Invisible Ellen (17 page)

“Did it hurt?” Ellen asked.

Temerity rocked once. “No, not really. I mean, there's a little prick at the beginning, but then you don't really notice it. Are you afraid of needles?”

“I don't know.” Ellen considered her answer and then decided that was wrong, so she changed it. “Yes. I mean, it's weird, having something metal go into your skin.” The very thought made her dizzy and the room teetered a bit. A flash of standing in a line at school, a cold swab on her arm, and a stinging prick. Waking on the floor, the
other kids laughing at her, her face burning. She shuddered and pushed the thoughts away.

A frown creased Temerity's pretty face. “You know nobody
likes
needles, don't you?” When Ellen didn't answer, she seemed to take it as a yes. “All you have to do is think about how the medicine will make you better, protect you, if you're getting a shot, or how much worse it is for the person who needs the blood you're giving, if that's the reason, and that puts it all in perspective.”

Perspective, Ellen thought, meant so many things. She didn't like to think about it.

T
hey waited for fifteen minutes, during which time they shared a small pack of cheese crackers that Temerity had selected from the mandatory after-donation snack foods. It was a tiny snack, but Ellen enjoyed the salty crunch. While they ate, Ellen told Temerity about Irena and the phone call the night before.

“So now she has a sick baby to care for that isn't even hers that she got saddled with in the first place?” Temerity summed up.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“And people feel sorry for
me.
Jesus, how does someone like Irena, and so many others, get along in the world?” Temerity asked sadly. Ellen thought,
Some do, some don't
, but she didn't say it out loud. “And you said they came here last night? We should see if we can find out what's wrong.”

“You could just ask Justice's friend Dr. Amanda,” Ellen said.

“No. She can't really tell us about patients' medical details. What she told Justice about the other two was either general knowledge or outside the hospital's legal domain. Think about it. Janelle met Cindy, and a shooting victim wasn't doing well. No medical details. Next idea.”

“Um . . .” Ellen didn't have any other ideas, and then she
remembered the Crows. “There are these two women who work with her. They said they were going to come down here today to see her.”

“Oh.” Temerity softened. “I'm glad she has friends.”

“She doesn't.” Ellen explained, briefly, about the Crows' insatiable appetite for gossip and the real reason for their visit—information. “So, I'm likely to hear whatever there is to know at work.”

“Okay, I guess we'll have to count on that. We've been sitting here long enough.” She stood up. “I want to go and see if we can find out anything about J.B.”

Ellen didn't even try to talk her out of it. The force that was Temerity just drew her along. They snaked their way through the passages again until they were seated in the intensive care unit's waiting room. Ellen searched around, but there were no suspicious-looking young men this time. Looking through the glass down the hallway, Ellen did not see the police officer who had been posted outside J.B.'s room on their previous visit.

“I'm not sure if that's good or bad,” Temerity said when Ellen told her. “I mean, on the one hand, he could have stabilized so they moved him to a regular room. On the other hand . . .” She let it hang.

“He could be dead,” Ellen finished.

Temerity sighed and patted Ellen's arm. “Yes, that was implied,” she said.

They waited for half an hour. Ellen occupied the time by watching some of life's other vignettes around her: a young woman crying in the corner who was being comforted by a young man who might be her boyfriend; a cold-faced older man engrossed in a thick spy novel, whose exterior calm was betrayed by the anxious twitching of his eyes to the ICU door each time it swung open; a family of four who was joined by a man exiting one of the units. They huddled together to hear the news of a loved one. The outlook was uncertain and the
reactions of the four were evenly tied. Two took the news as hopeful, the other two despaired.

Perspective
,
Ellen thought again.
It's all in the perspective.
Losing patience, Temerity tried to get information from the nurses' station but, unable to claim being a family member, she found herself denied.

“But he doesn't have any family,” Temerity pleaded. “I'm his neighbor.”

There was such pathos in her voice, which Ellen thought was probably mostly legitimate, that the nurse relented and told her that the patient had been moved, but that was all she could say.

“So, that's good news, right?” Temerity pressed.

The nurse glanced around. “He's been moved from intensive care. I'm afraid I can't tell you anything else.” The phone on her desk buzzed and the nurse answered it, effectively ending any further exchange.

“So,” Temerity said as they walked away, “he's probably somewhere else in the hospital. I think we should seek.”

Though Ellen was as intrigued as ever by many of the stories she was seeing about the hospital, the new addition of seeing the characters in these scenes as people who were suffering was beginning to leech strength from her. Empathy, something Ellen had only a sketchy understanding of, and still, for her, in its infantile stage, was draining. But she was aware enough to understand that maybe if the stories were positive, she would feel somewhat restored.

“Let's go back to the baby floor,” she suggested. It was mostly happy there.

“J.B. won't be there, and Cindy won't still be there either, I don't think,” Temerity told her. “As long as she had a normal delivery, which
she did, with no insurance and the Newlands most likely out of the picture, they would boot her out as soon as possible, two days max.”

This threw Ellen. “She's not back at the apartment,” she said.

Temerity smiled. “I think I know where she might be.” Ellen waited. “Where did Janelle say she lived?”

“Something Estates,” Ellen told her. “I'd have to look it up.”

“You know, that Newland woman's voice . . . What was her name?”

“Susan.”

“Right. It kind of stuck with me. She really cared about that baby, and I think she must have been truly disappointed—it makes me sad. But the way her husband talked, I'm still glad we did what we did. Imagine having a father who resented you from the start.”

Not being able to imagine having a father, Ellen had no response. But she too had thought about Susan Newland and her strong insistence that they keep the baby. She hadn't cared that the child was a different race. It probably took that kind of determination to be a good mother. Ellen remembered the mother kissing her child's head in the thrift store.

“Okay, let's make like the Jews and wander out into the desert,” Temerity said, taking hold of Ellen's shoulder.

Having never been outside the city, Ellen wondered why Jews would want to go out into the desert. Was it nice there? Did Christians like the desert too? Did Muslims? Maybe it was fun. It was probably sunny all the time, and some people liked that. They decided to go floor by floor, working their way down. They made their way through the fifth floor fairly quickly. No police occupied folding chairs outside any of the closed doors, and the ones that were open and occupied contained the elderly in various stages of dementia. It was depressing. Floor four was busier—there were casts and doctors
studying charts and families bringing flowers—but other than dodging the crowd, it too was proving uneventful until Ellen saw the detective coming down the hall toward them.

He walked purposefully, his face screwed into what might have been a perpetual, preoccupied scowl.

Ellen stopped and turned to face Temerity. “It's the detective,” she whispered. “He's coming this way. What should we do?”

Temerity tilted her head so far to one side that it almost touched her shoulder. “Really? Let's see, what are our options? We could . . . ignore him and traipse aimlessly through these antiseptic halls for hours, or . . .”

“We could follow him,” Ellen finished.

“Great minds,” Temerity said, and tapped her skull with her folded stick. Half of it swung free of her grasp on its fanlike hinge and smacked her harder than she had intended. “Ouch,” she said. “Well, moderately competent minds anyway.”

They huddled together until the detective passed, and then trailed a few yards behind him. They didn't have far to go until he went into a room, closing the door again behind him. There was no police officer posted outside the door, which, when Ellen asked Temerity if she thought that was good or bad, caused her to comment that it could go either way.

The room was near the end of the hallway, not far from the elevator banks and an area that included a few random chairs, so they took up their positions and waited.

“I wish we could hear what he's saying,” Temerity bemoaned. “You don't think you could slip into the room and listen, do you?”

“I'm not much of a slipper,” Ellen said, glancing down at her thighs overlapping the folding chair. “Those rooms are small, and I'm not.”

“Which increases the odds of being bumped into,” Temerity observed.

Ellen didn't say it, but it also increased the already strong possibility of her knocking over some outrageously expensive and fragile piece of medical equipment, causing the immediate demise of some unwitting patient as well as exposing herself. All she said was, “And I'm not really the most nimble person, as you may have noticed.”

“Why?” Temerity said. “Because you slid across my living room floor and tried to take out my coffee table? Personally, I think you were acting in self-defense. I've had my suspicions about that table's intentions for quite a while. It's attacked my shins on several occasions when I wasn't looking.” She snorted with laughter and Ellen found herself smiling at the image. “I refuse to believe it had anything to do with your nimbility factor.”

Ellen frowned. “Is ‘nimbility' even a word?”

“It is now!” Temerity told her. “You are present at the birth of a noun. Nimbility factor must be computed against sneak attacks of all ornamental furniture.”

“Shhh, he's coming out.” Ellen squeezed Temerity's arm and they sat quietly as the detective strode to the elevators, dialing on his cell phone. He held it to his ear.

“Morton here. Yeah, he's not much help. He says he knows the kid by sight, but not by name. . . . Yeah, I do believe him . . . because most of these guys go by tags. He confirms that he let him in, but won't say why, for obvious reasons.” He listened as he pressed the down button for the elevator, then continued. “No, the place was clean except for a small bag of weed—personal stash, I'm betting. If he had quantity, the kid took it. . . . I have no idea, sold or smoked by now. It looks like a dead end.” The elevator doors opened with a chime and the detective stepped in. The last thing they heard him
say was, “Seems like a nice enough drug dealer. Small-time. Too bad he'll probably be dead soon. . . . No, he'll survive this, doctor says, but there's not a chance in hell the Germenes will let him stay alive if he can finger one of them.”

The doors slid closed and Ellen watched Temerity think. “Germenes,” she said thoughtfully. “I heard a radio news report about them. They're a relatively new gang who consider themselves sort of an elite group, very organized. Kind of like the Mafia, but meaner.”

“Do you think that, you know, bracelet-scar thing on his wrist meant something?”

“The cop said it did. It's like their mark or something.”

Ellen rubbed her wrist unconsciously, then touched her face, feeling the remembered, searing, haunting pain of her own wound. The prolonged throbbing ache and the infection that lasted for months, aggravating the scarring. She could not fathom any reason why someone would willingly take on that kind of pain. It had been horrible. Her face twitched at the thought, so she shoved the disquieting memory aside with a great mental thrust.

“I'm going in,” Temerity announced, standing suddenly. “Point me in the right direction.”

“What are you going to say?” Even as she asked it, Ellen realized that she couldn't fathom Temerity at a loss for words. “Never mind, stupid question, just leave the door open so I can hear you.”

“You can come in too, if you like.”

“I don't think so.” She walked Temerity to the right door and pushed it open. Though it was a double room, only one bed was occupied and Ellen could see her neighbor in it, closer than ever before except through the lenses of her binoculars.

He was awake, she could tell that at a glance. His left arm was bare, and his shoulder was covered in a large bandage. The various
tubes that she assumed were dripping medicine into him snaked under the blanket, which covered the rest of his thin body. He turned his head to look at Temerity, and, for a split second, Ellen thought his eyes registered her as well. Then Temerity spoke, drawing his gaze again.

“Excuse me, I'm looking for a friend. Is this room 5023?”

“Don't really know, but it's just me in here,” he said. “It's awful boring.”

“I've got a minute, if you want to chat.” She advanced into the room. “My name is Temerity. Sorry I can't see you; it's a curse.”

“And a blessing sometimes, I'll bet. It would be if you had to look out this window.” J.B. laughed, but it turned quickly into a painful-sounding cough.

“Are you all right?” Temerity asked, concerned. “Do you want me to call a nurse?”

He waved away the idea with a hand that only rose a few inches. “No, no. I'm okay. I have some congestion in my chest. Took a bullet in the shoulder and I smoke too much. You wouldn't have any cigarettes on you?”