The Reading Lessons (42 page)

Meg hadn’t thought to question the fact that all the flowers in Old Hadley’s room had stayed fresh for weeks. They seemed as commonplace as the books now, and she had begun to take them for granted.

Before Meg could say anything else on the subject, the doorbell rang. No one ever rang the bell at Old Hadley’s house, and she thought it might be her mother. She didn’t give a crap if Mom was a cold-hearted snob, but for some silly reason, she could tell Old Hadley was hoping to see her. Maybe he didn’t realize that Mom didn’t like him? She ran to the window and pushed the curtain aside. A pale pink van painted with the words
Brix Florist
was parked in Grandma’s driveway. 

Ten minutes later, they were back at the sink refilling cans and ketchup bottles from the tap. Brix had delivered twenty-five fat bouquets wrapped in green paper. Grandma extracted a white rose from the rose bouquet and a blue iris from the iris bouquet. She snipped off ends with her kitchen sheers to make the flowers stand right in the etched Lalique water pitcher that she normally took from the china cabinet once a year only for the Beattie’s Bluff Theatre Guilde’s Victorian Christmas Tea. Meg had once asked to have lemonade in it for her own Victorian tea party and was promptly tossed a pair of Dixie cups and directed to the garden hose.

When Old Hadley woke up an hour later, Meg and Grandma pretended that nothing was different, as if an old gardener wouldn’t notice new flowers. His eyes moved from blossom to blossom until there wasn’t a one they had not touched. He closed his eyes and smiled.

###

“What we’re seeing on your x-rays is something called pnuemocystis pnuemonia,” Dr. Buckerfield said, his pale eyes entirely sorry and grim behind a pair of large wire-rimmed glasses. He sat in a chair next to Old Hadley’s bed, hugging a metal chart to his chest. “That’s a lung infection, Mr. Crump.”

Grandma stood in the doorway rubbing her palms up and down on her skirt. Meg perched on the edge of the bed. 

“How do you fix it?” Old Hadley asked. 

The doctor looked to be giving the matter some serious thought. “There’s a real effective medicine for treating normal cases of pnuemocystis. I’m afraid this isn’t a normal case.”

 “Leave it to Hadley to be abnormal,” Grandma said, but she sounded like she might cry.

Dr. Buckerfield licked his lips. “Have you read anything about Gay Compromise Syndrome, Mr. Crump?”

“What’s that?”

“An alarming number of people have been coming down with this new strain of pneumonia in the last year or so,” the doctor said. “It’s mostly homosexuals becoming infected.”

It was a question, of sorts. A question that made Meg squirm. Suddenly, she knew exactly what Dr. Buckerfield was talking about. The bank had let a man go last month at the Biloxy branch. He was sick with homosexual cancer, and there was concern he’d infect the costumers. She seemed to recall that a fight had broken out at the Saint Jude’s Food Pantry not long ago over something similar. A young priest was charged with hitting a sick homeless man. He claimed the man was endangering others at the shelter.

Poor Old Hadley. No wonder he never married. 

It was Grandma’s cackle that answered the doctor’s dangling question. “Hadley’s not a homosexual, Dr. Buckerfield.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Worth-Holmes, but maybe we’d best let Mr. Crump speak for himself,” Dr. Buckerfield said. He gave Old Hadley’s arm a soothing pat. “It’s a private matter, of course.” Initially, the doctor had tried to persuade Old Hadley to speak with him alone. “Is there some chance it could be this new disease?”

Old Hadley’s eyes lit up for the first time. “Nope. No chance at all. Guess you better look for a different diagnosis, Dr. Buckerfield.” Old Hadley rubbed his wrinkly brow. “Whew. You scared me for a minute there.”

Dr. Buckerfield didn’t look convinced. “I’m sorry. I guess I made a false assumption.” He was a new doctor, and Old Hadley had not been to see him until his recent troubles. Dr. Buckerfield opened the chart and started flipping through the pages. “What about this splenectomy you had some years back?” he said as he flipped. “There’s some recent information suggesting that some bad blood might have worked it’s way into the blood banks. Did you have any transfusions with your surgery, do you recall?”

The color dropped from Old Hadley’s face. Grandma’s hands fell to her sides.

“Ah, here it is!” Dr. Buckerfield cried, looking almost pleased. “I see here that you had a partial removal of your spleen about fifty years ago, and they had to take the rest in October 1977. Three transfusions were done. If it’s true that you caught this from one of your transfusions, your case could be very important in understanding more about Gay Compromise.” He looked up from the paperwork. “For one thing, we might need to find a new name for this thing, eh?”

“Can you make me better?” Old Hadley said. 

The doctor closed the chart. “At this point, no. But scientists are learning more everyday. I realize you’re very weak right now, Mr. Crump, but I’d like you to come down to the Hermosa Avenue Clinic tomorrow if you think you might be able. I volunteer there on Wednesday afternoons with a researcher named Dr. Simon. We’ve been working with patients with similar health concerns. I’d like to have Dr. Simon look at you.”

Grandma cackled again. “You expect us to carry him there, I guess?”

Meg had one vacation day she’d been saving for a long weekend in Vegas with her friend Annie. “I could take off tomorrow and help you get him there, Grandma.” 

Dr. Buckerfield nodded at Meg. “Thank you for that. This is important.”

The next day, Meg and her grandmother spruced Old Hadley up and put him in some clean clothes. “I don’t see why they think he has this gay sickness,” Grandma kept muttering. “Waste of time, is all it is.”

“We’re lucky Dr. Buckerfield knows someone who might be able to help,” Meg reminded her grandmother. Old Hadley was tired, feverish, and in some pain, but he didn’t make a peep until after Grandma complained for the tenth or twelfth time. 

“Wouldn’t it be funny, Lucinda, if it turned out I was a homosexual fellow and didn’t never know it?” 

He was steadier on his feet than Meg might have hoped, but he took to snoring on the drive to the clinic, and it wasn’t but fifteen minutes away. 

“Looks awful crowded,” Grandma said as they pulled up to the little brick building. Indeed, there were a lot of people at the Hermosa Avenue Clinic on this bright and beautiful afternoon. Meg wondered just how many people had come down with this new ‘condition’. 

“Must be giving away free china,” Grandma joked. 

Meg parked on the front curb, intending to pull around back after she helped Old Hadley walk through the front door. She’d barely gotten him out of the passenger seat when grandma said, “Here comes Dr. Buckerfield.” 

Meg heard him shouting something across the parking lot, but the crowd of people in front of the clinic was so thick it was hard to hear. She looked up just in time to see the man with the brick. Meg saw the brick, and then she saw Dr. Buckerfield waving his arms. He was mouthing the words: “Go back!”

But it was too late. Old Hadley stood on his shaky legs, looking frailer than ever in the full light of day. “Look!” Someone shouted. “It’s one of them!”

The brick sailed past Meg’s cheek close enough to graze her skin. It hit the car mirror, and glass flew. One piece opened a cut on Old Hadley’s forehead. Blood gushed down his face and dripped off his chin onto his shirt. 

There was a lot of screaming and shouting after this. “Queer blood!” someone hollared. The crowd began to scatter, running for cars or taking off down the street on foot. 

Dr. Buckerfield took hold of Old Hadley’s elbow and began steering him toward the clinic. “Let’s get him inside.”

Grandma was out of the car by now, and she planted herself in their path. “Put him back in the car, Meg. This was a terrible mistake.”

Everyone started talking all at once then. “ . . . might need a stitch.” “He’s bleeding, Grandma!” “There’s entirely too much danger.” 

Old Hadley held his tongue while they all fought to be heard. He must have been waiting for them to shut-up. When this didn’t happen, he raised a shaky hand in the air like a student wishing to be called upon. Meg stopped mid-sentence. So did Dr. Buckerfield. Even Grandma got quiet. “I want to see Dr. Simon,” Old Hadley said.

“But you’re bleeding all over the place,” Grandma protested.

Old Hadley shook his bleeding head. “Move out of the way, Lucinda. The doctor here said this was important, remember?”

Grandma sneered. “And you do so love feeling important, don’t you?” 

Meg wanted to smack her grandmother for being so cruel. The man’s face was covered with blood. He could hardly even see.

“We drove down here to talk to Dr. Simon, and I mean to go in there right now.” He pointed a long old finger at the clinic.

For a moment or two, Old Hadley and Grandma glared at one another, and then a rare thing happened. Grandma stepped aside.

###

The forehead needed six stitches so they worked on that first. Dr. Buckerfield apologized half a dozen times. “There was a report in the newspaper this morning from the CDC saying there’s been four hundred and fifty-two cases now in twenty-three different states,” he explained. “We’ve never had trouble like this before but the paper called it a gay epidemic, and I guess people are scared.”

“Me too,” said Old Hadley. 

Dr. Simon had an owlish sort of look which made him seem wise. He had a nice plain way of speaking, too. They did x-rays, stained sputum, and took Hadley’s blood. The official results would not be available for a few days, but Dr. Simon was convinced that Old Hadley had Pneumocystis carinii Pneumonia and that the infection was the result of a bad blood transfusion. 

“But Hadley got that blood transfusion five years ago,” Grandma said. 

Dr. Simon said it was possible that Old Hadley could have gotten it from a transfusion even it was ten years ago. “We just don’t know much about this right now. It’s only in the last few months that we’ve begun to understand that you don’t have to be a gay men to be infected.” 

He told Old Hadley that he could temporarily relieve some of his symptoms, but he could not cure him. 

“You mean I’m going to die from this?” Old Hadley asked.

Dr. Simon looked him straight in the eye. “I’m afraid so, Mr. Crump.”

Meg had been expecting something bad, but still, it was a hard thing to hear. Grandma sniffled in a handkerchief and shook her head. 

“Is it contagious?” Old Hadley asked. 

“The wisest thing I can suggest at this point is that we get some x-rays and bloodwork done on these two ladies. I don’t want to sound any false alarms, but we consider partners, spouses, and caregivers to be at risk.”

Meg felt her heart grind momentarily to a stop. She’d been exposed to a deadly disease! She was at risk. She was only twenty years old. Old Hadley looked mortified. “We must find out right away!”

“I think that’s for the best,” Dr. Simon agreed.

Grandma cried harder.

“Even though I can’t offer you any real hope of survival, Mr. Crump, I would like you to think about undergoing some more extensive testing. It could be a tremendous help to others. The only way to stop this illness from spreading is to learn all we can from those who have contracted it.”

“Are you off your rocker?” Grandma snapped. “Someone threw a brick at him today. How can you expect any more of the man?”

“It’s a lot to ask, I understand that. Some of the tests will be more invasive than the ones we did today. But if people are becoming infected from this killer blood, and I really believe they are, it’s vital we find out what’ going on as soon as possible.”

“Can you gaurentee his safety, Dr. Simon?” Grandma wanted to know.

“We’ll take better precautions next time, I can promise you that much.”

“But you can’t promise that there won’t be more imbiciles throwing things at us when we get out of the car next time, can you? And you can’t guarentee that Meg and me won’t get our skulls cracked either.”

Dr. Simon made the mistake of looking unsure.

“Forget it,” Grandma said. “Come on you two, we’re going home.”

“I’ll do the tests,” Old Hadley said.

Grandma looked ready to choke the life out of him. Surely she would have given into the urge if he wasn’t all bandaged and pathetic. 

Old Hadley sat up tall in his chair. “Maybe they can’t save me, Lucinda, but if there’s some small chance we can make it walk, I want to do it.”

“Make it
walk
?” Dr. Simon said.

“It’s a pinochle term,” Old Haldey said. “It’s a way for a low card to win a trick. We’re a couple of old pinochle players, you see.”

“This isn’t a card game,” Grandma said. “The only thing I want to make walk is you, now come on.” She picked up her purse, put on her hat, and stomped to the door, expecting Meg and Old Hadley to follow. 

“I’m going to do the tests, Lucinda.” Old Hadley rubbed his taped head. “In all my years, I don’t guess I’ve ever done much to change anything. I’ve taken the world as I found it, and I do believe I’ve made the best of it. I reckon I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. But I’m old now and I’ve lived a long time. These tests are a small thing and I mean to have them. You and Meg must get some tests done, too.”

Grandma’s eyes were teary red and sparking with fury. When she slammed out of the office, Dr. Simon visibly sighed a sigh of relief. “I know this is very hard on everyone involved, but now that your wife has stepped out of the room, I wonder if I could ask a different favor of you, Mr. Crump? I was a little afraid to bring it up before.”

Meg whispered a silent thank you to the Lord that her grandmother didn’t hear Dr. Simon mistake her for Old Hadley’s wife. She was upset enough as it was. 

“If I could arrange for your safety, how would you feel about making a trip to a medical center in Birmingham, Alabama?” the doctor asked.

“Alabama?” For some reason this made Old Hadley’s face light up bright as a Christmas tree. “Well now, isn’t that something.” 

###