The Complete Collection. William Wharton

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       14

      I’m up early. When I telephone the hospital, they say Dad’s condition is critical but stable.

      I take my notes from Max and sit down at the typewriter again. I type out a formal request for all the neurological examinations he said should have been done. They include an LP, or spinal tap, a brain scan, an EEG – electroencephalogram – certain blood tests and psychiatric consultation. I make a clean copy of this letter and mail it registered to Dr Chad at Perpetual. The original I put on my clipboard along with the statement of Dad’s case and the Knight & Knight signed card.

      At the post office I make photocopies of all these for record. After that, I go back home and type out a recapitulation of last evening’s events at the convalescent home. Mother is curious about what I’m doing. I put her off as best I can; I’m barely holding myself together.

      I go to the hospital. I stop at intensive care to see Dad but he’s still wired, taped up and unconscious. God, he looks so pitiful! It gives me strength to go through with all this.

      I ask the nurse at the desk for the administrative offices. They’re on the top floor of the building; I take the elevator up. I find the office of the administrative director and tell the secretary I’d like to see Dr Benson. She gives me a look as if I’d asked to see God.

      ‘Dr Benson is very busy, sir. Dr Benson is preparing for a conference in Boston. Who are you and what is it you want?’

      I go for broke; give her a quick summary of the situation. She listens with her pasted-on smile but doesn’t interrupt.

      She sees me for what I am, crank. I’m getting nowhere. I pull the Knight & Knight card off the clipboard.

      ‘Give this to Dr Benson, please. Tell him my attorneys have suggested I present this card before action is taken. I’ll be downstairs in the intensive care unit with my father; the name is Dr Tremont.’

      I don’t stay while she’s reading the card; it’ll work or it won’t. I walk out. This part of the building doesn’t smell like a hospital. It has the ordinary office smell of typewriter ribbons, erasers, used perfume, starch, paper and the electronic smell of computers. I take the elevator down to Dad in the nether regions.

      I sit in the room with him. I check to see if the IV, catheter, monitors, oxygen are all in place. I tuck in his bedclothes; all meaningless moves, just puttering around, trying to hold myself in. A few nurses look at me but I’m so deep into grief and anger they turn away. I’m half expecting a security guard. If he does come, he’ll need a submachine gun to get me out. I stare at Dad; he seems miles away, in another world.

       The water’s hot. I pour some in the washbowl and dip my shaving brush to soften it. I spin the brush on the soap and start lathering up. I work myself a thick soap beard, open my razor and strop it a few times on the strop hanging beside the mirror. That mirror has a crazy crack through the middle so I can make myself look as if I have a thick nose with three nostrils. I keep promising Bess I’ll buy a new one but always forget. I start scraping away, wiping the suds and cut stubble off on my finger.

      Ten minutes later, a large, tweedy man comes strolling onto the ward. I watch him stop at the nurses’ section. Even if I didn’t see abject panic on the nurses’ faces I could tell this is top dog. He has proprietorship written all over him.

      The nurses point and he heads over. As he comes in the room, he switches on the overhead light. I walk past him and turn it off again.

      ‘I think we can see well enough for what we have to discuss, Dr Benson. My father is in a very sensitive condition and the light might bother him.’

      Two points for me and the lines are drawn. СКАЧАТЬ