The Smart One and the Pretty One (7 page)

“Oh, will you just let it
die
?”

“Not until after Friday night,” Lauren said.

Chapter 5

S
ome guy was yelling at the nurses. Apparently his mother was supposed to have been put in a private room for her chemotherapy but was instead being asked to sit in the more public general seating area, where about half a dozen reclining chairs and corresponding IVs were separated from one another only by optional curtains. Nancy had been settled in one of the reclining chairs and her bag started about ten minutes earlier, and Lauren was sitting on a stool at her side. A young girl who was there with a much older man—a father? grandfather? hard to know—caught Lauren’s eye and rolled her own in the direction of the yelling guy. Lauren grinned at her, two strangers bonded by their disapproval of another stranger’s bad behavior.

“For God’s sake!” Yelling Guy had backed one of the nurses up against the wall. “What does it take to find someone who’s actually competent around here?” He was fairly young—probably in his early thirties—clad in khakis and a button-down shirt. His thick dark hair was cut short and he looked like he worked out a lot, which added to the menacing quality of his stance. His mother was sitting on the edge of one of the reclining chairs a few feet away, looking exhausted and completely detached from whatever battle he was fighting. With a little thrill, Lauren noted the bag at the woman’s side: it was Hermès and retailed for several thousand dollars.

“I’m sorry if there was a misunderstanding,” the nurse said, squaring her shoulders. She was short but had an impassive strength to her that would have intimidated Lauren. “We never promise a private room in advance.”

“You should have told your colleague that,” he said. “The one who promised me one last week.”

“What was her name?”

He looked around, like he might spot her. “I don’t know,” he said. “She had red hair. She was probably about your age.” His eyes flickered across her face and he added deliberately, “Maybe a little younger.”

The nurse scowled. “Well, whoever she is, she had no right to promise you a private room. They’re strictly on a first-come, first-served basis for
all
our outpatients, and we’re full up today. These chairs are very comfortable and we can draw the curtain around her if—”

“I don’t want a fucking curtain,” he said. “I want a private room.”

“Please keep your voice down and watch your language. Show some courtesy toward the other patients.”

He put his face even closer to hers, forcing her to draw back. “I’ll do that when you show some courtesy toward my mother.”

Lauren was rooting for the argument to escalate into some real drama. She was bored. With any luck, the guy would get so belligerent that security guards would be called in.

Unfortunately for Lauren, the nurse chose to defuse the situation.

“I’m sorry,” she said, firmly pushing the young man to one side and stepping around him so she could address his mother directly. “I really am, ma’am. If we had a private room available, there’s nothing we’d like better than to see you happily settled in there. But since we don’t, why don’t we just make you comfortable here and get the drip started, so you can be back home and in your own bed ASAP?”

“That’s fine,” the mother murmured. She was bone thin and sallow but still beautiful, with elegant cheekbones and wide-set gray-blue eyes.

“You should have a private room,” her son said to her. He looked a lot like his mother, except he radiated health. And fury. No, not fury—Lauren amended that—more like frustration so great he was going to explode with it. “They promised last week. You heard that nurse, didn’t you? She said—”

His mother put up her hand. Her fingers were so thin that her knuckles looked far too big for them. “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t care. I just want to get through this.”

“I can make them give us one,” he said. “I’ll go to the head of the hospital if I have to.”

“Please, Daniel. Let’s just get through it and go home.” Slowly and carefully, she swiveled her body, moving her legs up and onto the leg rest part of the recliner. The casual slip-on shoes she wore—basically slippers with a thin leather sole—didn’t fit with her elegantly tailored pants and silk top and were the only noticeable sartorial concession she had made to her illness. Well, that and the scarf around her head, which was probably there to hide thinning hair but was so pretty and so artfully arranged that it looked like something Jackie Onassis would have tossed on to walk the streets of New York. All she needed were the big sunglasses.

The woman’s son moved over to support her and guide her into place. His body’s violent energy seemed to soften into an anxious tension as he bent over her. “I just want to get done and go home,” she said again.

“All right,” he said. “All right.” He brushed some hair off her forehead and let his fingers rest against her temple a moment. Then he turned back to the nurse. “Can you at least get this thing going?” he said, his voice strident again. “Can we please just move quickly for once?”

“I’ll do what I can,” the nurse said. “But I can tell you on behalf of the entire staff that a pleasant tone of voice and a little respect would go a long way toward generating some goodwill.”

“Respect has to be earned,” he said. “Making a promise to someone who’s sick and then not keeping it—”

“Daniel,” his mother said. Her voice was soft, but he immediately turned back to her. “I’m thirsty. Could you get me something to drink?”

“I can bring you some water,” the nurse said. Man, she was clueless, Lauren thought. Even from where she was sitting, it was clear that the mother was trying to get rid of the son, give him some time to calm down.

Sure enough, the mother said, “Thank you, but what I’d really like is some juice—there’s usually some in the snack room. Daniel, would you mind—?”

“Of course,” the guy said. “I’ll be right back.” He moved off. As he did, he noticed Lauren staring at them all and narrowed his eyes at her.

As soon as her son was out of earshot, his mother took hold of the nurse’s arm. “Don’t be mad at him,” she said. “He’s just worried.”

“Everyone here is worried,” the nurse said, a little stiffly. “There’s no need to take it out on the staff. We’re doing the best we can.”

“I know you are,” the mother said. “He does too. He just wants to take care of me so badly. He hates that he can’t control this.”

“Maybe he should see one of our social workers,” the nurse said. She pulled on her patient’s arm, straightening it out, turning it palm up, running her finger over the most prominent veins, all with a practiced efficiency and detachment. “They’re very good at helping people deal with their anger and pain. Let me know if you want me to schedule an appointment for him.” She gently stretched the skin on the inside of the woman’s elbow between her thumb and forefinger and studied it, shaking her head. “Too many punctures. Have you talked to your doctor about getting a port put in?”

The woman reached up tentatively to touch her own collarbone. She let her fingers trail down to the skin a few inches below it as if checking to see that the flesh there was still untouched. “He wants me to. But it seems so . . .” She hesitated before saying, “Permanent.”

“I don’t see that you have any choice,” the nurse said. “Your veins can’t take any more sticking. I’m going to let him know that it has to be done.”

The woman nodded briefly and closed her eyes.

The nurse resumed her work in silence. Lauren checked her own mother’s IV bag, which was only a quarter empty. Nancy was watching the TV that hung down from the ceiling, either feigning interest in the talk show that was on or genuinely absorbed by it. “Mind if I stretch my legs?” Lauren said.

“Of course not.” Nancy looked up at her. “I’m sorry this isn’t more entertaining.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Lauren said. “I was expecting nonstop laughter here.”

Nancy said, “Go.”

Lauren found the snack room on the other side of the floor. There wasn’t much to the place; it wasn’t even really a room, just a sectioned-off area with a small dorm-sized refrigerator on the floor, a hip-height counter that ran around the edges, a bunch of drawers and shelves under the counter, and a coffeemaker, microwave, and toaster on top of it.

The area was empty except for one person: the guy who’d yelled at the nurse. He was frowning down at a couple of small packets in his hand, as if their contents offended him. As Lauren entered, he looked up and waved them at her. “Partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil,” he said. “That’s all these cookies are made of. That and sugar. I thought the goal here was to make people healthier. Why would they have these?”

“Yeah,” Lauren said. “Sick people shouldn’t be putting
poison
in their bodies.” She smirked. “Oh, wait—isn’t that
why
they come here?”

“Ha,” he said. He didn’t exactly seem amused, but he did look at her with a little more interest now, pausing to take in the tight jeans, the formfitting T-shirt, the long curly hair she was wearing pinned up in a loose knot with painstakingly arranged tendrils escaping. “Is that gallows humor?”

“Just trying to keep myself amused.” She opened the mini-refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. “I’m bored out of my mind.”

“I noticed.” He tossed the two packets of cookies back in a big tray of assorted snacks. “I saw you staring when I was talking to Nurse Ratched over there. Hope our argument kept you entertained.”

“It was kind of hard not to stare,” Lauren said, unscrewing the bottle cap. “You were talking pretty loudly.”

“They drive me nuts here,” he said. “Every time we come, they fuck something up. The nurses are morons.” A nurse passing by the area shot him a dirty look over the top of the partition. He returned the favor and she went on with an audible snort of disgust. “The part that drives me nuts is that one will make a promise and then the others will act like
I’m
the irrational one for believing it. Bad enough we have to keep coming here, but to be treated like we’re idiots—” He shook his head.

“How many times have you been here?” Lauren asked.

“You mean specifically for chemo? Or in general?”

“Chemo, I guess.”

“This is our fifth time,” he said. “You?”

“First.”

“Who’s the patient?”

“My mom. She has breast cancer. It’s not too serious, though. You’re here with your mother, too, right?”

“Yeah,” he said and rooted aimlessly through a basket filled with bags of chips.

Lauren said, “She looked pretty wiped out.”

“She is.” He picked up a juice box. “I should get this to her. She was thirsty.” Lauren waited, an eyebrow raised skeptically, and he sighed. “Or maybe she wasn’t. She knows I hate watching them put the IV in. Ever since this one time . . . The nurse couldn’t get it in right. She just kept digging and digging in there with the needle and my mother actually fainted from the pain.” He smiled humorlessly. “That nurse no longer works here.”

“You got her fired?”

“I don’t know. They may have just moved her to a different part of the hospital. All I know is she isn’t anywhere in sight when we come. But if she ever again walks into a room where my mother’s being treated, I’ll—” He stopped.

“What?” Lauren said. “What will you do? Now I’m curious.”

He considered her. “You’re still looking to be entertained, aren’t you?”

“Desperately.”

“I have an idea.” He opened up a drawer and pulled something out: a deck of cards. “I found this the other day.”

“Terrific,” Lauren said. “Let’s play.”

He wanted to be within sight of his mother, so they went back to the chemo area and found some chairs across the hallway from where their mothers were reclining. There weren’t any real tables, but Lauren pulled up a stool to play on while the guy took his mother the juice and made sure she was comfortable.

“Okay,” he said once he had rejoined her and they’d both sat down. “What’ll it be? Lady’s choice. Five-card stud, Texas hold’em, Omaha?” He riffled the cards expectantly.

“Texas hold’em,” she said.

He made a face. “Should have guessed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Everyone plays that now,” he said. “Every socialite and soccer mom. It’s hip and adorable to play Texas hold’em. Which goes against the whole idea of poker. It should be grimy, dirty, low-class, played only by the lowest form of what’s barely humanity—”

“I could spit tobacco all over the cards, if you like,” Lauren said.

“It would be a start.” He stacked the cards and evened out the edges with his fingers. He had long, slender fingers. Lauren wondered, idly, if he played the piano.

“So how’d you end up with mom duty today?” she asked. He didn’t strike her as the caregiver type.

“I do it every day.”

“Why you?”

“Short answer is there’s no one else.”

“Are your parents divorced?”

“No. My father’s dead.”

Lauren winced. “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

“You have any siblings?”

“One younger brother. He moved to Costa Rica two years ago. If he calls my mother once a month, it’s a miracle.”

“Do you work?”

“I have a job back in New York.”

“So what’s going on with that?”

“I took a leave of absence.”

“That was good of you.”

The guy—what was his name, anyway? His mother had said it, but Lauren had already forgotten what it was—looked annoyed. “Good of me?” he repeated. “She’s my mother, for God’s sake. What choice did I have?”

“Everyone has a choice. Your brother didn’t come running.”

“My brother,” he said with a disgusted roll of his eyes. “I
had
to be here. End of story. My life will wait for me.”

Lauren wasn’t bothered by his abruptness. It seemed more honest than rude to her. Well, maybe a little of both. But she didn’t mind other people’s rudeness: she never took it personally. “What do you do back in New York?”

“I’m an investor.”

“And you can just take a leave of absence from that?”

“From the office, yeah. I’m still working—most of what I do I can do on the computer from here. And the time difference helps. I get a lot of work done early and then I’m available the rest of the day to help my mother.” He made three piles out of the cards and then stacked them up again, each one on top of the next.