The place was deserted except for the night nurse, who sat at her station absorbed in some paperwork and hardly noticed the new arrivals.
Paul left the other two to keep the Can Man upright and went to the desk, trying to get the nurse’s attention.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“One moment,” she said. She wore black glasses around a pinched face and her hair was tied into a bun above the matronly bulges in a starched white uniform. She was working intently on some kind of report, scribbling onto a yellow manila folder. Paul impatiently tapped on the counter, then looked back behind him.
A strand of drool was rolling from the Can Man’s mouth onto the blanket.
“Now, how may I help you?” the nurse asked, putting the folder away and finally deigning to look at Paul.
Paul pointed back at the blanketed old man. “This guy needs a doctor right away.”
“He’s got something on his hand,” said Meg. “Some kind of acid or something.”
The nurse didn’t even look at the man. “Does he have Blue Cross?”
“I don’t think so,” Meg said, clearly flustered at the question.
“Medical insurance of any kind?”
“I don’t believe this shit,” said Flagg, muttering under his breath.
“Ma’am, this is the Can Man. He probably checks this place out once in a while, picking up discarded cans. He does a service to you guys. And he needs help!” Paul said.
For the first time the nurse looked directly at the man. She wrinkled her nose at the smell, as the Can Man trembled beneath the blanket, swaying on weak legs. She pressed a buzzer.
“The doctor on duty is busy with another patient right now,” she explained.
Almost immediately a bulky male orderly with a crew cut answered her call. She turned to him. “Willie, would you put this gentleman in number three, please?”
Willie nodded and took the Can Man from Meg and Flagg’s grasp and steered him to a rolling gurney. He picked the guy up and laid him down on the gurney, as if he were a sack of cotton. The Can Man began to whimper fearfully, his feverish eyes focusing on Brian Flagg.
“Take it easy, old dude,” said Flagg softly. “These guys are gonna fix you right up.”
Paul watched as the old man turned and looked up at Flagg, a glimmer of intelligence and hope in his eye. He quieted down. Paul looked over to Meg, who was studying Flagg, clearly as surprised as Paul at the compassion he displayed.
As the orderly wheeled the gurney away, the nurse handed Paul a clipboard holding several blank forms. “You’ll have to fill these out,” she said. Then she went back to her own business inside the station.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Meg asked, looking at the door still swinging from the recent exit.
“He could lose that hand,” Paul said. “It’s up to them now.”
Brian Flagg, though, seemed to shrug off his concern like a dirty T-shirt. “You guys can stick around if you want to. I’m outta here.” He headed for the door.
Meg shot him a look of disappointment, and Paul thought quickly. What next? They could leave now, sure, but all they’d be thinking about was that groaning old guy with the gunk on his hand. It would ruin their whole evening. This way, if they stayed—well, they wouldn’t be eating cordon bleu and sipping underage wine—but they’d be together, and they’d still be able to talk, to get to know each other.
“Do you mind if we stay for a while, to just make sure?” Paul asked.
Meg smiled sweetly, looking very beautiful. “I was about to ask you the same thing, Paul.”
“Let me see if they’ve got a Coke machine nearby.”
“Diet orange if they’ve got it, okay? I’ll be sitting over in the waiting area.”
“Right.” He stopped, then turned back to her. “You know, for a really lucky day for me, my luck swerves around, doesn’t it?”
“Lucky, Paul?”
“Yeah. I mean, you saying you’d go out with me. Wonderful luck!”
She smiled again, sexily. “Nothing to do with luck there, Paul Tyler. If you hadn’t worked up the courage to ask me out in a week or two, I would have had to ask you!”
He went off to look for the soda machine, his heart much lighter.
10
As it turned out, though, a clinic waiting room was not a spot particularly conducive to deep conversation.
Paul dutifully filled out the forms as best he could, though they looked really funny with just The Can Man penned in for a name, and The Woods Near Elkins Grove as an address. He put the forms back on the counter at the nurse’s station, but she ignored both him and them. Then he returned to continue the awkward talk with Meg.
They were both preoccupied, of course. There was no way to ignore the environs—not with those bright fluorescent lights humming into your eyes; not with that medicine and rubbing-alcohol smell reminding you where you were. A half hour dragged by as they talked and thumbed through the different magazines lying around the waiting room. Meg was paging through a big thing called Special Report: Fiction and Paul was checking out a Car and Driver.
Paul looked over at her. “I bet you’ve had better first dates, huh?”
“I don’t mind.” That smile again. Wonderful.
“Hey. You want another soda?”
“Sure. Same again, okay?”
“No problem.”
The vending machine was just inside the swinging doors. It was a Pepsi machine, not a Coke machine, but it did have diet orange, so Paul wasn’t complaining. He dutifully fed the quarters into the slot and punched the buttons. The machine produced the beverage with a rattle and a thump. Another few quarters, this time for a Pepsi, and as he put them in, Paul happened to glance up the hospital corridor.
It was much as it had been before.
At the end of the corridor was the room where they’d put the Can Man. He was lying on the same gurney there, unattended. He seemed to be unconsious now, not moving at all. Sheesh, thought Paul. The doctor still hasn’t gotten around to him!
As Paul stared at the man lying on the gurney, something odd happened. There was a strange kind of movement under the blanket, a kind of wobbly flutter.
What the hell… ? Paul thought. Was the guy out, or was he awake, his hands going through spasms for some reason?
Leaving the sodas in their trays, Paul walked up the corridor to the open room. To one side of the hall there was activity. Soft voices came from the examination room where a doctor was putting the finishing touches on an old woman’s arm cast, while he spoke to her gently. Paul walked past, turning his attention back to the room where the Can Man lay.
Yow! The blanket was heaving up now, like a wave! What could be doing that?
As he approached, Paul noted that the Can Man’s head was turned away. But just as he entered the small cubicle, the head flopped over to face him.
Filmy eyes stared up from a white, skull-like face. A bloody froth bubbled up from within the Can Man’s gaping mouth with a rattling, gurgling sound.
“Oh, no!” said Paul, stopping dead in his tracks. He went no farther, instead turning and heading back, double quick, to the room where the doctor was working.
Bounding in, he cried, “Doctor! You gotta come right away!”
The doctor looked very annoyed at the intrusion. “Can’t you see I’m with a patient here?”
Paul pointed down the corridor desperately. “There’s a man dying! Please!”
Paul grabbed the man’s arm and dragged him into the hallway.
“Down here,” he said. “We brought him in earlier!”
They entered the cubicle. But now there was no movement beneath the blanket. The Can Man lay still and oblivious to everything, as though sleeping.