The Orchard (20 page)

He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help feeling she was stalling, and didn’t mention the lines that were deep by her eyes, the weariness that drew down the hard corners of her mouth.

“Jeez,” Rory said when she’d finished checking his ear and his side, “you’re sure grumpy.”

She glared at him, glared at Michael, and marched out of the room.

“What did I say?” the boy asked.

“Nothing,” Michael assured him. “I guess today just isn’t a good day all the way around.”

“Nuts,” the boy said and stared glumly at the wall.

Shortly afterward, Rory was sent off in a wheelchair to see his parents in the visitors’ room, and Michael got on the crutches again and practiced as he was told. Every hour. Once an hour. Damning the cast for being so damned heavy. Damning his good leg for being so damned weak. He didn’t fall, though he came close twice, and once lunch had been cleared away and the throbbing had eased, he decided to take the measure of the hall.

“I don’t think Dr. Player’s gonna like that,” Rory warned when he returned.

Michael grinned at him. “The way she’s feeling today, if I dropped dead, she’d sue me. What have I got to lose?”

“She could lock you up, put you in solitary.”

“Not me, pal. She loves me, you know.”

Rory made a face, and he threatened him with a sound thrashing, laughing until he saw the panicked look on the boy’s face.

Shit, he thought; Kolle, you’ve got a lot to learn about handling kids.

He waited until he was sure Rory knew he was kidding, then leaned against the jamb and checked for a destination, a goal he had to reach before he dropped of exhaustion.

The easiest way would be straight ahead, along the white and soft-brown tiled corridor that split the building in half. But if he went there, he would have to pass two pairs of elevators facing each other, examination and storage rooms, and the nurses’ station. That was too many people he might meet and who might see him fall, too many nurses who might question his journey.

Left would take him to the rear of the building and the intensive care units; the opposite way would bring him to the front and, at the corner, a large open area—a visitors’ room, where patients sat with their families, had coffee and snacks from machines, and watched the trees and sky through dark-tinted windows that reached to the ceiling.

He liked the idea of coffee not brewed in the hospital’s miserable excuse for a kitchen. On the other hand, he didn’t want all those people laughing at him should he slip. Damn, he thought, closed his eyes, and flipped a coin. A slow inhalation, and he swung to the right, keeping close to the wall and avoiding nosey stares into the other patients’ rooms ranged along the hospital’s outer rim.

He half expected, half hoped for, Carolyn or Janey to show up and scold him for his foolishness, then drag him back where he belonged. When nothing happened, he hobbled on, ignoring his left leg while he found the rhythm that matched the weight of his cast and the swing of the crutches. It wasn’t fun, but it was mobility, and by the time he reached the visiting room, he was sweating and feeling just fine.

And then, not so fine at all.

The room was twenty feet long, almost that wide, and the light through all the windows turned suddenly bright. White. Brilliant white. Bleaching the walls, shifting the molded plastic chairs and long plastic tables to sharp-edged black stone. He squinted as he passed over a metal floor strip that guided shut sliding doors when visiting hours were over, and hesitated when he realized no one was here. He groped for the nearest chair, couldn’t find one, and swung around on his crutches to face the way he had come.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

White. Blinding white filling the window at the hall’s far end, spilling from the rooms and covering the floor, killing shadows and colors, bringing tears to his eyes, and stoppering his ears as if he were deaf.

He felt himself swaying but there was nothing to hold on to, and he cursed his stubborn pride, cursed the doctors and nurses, cursed the burning pain that spiraled beneath the cast and made him grip the crutches so tightly he could feel his fingers beginning to cramp.

Something touched him behind his knees.

Someone’s hand dropped lightly to his shoulder.

Someone said, “Sit,” and he didn’t question the order. He lowered himself into a wheelchair, gathered the crutches between his legs, and felt his leg tremble as it held the cast an inch off the floor.

“Thanks,” he said. “God, I thought I was going to die.”

“You’re not going to die, don’t worry about it.”

They turned right, into the light, and he lowered his head to keep the tears from returning.

“No offense, but this isn’t the way to my room.”

“I know. I just thought you’d like a tour or something.”

He looked up and over his shoulder, but the damned light had turned the woman’s face to shadow. “Cora?”

“Yeah. Hi, Mr. Kolle!” Brightly. Smiling, though he couldn’t see it. “How are you doing?” A high-pitched laugh, a young girl’s laugh, and the wheelchair swerved when she covered her mouth.

He looked straight ahead, shading his eyes, wondering what the hell was going on outside. Cora said she didn’t know, probably just a break in the clouds.

“What clouds?”

“What clouds? It’s been raining all morning.”

How nice, he thought, angry that he hadn’t even noticed the damned weather.

“Mr. Clayton,” she said a few yards later, “wants me to tell you everything’s okay on the insurance. If they try to charge you for something, sue them.”

One of the wheels needed oiling. He shifted the crutches until they were lying across the armrests. It didn’t matter. No one was in the hall but them it seemed.

She talked rapidly, almost nervously, telling him about the weather, the work on Centre Street that was replacing blacktop with brick, the way the boy with the bandaged ear wouldn’t talk to her even though she’d brought him some candy.

“Rory,” he said. “His name is Rory.”

“Weird.”

“Scared, Cora.”

They paused at the corner, swung left, and moved on, through the light, soft and soothing, turning the few passersby into silent, nunlike shadows that were swallowed again as soon as they moved on.

He was reminded of cloisters and didn’t know why.

“Scared? No kidding. Of what?”

“I don’t know. That’s why you’re going to help me.”

She leaned down, her lips close to his right ear. “Me?”

“Well, sure. Aren’t you supposed to be my legs?”

“Oh. Right.”

They passed the middle corridor, and he heard an elevator’s door hiss open, hiss shut. No footsteps. No gurneys. No chatter at the nurses’ station.

The medicine, he thought then. His stomach churned briefly; he swallowed bile and took a breath.

“What do you want me to do?”

He started, not realizing he had almost dozed off, and had to think a moment to remember what she was talking about. “The children’s ward is where, upstairs?”

“Down,” she said. “In back. Upstairs are the operating rooms and the labs, stuff like that.”

“So go downstairs,” he said. “Talk to the nurses. Find a doctor and talk to him. See why they’re moving the kids out.”

When she didn’t answer right away, he thought she hadn’t been listening; then she grunted, and moved a little faster. On the left were windows, most of them blanked by white blinds, the dying behind them and “No Smoking” on the doors.

“Mr. Kolle?” Whispering now, as if in deference to the place, and to the silence it commanded.

“What?”

“Why’d you come to the Station?”

Mike,
his former editor had said,
you do not walk up to the mayor of Boston, shove a pad and pen in his face, and ask him flat out if he knew, when he bought that harbor-front parcel, that they were going to kick out the lobstermen and bring in the condos.

“I didn’t much like the city.”

You’re too eager, Mike. You gotta be patient when you’ re fishing for the big ones.

“You like this place better? Really?”

Patience, he had thought, was for cowards, and for people who had buckled to the weight of the system; patience, he discovered, was the hardest thing to learn.

“I like it okay.”

Around the corner, toward his own room, the light fading, colors returning, noises once again unmuffled and sharp.

Cora wheeled him in, careful of his extended leg, and he saw that Rory was gone, his bed still unmade. She said something about the kid going for an ear test or exam, helped him onto the mattress, and put the chair beside the window. Then she reached down by the door and with a smile held up a large white wicker basket filled with fruit and cheese, covered with cellophane she tore off with a flourish.

“From the office,” she said. Smiled shyly. “And me. I know what it’s like to be stuck in a place like this. It’s awful. The pits.”

She was, he saw now, much younger than he’d first thought. Barely out of her twenties, rather pale, and too slender. She looked ill and too proud to give in to it; she looked, he thought, as if she were dying.

“Cora, you all right?” Fussing with his bathrobe, holding his leg above the cast to subdue the pain.

Startled, she tried a smile. “I’m tired, that’s all. Mr. Clayton’s a real slave driver. He says, if I want to learn the business, I have to learn all of it, even back where they print it. I told him I just wanted to learn investigative reporting, and he said that was redundant.” A melancholy frown as she placed the basket on the table. “I don’t think I’m gonna stick around very long.”

“You could learn from worse,” he said. “Marc Clayton’s a hell of a man.”

Working five years for the
Globe,
from the time of his graduation, wanting it all before he was thirty, before he was too old to enjoy it. Running around like a jackass, hunting the elusive scoop that would bring him his fame, his fortune, his gold-plated place in the journalistic sun.

Playing at Clark Kent without the costume underneath.

Christ, he thought when he looked at the girl; Christ.

Music from the next room until a nurse turned it down; an orderly shambling behind a broom and a bow wave of dust.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, and pushed a hand through her hair. “If I’m gonna get what you want, I’d better move it, huh?” She reached into the basket and grabbed an apple, shined it on her breast and kissed it, and winked. “I picked this one myself,” she said as she tossed it into his lap. “I didn’t think you wanted all that garbage they spray on them in the store, y’know? They even have artificial coloring, for god’s sake.”

He didn’t wince when it landed on his groin, didn’t say anything about organic versus cheap. He only picked it up, saw himself in the red that was deeper than a mirror, and winked back as he took a bite.

“Pretty good, huh? An apple a day, right?”

“I should have had one before.” She looked away, and he raised an eyebrow. “You have trees in your backyard?”

It was sweet, juicy, with a slight afterbite.

She grinned and walked to the door. “Are you kidding? My father can barely grow grass. No, it’s from the orchard. You know it, on the other side of Mainland?”

He thought, and shook his head. “I’m still new, I guess.”

“That’s all right. I only found out about it when my sister dragged me on this really gross picnic last spring. Jesus.” Her mouth twisted in disgust. “Kids, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” he said solemnly. “Pains in the ass.”

A laugh, a blown kiss from her palm, and she cautioned him not to eat it too fast. With the food he was getting now, he’d probably throw it up. Then she was gone, and he lay there with the bed cranked up and the bed beside him empty and the apple turning warm as he turned it over in his hand.

He slept, woke just before dinner, and jumped when he saw someone standing beside him. It was Rory, huddling in his bathrobe, and he’d been crying.

Michael repositioned the bed up so he could sit without strangling, realized he still had the apple in his hand, and laid it on the table.

“Mr. Kolle?” the boy said, wiping a sleeve under his nose. “Mr. Kolle, I want to go home.”

He didn’t know what to say, and couldn’t say a thing when the orderly wheeled in the supper cart, cheerfully spreading the good word from the gloomy outside, hustling Rory to his bed, and serving the trays with a flourish. After he left, they ate in silence, and when the remains were taken away, he didn’t object when Rory, with a pleading look, climbed onto the bed beside him, shivering, his freckles so dark against the pale white of his face they made his cheeks hollow, his nose too sharp.