Authors: Karl Alexander
Time After Time (12 page)
“They'll help you at the desk, sir.”
H.G. went to the reception center and patiently waited. Beyond the glass partition was a bank of television screens that showed corridors and various hospital rooms. A nurse sat before them pushing buttons on a console that changed the pictures. Occasionally, she made notes. H.G. was awe-struck. Why, a person could know instantly what was going on anywhere in the hospital. Think of the time and the lives that could be saved by such a miraculous device! He grinned triumphantly. Stephenson had been short-sighted and wrong, for here television was employed for the public good. H.G. wondered if this form of communication were used all over the world. If so, great multitudes of people could instantly see what
the others were doing and how the others lived. What a boon for rationality!
the others were doing and how the others lived. What a boon for rationality!
A statuesque blond nurse approached him and smiled. “What can I help you with, sir?”
“This afternoon an acquaintance of mine was struck by a motorcar and brought to this hospital. I'd like to find out the extent of his injuries and when he can be expected to be released.”
“Certainly, sir. Can I have the patient's name and social security number?”
“His name is Leslie John Stephenson ⦔
She turned and worked the keys of a small electronic machine.
“But I'm afraid you've got me on the social security number.”
“Date of birth, then?”
“I'm not precisely sure about that, either.”
The nurse looked from the machine to H.G. “I'm sorry, sir, there is no Leslie John Stephenson registered here.”
H.G. smiled patiently. “I don't think that he had any identification with him when he was struck by the machine.”
“Then he'd be listed as a John Doe.” She frowned, thought, then brightened. “Can you tell me where the accident occurred?”
“At the corner of Van Ness Avenue and Ellis Street.”
She returned to the computer and typed in another message. Moments later there was a reply which she read to Wells. “Male, Caucasian, six feet tall, one hundred eighty pounds, brown eyes, dark-brown hair, dark complexion. Was admitted in a comatose state at 1613 hours wearing a pink shirt and light-blue pants.”
“That's him! That's Leslie John Stephenson!”
“The official records list him as John Doe number sixteen.” She smiled professionally.
“Can you tell me how he is?”
“I'm sorry. You'll have to speak with the patient's doctor ⦠Mr ⦠.”
“Wells.”
She wrote down his name, then pointed toward a corridor. “Why don't you wait in the visitors' lounge. The patient is being treated by Dr. Rodden. As soon as the doctor is off duty, I'll send him in to speak with you.”
“Thank you.” He turned and moved away.
Once past the elevators (he would never get used to that name), he found himself in the visitors' lounge. The floor was carpeted, and an abundance of plush furniture and reading material on tables awaited visitors.
He was impressed. At St. George's the only provision for visitors was a damp stone room with one severe wooden bench against each wall.
He for an empty chair when he heard a curious sound. He turned and stared. Opposite the lounge on the other side of the corridor a man removed a can of something from one machine and then an apple from another! Machines that dispensed food! Good Lord!
H.G. hurried over for a closer look. Sandwiches reposed in the windows of one, fruit in another, soft drinks (whatever that meant) in a third, coffee, tea and hot chocolate in a fourth, and then a whole host of appetizing little snacks (the names of which were foreign to him) were in a fifth machine. Suddenly, he was very hungry, and so he returned to the sandwich machine, read the offerings, decided that “Ham and Cheese” was the most familiar and punched the button. Nothing happened. A light flashed, and he read, “Insert Money.” He blushed, fished in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He deposited the required fifty-five cents and pushed the button. The machine groaned, whirred, returned his money and flashed another message: “Try Another Selection.”
H.G. obeyed, but got his money back again. Three more times he inserted his money into the machine, and three more times no food was delivered.
He looked at the next machine in the line and frowned. He did not like fruit. Slightly annoyed, he moved to the snack dispenser and studied the offerings there. He rejected jawbreakers (the connotation made him feel weak), Life Savers (he was in good health), jujubes (they resembled medication of spurious origin) and toasted corn kernels (he had no desire to eat something that looked like the droppings of a small animal). All that remained were “Fritos” and “Hostess Twinkies.” The latter appeared more nourishing, so he fed coins into the machine, pulled a lever andâlo and beholdâout popped a Twinkie. He carefully unwrapped the little morsel and sniffed it. Visions of Mrs. Nelson's superb cooking came to mind which were incompatible with the sweet and stale odor of the Twinkie. He shrugged and jammed the thing into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed and did not feel satisfied. If anything, his teeth hurt from the massive intake of processed sugar inside the Twinkie's white center of goo.
Ultimately, he settled for a cup of weak tea. He returned to the lounge thinking that the problem with the mechanization of food preparation was there was no one to whom one could complain.
He settled into an overstuffed chair, then took a dog-eared Reader's Digest off the table. He was about to peruse this interesting little rag, when a white-coated doctor mouthing sympathy ushered three people of color into the lounge. H.G. studied them with interest, for aside from photographs, he had never seen black people before.
They appeared to be a familyâin the Western, Judeo-Christian sense of the word. As opposed to the African. Although, upon reflection, H.G. realized that he had no idea what an African family was all about. His knowledge of the sociology of the dark continent was limited to the tribal system, which he distastefully compared to London's circle of private men's clubs.
He leaned forward, inspected the three more closely and saw no vestige of the jungle or the savannah in their behavior. They could
have been any American or English family. The mother was graying, overweight, and was dressed in a shabby, dark-blue dress. The two young lads who assisted her were obviously her sons. The older one was tall and wore an outfit similar to Stephenson's new attire; he paced angrily while the doctor went on. The younger boy, in faded sweat shirt and brown pants, faithfully listened to the white-coated messenger of bad news. The mother began to cry. The doctor apologized, turned and left the room. The younger boy consoled his mother, “Daddy's going to be all right. Don't listen to no doctor, Momma!”
have been any American or English family. The mother was graying, overweight, and was dressed in a shabby, dark-blue dress. The two young lads who assisted her were obviously her sons. The older one was tall and wore an outfit similar to Stephenson's new attire; he paced angrily while the doctor went on. The younger boy, in faded sweat shirt and brown pants, faithfully listened to the white-coated messenger of bad news. The mother began to cry. The doctor apologized, turned and left the room. The younger boy consoled his mother, “Daddy's going to be all right. Don't listen to no doctor, Momma!”
H.G. recalled etchings he had seen in American history books during his grammar school days depicting slavery. Yet, the African slaves had been emancipated the year before he was born. Why, then, did the image before himâset in this futurological hospitalâseem so acutely historical? Did a different kind of subjugation exist in 1979? There was only one way to find out. He would go over to the family and discreetly ask them if there was anything that he, H.G. Wells, could do to help.
He impulsively rose and started to approach when the older brother turned and fixed him with a stare. H.G. stopped short. He got the chilling sense that a barrier had just slammed down between himself and the black family. He searched the young man's face for an explanation, but the expression was cold and murderous. H.G. wisely returned to his chair and pretended to read. An upbeat tune played from the speakers in blind counterpoint to the woman's moans of despair.
Thus, H. G. Wells unwittingly became a nervous sociological stereotype of the late 1970s. Why had the young black looked at him with such a deep-rooted malice? He hadn't done anything to them or their father.
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For the next two hours, H.G. waited in the visitors' lounge for Dr. Rodden to appear with news on the condition of Leslie John Stephenson. It was not a relaxing time, for every few minutes ambulances would arrive at the hospital. Moments later, relatives or friends would congregate in the lounge. Most of them (hence, the emergency patients) were black, brown or Asian, and H.G. saw hopelessness in their eyes. With the exception of the hospital itself, he could have been in London's East End. Technology hadn't helped these people. It mocked them.
The Chinaman with one eye who honed a knife on his boot. The gray-haired brown man who drank from a bottle in a paper sack. The young black girlâdismally swollen with childâwho was badly beaten and waiting for assistance. The infant suffering from an unknown ailment left to scream, no one knowing why. The old woman, nearly blind, who did not know what they had done with her husband. The black man in the yellow suit and the orange derby who just waited.
Every one of them.
H.G. left the lounge, acutely aware that in this small corner of 1979 a class system existed. He had always believed that progress would free men to practice good works. Now, he wondered, and it made him angry to be questioning his own convictions, especially since Stephenson had already done that earlier in the day.
He stormed past the elevators to the reception center.
“Is there something wrong, sir?” asked the nurse behind the window.
“Yes, there is something wrong. The nurse that was here before told me that Dr. Rodden would meet me in the lounge to discuss the condition of an acquaintance of mine.”
“Dr. Rodden left the hospital ten minutes ago,” she said apologetically.
“But he was supposed to speak with me!”
“I'm sorry. He won't be back on duty until the morning.”
“Wait a minute!” H.G. exploded, turning purple. “You don't expect me to spend the night in that lounge, do you?”
“I'm sorry, sir, that's not my concern.” She gestured to someone behind him. “Next, please.”
Frustrated and helpless, H.G. turned and strode out of the hospital.
The cool night air was refreshing, and the fog softened the hard edges of the lights and muted the metallic traffic sounds. H.G. calmed himself, then started walking away from the hospital. When he got to the street, he wondered what he should do next, somewhat transfixed by the alien blinking of colored neon lights. Exhaustion came over him, so he sat down on the curb and tried to think out a logical course of action to follow. The first idea that crossed his mind was not a brilliant one, but practical.
Get some rest.
Across the street were hotels, and their façades reminded him of nineteenth-century London. He hurried toward them, a homesick twinge in his empty stomach and several nostalgic tears running down his face. Then he angrily shook off those symptoms of self-pity. He didn't need a lot of internalized rubbish about the the good old days. What he needed was a decent night's sleep.
He entered the “Portrero Hotel & Rooming House (since 1929)” and started across a small lobby decorated with mildewing furniture and one sleeping black janitor. There was no one at the desk. He rang the night bell.
Five minutes later an ashen-gray black man shuffled from out of a dark hallway to the desk.
“What you want, boy? Ain't no poontang here no more, no sir. They all went uptown and took out business licenses when the new mayor got hisself elected.”
“I'd like a room, please.”
He put on a pair of rimless spectacles. “For the night?”
“My good man, what else would I want it for?”
The black man responded with a worn, yet timeless shrug, then placed a yellowing card and a pencil in front of Wells. “That'll be fourteen-fifty, please, sir.”
H.G. dug into his pockets for the money, but all he found was a dollar-thirteen in small change.
The black man blinked and waited. He was used to it.
Suddenly, H.G. grinned, for he remembered the traveler's checks he'd purchased from Amy Robbins earlier in the day. God, it seemed so bloody long ago! “Do you accept traveler's checks, sir?”
“As long as they ain't foreign.”
H.G. chuckled at the unintended irony of the man's statement; he dug into his back pocket. Foreign, indeed!
The traveler's checks weren't in his pants pockets, so he reached into his coat. Ah, yes, a bed. No, a bath first. A hot, luxuriating bath.
Suddenly, he frowned. His traveler's checks! He didn't have them! Were they lost or had he been robbed? He frantically went through his pockets again, but to no avail.
“Something wrong, sir?”
H.G. didn't answer. He turned and hurried out. He went back to the hospital and once more entered the visitors' lounge.
Three small black children slept in the chair he once occupied while their fathers sat on the nearby couch playing cards. The other furniture was occupied, too. Beyond caring, H.G. lay down on the floor between the chair and the couch, and used a pile of the day's newspapers as a pillow. No one noticed; he could have been dying.
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