Everything about his father had delighted David when he was a boy.
He wondered when it all had changed.
He wondered when his father had become a pain in the ass.
The waiting room, and his father’s room, and his own room at the hotel were beginning to blend into a single unit. The only reason David went back to the hotel between visiting hours was to get away from the hospital, but the hotel room was becoming an extension of the hospital. He had been here only since yesterday afternoon, and already his life was ordered by the sign on the waiting room door:
The other people in the waiting room seemed to spend their entire day there, watching television, talking to each other or to whichever pink lady was at the desk, going down for lunch in the hospital coffee shop, returning to wait for the two o’clock and then the four o’clock, and only then leaving the hospital to return later for the seven o’clock. Their patience was infinite; they all had people who were maybe dying in there.
He sat beside Bessie on one of the leatherette couches and listened to the voices all around him.
“My mother hit me this morning,” the thin woman with the flushed, excited face said. This was shortly before the two o’clock visit. Or perhaps the four o’clock. It was all becoming a blur for him. “She wants to go home, she hit me. I don’t know if I’ll come to see her again. She gets upset whenever I come. Maybe it’s better if I stay home.”
“No,” the pale woman in the wedgies said. Her daughter was not here today. Neither was the man from Toronto; David assumed he had already flown his comatose wife back to Canada. “You have to keep coming. They can carry on all they want, but they like to see you.”
“I don’t think she likes to see me,” the other woman said, and lit a cigarette. “I really don’t think so. If she likes me so much, why does she take a fit every time I come?”
“Because you’re the only one she can take it out on.”
He was beginning to learn their names. The pale woman in the wedgies, the one whose husband had had open-heart surgery twice, was Mrs. Daniels. Her fat daughter, who was not here this afternoon because her little girl had a ballet recital, was named Louise. David did not yet know her last name. The woman with the flushed face, the one whose mother had come in for a simple hernia operation and who was now violently insisting that she be taken home, was Mrs. Horowitz. She smoked even more than David did. There were other people in the waiting room now, strangers, the way Mrs. Daniels and her daughter and Mrs. Horowitz had been strangers to him yesterday. On the television screen, a man wearing a tuxedo was talking to a woman in a slinky evening gown. They were both sipping brandy from large snifters.
“That guy’s been wearing a tuxedo for the past two weeks,” a swarthy man across the room said.
“Things go slow on soap operas,” Mrs. Daniels said.
“Things go slow right here,” the man said.
He was growing a mustache; it sat like a smudge on his upper lip. He kept touching it constantly, checking on its progress. He had black hair and very dark eyes. He introduced himself as Albert Di Salvo. He told the others that his mother had suffered a stroke two weeks ago. He came to visit her whenever he could. He was worried that she was still in Intensive Care. He was an only child; he wanted to visit her more often, but he had to go to work, didn’t he? As it was, he was losing a lot of work hours. Mrs. Daniels comforted him. She told him he was of course doing the best he could; he couldn’t come here every minute, could he, and maybe lose his job?
“Same tuxedo for the past two weeks,” Di Salvo said. “I’m forty-three years old, I don’t have a tuxedo. That kid there on television is what, twenty-four, twenty-five, he’s got his own tuxedo.”
“It really belongs to the show,” Mrs. Horowitz said, puffing on her cigarette.
“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be his,” Di Salvo said. “He’s supposed to be rich.”
“He probably is rich,” Mrs. Daniels said. “I mean, in real life. Those TV actors make a lot of money.”
“Sure, they do,” Di Salvo said.
David lit another cigarette. Mrs. Daniels turned to him and gently said, “You shouldn’t smoke so much, Mr. Weber. I know this is a difficult time for you, but you have to watch your own health, too.”
“Let him smoke if he wants to,” Mrs. Horowitz said. “My mother never smoked a day in her life, she’s here in Intensive Care hitting her own daughter. Let him smoke.”
“You should eat, too,” Mrs. Daniels said. “To keep your strength up. There’s a coffee shop downstairs, they serve a nice lunch. Did you have lunch today, Mr. Weber?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Keep your strength up,” Mrs. Daniels said.
“When he finally takes off that tuxedo,” Di Salvo said, “it’ll walk across the room all by itself.”
Bessie, silent until now, suddenly said, “It always seems like forever. Waiting.”
It must have been during the four o’clock visit that David met the psychiatrist. The man walked into the room unannounced, the way they all did. He was holding a clipboard; David figured at once he was a doctor.
“Hello, Weber,” he said, “how are you feeling today?”
“Great,” his father said.
“Better than yesterday?”
“Better than yesterday, worse than today,” his father said.
The man looked at him shrewdly.
“What do you mean by that, Weber?”
“You’re the psychiatrist, you figure it out.” He looked at David. “They’re sending me a psychiatrist, they think I’m nuts.”
“That’s not true, Weber.”
“I’m his son,” David said, and extended his hand.
“Dr. Wolfe,” the psychiatrist said. He did not take David’s hand. “He’s been very depressed,” he said as if David’s father were not in the room with them. “We thought he’d be happy when they took the tube out of his nose, but he’s still depressed. Why are you so depressed, Weber?”
“Some psychiatrist,” David’s father said, and shook his head.
“Why are you depressed, can you tell me?”
“No reason at all,” David’s father said. “I’ve got a hole in my belly, they’re taking pictures to see if I’ve got more blockage, why should I be depressed? I should be dancing in the streets instead.”
“They’re trying to help you,” Wolfe said. “We’re all trying to help you.”
“You can help me by leaving me alone. I never had such a crowd of people around me in my life. It’s like the New York subway system in this room.”
“Have they...?”
“During rush hour.”
“Have they been taking more pictures?” Wolfe asked. Whenever he talked directly to David’s father, he raised his voice a decibel or two, as if he were talking to a dull child or a deaf person.
“No, I made that up so your day’ll be interesting,” David’s father said.
“Have you been making anything else up?”
“I’ve been making up all the beds on the floor.”
“When do you do that, Weber?”
“After I get through making the nurses. They’re very hot numbers, these Cuban nurses.”
“How about the shelves behind the wall, Weber? Have you been seeing those again?” He turned to David and lowered his voice. “He’s been hallucinating,” he said.