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The keening of a siren penetrated a confused dream of an endless face-up fall with a crowd of grimacing, bodiless faces raining stones down on her. The frightening scene faded, and she opened her eyes to a face inches from her own.
What had happened? Carefully, she moved her eyes. When that went okay, she lifted her head. A wave of dizziness followed by nausea forced her down. Where was she?
A flashback of herself hurtling downstairs. Knox had been going to kill her.
Where was Knox? What had happened to Simpson? She ran her tongue over her dry lips and whispered to the face looming over her.
“What happened?”
“I’m glad you’ve come around. You had a bad fall and were unconscious when we reached you. You’ve banged your head pretty bad, and your shoulder’s dislocated.”
“What about the other man?”
“You were the only one injured. When we arrived, you and the police were there. No one else.”
After the attendants gently decanted her in the emergency ward of the Municipal hospital, she endured increasingly painful pokes and prods from the emergency room staff. When the resident was ready to set the dislocated shoulder, she pleaded for a painkiller, but the young man refused.
“I can’t give you any. You have a concussion. I’m sorry—I’m aware of how much this hurts, but we have to pull it back in place and patch you up before we send you upstairs, where we can keep an eye on you for the night. We’ll wake you every hour until we’re sure you’re okay.”
Her polite, civilized, middle-class mask in place, she said she understood and thanked the resident even as he pulled and pain surged through her. An orderly wheeled her to the elevator and deposited her on an upper floor. He rolled her into a bed in a four-bed room. Before she did more than glance at the other occupants, the curtain around the bed was pulled, whirring in its track, to enclose her in a tiny world where the hourly arrival of the nurse rescued her from confused and frightening dreams.
Very early in the morning, a doctor breezed inside her curtained sanctuary and examined her. “You’re okay. Your pupils are normal. I expect you’re pretty sore.” He took out his prescription pad. “This is for Tylenol 3 with codeine. Your shoulder will hurt and be awkward—use the sling to stabilize it until you recover. Take these—the dosage is on the bottle—and see your own doctor next week. You’re free to go, but have someone come and pick you up.” He handed her the prescription and displayed his mastery of the physician’s backward two-step, an agile move designed to extricate busy doctors from encounters with all but the quickest and most persistent of patients.
Hollis smiled at the performance as she levered myself upright—not an easy move with one arm immobilized, every inch of her body hurting and her head aching. Out of bed, she shuffled her resisting flesh through the encircling beige curtain and glanced at the room’s other three occupants. Without her glasses, they were all a little fuzzy, but she saw two were of indeterminate age—lank, untended hair, a patina of illness and no makeup made it impossible to guess whether they were thirty-four of fifty-four. The third, perched alertly against her pillows, wore a bed jacket of fluorescent crocheted circles that would have dimmed the vitality of a bloomingly healthy teenager, let alone its wearer, who would not see eighty again.
Nevertheless, with a snap of bouncing curls and the purposeful adjustment of gold-rimmed glasses, she managed to overwhelm her coat of many colours. “And what have you been up to, young lady? Last night there was a policeman sitting outside the door. We figured a felon had joined us.” She giggled. “I even peeked to see if you were handcuffed or shackled to the bed.”
A policeman—Simpson hadn’t caught Knox and had been afraid he might try to kill her. Was he still there? Hollis creaked across the room and peered into the hall. The chair outside the door was unoccupied.
“You didn’t need to do that—I could have told you—he left at ten after five. The duty nurse told him he’d had a message that you weren’t in danger any more.” She chuckled, “That’s when I felt sure you weren’t the criminal. But, young lady, you do realize we had a bad night’s sleep because of you—we woke up every hour on the hour when the nurses came to check on you.”
It was a long time since anyone had addressed her as “young lady” and, ironically, on this particular morning, she felt anything but young. “I’m sorry, but it wasn’t my idea.” She temporized. “I had an accident. I fell downstairs. You probably heard the doctor say I’m okay.” Copying the physician’s two-step, she eased herself to the bathroom.
The battered face in the mirror startled her. Her nose swollen and bruised took up half her face. She touched it gently and wondered if it was broken. She’d ask Tessa.
After pumping harsh pink hospital soap into her hands, she lathered, gingerly washed, and dried with paper towels. It wasn’t Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door Salon, but she felt better. She vetoed substituting soap for toothpaste and rinsed her mouth with water.
Carefully, creeping like a stroke victim on an icy sidewalk, she moved to the nursing nation, humming with post shift change activity, and phoned Tessa. Even though she hadn’t been there for Hollis before, she was the one Hollis wanted.
“Tessa, it’s Hollis. I’ve had an accident, and I’m at the hospital. They’ve said I’m ‘fit to go home’. I know you don’t leave for work until nine, and I wondered if you’d pick me up.” Without waiting for a reply, she continued, “It’s an imposition, but I . . .”
“In the hospital. What happened? Which one?”
“The Municipal.”
“I’ll leave immediately. Have an orderly bring you down to the west side door. I’ll be there inside of fifteen minutes.”
On her return walk to her room, Hollis found she’d limbered up. Watched by the other three occupants, she pulled on her underpants and her yellow skirt but the bra and yellow top stymied her.
The woman in the psychedelic bed jacket took charge. “Forget the bra. Bring me the blouse. I’ll undo it and button it on over your sling.”
Hollis obeyed, thanked her benefactor, and wished the women speedy recoveries before she limped to the nurses’ nation and arranged for an attendant to wheel her to the side door, where Tessa bundled her into the car.
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story, but never mind about me for a minute. I’m the one leaving hospital, but you look like you’ve been hit by a bus. What’s the matter?”
Tessa responded by pulling to the side of the road and killing the engine. She turned to face Hollis. In an agitated voice, she said, “Hollis, I feel awful. I’ve avoided you when you needed me. I’ve been a terrible friend, thinking only of Kas and myself.”
Hollis wanted to reach out and pat Tessa, but with her immobilized left arm, she could only wait for Tessa to finish her speech.
“I have to tell you about me and Paul.”
Not Tessa, surely her wonderful self-possessed friend hadn’t fallen for Paul’s line. But why not—she had.
Tessa
