A nurse came out and motioned to him, and he got up and plodded in, through the double doors. Man at work. A very tired man. But he was an empathetic man because, about ten minutes later, he beckoned to me and took me to her bedside. The rapid shallow breathing had eased. There was an LV. rigged, dripping into the vein in her arm. Her cheeks seemed hollower than they had looked an hour before, in her room, her eyes more sunken.
He said in a low voice, '~e knocked the fever down almost one degree. First sign of progress."
We walked out together and he said, "I'm making a full report of all our findings to Disease Control in Atlanta. Do you know anything about the red welt on the back of her neck?"
The Green Ripper
"She told me she was bitten by a bug this morning. She said it stung her."
"Symptoms bear no relation to anaphylactic shock. We've taken some tissue from the area It's being packed in dry ice and flown to Atlanta along with blood samples and so forth. Got more sophisticated analysis systems available up there. Paper chromatography. Thin-layer chromatology techniques."
The hours blurred. I went in as often as I could. Night and day inside hospitals are too much alike. Saturday night. Sunday. Sunday night. She kept changing, little by little, going further away from me. They did a tracheotomy, and from then on a machine was doing her breathing for her, pumping her chest up and down. When I bent close to her to touch my lips to her dank forehead, I could detect the faint sour smell of mortal illness. At one point, early in the vigil, I went out to the car and made the mistake of trying to eat one of the clammy hamburgers and was siclc on the asphalt.
Meyer came out, bringing a change of clothes and my toilet kit. A nurse found me a towel and took me to a place where I could shower and scrape the pale stubble off my tired brown jaws.
Somebody forgot to stop me and tell me. I went in a little after eleven on Monday night, and she was gone. The bed was empty. The equipment had been moved away.
"Where is she?" I roared, and they came running toward me, hushing me, ushering me toward the door.
A big black nurse, big as a tight end, had been answering questions for me during other visits during that shift. She took hold of my shoulders and gave me a shake. "Easy now! Easy now!" she said in a husky whisper. "It's better we lost her."
"Better than what?"
"Hush now. You hush down. A temperature like that, for so long, it cooked her brain. She would have been a vegetable. Ternble thing, a strong young woman like that." She had led me out into the corridor. "Who you got to come get you?"
"I'll manage." I tried to smile. The tears were mnumg down my face. No sobs. No shudders. Just eyes naming. "Where is she now?"
'They're doing an autopsy."
"Who said they could!"
"It's a law, Mr. McGee. When the cause of death is unknown, they have to. There's no way anybody can stop them, and that's a good law. Whatever is killing people, we have to find it out."
"What finally happened? There was that machine..."
She shrugged. "Total kidney failure, and then the heart gave out right about the same time." She shook her head. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "I don't know. We get so many old ones here.
The Green Ripper
Not young strong women like her. Whatever it was, it came and wore her right down to nothing. It took the life right out of her. It ate her up, like it was some hungry thing." She caught herself. "sorry. talk too much. Listen, if you're the only one she had, what you've got to do now, you've got to make the arrangements. She's got to have a burial"
I wallced on out of their hospital, snuffling from time to time, marveling that I could walk with so little thought and effort. Long strides, heels thudding against the tile door, hand lifting without conscious command to flatten against the push plate on the big glass door, push and let me out into the chill night, spangled with stars that were faint above the security lights of the parking area. I walked to the tall dark shape of Miss Agnes, my ancient Rolls, and leaned against one of her high front fenders, my arms folded, ankles crossed, eyes running again.
Cessation.. Ending. A stopping of her. I heard the night sounds of country and city. Yawk of a night bird nearby. Faraway eerie pulsing of siren. Whim poring drone of light traffic on University Drive, lights in moving patterns. Grinding whine of trucks moving fast, a mile or so away. Random night wind clattering palm fronds. This was the world, bustling its way on through its allotted four billion more years of ffme, carrying its four ~billicn souls gracelessly onward. A lot of them had stopped tonight, some in blood and terror. I tried to comprehend the enormity the obscenity of the fact that Gretel Howard had been one of them, just as dead as the teenagers who impacted a tree at a hundred and ten miles an hour near Tulsa, the llying dentist who didn't see the power lines, the Muslim children dead by fire in Bangladesh, the three hundred elderly in Florida who would not make it through the night in their nursing-home beds.
I could not fit my mind around the realization of finality. There seemed to be more that would happen for the two of us, more of life to be consumed and completed. My body knew with a dreadful precision all the contours of her, the shapes and fittings, the sighs and turnings, gasps and pressures.
I sought refuge in a child's dreaming. They had spirited her away, mended her, and would soon spring the great surprise upon me. She would come running, laughing, half crying, saying, "Darling, we were just fooling you a little. That's an. Mid we scare you too much? I'm sorry, Tray, dear. So sorry. Take me home."
And on the way home she would explain to me how she had outwitted the green ripper. I had read once about a little kid who had overheard some adult conversation and afterward, in the night, had terrible nightmares. He kept telling his people he dreamed about the green ripper coming to get him. They finally figured out that he had heard talk
The Green Ripper about the grim reaper. I had told Grets about it, and it had found its way into our personal lan- guage. It was not possible that the green ripper had gotten her.
Not possible.
43
3
Meyer took care of practically everything. I couldn't have managed. I was too listless and too depressed. We both remembered that after her brother's death at Timber Bay, Gretel said she preferred cremation, just as he had. Cremation and maybe a small nondenominational memorial service for close friends. Not many people had attended John Tuckerman's memorial service in Timber Bay. He had been too closely associated with Hum bard Lawless, the man who had taken all the money and tried to run.
I did not think there would be many people who would want to come to Gretel's memorial service. Meyer arranged it at a small chapel up beyond
44
Lee Green Ripper
South Beach Park, at eleven in the morning on Saturday, ten days before Christmas.
Ten or so people came in from Bonnie Brae. And a lot of people from the Bahia Mar area. Meyer calls it a subculture, the permanents. The great waves of tourists and boat people flood the area and recede, leaving the same old faces, most of them, year after year. I did not see all of them come in. When it was over and we walked out into December sunshine, they were there, moving toward me to touch, to shake hands, to kiss, to say some fumbly words: We're sorry. That's what it was about. Together we form a village. And share the trouble as much as we can. Take as much of it upon ourselves as is possible, and we knifer it is not very much. Okay?