“Right, Irv,” I say, not catching it all. “At least you can see it that way.”
“I’m sure Jack’s fine,” Irv says, guiding us one-handed through a circular, shrub-lined drive, following the red EMERGENCY signs and stripes. The yellow Cooperstown Life Line ambulance is just swaying back out the drive, its flashers off, its cargo hold dark, as though something deathly has occurred. Ms. Oustalette is at the wheel and talking animatedly while smoking a cigarette, her nameless male partner barely visible in the shadowy passenger’s seat.
“Home sweet hospital,” Irv says, as he pulls alongside a bank of sliding glass doors designated simply as “Emergency.” “Just hop on in, Franky,” he says and smiles as I’m already leaving. “I’ll park this beast and find you inside.”
“Okay.” Irv is radiating limitless sympathy, which has nothing to do with liking me. “Thanks, Irv,” I say, leaning a moment back down into the door, where it’s cool, and out of the hot, gunmetal sunlight.
“Simulate calm,” Irv says, hiking one big blue-clad knee up on the leather seat. A tiny bell starts gonging inside.
“He’ll probably have to wear glasses, that’s all,” I say. I shake my head at these wishful words.
“Wait and see. Maybe he’s in there right now laughing his ass off.”
“That’d be nice,” I say, thinking how nice it would be and how, if so, it would also be the first time in a long time.
But that is not the case at all.
Inside at the long apple-green admissions desk I am told by the receptionist that Paul has “gone right in”—which means he is out of my reach behind some thick, shiny metal doors — and that an ophthalmologist has been “called in specially” to have a look at him. If I would take a seat “over there,” the doctor will be out pretty soon to talk to me.
My heart has begun whompeting again at the antiseptic hospital colors, frigid surfaces and the strict, odorless, traffic-flow yin-yang of everything within sight and hearing. (All here is new, chrome-looking and hard plastic and, I’m sure, owes its existence to a big bond issue.) And everything’s lugubriously, despairingly for something; nothing’s just for itself or, better, for nothing. A basket of red geraniums would be yanked, a copy of American Cage Bird magazine tossed like an apple core. A realty guide, a stack of Annie Get Your Gun tickets — neither would last five minutes before somebody had it in the trash. People who end up here, these walls say, take no comfort from grace notes.
I sit nervously midway down a row of connected cherry-red high-impact plastic chairs and peer up at a control-less TV, bracketed high and out of reach and where Reverend Jackson in an opened-collared brown safari shirt is being interviewed by a panel of white men in business suits, who’re beaming prudish self-confidence at him, as if they found him amusing; though the Reverend is exhibiting his own brand of self-satisfied smugness plus utter disdain, all of it particularly noticeable because the sound’s off. (For a time this winter I considered him “my candidate,” though I finally decided he couldn’t win and would ruin the country if he did, and in either case would eventually tell me everything bad was my fault.) His goose is cooked anyway, and he’s only on TV today to be humored.
The glass doors to the outside sigh open, and Irv strolls casually through in his blue sweats and sandals and yellow cardigan. He looks around without seeing me, then turns and walks back out onto the hot sidewalk as the doors shut, as if he’d come in the wrong hospital. A ticker running under Reverend Jackson’s shiny brown mug reveals that the Mets defeated Houston, Graf defeated Navratilova, Becker defeated Lendl but is losing to Edberg, and while we’re at it that Iraq has poisoned hundreds of Iranians with gas.
Suddenly both metal ER doors swing back, and a small young lemon-haired woman with a scrubbed Scandinavian face and wearing a doctor’s smock comes striding out holding a clipboard. Her eyes fall directly on my worried face, alone here in the red relatives’ alcove. She walks to the admissions desk, where a nurse points me out, and as I stand already smiling and overgrateful, she heads over with a look — I have to say — that is not a happy look. I would hate for it to be the look that spoke volumes about me, though of course in every way it does.
“Are you Paul’s father?” she starts even before she gets to me, flipping pages on her silver clipboard. She’s wearing pink tennis shoes that go squee-kee-gee on the new tiles, and her smock is open down the front to reveal a crisp tennis dress and short legs as brown and muscled out and thick as an athlete’s. She seems totally without makeup or scent, her teeth as white as brand-new.
“Bascombe,” I say softly, still grateful. “Frank Bascombe. My son’s Paul Bascombe.” (A good attitude can oft-times, Gypsies believe, deflect bad news.)
“I’m Dr. Tisaris.” She consults her chart again, then fixes me with perfectly flat blue eyes. “Paul’s had a very, very bad whack to the eye, I’m afraid, Mr. Bascombe. He’s suffered what we call a dilation to the upper left arc of his left retina. What this essentially means is—“ She blinks at me. “Was he hit with a baseball?” This she simply can’t believe; no eye protection, no helmet, no nothing.
“A baseball,” I say, possibly inaudibly, my good attitude and Gypsy hope gone, gone. “At Doubleday Field.”
“Okay. Well,” she says, “what this means is the ball hit him slightly left of center. It’s what we call a macula-off injury, which means it drove the left front part of his eye back into the retina and basically flattened it. It was a very, very hard blow.”
“It was the Express cage,” I say, squinting at Dr. Tisaris. She is pretty, svelte (if short) but sinewy, a little athletic Greek, though she’s wearing a wedding ring, so conceivably it’s her husband the gastroenterologist who’s the Greek and she’s as Swedish or Dutch as she looks. Anyone but a fool, however, would feel complete confidence in her, even in tennis clothes.
“At the moment,” she says, “he has okay vision in the eye, but he’s having bright light flashes, which are typical of a serious dilation. You should probably have a second doctor take a look at him, but my suggestion is we repair it as soon as possible. Before the day’s out would be best.”
“Dilation. What’s a dilation?” I am instantly as cold as mackerel flesh. The nurses at the admissions desk are all three looking at me oddly, and either I’ve just fainted or am about to faint or have fainted ten minutes ago and am recovering on my feet. Dr. Tisaris, however, model of rigorous antifainting decorum, doesn’t seem to notice. So that I simply do not faint but grip my ten toes into the soles of my shoes and hang onto the floor as it dips and sways, all in response to one word. I hear Dr. Tisaris say “detachment” and feel certain she’s explaining her medical-ethical perspective toward serious injury and advising me to act in a similar manner. What I hear myself saying is, “I see,” then I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste dull, warm blood, then hear myself say, “I have to consult his mother first.”