The doctor agrees with Sibyl that, as Mom’s daughter, she has every right to ask that the official visitor list be limited to family members only. Not that the hospital doesn’t have a similar policy of its own, since access to ICU patients is pretty tightly restricted as a rule.
I would have argued against this position on behalf of Winnie, but again, I am, as I have previously noted, a coward. All I’ve really been able to do is come downstairs to the main waiting room every other day and report to Winnie how Mom is doing. That’s not quite what Winnie needs, obviously. She wants to see my mother. She wants to sit and hold the hand of the person she loves most in the world.
My niece Lindsey agrees.
Let me tell you about Lindsey. She’s the conscientious kid who volunteers to take all the classroom animals home over summer break. She’s the principled kid who stands up to her classmates, and even sometimes stands up to her teachers when something gets said which she considers disparaging of a particular group. I call Lindsey our family’s little “Catcher in the Rye.” She’s like Holden Caulfield stationed in the rye field, keeping everybody from going off the cliff. It’s hard work looking out for everybody. Do you think you know a Lindsey? Because I happen to think there isn’t another thirteen-year-old girl quite like her.
Well, she calls me up just as I’m about to transition to weekend mode. It’s Friday night. It’s pizzas and Buds with a couple of the other lifelong bachelors who live in my apartment building. I’m in a hurry to start my weekend R & R. But I sit down and listen. Lindsey says she’s going to tell her parents that she’s spending the night with a friend of hers, but really she’s going to the hospital where they have Gran.
“Aren’t they going to check with the kid’s parents — the one you’re supposed to be having the slumber party with?”
“Are you serious? I spend, like, almost every Friday night at Tiffany’s house.”
“So Tiffany’s in on it?”
“Oh, totally. She’s got a really cool lesbian aunt who’s going to send her to Europe when she’s eighteen.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Pregnant pause. Third trimester kind of pregnant.
“I’m a little confused here, Lindsey. ICU visiting hours are over at seven. Besides which, they wouldn’t let you see Gran by yourself anyway.”
“Duh. That’s not why I’m going. And I’m not asking you to go either. It’s somebody else who’s coming with me tonight.”
“Who?”
“I am so not telling you. You’ll go straight to Mom.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I don’t trust your generation anymore. Gran and Winnie’s generation — they’re pretty cool, I think, but I don’t know about you, Uncle Matt.”
“I’m devastated. What team do you think I play for anyway, O-Niece-O-Mine?”
“I soooo need to leave to meet Winnie.”
“Winnie.”
“Well, duh. I have to take the bus, you know, since I do not happen to drive.”
“I’ll drive you. Would that put me on your team?”
“Oh my God, are you serious? Because that’s the reason I called you.”
Part B of the plan seemed, at first glance, to be the trickier part. It was making a personal, deeply heartfelt, pull-out-every-stop-in-the-emotional-manipulation-handbook attempt to get the night nurse supervisor, Ms. Gibson, to break two hard and fast rules of Intensive Care patient access: to allow a patient to see a visitor past seven o’clock, and then to allow in a visitor who by traditional definition isn’t even a member of the patient’s family.
By traditional definition, I’m smiling. I’ve known gay couples who’ve been “married” for more years than most straight couples of my acquaintance. And of course it wasn’t Mom and Winnie’s fault they got a late start. Winnie knew all along who she was. Maybe Mom knew too, but she’d always tamped it down. Coming out as a lesbian in the pre-Gay Rights era, especially coming out after you’ve been “traditionally” married and already raised two kids — that would have to be classified as one of life’s most difficult decisions. But, to her credit, she did it. I once asked Winnie how my mother could possibly have taken such a bold step, knowing the consequences. (Sibyl didn’t speak to Mom for over a year.)
Winnie didn’t bat an eye. “Because she loves me.”
Added to the mix was the fact that Nurse Gibson doesn’t even come on duty until nine o’clock. Roughly calculating the odds in my head, I gave my niece’s scheme about a fifty-to-one chance of success. And that was being optimistic.
We met Winnie at her and my mother’s favorite Chinese restaurant over on Second Place. Winnie was worried. She’s generally a tough old broad, just entering her seventies, sharp as a tack and very much her own woman. Now she seemed emotionally, well, fragile. It had been almost two weeks since she’d seen Hallie. And she was the one who brought Mom to the hospital in the first place, for Chrissakes. By late that same day, Winnie’s access to Mom had been totally cut off. I think this was Sibyl’s way of getting back at Mom and Winnie for all the embarrassment she felt they’d caused her. If so, it was hateful and punitive. I should have confronted her that first day.
But in case I haven’t said it already, I’m a…right.
Winnie poked at her General Tso’s chicken. She didn’t seem to have much of an appetite. “Lindsey, honey.” She closed her eyes. “I admire what you’re trying to do. But what makes you think that the head night nurse is going to put her job on the line just so I can spend a few minutes with your grandmother?”
“Because she’s, like, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I talked to her one day at Ward’s.”
I gave my niece a quizzical look. “Based on one brief conversation at the supermarket, you’ve decided that this is the kind of woman who can make miracles happen?”
Lindsey put her chopsticks down. They had been a struggle for her and I had twice suggested that she be an ugly American diner like Winnie and me and resort to the fork. “I think it’s wrong the way my mother has stood in the way of you getting to see Gran.” Lindsey was looking at Winnie. Both had tears welling in their eyes. I felt like a heel because I wasn’t likewise moved. And besides, I wasn’t really involved in this little escapade. I was just Lindsey’s chauffeur for the evening. Although, if it ever got back to Sibyl that not only had Lindsey lied about where she was that night, but that I had tacitly approved of the deception, I’d probably get put on Sis’s shit-list for a couple of years, at least. I’d have to miss all those great Saturday backyard cookouts with Doc bending my ear about infusion pumps, blood pressure cuffs, and peripherally inserted central catheters. On second thought, maybe being on my sister’s bad side wasn’t such a bad place to be.
“Hey, it might take a little convincing,” Lindsey went on, “but I’m totally not giving up. Is it almost nine?”
Winnie glanced at her watch. “No, honey. It’s just a little past eight.”
“Really? That’s all?”
Winnie nodded. We all picked up our forks and tried our best to eat.
In the main lobby of the hospital, Winnie and I sat down on a couch, while Lindsey approached the information desk.
“General visiting hours are nearly over,” we could hear the woman saying to Lindsey. It appeared from all the activity behind the desk that the woman was in the process of closing down her station for the evening.
“I know,” said Lindsey, glancing up at the clock on the wall. The clock read 8:55.
“I was wondering if all the nurses who come in for the next shift, if they, like, use that door there, or is there a back door — a staff door or something they might go through?”