A man with dark eyes and expensively capped teeth brushed against Sabine, smiled, and asked for forgiveness. She ignored him and took up her drink.
"I didn't even ask you how long you were planning to stay," Sabine said.
"Day after tomorrow. Bertie has to get back to work. I work in the cafeteria where Kitty's boys go to school, but they're real flexible. Kitty thinks I ought to retire now that we've got this money, but I like seeing the boys. They're good kids, and they're already so big, I mean, practically grown-up. I want to be around them while I can. Her older son is Howard Junior, for his dad, but her younger boy's named Guy. Kitty named him for her brother. Now, there's something I bet you didn't know." Something caught her eye in the dim light. She was looking in Sabine's lap. "What did you do to your hand?"
Sabine looked down at it herself. She had been trying not to think about it, but it was throbbing as if she were holding a small heart in her fist. Perhaps she'd wrapped it too tight. "I cut myself," she said.
Mrs. Fetters reached down into Sabine's lap and brought her hand up to the bar. "Either you don't know anything about bandaging something up or this isn't just a cut." Then she took the hand as if it were something not connected to Sabine, a wallet or a comb, and held it closer to the light over the bar. "Jesus," she said. "This thing is soaking through." She reached into her purse and tossed some money on the bar. "Come on in the bathroom and let me have a look at it."
"It's fine," Sabine said.
But Mrs. Fetters wasn't listening, she was off the bar stool, pulling Sabine along like a woman with vast experience in flesh wounds. In the bright light of the bathroom, things didn't look very good. She had the Ace bandage halfway off before they were down to a solid red wetness whose color matched the flowers in the wallpaper. Sabine felt suddenly dizzy, and she didn't know if it was from the loss of blood or the sight of it.
"Do you want me to take all of this off and tell you you have to go to the hospital or do you want to save the time and just go now?"
"I'd really rather not," Sabine said, but in her own voice she heard doubt. She was moved by the sight of so much blood. Part of the cut, she knew, was in her wrist, that delicate network of things not meant to be severed. "I hate that hospital."
"Well, it's a big town, there has to be more than one." Mrs. Fetters looped the bandage back around carelessly. "Come on," she said, leading again. "I guess it's a good thing I called you. You probably would have bled to death in your own bed."
Sabine stopped her at the door. "If I have to go, that doesn't mean you have to go. I'll be fine."
Mrs. Fetters looked at her, puzzled. "You don't think I'd have you going to the hospital in the middle of the night by yourself, do you? What do you think your mother would say if she ever found out?"
My mother, Sabine thought, would be too busy asking you questions about how you raised your own children.
Good Samaritan was less than a mile from the hotel. There was no need to drive all the way to Cedars Sinai. Could a person really bleed to death from sticking themselves with an X-acto knife? Probably not, but she liked the thought of it, committing suicide while she slept with no intention of doing so.
The lights of the emergency room blazed. The electric doors flung themselves open at the slightest touch. They wanted you here. They pulled you in.
Children lay flushed and dozing in their parents' laps, a woman with her arm slung in a piece of floral sheeting stared straight ahead, a man with no shirt and a large piece of cotton padding on his chest lay on a gurney in the hall, a woman with blood-matted hair and bruises only on one side of her face sat away from the rest with a police officer. People cried, sweated, and slept. Some people sat next to suitcases and watched through the window as if they were waiting for a bus. Two old men who looked like they should be at Canter's talked and laughed aloud at each other's stories. Sabine went to the front. She filled out her forms, had her insurance card copied, and was not reassured that her turn would be soon. She went and sat beside Mrs. Fetters in the waiting area.
"Do you think there's something particularly bad going on tonight?" Mrs. Fetters asked in low voice.
Sabine shook her head. "I'd guess this was pretty calm."
"I don't think I'd ever get used to living in a city."
"This isn't a very glamorous way to spend your first night in Los Angeles."
Mrs. Fetters laughed. "Well, what was I going to do? I'll tell yob one thing, spending the night in a bar never did anybody any good. I'm better off here." She looked at Sabine's hand and lightly touched the tips of her fingers. "Those nails of yours are getting kind of blue. I think we should loosen this thing up a little bit. They won't let you bleed to death right here." She took her hand and carefully wound back the Ace bandage, then put it on again, letting the weight of the soggy cloth hold it in place.
"Thank you," Sabine said. Dot Fetters got a tissue out of her purse to wipe the blood off her fingers. Several drops of blood fell on the white floor. No carpet around here. "This is where they brought Bobby Kennedy, the night he was shot."
"Really?" Mrs. Fetters said, looking around the room with new respect. "What a tragedy that was. What a sweet boy."
They sat quietly, both of them trying not to look at anyone in particular. "Do you remember that scar Guy had-it was right here?" Mrs. Fetters put her finger beside Sabine's left eye and traced a line down the side of her face, back along her hairline, in front of her ear, and down to the very top of her jaw, following the exact course of a scar Sabine had looked at for twenty-two years. The touch was so light that it chilled her.
Sabine nodded.
"Where did he get that scar?"
"Playing hockey at Dartmouth. Someone got him with the stick."
"I got him," his mother said, crossing her arms around her chest. "Seven years old. I was working in the yard and Kitty and Guy were playing. I was trying to cut back a bush but my shears were too small and I told Guy to go to the garage and get the big shears. But Guy was all busy with Kitty, they were making something and I had to holler at him again, told him he better run 'cause I wasn't going to ask him a third time. Well, then he drops everything. He went off in a flash and not two seconds later he's coming back and he's got the clippers and they're open, like this"-she put her palms together and turned back her hands. "Well, I saw those things coming, they caught the sun. It's like he's running with a couple of butcher knives, and I say to him, 'Don't run,' though not a minute before I'd told him to run, and he gets confused, looks at me, and down he goes over the hose line, just like that." She snapped her fingers. The nurse looked up, puzzled, and then looked away. "Damned if he didn't slice his beautiful face halfway off, right in front of me. I'll tell you, if you have kids you spend your whole life thinking how you'll never forgive yourself. You always think you should have been watching them better, but half the things happen when you're looking right at them."
Sabine saw him, his back narrow in a blue T-shirt, his hair cropped short. The blood on the blades of the shears, on the grass. "What happened?"
"Everything happened," Dot said, holding herself tightly, "at exactly the same minute. I'm crying, he's crying, Kitty is absolutely beside herself. I turn him over and I have to push the skin back over the bone with my fingers." She held up her hand to show Sabine the fingers she had used. "I was covered in dirt, of course. You've never seen the likes of it. I tell Kitty to get my car keys and just like that we're off to the hospital, not that you'd even call it a hospital after being in a place like this. Everybody comes out to see what's going on. I've got Guy in my arms, Kitty's holding on to his feet, she's got blood on her, I'm all bloody. The three of us look like we just walked away from some sort of wild burning car crash. I tell them what's happened, so the doctor says he's going to take him in the back and sew up his head and that I am to wait in the other room until it's over. At this piece of news Guy grabs onto my shirt, right at the neck, for everything he's got and he starts to really scream. So I say, 'cause I'm feeling so bad about telling him to run, 'No, I'm going in there.' 'No, no, Dot,' they say. 'You won't like this. You trust us, you stay out here.'" Dot Fetters took a breath and looked at the double doors going back to wherever it was they sewed up children's heads.