“Eli needs to learn respect for the police. I'm going to discharge him to your custody.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Just my job. 'Night, officer.”

They took him out. Eli swore and stumbled. Maybe it would happen just down the street, in this precinct anyhow. He might bolt outside the hospital, or there were a lot of quiet corners where he might try to escape, and they would have to take him into custody again, teach some respect. I went into the quiet room. It stank. The scissors were gone, and what can you say about that? So many things happen at once. A doctor could lose track of one small, sharp object, and an agitated patient could easily grab a little pair of scissors.

I went to the bathroom, took the small handful of pills that would reduce my probability of seroconverting if I had actually been exposed to HIV and washed them down with handfuls of water. Soon my shift was over, and I signed over to the next physician.

As I drove away, I saw a speeding police cruiser with sirens on, blazing toward the hospital. There're a lot of cruisers, like crackling fireflies in the night. The police
bring in their prisoners when necessary, and the officers come themselves as patients when they're hurt. I didn't look to see the faces of the officers in that car.

 

AFTERWARDS

DOCTOR SRI WATCHED THE AMBULANCE CREW
wheel in the big, motionless man. In resuscitation bay 3, the form wrapped in the blanket was lifted upward by a circle of hands, each grasping the orange cloth. The medics and nurses asked and answered each other at the same time. This heavy form in the bright blanket rose off the ambulance gurney, floated for a moment, and then settled on the hospital stretcher. Around the silent man, a choir of beeping monitors and electronic alarms rang out a desperate melody.
Lines and cables spilled over each other, into him and onto the floor.

“What's the story?” asked Sri.

Zoltan the paramedic said, “Unwitnessed collapse in a hair salon. He was in back. Found in vee-fib. Shocked three times, tubed, epi times three, atropine times two. En route, total six shocks—no response.”

“Time down?”

“Call at fourteen-oh-five…now twenty-five minutes down.”

“All right.” Sri placed his stethoscope on the man's chest—no heart sounds. The eyeballs were beginning to dry and stick to the open lids, and the pupils were a fixed size. The hands were a lacy blue web, which spread up the arms to the purple face. Sri felt relaxed, almost placid.

“Twenty-five minutes down?” said Sri. He felt calm because it was too late to make a difference.

“Yeah. Traffic.”

“Fine. Bolus Amio three hundred. Pads, and get ready to shock.” Hands reached for drug boxes, for the paddles. The monitor's frantic line jumped up and down. Bouncing, bouncing, and wild. Ventricular fibrillation, the heart's desperate spasm.

“Amio in,” called out a nurse.

Sri held the paddles in front of himself.

“Charging to three-sixty,” said Sri. His thumbs flicked the red button on each paddle. The counter climbed: two-fifty, three hundred, three-sixty. “I'm
clear.” He placed the paddles on the chest. “You're clear.” He looked up and down the stretcher to see that everyone had stepped back. “Everyone's clear.” Sri leaned down hard over the paddles. His thumbs found the big orange buttons. With a quiet beep of the defibrillator, the man's body jumped in a moment and softly rustled the sheets in falling back into them. Sri always thought there was a noise in that jumping—like a little bang or a snap. Afterwards, he wondered if he had imagined it, and then he couldn't be sure.

“Continue CPR,” said Sri.

Zoltan, whose shoulders were broader than his planted feet, compressed the chest. With his hands overlapped and a closed-mouth smile, he pumped the chest casually, flexed at the elbows. Most people lock their elbows and lunge from the waist to achieve enough force. Zoltan pumped with a delicate stroking motion that pushed the silent man audibly down, down into the stretcher.

“Good output,” said Sri. His gloved hand felt for a pulse on the groin of this human shape in the nest of sheets and wires. The blood not clotted yet, but not warm either. At the requisite intervals, Sri ordered injections, shocked the human form, and re-examined. On the monitor, the dancing line became a lazy wave. Sri wrote in the chart.

It was fourteen-fifty when Sri said, “Hold compression.” The line was flat across the monitor. “Is the family here yet?”

“No one.”

“Well, I think we're done. I'm calling it. Thank you everyone.”

 

Four patients later, Nurse Lillian came to Dr. Sri.

“Mr. Wilhelm's family is in the family room,” she said.

“Who?”

“The vee-fib. His family.”

They began to walk down the hall. Lillian handed Sri the chart.

“Wife and son,” said Lillian. Her voice was light and firm, a tone that might signal the arrival of guests who were expected but not especially welcome.

Is he really dead yet?
Sri wondered. Mr. Wilhelm himself was gone, but the Mr. Wilhelm who existed with his family was alive until Sri told them of the death.
This hallway to the family room always feels long,
thought Sri. Sri knew he was wondering idly, because either this death had happened or was soon about to be finished. It didn't matter if it was a secret reality in this hallway. The door appeared.
What if I don't go through this door?
thought Sri. He would not turn away. He had been in the family room many times.

Sri opened the door that had no window in it. He and Lillian entered the room.

“Hi, I'm Dr. Sri. This is Nurse Lillian.”

Glancing at the chart, Sri saw that he had not yet written that the patient was deceased.
What if, just now,
he thought,
I forgot that Mr. Wilhelm died?
Sri shook
hands with Mrs. Wilhelm and then her son, Tomas. “Pleased to meet you,” said Sri. Seeing them, now it seemed unfair that he knew and they did not. He wanted to rush the words. “I'm sorry it's under these circumstances.” But first the key phrases. What did he usually say in this time when everything but the facts would be lost?
Each time it feels like I'm rehearsing.
“Your husband arrived here about an hour ago.”
I should just say it, to make it real and end it. They already know. A wife knows—some believe that at the moment of death she feels it already.
“He collapsed in a hair salon. The paramedics came immediately, and did everything they could.”
I used the past tense. It gives it away. What would I say if the man were alive? I would start by saying he was alive.
Beginning to tell it, Sri felt calm. “They transported him here. We began to resuscitate him immediately. His heart had stopped beating. We did everything we could.” That last phrase felt like soap opera, but these words always came out of Sri's mouth.
To talk like this creates a delay, but there's a story to tell. Tell them the story. The story needs to come before the ending so that it makes sense looking back.
“We couldn't restart his heart.” So he had maybe tricked himself by revealing the death without saying the actual words.
I still have to say it.
“I'm sorry, but Mr. Wilhelm passed away peacefully about half an hour ago. He was in no pain or discomfort.”
That last part, I always feel I might be lying.

There.

The wife's face held a shattered expectation. Tomas Wilhelm was Dr. Sri's age, with quiet eyes that had the calmness of grey water. The young Wilhelm gazed beyond the space of the small room. This room. Sri had seen its pictures so many times but he could never think of what they showed. Forgotten landscapes, maybe, hung over the soft, easy-to-clean vinyl furniture.

“Heart attack,” said Sri. “Most likely.”

“He didn't take care of himself,” said Tomas, squinting.

“I see.”

“He smoked, never exercised, he was a diabetic—didn't care about his sugar.”

Sri always felt relief to learn that a deceased person's end was predicted by his life. It made it a happens-to-someone-else event, a bound-to-happen circumstance. There was less to explain, or understand.

“Well, I'm sure there's a lot to remember,” said Sri. Relieved at having told his part of the story, he tried to look at his watch without appearing to do so.

“He was in a hair salon?” asked Mrs. Wilhelm.

“Yes, a hair salon,” said Sri. “He fell in the back room. They called the ambulance. The paramedics gave him—”

“A hair salon? You mean his barber,” said Mrs. Wilhelm.

“I suppose his barber.”

“Why was he in the back of his barber's shop?” asked Tomas.

“Well, I don't know,” said Sri.
Details. Everyone wants the details. Emphasize the promptness of treatment.
“The ambulance crew shocked him immediately, and—”

“Immediately? The ambulance people were there?” asked Tomas.

“After they arrived.”

“I don't think his barber has a back room,” said Mrs. Wilhelm. She turned to Tomas, “Did he ever call it a hair salon?”

“It must be the back part of the shop.”
How would I know?
Sri looked openly at his watch.

“The haircut place. We'll get the address for you later,” said Lillian. “The ambulance people write down something that describes the place. For instance, if they bring someone from a coffee shop they might write
café.
Hair salon, barber. Back room, back of the store.”

Sri decided to try his medical speech again. “I can assure you that he received all the treatments that had a chance of saving him.”

“What about his car? Where is it parked?” asked Tomas.

“They won't tow it if he's died,” said Mrs. Wilhelm. “Will they?”

“Well, you know the parking police,” said Sri, and then wondered if he should have said something different. It was true that they ticketed and towed you even after death.

Sri stood, his hand at the doorknob. “Please don't hesitate to ask any further questions—about the medical
issues.” Relatives asked things he had no idea about—whether the car would be towed, or which hairdresser had given the last trim. Why did they care, now that these things were in the past? As soon as Sri felt the distance of closing the door behind him, he felt badly for thinking that. After all, the trivia was their property to care about, to console themselves with.

 

The nurse wrote down the address of the hair salon to help Mrs. Wilhelm and Tomas find the car. Tomas crumpled it into his pocket; 487 Fenning Avenue. As they drove from the hospital, neither Mrs. Wilhelm nor Tomas commented that this was not the address of the usual barber. It was early evening, and the winter sky had been dark since late in the afternoon. The gusts of falling snow were lit by streetlight. The snow comforted Tomas, filling the harsh air with softness. The early black evening made it feel like it was time to be at home, to sleep and be ignorant. Perhaps to watch television, and to allow the seduction of flickering cone-light from thirty-nine cable stations.

“I'll take you home, Mother?”

“I don't want to be alone.”

“We'll call Aunt Sophie and she'll come over. And Nana needs to know.”

“How will you get his car?”

“I'll find it.”

“You can't drive two cars.”

“True.”

Four-eighty-seven Fenning. Tomas pulled over, found a map and looked it up. It was a street in the area that real estate agents called the Upper Beaches, an attempt to convince house buyers that it was a part of the neighbourhood near the water. No one ever referred to the Lower Beaches but simply the Beaches, unless it was the Upper Beaches. When they found Fenning, it was an awkward street containing both houses and small, brick industrial buildings. An auto body shop, a reupholsterer, a hair salon. Tomas wished that he had insisted on taking his mother home, that he had come here by taxi or by streetcar. He could have walked to find the car, and he felt like walking, like having the repetitive motion of walking quickly in the snow, of seeing his tracks behind himself. He slowed down the car. The window of the hair salon at 487 Fenning was still bright through the slats of venetian blinds. The car was not on the street, though there seemed to be plenty of parking.

“Let's drive up and down,” said Tomas.

“Pull over.”

“The car's not here.”

“I need to get out.”

Slowly, thinking of not stopping, Tomas eased the car alongside the curb. His mother stepped out of the car, and pulled her green coat closed in front. She slammed the door quickly, and Tomas sat in the car with the engine running. The radio was off. Tomas watched his mother walk toward the hair salon, and thought about
following her. He wondered how much gas was in his father's car, a hatchback. His father often let the gas run low, then filled it up a quarter-tank at a time and said that he was going to wait and see if gas was cheaper tomorrow. His mother had not asked him to come with her, and Tomas saw her go into the hair salon, the blinds on the glass door shivering behind her. There won't be gas in the car, decided Tomas. And his father wouldn't have fixed the muffler yet. This would be left to him. He was angry at his father for leaving these messes, and for dying on a street in the Upper Beaches not known to them. Tomas watched the snow. He let it accumulate, and then flicked the wiper switch on for a moment to clear the windshield. He admired the patterns of the flakes on the glass. At first the snowflakes melted upon contact with the windshield, and then when they stuck they clumped so it was difficult to see the hexagonal patterns of the crystals.
Maybe I should go inside?
he thought. He looked toward the hair salon and saw a man emerge. Tomas turned on the windshield wiper, swept the glass canvas clean, and watched again. He turned off the car and put on his gloves. He had always doubted the uniqueness of each snowflake.