The Dismantling (14 page)

S
IMON
found Abraham Medical Center south of the elevated J/M/Z tracks, the demarcation between the Williamsburg of cupcake shops and bike lanes and faux dive bars and that of storefront
iglesias
and bodegas and, a few blocks farther south, yeshivas and
shtreimel
hatteries. The line, though, seemed to have lost its elasticity since the last time Simon had been here, sagging now irregularly southward. As he walked down a block of sooty tenements from which a ten-story glass tower protruded like a flipped bird, he decided he was going to set this situation with Maria right, deliver to DaSilva another two viable pairs, and then get the hell out. He didn't like how exposed he suddenly felt. Maria, Lenny, Cheryl, Crewes, now the staff at Abraham—it was his face and name they'd point to if shit really hit the fan, if DaSilva ever blew the whole thing up. And he didn't like the way DaSilva was shifting the responsibility for Maria's situation so squarely onto his shoulders. Okay, he'd fucked up by not checking in with Grodoff sooner, and maybe he should've told DaSilva about the doctor's call right away. But how was he supposed to know Maria would lie like that? It had ambushed both of them, and it was a problem they should be solving together. Instead, DaSilva was isolating him, boxing him in. He didn't like it at all.

He continued toward the BQE. The hospital was on the far side of the expressway, a hulking white-brick structure set back from Lee Avenue. He dodged a Hebrew-lettered private ambulance and located the main entrance. He was directed up to the fourth floor, where he gave Maria's name to the receptionist, a pink-cheeked young woman with silver crosses dangling from her earlobes. She tapped at her computer, asked for his name.

“Simon Worth.”

“You're the first to come see her.” She checked a clipboard, scribbled a note. “She didn't give us a contact name or any number to call. I'm assuming she'll be happy to see you?”

“I'm her boyfriend,” he said. The lie was spontaneous, thrilling.

The receptionist glanced up at him for the first time. “Just hang tight for a sec.”

She picked up the desk phone, dialed a number. She glanced up at him again, and he realized he was leaning over the desk, crossing an invisible barrier into what she'd apparently designated as her personal fiefdom. He straightened up and backed away, shoving his hands into his pockets. Bells pinged, phones rang, the PA droned: the white noise of a busy urban hospital.

“She's not cleared for visitors yet,” the receptionist said. “If you want to come back in a few hours—”

“I'll wait.”

The receptionist frowned, then pointed at a row of molded plastic seats fastened to the wall.

He sat in one of the chairs and watched the business of the hospital unfold in isolated and harried bursts of activity. He closed his eyes and imagined Katherine Peel rounding the corner, Maria's chart in her hand. Then he imagined himself close behind, white coated, sober faced, holding forth to a gaggle of interns on the proper questioning technique for rounds. What a joke that was.

“Mr. Worth?”

Simon jerked his head. He must have dozed off, the short night of sleep catching up with him.

A gaunt-cheeked man in blue scrubs extended his hand: “Dr. Rudich. I'm taking care of Ms. Campos. Diane tells me you're Maria's boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

Rudich frowned at his clipboard, distracted. “And how did you find her here?”

“I'm sorry?”

“We didn't call you.” Rudich looked up. “Neither did she, unless she's hiding a cell phone under her mattress.”

“Her neighbors,” Simon said, improvising. “I came to see her this morning and ran into some of them on the stoop. They said she'd been taken away in an ambulance and this is the closest hospital.” He shrugged. “It was a good guess.”

“Smart.”

“What happened?” Simon said. “Is she okay? I don't—they didn't tell me much else.”

“She's stable now, yes.” Rudich seemed on the verge of saying more before reconsidering.

“Look, Dr. . . .”

“Rudich.”

“Dr. Rudich. I've been out of town for a few weeks. In California. I got home last night. It's been a little while—maybe a week—since I talked to Maria. We were kind of in a fight.” Simon looked down at his shoes, wondering if he was overdoing it. “I guess I'm asking . . . is this a sudden thing? Or has she been sick for a while and I just didn't know it?”

“Mr. Worth, has your girlfriend been to Israel recently?”

Simon raised his head. “Yeah. Last month. Why?”

“Did you go with her?”

“No. I was in California visiting family. Los Angeles.”

“Have you seen her since she returned?”

“No. We talked, but I haven't seen her. Like I said, I just got back last night. Did she get sick while she was there?”

Rudich looked at him, tapping his pen against the edge of his clipboard. His eyes blinked rapidly behind frameless glasses. “Not exactly. She's had a procedure done, which she says took place there.”

Simon tried to project the appropriate level of confusion, furrowing his brow, crinkling his nose. “What procedure?”

“It left her with a bile leak,” Rudich said, ignoring the question. “We went through her mouth to place a stent. When we got a clear look at things, we saw that the duct tear was actually rather severe, and we had to go in laparoscopically to repair it.” He shook his head. “Cleaning up somebody else's mess is always fun.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ask her about this Israeli procedure, if you want.”

Simon paused. He wanted to sound concerned, but not overeager. “Will she be able to leave today?”

“Tomorrow. She'll be on fairly heavy pain medication. You'll be the one signing her out?”

“Yes.”

Rudich nodded as he led Simon down a hallway lined with empty gurneys. Doorways provided glimpses into windowless rooms, most of the patients hidden behind drawn plastic curtains. Simon glimpsed a few lying blanketed and entubed. Most were sleeping; the rest stared up at wall-mounted televisions, remotes cradled loosely in their hands.

“Here we are.” Rudich rapped on a half-open door, stuck his head into the room. “Maria?” He took a few steps inside, Simon close behind him. “You have someone here to see you.”

She lay propped up in the bed, her eyes closed. Her clothes—jeans, a gray sweatshirt, pink socks—were neatly folded inside a clear plastic bag, sitting on top of her black Chuck Taylors, on the seat of the room's only chair. A tube, its gauge the width of Simon's thumb, ran into the crook of her arm; a number of other tubes and wires disappeared under her gown. Her toes, the nails painted electric purple, protruded from the sheets.

“I doubt it,” she said, her eyes still closed, her voice thick and drugged.

“Your boyfriend?” Rudich said.

Her eyes snapped open, her head bolting off the pillow. She saw Rudich first, then found Simon standing beside him. She stared at him, her body rigid. Slowly she relaxed, sinking back down onto the mattress, grimacing, touching her abdomen.

“Simon,” she said. She looked away, color blooming in her cheeks.

“Are you all right?” Simon could feel Rudich's eyes on him; he forced himself to keep his attention on Maria.

“I don't know.” She jutted her chin at Rudich. “Ask him.”

“Could we speak in private for a moment?” Simon said.

“That's up to her,” Rudich said.

She waved a hand. “It's okay.”

Rudich glanced at Simon a final time before he slipped out of the room.

They stared at each other, Simon standing just inside the door, Maria breathing heavily, the pulse jumping in her neck. Simon broke first, turning away to place her sneakers and bag of clothes onto the floor. He pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat down.

“Boyfriend?” Maria said.

“Should I have said cousin? I thought you might be sick of that game by now.”

She smiled, twisting it off into a grimace.

“I've been calling you,” he said.

“I threw away my phone.”

“Why?”

She didn't answer.

He leaned forward. “I went along with the Israel story,” he said quietly. “I said I knew you'd been there but that I didn't know anything about the surgery. Why Israel?”

“I read an article,” she muttered. “I don't know—it popped into my head. I hadn't planned for this.”

“What did you plan for?”

She shook her head, looked away. “How did you find me?”

“I got a call,” he said.

“You got a call? What does that mean?”

He ignored this. “I'll tell you something. If you boarded that train? If you visited that doctor in Glendale? Then, yeah, it's none of my business what you were planning. Why you needed the money. What you were going to do with it. I never pressed you about any of that because it didn't matter. It wasn't relevant. But now?” He paused, took a breath. Maybe he was going at her too hard. But the truth was that her evasions were pissing him off. “Do you know how many hospitals do live-donor liver transplants?”

“No, Simon, I don't.”

“Three in New York City. About a dozen in the rest of the country. In the rest of the world, maybe thirty. You can't just turn up in the ER with that scar and not have people ask questions.”

She stared at the ceiling.

“Maria. I need to know why you're still here in New York. And when you're planning on going home.”

She said nothing.

“Maria?”

She snapped her head around. “I wouldn't be here unless the surgeons
you
sent me to hadn't fucked up.
I'm
the one who's suffering.
I'm
the one who's got a hole in her gut. Not you.”

“If you'd gone to Dr. Grodoff—”

“
Fuck
Grodoff,” she hissed. “And fuck you.” She collapsed back into the pillows, her sweaty hair pasted across her forehead. She closed her eyes again, shuddering and clutching at her abdomen.

“I'm trying to help you,” Simon said.

She shook her head.

“Your son,” he said. “Is there somebody you want me to call? Maybe your sister? I can wire some of your cash out there, or . . . I don't know.”

She shuddered again, this time with smaller, trembling movements. He realized she was laughing. She mumbled something he couldn't make out, and he leaned closer, asking her to repeat it.

“There's no son,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean”—she quieted the trembling, spoke louder now—“there is no son. I've never had a child. Probably never will. No sister either.”

“I don't understand.”

“What's not to understand? You make up stories for people all the time. I made one up too. I figured if I was a single mom you might ask fewer questions about why I needed the money.”

No wonder the life he'd imagined for her in LA felt so hollow, so incomplete; he'd assembled it out of faulty parts. “So you just lied to me?”

“Don't act so shocked. Isn't this whole thing a lie? Health Solutions and the rest of it?”

“We need to invent cover stories so—”

“Yeah, I get how it works. I'm just saying that you shouldn't be so surprised to find out you're not the only ones doing it.”

His ears felt hot. He didn't fully understand why he was taking this so personally. “What else did you lie about?”

“Now is not the time.”

“Maria—”

“Please.” She pointed at her stomach. “Can we talk about this when I don't feel like there's a bag of broken glass in my gut?”

Simon looked more closely at the lines running into and out of her body: the saline drip, the antibiotic drip, the morphine drip, the catheter. Her pupils were dilated, the muscles in her face slack. He saw the plastic button held loosely in her hand, its cord running to the morphine drip. She watched him fidget in the chair, her eyes tracking a fraction behind his movements. She licked her lips.

“You know what?” she said. “I liked it better when I got paid to be a patient.”

“I don't blame you.”

“I want to get out of here.” She lifted the button. “And I'm gonna take this with me.”

“Tomorrow. I'll come sign you out.”

“You're going to take me to my apartment?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded. He watched her depress the button. “Who else knows I'm here?”

He hesitated. “Nobody.”

“Liar.”

“You're safe, Maria. I promise.”

“You don't know what the fuck you're talking about,” she said, the words slurring together.

She wriggled her body against the thin mattress, closing her eyes and turning her head away from him. He sat in the chair and looked at her. Her hospital gown had shifted with her movement, and he could see the side of one of her breasts, a pale swell of skin that rose and fell with her breath. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. He wanted to readjust her gown, to pull the pilled cloth tight across her chest and cover her up.