Revenge at $100 an installment. Collect.
“To tell you the truth,” said Alvin Crichton, M.D., chief of Neurosurgery at Steubenville General Hospital, “we don’t have a clear X-ray picture of your husband’s injuries yet.”
“My Karl has been here days and days,” said Lulu in her Margarete persona, “and you’ve had him up and down to that room with that big machine and made him lie on that cold table—”
“The X rays we have gotten don’t really tell us anything.”
They were in Zlachi’s semi-private room on a beautiful spring day in Stupidville; the drapes were back and the shades up so the bright afternoon sunlight poured across the bed and dripped to the floor like honey. The other bed was unoccupied.
“Why don’t they?”
Crichton had a big beak and was tall and lanky and slightly stooped, so in silhouette against the window he looked like a heron about to spear a fish with his nose.
“Because your husband won’t lie still for the X rays.”
“You keep puttin’ him through all that pain,” she snapped. “On the table, off the table—”
“That’s why we’d like to run a few tests right here.”
“Is it gonna hurt?” quavered Staley in his weak old-man’s voice. “I gotta lotta pain even just lyin’ here. I can stand that okay, but when I move—”
“I know, but it would be a great help in our diagnosis if we could localize the pain to find out exactly where it hurts.”
If the patient had been younger, Crichton would have suspected some sort of scam, but this was a man pushing 80, with no insurance and a dozen witnesses to his terrible headlong tumble down the department-store escalator.
Mrs. Klenhard surprised him by patting her husband’s arm.
“Karl, you gotta do what the doctor tells you.”
“Whatever you say, Mama,” he replied in a docile voice.
“Wonderful.” Crichton rang for the nurse as he sat down on the empty bed and got out his pen. “Are you still having those bad headaches, Mr. Klenhard?”
“Alla time, Doc.” He put a hand to his head. “They don’t never go away.”
“Not even with the medication?”
“Sometimes at night I kinda drift off... but otherwise...”
Crichton made cat scratches on the patient’s chart. “And how about the vertigo?” Seeing the look on their faces, he amended, “Dizziness. Losing your balance when you stand?”
“0h. Yeah. I gotta lean on Margarete when I gotta use the bathroom, Doc. Is very... makes me feel... ashamed, you know?”
The nurse came in, a sturdy freckle-faced girl with auburn hair and upturned nose. Crichton said he would like the patient to stand beside the bed for a few simple tests.
“Here we go,” said the nurse cheerily. She drew back the covers and reached for Staley’s feet. “We’ll just—”
“No!” exclaimed Margarete. “He don’t do it that way.”
It was a major operation, with everyone helping, just to get Staley on his two feet beside the bed. Even then he wasn’t upright; he was bent forward and pulled over to one side.
“That’s fine!” exclaimed Crichton with dubious enthusiasm. “Now I would like you to stretch your arms out to your sides... yes... that’s it... Now close your eyes and touch your nose with your forefinger...”
Staley tried with his left hand first. He fell over to his left. Margarete, expecting it, was quick to catch him.
“Gee, Mr. Doctor, I... I’m sorry...”
“You did just fine. Could you try the other hand?”
Staley tried with his right. And fell over left again.
“What’s it mean he does that?” demanded Margarete in alarm.
“It suggests that the major injury is on your husband’s left side.” Crichton patted Staley’s shoulder. “You’re doing just fine, Mr. Klenhard. You game for another little test?”
This one was more daunting. Staley was to try to relax his body, and then bend gently forward at the waist as if to touch his right foot with his left hand.
He bent down a few inches. And shot erect, screaming.
Trying to reverse it, to touch his left foot with his right hand, Staley, pale and shaken, got down about a foot before he yelped and shot erect again with a hand to the small of his back. They got him carefully but quickly back into bed on his back, pale and shaken, with the covers still drawn down.
“Is that it?” he asked hopefully. Lulu was patting his face with her handkerchief. “I don’t know if I can...”
“Just one more, then we’ll give you something for the pain and leave you alone.”
Lulu was fierce. “You gotta tell him what it is first.”
“I’d like you to raise your left knee just a little, Mr. Klenhard, then straighten it out again...”
“Hey, that oughtta be easy!” exclaimed Staley with his first show of enthusiasm for the day.
He almost delightedly started to lift his left knee. And yelped in agony, jerking to his left. Lulu started forward protectively. The nurse stopped her. Staley was breathing quickly and shallowly. He finally relaxed, the lines of pain lessening on his face. He spoke apologetically.
“Guess I didn’t do that so good, huh, Doc?”
“You did fine.” Crichton made a little grimace of his own. “How about... could I try to bend your knee, Mr. Klenhard?”
“Sure,” said Staley with a ghost of his former enthusiasm, “maybe you be better at it than me, huh?”
Crichton gingerly began to bend the knee. Staley yelped. This time Lulu started for Crichton, hands clawed, but the nurse again interposed herself between them.
“That’s enough. My Karl has had enough.”
Crichton frowned. “If we could just try his right leg—”
“No more,” she said with that sudden determination that so far had kept anyone else from being assigned to the other bed in the room. “No more for my Karl.”
“Mama,” said Staley. This time he met that dark, ominous gaze with one of his own. “We gotta let the doctor find out what he can. One more leg, okay? Then we be all through here.”
Another long pause from Lulu. Then finally, reluctantly, she nodded. “Okay. Once more. The right knee.”
Staley steeled himself, then started to bend his right knee. One inch. Two. Six. He kept bending it. It was almost totally flexed before he suddenly winced and let it drop. He lay there panting, but he met the doctor’s eyes triumphantly.
“Hey, I done good, huh, Doc?”
“You done wonderfully,” agreed Crichton. “And that’s it for today. In a few minutes they’ll bring supper—”
Lulu said, “I think he’s got too much pain to eat supper.”
“Then you can eat it for him,” grinned Crichton.
He made his notes on Staley’s chart and departed with the nurse. Staley’s eyes met Lulu’s. He winked. She winked back.
“I’ll make sure the nurse knows it was me ate your supper,” she said. “Then during visiting hours tonight I’ll sneak you in something from Jack in the Box—”
“Some of those fingerfoods I see on the TV,” exclaimed Staley with enthusiasm. His voice was deep and full, not thin and quavery as it was when anyone else was around. “With some of those curly fries and a Coke...”
Marino was off working his secret hotel scam, but the three other literates in the kumpania — Yana, Immaculata Bimbai, and, surprisingly, fat Josef Adamo — were filling out registration applications in a variety of names, with return addresses all over the country. The DMVs of such friendly southern states as Georgia and North Carolina would mail valid auto registrations to anyone who paid the fee and sent in the forms, and already only fourteen of the cars were still in the Bay Area.