Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 03 - When the Carny Comes to Town (4 page)

Aunt Madge was already patting her on the back and I was holding her hand, so he didn’t say anything, just handed the towels to Aunt Madge, who gave Ramona one to wipe her mouth and placed the others on the back of her neck.

While Aunt Madge helped Ramona I looked at the doctor’s name badge.  Jacob Goldstein looked about my age, but lines at the corner of his eyes made me think more like mid-thirties.  He gave me a small nod and glanced at his watch.

“I’m so sorry,” Ramona said, sitting up. 

She looked more or less done, so I moved the waste basket and its smelly contents a few feet away from us. 

“He’s someone you care about,” the doctor said quietly.  He adopted a more brisk tone as he went back to his drawing, which he had stuck in the pocket of his scrubs.  “I’m really not that concerned about the head injury.  Twenty-five years ago we had poorer quality imaging and couldn’t be as precise when we worked on the brain or skull.  They’ll watch him closely, probably administer some steroids, which also reduce swelling.  He should recover fine.”

He leaned against a chair.  “He has at least two crushed vertebrae, one cervical, one thoracic.  They’ll be evaluating him carefully to be sure there is no pressure on nerves along the spinal cord.  Someone else will talk to you more about that.” 

I racked my brain.  If cervical was neck area and lumbar was lower spine, thoracic must be in the middle.

“So, he fell?”  Aunt Madge asked.

Dr. Goldstein shrugged.  “That would be my assumption for the back injuries.  If I had to guess I’d say down a flight of steps.”

“But,” I was groping, “you don’t think that’s how he hurt his head?”

“Anything is possible,” he said, “but I did my neurosurgery residence in Camden and saw enough skulls hit with beer bottles to think it looked familiar.”  He stood.  “I’m on call in Newark this afternoon.  I was just down here with my kids for the carnival.  If I hadn’t stayed to have breakfast at Newhart’s Diner I’d have been long gone.” 

He shook hands with me and then Aunt Madge, ignoring Ramona for probably sanitary reasons.  “I expect you’ll know the local doctors who will care for him,” he said.

Aunt Madge gripped his hand and looked him in the eye.  “I will forever regard you as a miracle.”

He pulled back his hand and gave her a tap on the shoulder.  “I’ll tell my wife you said that.” 

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS ANOTHER HOUR before anyone came to talk to us again.  Once Aunt Madge made sure the right people knew where we were waiting she wouldn’t let me go bug them.  The cleaning person who came to deal with the trash can refused Aunt Madge’s offer to buy him a cup of coffee and a roll.  “Comes with the territory,” was all he said.

Finally a woman in scrubs came in to say Scoobie had been moved to Intensive Care and we could go to the waiting area there.  As we took the elevator to the fourth floor I wanted to scream.  Didn’t they know we needed to see Scoobie
right now
?

We sat and I scanned the room for the nearest waste basket.  Just in case. 

After a few moments Ramona got up and walked to the window.  She stood looking out for a minute and then turned back to us.  “I can’t believe this is happening.”

Aunt Madge looked at her and then me, and asked her question a bit differently.  “You two are sure you don’t know anyone mad at him, right?”

I shook my head.  “Everybody, even Joe Regan, talks about how great Scoobie’s doing, with school, and everything.”

“And half of them say it’s because of you,” Ramona said, nodding at me.

“Me?”  I stared at her.  “What did I do?”

“Nothing annoying at the moment,” Aunt Madge said, dryly.

Ramona shrugged.  “You guys had a lot of fun in high school.  You know Scoobie’s always been…”

“A little different,” Aunt Madge threw in.

Ramona nodded.  “You guys hung out all the time in junior year, and you do again.  You get him.”  She shrugged.

I knew what she meant.  Scoobie and I had talked a couple of times over the winter about how unhappy we both were during eleventh grade — not that we had talked about it back then.  For me only that one year was really unhappy.  My life was okay once my parents got back together and I went home to Lakewood.

Scoobie won’t talk to me much about his life then, but I guess his severely alcoholic mother, to use Aunt Madge’s phrase, either ignored him or tried to get him to sneak booze to her when his father was not around, which was a lot of the time.  I didn’t know this at the time.  I just figured he was allowed to be where he wanted to be when he wanted to be there.  Aunt Madge, of course, kept a much tighter rein on me, but she went to bed early, so if the weather was halfway warm I’d sneak out.

Before I could say anything a nurse walked in.  “Hi, Madge.”  She leaned against a small table and faced the three of us.  “He’s doing a lot better than anyone thought he would when he got to the ER, but he’s got a long way to go.”

“Has he been conscious at all?”  Aunt Madge asked.

“Several times he responded to commands to wiggle his toes.  And about the third time I asked him to squeeze my hand he scratched his index finger on the sheet, and when I looked at it he made a loose fist and then raised his middle finger at me.”

I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard in my life, not even the night Robby told me he was going to be arrested for embezzling.  It was a couple minutes before I could stop, even with Aunt Madge giving me a continual one-armed hug and Ramona pushing tissues at me.

“I’m so sorry,” I hiccupped and wiped my sweaty face with a handful of the cheap hospital tissues. 

“It’s okay,” Ramona said.  She was kneeling on the floor in front of me and she grinned.  At least you didn’t need the waste basket.

WE SET UP A SCHEDULE so one of us would be in the waiting area all the time.  After they knew Scoobie could sort of respond to questions they had sedated him again, so we couldn’t talk to him.  It was supposed to help his brain heal better.  The hospital would only let one of us into Scoobie’s tiny room at a time, and for only a few minutes an hour.  We let Aunt Madge go in first.  It was her idea.  She said she’d let us know what to expect. 

“He’s banged up, but his face isn’t bruised as badly as I expected, and only one eye is swollen.”  She thought for a second.  “They’ve sedated him a lot, so he doesn’t respond, but the nurse said we shouldn’t worry about that.”  She sat down heavily on one of the stuffed, hard plastic chairs.  “There’s so much equipment in there a seagull wouldn’t have a perch.”

She stayed a bit longer, but Ramona and I sent Aunt Madge home in the middle of the afternoon so she could see to her guests.  She’s an early bird, so she planned to come by Sunday morning just after her guests finished breakfast. 

While Aunt Madge had been in with Scoobie Ramona and I started calling a few people.  We knew word would get out fast and rumors would fly, so we called Jennifer and asked her to tell some of the classmates Scoobie knows best.  Ramona called Joe Regan while I called Daphne at the library, since that’s where Scoobie hangs out much of the day.  Neither of us called George Winters, but about four o’clock he showed up.

His demeanor was not as impassive as it usually is when he throws questions at people.  George had his notebook in one hand and pencil in the other and gave us a raised-hand surrender gesture.  “You know I gotta ask.  Then I’ll leave you alone.”

If I hadn’t pulled him into the dunk tank yesterday I probably would have shrieked at him.  Instead I just nodded, and asked him the first question.  “Did you talk to Sgt. Morehouse lately?” 

“They’re wrapping up at the carnival.  Doesn’t look like they’re finding out much.  Carnies are mad because they say everybody suspects them of every crime in town when they’re here.”

I didn’t give a damn about the carnies.  “In other words, nothing,” I said.

“Nothing they’re talking about and I can usually get something out of ‘em.”  He flipped open his notebook and glanced at it.  “Nobody saw him much after the last time he heckled people at the dunk tank about nine-thirty last night.  By that time he had changed back into his jeans and a sweatshirt, and that’s what he was wearing when they found him.”

I nodded, thinking.  I’d seen Scoobie then.  He’d been trying to get Father Teehan to promise to get onto the dunk tank plank Sunday after Mass, and Father was having none of it.  Reverend Jamison reminded Scoobie that Father Teehan was no spring chicken, and it had taken me a minute to figure out that there was some ecumenical hazing going on. 

“That was the last time I saw him, too,” I said.

Ramona described our walk to the car together and that we’d mentioned we hadn’t seen him for awhile.

George nodded.  “It sounds as if he left shortly after 9:30, but it’s kind of odd no one saw him leave.  I guess someone may hear what happened and call the police later.  They’re putting a call out on the radio.”

“Who’s going to be listening to the radio today?”  I asked.

“They’re set up at the carnival, like always,” Ramona said.  “They’ll mention it a lot.”

“Yeah.  Chamber of Commerce’ll love it.”  George continued, “Morehouse is really irritated that they don’t want to announce it on the PA at the carnival, but Father Teehan and a bunch of other people think it would “unduly upset” people.”

“That’s ridiculous!”  I stood up and walked to the window and back.  “How come it gets to be their decision?”

“It’s not like they’re warning about a heavy thunderstorm coming in.”  George glanced back at his notes.  “What’s done is done.”

When neither of us said anything he glanced up.  “Sorry,” he said, taking in our stony stares.  “They figure most people who were at the carnival yesterday aren’t there today, except the workers, and they’re talking to them.  So,” his tone grew cautious, “either of you seen him yet?”

Ramona looked at her watch.  “I’ll let you guys talk.  I told Roland I’d come back to the store for a bit.  He wants to take his nephew to the carnival.”  She looked at me.  “I’ll be back about six or seven and I’ll bring you a pillow.”

She left and George looked at me.  “You’re sleeping here?”

“Probably just tonight.”  I looked away, afraid I’d tear up.

He stared a moment, then repeated his question about whether we’d seen Scoobie yet.

“He looks, well, better than I thought he would,” I said.  “I thought his head would be really swollen and he’d be all black and blue or something.”

“He’s not so banged up?” he asked.

I thought for a second.  “He is.  His head is bandaged from where they put in a catheter to drain some fluid from his brain.”

George winced.

“But it’s not like a huge turban.  He has a bruise on his face, and a puffy eye.”  I thought for a moment.  “You can’t see the back injuries.”

“He awake?” George asked.

I shook my head.  “They said once they knew he could hear them and follow a couple instructions they sedated him.  It
’s
supposed to help his brain heal faster.”

George made a couple notes, and I looked at him more closely.  “Did the police tell you what was wrong with him?”  I asked.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, not looking up.

“No they didn’t.  You’re fishing, same as always.”  I could feel myself redden and it was an effort not to yell at him.

He stared at me very directly.  “They said he was hurt in a fall and maybe somebody pushed him.  You know cops keep back stuff.”

“Because there’s always some total ass who will print it,” I said, regretting my word choice almost as soon as it was out of my mouth.

Since he wanted to keep talking to me George didn’t show any offense taken.  “I don’t just work here, I live here.  I’m not saying I sugar coat stuff, but if the cops have a good reason to keep something quiet I pretty much go along with it.”

Too stubborn to apologize I snapped back.  “You’re only saying that because you want something from me.”

He shut his notebook and stood.  “I’ll see you around, Jolie.”

I SAW SCOOBIE several more times before Ramona came back with a pillow and a plastic bag of grocery store raw vegetables.  While she was in with Scoobie I ate a few, wishing they were dipped and fried.

“What do you think?” I asked when she came back.

“Well, you know he’s just sleeping.  But I watched the numbers on the equipment he’s hooked to and his blood pressure and oxygen level look good.”

All I’d done was stare at him, and I felt stupid for not looking around the area by his bed. 

“When my father had a stroke a couple years ago I learned what all those numbers mean,” she said.  Ramona helped herself to a couple pieces of cauliflower.  “I just don’t get who would hurt him.”

“That’s the $64,000 question,” I said.  “It had to be a long time after the carnival shut down for the night.  People would have been taking a shortcut through those trees to get to the popsicle district.  If he had a fight with somebody there before he went to the boardwalk people would have heard.”  The popsicle district is a part of Ocean Alley with small bungalows painted in vivid colors.  Thanks to Ramona’s real estate agent uncle, Lester Argrow, I appraise a fair number of houses in that area.