“Mr. Murphy?” the woman called out as soon as Brian entered. She and Brian were the only people in the room.
“Yes,” he said. “Brian Murphy.” He could see her name was Maria Hernandez. He approached her desk, where a large plexiglass shield had been added in recent months. Like a cashier’s window at a bank, there was a slot for passing papers to and fro along its base.
“Brian Murphy,” Maria repeated while tilting her head to the side to give him a good once-over. “Were you related to Deputy Inspector Conor Murphy, the commanding officer of the 34th Precinct, by any chance?”
“He was my father,” Brian said, surprised that she recognized him with his face mask. Luckily the short time Brian had been assigned to the 34th Precinct was before his father had become the CO.
“I knew it the moment you walked in here,” Maria said, as if proud of herself. “You’re certainly your father’s son. My husband, Adolpho, who was the sanitation supervisor for Inwood, knew your father very well. In fact, they shared many an after-hour beer.”
“Unfortunately, my father shared far too many beers,” he responded. He didn’t want to be reminded of that aspect of his father, who ultimately fell victim to the Irish curse of alcoholism and had died a year and a half earlier. At the same time, Maria’s comment reminded him of the benefit as well as the disadvantage of living within one of the many tight-knit New York neighborhoods. Lives were inextricably intertwined.
“Isn’t that the truth,” Maria said grimly. “Same can be said about my Adolpho, bless his soul. Aren’t you a policeman, too?”
“I was. In December I left the force to start my own business. One of my brothers is a cop and so was my uncle, grandfather, and great-grandfather.” Brian had loved being a policeman and had longed to become one for as long as he could remember. But part of the reason he left the force was to avoid the trap that had ensnared his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. The security business had been a way to use his law enforcement background and experience in a new and creative way, without it becoming too routine or depressing.
“And who is this Emma Murphy?” Maria said, holding up the admission papers.
“That’s my wife,” Brian said. “Emma O’Brien. You probably know her father and mother. Her father started Inwood Plumbing and Heating.”
“Yes, I know of her. I’m sorry she’s being admitted, especially to the ICU.”
“I am, too. What do I need to do here?”
“Just sign these admission forms for me,” Maria said. She slid the stack of papers through the slot in the plexiglass.
He leafed through the stack, and he could see it was the usual legalese that he detested and for which he had little patience. It reminded him of income tax forms. “What is all this?” he asked.
“The customary material. It’s mostly to give the hospital and our fine doctors and nurses the right to take care of your wife. It also means you are agreeing to pay for the necessary services.”
“Does it have our health insurance information?” Brian asked.
“Whatever you gave to the ED clerk, I put in there,” Maria said. “Slip it back to me and I’ll make sure.”
Brian did as he was told. Using her index finger, Maria rapidly flipped through the pages. In a moment she’d found the correct one. “Yes, here it is. Peerless Health Insurance with the policy number. You’re fine.”
“Okay, good,” he said with relief. “Let me sign it.”
Maria shoved the pages back through the hole in the plexiglass. While Brian was signing, she asked: “Why do you have Peerless insurance? Why don’t you have your official NYC insurance? I mean, you were a policeman for years, right? I still have my Adolpho’s plan. It’s really terrific.”
“When Emma and I left the force to start our company, which was far more expensive an undertaking than we thought, we had to pinch pennies. We couldn’t afford the premiums to keep our NYPD insurance, so we turned to the short-term market. Peerless offered what we needed. We felt obligated to be covered because of our daughter. She’d been a preemie.” He slid the signed document back through the plexiglass.
“It does seem to be a quite popular company,” Maria agreed. “I’ve seen a lot of it lately. Okay, you are good to go, and I hope Emma gets better quickly.”
“Thanks, Maria. Nice chatting with you.”
Brian returned to the main waiting area. As someone who was a committed “doer,” he found this kind of inactivity a strain. Yet he couldn’t leave without having more information and reassurance about Emma’s condition. To make certain that the powers that be knew he was still there, he went back to the information desk and essentially rechecked in. He told the clerk that Dr. Kumar had informed the nurses that he wanted to see his wife as soon as her MRI and CT scans were done. The clerk assured him that the nurses would surely let him know the moment they could. With a strong suspicion the woman was merely placating him, he nonetheless took a seat as far away from everyone as possible and committed himself to waiting.
Another hour crept by. Brian watched as an endless cast of characters either walked into the ED or were carried in. Some came with extended family, most of whom were denied entry by the security people because of the coronavirus situation. Under less stressful circumstances he might have found the scene mildly entertaining as a reflection of life in Inwood. He even recognized some of the patients or the accompanying family members, but he didn’t talk to anyone, preferring to hide behind his mask and just observe.
“Mr. Murphy?” a voice asked.
Brian turned away from the scene of another ambulance arriving to find himself looking up into the masked and shielded face of Ms. Claire Baxter, RN, as evidenced by her name tag.
“Yes, I’m Brian Murphy.”
“Dr. Kumar said you’d like to see your wife before she is transferred upstairs. Come with me.”
He quickly got to his feet and followed the nurse back into the Emergency Department’s busy hinterland. He was shown into one of the larger treatment rooms, where Emma was seemingly asleep on a gurney with its rails raised. To his great relief she looked entirely normal save for a nasal cannula providing oxygen and a stocking cap covering her red hair. She even had a very slight but healthy-looking tan on her normally porcelain cheeks, which made the IV and an oximeter on one of her index fingers look totally out of place. Dr. Kumar was busy studying MRI images on a flat-screen monitor.
Brian approached the gurney and closed his fingers around Emma’s forearm, hoping that she’d wake up. She didn’t budge.
“She’s sleeping off the considerable medication we gave her to control her seizure,” Dr. Kumar explained, speaking rapidly. He quickly moved around to the other side of the bed. “She is still quite disoriented, but I’m happy to say that her oxygen saturation now is entirely normal. That means her lung function is steady, which we feel lessens the chance we are dealing with coronavirus or will be in need of a ventilator. She tested negative for SARS-CoV-2, by the way.”
“That’s encouraging,” he said. “What did the MRI and the CT scans show?”
“Both are consistent with viral encephalitis,” Dr. Kumar said. “More importantly I spoke with an infectious disease specialist. She told me that considering the history of you and your wife having just been on Cape Cod and that beach incident you recounted, she’d favor a diagnosis of eastern equine encephalitis rather than West Nile, which we’ll be testing for. She reminded me that Massachusetts has seen an uptick in EEE over the last couple of years.”
“I’ve never heard of EEE.”