Bitter Business (5 page)

“Go ahead and call your friend at Goodman Peabody and see if you can set something up for Friday. Dad will have changed his mind by then.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’ve invited him and Peaches for dinner Wednesday night.”

“You must be one hell of a cook.”

“Now that you mention it, I
am
cooking his favorite dinner. I’m also planning on telling him that if he doesn’t agree to buy out Lydia, I’m resigning from the company.”

“Do you really think it’ll work? Aren’t you afraid he’ll call your bluff?”

“It’s not a bluff. I get job offers all the time. This last one’s a good one—I’d be heading the metal coatings division at Monarch Metals.”

“I thought they were in Boston.”

“They are,” she replied matter-of-factly. I remembered what Daniel had said about Dagny not taking shit from her father. Suddenly the situation with Superior Plating seemed less hopeless.

Dagny glanced quickly at her watch. “I have a conference call in a few minutes with one of our vendors,” she apologized. “Why don’t we take a walk over to my office and I’ll get you a copy of the letter from Lydia’s investment bankers. They’ve asked for a ridiculous amount of information. You’re going to have to tell me how much of this stuff I really have to provide. If I give them everything they’re asking for, it’ll take weeks to get it together. I’ve also had Cecilia run off a copy of our most recent financials.” She stood up and stretched. “That feels so good. I think I’ve been in that chair since ten o’clock this morning.”

I followed her through a series of narrow passageways that were all paneled in the same imitation woodgrained stuff that seemed to have been indiscriminately applied to every surface in the fifties. She led me into a small suite of offices. I have a terrible sense of direction, but I guessed we were adjacent to the reception area where I’d come in.

Dagny’s office was off by itself at the end of the hall. At the threshold she stopped so suddenly that I literally ran into her. My automatic apology dried up in my throat as I saw what it was that had stopped her dead.

“Oh my God,” said Dagny, the rising note of alarm in her voice turning my stomach to lead.

Facedown on the blue carpet in front of Dagny’s desk, her hair splayed around her head and her short skirt hitched up to reveal red satin panties, lay the inert form of her secretary, Cecilia.

4

“Cecilia?” called Dagny, her voice hovering somewhere between bewilderment and alarm. “Are you okay?”

There was no response from the motionless figure on the floor. For a minute we just stood there, two women in business suits caught completely off guard. Then Dagny ran to her desk and picked up the phone. Silently praying that Cecilia had just fainted or, better yet, had passed out drunk, I dove and knelt beside the prone figure on the blue carpet.

Shaking her gently, I called out her name. Nothing. I shook harder. Her body was inert, eerily unresponsive. I felt a tightening in my chest and knew that it was fear.

“Call nine-one-one,” I commanded Dagny, who by then was already on the line with the police dispatcher.

I checked Cecilia’s wrist for a pulse and found none. Pushing aside her long hair, I searched frantically for the carotid artery. I found the spot but there was no pulse.

I took hold of her shoulders. She was surprisingly heavy, and as I turned her over onto her back, her head lolled sickeningly to one side. I bent my face over hers but felt no whisper of breath. Her skin was pink and felt warm against my hand. But there was something about her eyes, open yet unfocused, that chilled me.

Trying not to think, I checked her mouth for foreign objects. Then I pinched her nose closed with one hand, placed my lips over hers, and exhaled. I moved both my hands over her breastbone, wondering desperately if I was even close to the right spot, and began the series of compressions I’d learned in CPR.

When they brought in the Red Cross to teach classes in cardiopulmonary resuscitation at Callahan Ross, everyone joked that it was a clear case of self-interest. The older partners just wanted to make sure that when they had their big heart attacks everyone would know exactly what to do. I swear that when I signed up for the course I never dreamed that I’d ever use what I’d learned.

“One and two and three and four and five,” I counted out loud. “Go to the front of the building and wait for the paramedics,” I ordered Dagny. She hesitated. Then, nodding tensely, she disappeared out the door as I began the next set of compressions.

I do not know how long it took. At some point, like a distance runner in “the zone,” the world just went away. I was aware of nothing, not the passing of time or the accumulating ranks of Superior Plating employees who began crowding into the doorway. Five compressions and a breath, five compressions and a breath, that was what my world had narrowed down to—my face pressed against the face of a woman I’d barely met. Now I felt the thin fabric of her blouse under my hands, felt the resilient softness of her skin, smelled the lush flowers of her perfume....

I did not hear the paramedics come. At some point strong hands grasped my shoulders and pulled me away.

A man’s voice spoke, but at first I didn’t register the meaning of his words. Gradually the adrenaline released me from its grip and I saw the room as if for the first time.

On the floor in front of Dagny’s desk a half-dozen blue-uniformed emergency medical technicians swarmed around the still-motionless body of her secretary. One of the paramedics, a woman who wore her glossy hair in a French braid that made me suddenly think of horses, began asking me questions: What was her name? When did I find her? How was she lying? Did I move her? How long did it take me before I started CPR? Did I know whether she had any history of heart disease? Diabetes? Drag use?

As I stammered out my replies another paramedic, a black man with a bald head, slid some sort of tube down the unconscious woman’s throat. Another EMT took a thick needle and started an IV drip.

“Pupils dilated and unresponsive,” said one voice. “Blood pressure is zero.”

“Defib?” demanded another.

“We’re so close to the hospital, let’s just keep her ventilated and get her in,” replied the black paramedic, who seemed to be in charge.

The woman with the French braid turned to me. “You can ride with her in the ambulance. Let’s see if somebody can find her purse.”

I sputtered an incoherent protest, but no one paid any attention. They were already bent over the stretcher. I looked around the room desperately for Dagny, but she "as nowhere to be seen. As we were walking out the door someone shoved Cecilia’s battered black shoulder bag into my hands.

* * *

The siren wailed and throbbed above us as we navigated the narrow city streets. I wondered which hospital was nearest and decided it was probably Michael Reese. Cecilia, still unconscious, lay strapped to the stretcher while the black paramedic kept up his ministrations— shining a penlight into her eyes, taking her blood pressure, checking the IV line.

I sat on a narrow bench, crouching thigh to thigh with a second paramedic, one I hadn’t noticed back in Dagny’s office. He was good-looking in a beefy sort of way, with a lantern jaw and what I knew instinctively must be a quick eye for the ladies.

“Nice work in there,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Did she do drugs, do you know?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen her before.”

“So you don’t work with her or nothin’.”

“No. I just had an appointment with her boss.”

“What kind of place is that back there where she works? It’s some sort of factory, isn’t it?”

“They do metal plating.”

“So you don’t work there?”

“I have an office downtown.”

“Whadya do?”

“I’m an attorney,” I replied uncomfortably. The circumstances, I felt, were not ideal for small talk.

“You’re kidding. I would never’ve taken you for a lawyer, on account of you being so young and good-looking and all.”

We hit the bump of the curb and made a sharp turn into what I prayed was the entrance to the emergency room.

“Save it, Frank,” snapped the black paramedic. “It’s show time.”

I hate everything about hospitals—the smell of suffering mingled with disinfectant, the constant drone of unwatched TVs and babies crying, the way that tiny acts of compassion are overshadowed by the monumental cruelty of bureaucratic indifference. It is the same in every hospital I have ever been in. And I have been in my share.

My husband died of brain cancer the year we both graduated from law school. The months that preceded his death were filled with painful tests and poisonous medications. They were months of bitterness, stoicism, and despair. By the time I came through them, I had used up a lifetime’s allotment of patience with hospitals.

The paramedics wheeled Cecilia into the emergency room at a dead run and disappeared behind double doors marked NO ADMITTANCE, leaving me to battle a wearily indifferent admitting clerk through two inches of Plexiglas. I looked through the purse in my hands, not my own, but the one I’d been numbly clutching since we left Superior Plating. I turned it upside down on the Formica counter in front of me and scrabbled through the mess: bus transfers and used tissues, two condoms still sealed in their foil packets, a hairbrush grotesquely clotted with blond hairs, and a half-eaten candy bar.

From the front of a tattered romance novel a barechested man stared up at me with unbridled lust. Thrust between its pages I found what I was looking for. Attached to an Illinois driver’s license with a paper clip Were four soiled dollar bills, a disconnection notice for an apartment in Uptown, and finally, a dog-eared insurance card, all in the name of Cecilia Dobson.

Relieved, I passed the identification to the clerk, who disappeared to make copies. Behind me a toddler with a runny nose played with the knobs of the candy machine while an old woman in bedroom slippers and a greasy raincoat sat in a chair by the door and sobbed.

After the clerk returned I set out in search of the pay phones. I found them cleverly positioned between a blaring television set and the speaker of the public address system. Three of the four were not working and a girl who looked as though she was about fourteen was using the fourth. In one hand she cradled a very new baby and in the other the receiver.

“But I don’t have no money for no bus,” she was insisting to whoever was on the other end.

Back in the cramped waiting room I found a row of vinyl chairs that were bolted to the floor and sat down to wait. I tried hard to worry about Cecilia Dobson, but felt instead an unreasonable pang of longing for the quiet order of Callahan Ross, where clients wait among the brass lamps and the Chippendale. After a while my beefy paramedic returned, emerging from behind the steel doors of the emergency room with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand. On his face was a broad smile that I suspected of having been practiced in the bathroom mirror. My heart sank.

“I’ve got cream and sugar in my pocket if you want,” he said, sitting down beside me and nodding in the direction of his chest. It was obvious that he spent his off-hours lifting weights. He wanted to be sure that I noticed.

“Black is fine, thank you,” I replied. “Do you know if she’s going to be okay?”

“They’re still working on her. They’ll come out and get you when they know anything. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“Fine,” I replied primly.

“You did a great job back there.” He moved a little closer. “Not many people woulda kept their heads the way you did.”

“Thank you,” I said, pressing my knees together and wishing he’d go away.

“I know how upsetting something like this can be. You know, I see a lot of stressful things on my job. I handle life-and-death situations every day.” He leaned so close to me I could smell what he’d had for lunch. “I know how to handle it. I can help you deal with the stress....” I gritted my teeth and grimly evaluated my options. I was debating whether to declare myself HIV positive, a lesbian, or both when the doors to the emergency room swung open and a tired-looking nurse in pink scrubs motioned to us.

“They want to see you now,” he said, giving my hand a squeeze. “You want me to come with you?”

“No,” I replied hastily, scrambling to my feet.

“If I’m not here when you get finished, I want you to call me. All you have to do is dial nine-one-one and tell them you need Frank.” His last line had the polished delivery of a professional.

The doctor’s name was Kravitz, and despite the camouflage of her white coat, I could see that she was pregnant. She saw me in a cramped supply room with a folding chair in one comer. Through the open door I could see doctors in their shirtsleeves and tennis shoes doing their weary dance from treatment room to treatment room while a metallic voice from the PA system urged Dr. Patel to report to the oncology service.

“Are you a relative?” Dr. Kravitz asked.

“No, I’m not. I’m just one of the people who found her.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”