“She’s asleep, Mr. Ives. Why don’t you go get some dinner?”
“I heard that,” I whispered. “Cappuccino. Yes. I’d love a cup.”
Why Dr. Voorhis had wandered into my hospital room, I couldn’t imagine. Maybe I was hallucinating. I’d done it before. Once upon a time I’d been so sick with the flu that I imagined Immanuel Kant perched at the foot of my bed, a wizened mouse of a man, explaining the whole of Critique of Pure Reason to me. Even more amazing, I understood him.
Dr. Voorhis’s ghost wore brown, the color of the leaves that had formed his daughter’s final bed. Her face floated up, golden hair fanned out around it, like a pillow. Her face, then his face. The same gray-blue eyes. Dr. Voorhis’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Kant had, at least, been audible. No sense being rude, even to a specter. “Hi,” I croaked.
Dr. Voorhis’s features warped and slid, his round eyes became slits, his smiling mouth twisted into a leer, like a fun house mirror. I turned my head to see whether Paul had noticed the man, too, but his chair was empty. Oh, yeah, dinner. Paul had gone to the cafeteria to get dinner. I turned my head to the door, expecting to discover that Dr. Voorhis had vanished, but the apparition had moved to the side of my bed, next to the I-Med machine. He reached out and placed a hand on my knee. I felt the coldness of his touch even under the blanket.
“What…” What are you doing here? I wanted to say. You practice in Baltimore. But my lips were numb and my tongue seemed to fill my mouth. If Paul showed up, would Voorhis go poof?
The hand crept up my thigh. Blood pounded in my ears so loudly it drowned out the sound of the air compressor under the bed. Gasping, I patted around the top of the blanket, feeling for my call button to summon the nurse. Where the hell is it?
I touched something hard and cold. I wrapped my fingers gratefully around it and pushed the button, but only succeeded in turning up the volume on the TV. I dropped the remote and heard it clatter to the floor. Oh, God, where was that call button? I’d never needed it before. Paul had always been here for me.
My eyes locked on Dr. Voorhis and I watched, hypnotized, as he reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a narrow package, about the size of a pen. The package crackled as he opened it, like cellophane. I was feeling along the aluminum bed rail, hoping to find the call button cord wrapped around it, when I heard something go snap! like a toothpick breaking.
I located a button at the edge of the mattress and pumped with my thumb for all it was worth. But it must have been the morphine control, because Dr. Voorhis’s face shimmered before me, like a mirage on a hot summer day. His gray hair lengthened and curled softly around his ears; the black-rimmed glasses melted away; and his mustache morphed into the smiling, glossy pink lips of my nurse. “How are we doing, hon?”
I was dizzy with hyperventilation. Thank God!
The nurse picked up my wrist between her thumb and forefinger and, with her eyes on her wristwatch, took my pulse. “Goodness! Your heart’s going a hundred miles an hour!”
“Nightmare,” I mumbled.
Trussed up, tethered to tubes and wires, including a catheter and a tube snaking out of my chest, I was completely helpless. “What’s this?” I touched the smooth, round surface of a blue plastic object lying just under the edge of my blanket.
“We call it a purse. It collects the fluid draining from your chest.”
I managed a weak smile. “Not exactly Gucci, is it?”
“No. That drain will stay in for a few days, but we may be able to take the catheter out tomorrow, once you get up on your feet.”
“On my feet? So soon?” I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I’d been hit by a two-ton truck.
“The sooner you’re up on your feet, the sooner you’re out of here.”
Paul materialized at the foot my bed, holding a Styrofoam container with a straw in it. “I thought you might like a Coke.” He raised a questioning eyebrow at the nurse.
“That’s fine,” she said. “We’ll be starting her on solid food in the morning.”
Food. Yuck. My stomach roiled. The nurse cranked up the back of my bed and tucked a pillow under my shoulders, making it easier for Paul to hold the cup under my chin. I never remember a Coke tasting so good. I drifted off to sleep after that, with Paul holding my hand.
When I awoke, who knows how much later, Paul was sprawled in his chair watching the news. His deck shoes sat side by side on the windowsill, next to an arrangement of red and green carnations looking for all the world like Christmas leftovers. “Paul?”
He padded to my side in his stocking feet.
“Stay with me, Paul?”
“Don’t worry, love. I’ll be right here.”
I had been lying flat on my back. When I tried to turn my body in his direction, a searing pain shot across my abdomen. I sucked air in through my teeth. “Oooh!” I pumped on the magic button and waited the few seconds it took for the pain to be reduced to a dull throb. Wonderful machine! Whoever invented it deserves to be a millionaire. Afterward, I tried unsuccessfully to stay awake, gazing at Paul through eyelids at half-mast. “Night-night,” I said, and he faded away completely.
The next morning, well before dawn, I was awakened by a new nurse, intent on recording my temperature and blood pressure. “How did we sleep?” she asked, sticking a plastic thingamabob in my mouth.
“Fitfully,” I mumbled around the thermometer. I raised my leg a few inches off the sheet. “Hard to sleep with these things pumping up and down on your legs every few seconds, not to mention that rogue Hoover howling away under the bed.”
“She must be feeling better. She’s getting cheeky,” Paul remarked from his place by the window. He had shoved two chairs together and was using them as a bed. He pushed one away with his foot, stood up, and slipped into his shoes. “While you’re busy here, I think I’ll get some coffee.”
“Bye!” I chirped. “Bring me a cappuccino!” I turned pleading eyes to the nurse. “I can have a cappuccino, can’t I?”
She shrugged. “Don’t see why not.” She waved Paul out the door, then pulled the privacy curtain around my bed. “Which do you want me to get rid of first? The catheter or the water wings from hell?”
“The catheter, please!” She busied herself with the tube and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was removed from my nether region. A minute later I felt like a new woman when the inflatable cuffs were history as well. I bounced my legs up and down on the mattress, enjoying my freedom.
The nurse handed me a pair of paper slippers. “Here. Let’s put these on and we’ll take a short walk.”
I nodded at the IV apparatus, still attached to my arm. “I suppose that comes along with me.”
“For another day, at least.” With a hand under my back, she helped me into a sitting position. I teetered for a few minutes on the edge of the bed, fighting waves of blackness, with my feet dangling over the side. She slid the slippers onto my bare feet. She steadied my elbow and, with the other hand stabilizing the IV apparatus, helped me wriggle off the bed.
My favorite blue velour bathrobe hung on a hook by the door. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to put it on with my arm attached to enough equipment to man the space shuttle, until the nurse slipped the plastic IV bag off its hook and passed it through the sleeve of the robe, my arm following. “Clever girl,” I remarked.
The floor was cold under my feet as we shuffled out the door and walked down the hall toward the nurses’ station. I must have been a pathetic sight pushing my IV machine along in front of me with my “purse” pinned to my hospital gown and banging against my side with each deliberate step. At the nurses’ station, we turned and headed back to my room. The nurse accompanied me to the chair that had been so recently vacated by my loyal husband and helped me sit down in it. “Sit here while I change your bed.”