"When do you find out who it is?"
"Sometimes we start guessing. We know the approximate age of the patient, where the incident occurred, and we start making bets — was it the Viper Room, up in the hills, in a store on Rodeo Drive, at the hairdresser's? You can get a stroke from tilting your head back in those hair-wash sinks and no one notices, until they try to sit up — we've had a couple of those — celebs are always having their hair done."
The resident yanked his curtain open. "They're coming to get you. I ordered a brain scan, want to make sure it's not an aneurysm, that you're not about to spring a leak, pop a berry." The aspiring doctor laughed at his own joke.
"I don't know where they find them these days," the nurse said, excusing herself as a pair of state troopers wheeled in a boy tied to a desk chair with yellow nylon rope, like he'd been lassoed.
"I'm God," the boy announced loudly.
"Hi, God, I'm the emergency-room nurse — can you tell me what you took?"
"Don't fuck with me," the boy said. "Don't fuck with God. Because I know, God knows. And I'm God, I can fly, I'm free. I'm God," he screams, "I'm God, I'm God, I'm God," each scream progressively louder than the last.
A doctor shined a light into the boy's eyes. "Tell me about yourself — what was your name before you were God?"
"I'm God, I'm Jesus, I'm nailed to the stake, that's why I can't move my arms. I'm God, God is a dog," he barked.
"OK, God, we're going to give you a shot that will help you come down off the mountain."
"I'm flying," he shouted. "And I'm free." He started wiggling inside the ropes. "Free me, I order you to free me."
Meanwhile, the Code Orange auto accident arrived and was wheeled into the cubicle next to him, curtains pulled around her.
The old actress was moaning. From what he overheard, he knew she had some sort of scalp laceration.
He ran through a mental list of names — who could it be? — old actresses? Most of the ones he thought of were already dead — Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, Garbo.
"Let's go ahead and cut it off, I need to see what's under there," someone said. "Pass me a scissors."
"Don't cut," the actress said.
And then — plunk — through a crack in the curtain he saw something bloody smacked down on the metal tray table.
"Gauze," someone called out. "Apply pressure. How deep is it? Any foreign matter?"
He was terrified that her scalp had come off. He couldn't help staring at the metal tray — what was he looking at? — hair, flesh, blood, a bloody scalp.
A nurse grimly stepped out from behind the curtain.
"Did she lose her head?" he asked.
"We don't give out patient information."
Whatever he'd seen was sufficiently terrifying that it drove him to dial. He called his ex-wife. It was the one number he'd memorized — it was his old number.
Before he could say anything she said, "I just got home, I'm exhausted. I was in meetings all day. I'm crazed. Can we talk tomorrow?"
"I'm in the hospital. They said I should call someone."
"What can I do for you from here? It's after midnight."
"I was in pain and it just kept getting worse, I dialed 911. I'm at Cedars-Sinai with electrodes on my chest and an IV in my arm. They keep asking if I have a history of heart disease."
"Why don't you call your son?"
"It doesn't seem like the best time to call Ben."
"I'm exhausted, Richard. Will you be home tomorrow? I'll call you tomorrow." She hung up before he could speak.
It didn't occur to him to say, This might be the last time we ever speak, this might be IT — don't you get it? He couldn't believe he'd called her — was she always so mean? He shouldn't have called her — he must have been crazy to think he should call, he shouldn't have called anyone — he should have kept it to himself.
As the thought crossed his mind, pain sliced through him like lightning. Why not just die? He didn't want to die. He couldn't die. He hadn't even lived yet.
"I'm scared," he said to no one. "And the woman next to me has lost her head."
The nurse was speaking to the man across the way, talking loudly, like she was making an announcement. "Mr. Rosenberg, you have a broken hip. Your daughter is on her way. Do you know where you are?"
"Of course I know where I am, I'm at the movies, this is all a movie," he said. "I wish it were. I'm at the home, the home where I live, or I should say where they put me — waiting to die. Cold storage, that's where I am. I may be old, but I'm not senile."
"You're in the hospital, Mr. Rosenberg. You fell, and they brought you here. Do you know who the president is, Mr. Rosenberg?"
"What does it matter? They're all thieves."
"Mr. Novak?" An escort in yellow scrubs appeared at the foot of his bed. "I've come to take you away." His gurney was wheeled, IV flapping, down antiseptic corridors and into the bowels of the institution.
CAUTION-RADIATION. A technician appeared with a big syringe. "Are you allergic to seafood, shellfish, iodine?"
"Not that I know of."
"Are you claustrophobic?"
"I never thought so."
The big syringe, and then a smaller syringe: the contrast and a little something to peel the edges back, to sedate him.
"The scan takes about forty-five minutes; it's important that you don't move — we don't have time to start again, we're squeezing you in."
He felt the squeeze. He felt lentil bile rise in his throat.
The contrast sloshed through him like cold radioactive jelly. His mind was strange. He remembered the ambulance door opening, the feeling of relief that he'd made it there. And then the almost simultaneous rush up from his gut, the sensation of bringing up everything, vomiting up himself, so that in the end he was entirely raw, inside out, exposed. The nurse had wiped the vomit off his mouth with a paper towel; that was nice. If she'd said his name, if she'd smiled at him, if she'd had a damp washcloth, if she'd been a little more gentle, it would have been perfect. It was all a little too matter-of-fact but he was glad they were there, standing by.
The test: it was like test-driving a coffin, as though they were scanning him to make a 3-D model — a virtual death. He could imagine them scanning him and then taking him back upstairs and showing him a PowerPoint presentation of how he would look in a variety of coffins: coffins with different fabrics, head pillows, some with embroidered quotes, a monogram on the lid.
He lay on the narrow, flat bed of the scanner, eyes open, the ceiling two inches from his nose, and all he could think of was his ex-wife.
Back to the beginning, that seemed to be where he'd left off. She was going to be a journalist and he was going to be an economist, an intellectual, a policy man. They met in college — Barnard and Columbia — lost their virginities to each other — or at least he did. And they got married — got an apartment first on the Upper East Side, in a new but nondescript building on Lexington Avenue. From the beginning she made it clear that that wasn't good enough — she wanted Fifth Avenue, overlooking the park. And the whole thing started with a feeling of failure. What should have been an up, a moment celebrating two young people starting a life together, became a theme of nothing being quite good enough. She threw herself into work — determined that, one way or another, she would get exactly what she wanted — and he quickly felt left out. In an effort to do good, to get her attention, he too threw himself into work, and it became all about the money, making enough to impress her and then enough to protect himself, and then just raking it in, making money from money. There was so much money out there, money that could be his for just having an opinion, a point of view, making a good guess. It was the game of money, the fun of money, it was addictive, and he kept winning. He'd tell himself that he'd won two million dollars, he'd won a big bonus, he'd won the admiration of all of those around him who took it to heart, who took it seriously, who got eaten up by it. It's a game, he told everyone — it doesn't mean you don't want to win, but you have to be willing to lose, you have to not take it personally. It's only paper.