Even in her sleep I recognized her. She was younger than me, but not much. Long, curly hair, a reddish purple that could only come out of a bottle. Memorable hair, even if you’ve only seen it once, even though it now had an inch of black roots showing at the scalp. Her face was pale and showed the remnants of bruises. Her long, lovely arms were bruised, too, purple and green around the sites where blood had been drawn or tubes inserted. She was skinny, the sad little blue gown and blanket not thick enough to hide the bones jutting through. She no longer smelled like Shalimar.
“Hello,” I said to her, but she didn’t respond. I touched her face, very gently, but she didn’t respond to that either.
I wondered how long she’d lain there. I’d seen her only a month before.
WE’D met at the Somdahl & Associates Fourth of July barbecue. Even with the hair she wouldn’t have stood out among the crowd of strangers, and I, as a company spouse, wouldn’t have made an impression on her either, but for a clumsy gesture. A drunken partner had spilled a pitcher of beer on her T-shirt, and instead of apologizing made lewd remarks about how good some women look wet. Another man tried to intervene, no doubt thinking “sexual harassment lawsuit” but the drunk wouldn’t give way gracefully. While the two men worked it out, I’d walked over to the beer-soaked woman and touched her shoulder. I had an extra shirt in my car, I told her. When she hesitated, I put an arm around her, and she let me lead her away.
“Thanks,” she said. “Asshole. All week I work for him. Now I must eat and drink with him.” She had an accent that I couldn’t identify. Some Romance language.
“Who is he?” I asked.
She’d looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Albert Werner. The CFO. You must be new.”
“My husband is,” I’d said. “I’m just the spouse. Jane England.”
“You’re married to-”
“Richard England.”
Her eyelashes fluttered, a butterfly’s gesture. “Your husband is Richard England.”
“Yes, do you know him?”
There was a pause. “Yes.”
We were at the car now and she was waiting, so I opened the trunk and she added, “You are the Good Samaritan.”
“No problem.” I pulled a pink T-shirt out of the emergency diaper bag. Clipped to the bag was a plastic-framed photo of Paco and Charlie with Tooth. “I have twin toddlers, so someone’s always spilling something on me, or my breasts used to leak, when I was nursing. I’m just in the habit of carrying around a change of clothes.”
“I didn’t realize Richard England had children,” she said, touching the photo. Staring at it.
It was one of those remarks-actually, it was the third remark in two minutes-that sent a shiver of sexual jealousy down my spine. But she looked at me then, intently, and said, “Your husband. He’s tall, yes? Large nose.”
I nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “Last week, I carried heavy boxes into the conference room, for the meeting. Eight men around the table, and only your husband, he jumps up to hold the door and then he takes all the boxes from me, to help me. All the boxes.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but she turned her back to me and pulled off her beer-soaked shirt. I looked at her flawless skin, her narrow ribs, her spine, her lacy little bra straps, and I was relieved that I didn’t need to feel jealousy.
She turned around, dressed once more. “Jane. Thank you. It really is kind of you to give me the shirt off your back. I can’t think of many people at this picnic who would do this. I won’t forget it.”
I reached out to pluck from her wild hair a tiny piece of paper caught there. A Band-Aid wrapper, escaped from the diaper bag.
“And you have twins,” she said, smiling for the first time. “This is very lucky. A blessing. Boys, yes? And a dog.”
“Yes.” I smiled back at her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Matilda,” she said. At least, that’s the name I guessed at, but it was hard to know, because it came out quickly, except for the middle syllable, drawn out so musically. Mateelda…
Later I noticed that she’d left her red baseball cap in the trunk of my car.
THE nurse’s shoes were silent, and I only saw her when I turned. I gasped. She jumped.
“Jesus!” she said, a hand to her heart. “Wasn’t expecting anyone.” She wore turquoise scrubs and Nike running shoes.
“Is it not visiting hours?” I asked.
“No, it’s just you’re her first visitor. On my shift, anyway.” The nurse checked her watch and made a note on the chart held in a binder.
“I just now found out she was in the hospital,” I said. The nurse was reading the chart and didn’t reply. “How long has she been here?”
“This floor? Five days.”
“And how long in the hospital?”
She flipped a page. “Admitted ten days ago to the ER, then surgery, then intensive care, and then up here.”
“What is ‘up here,’ exactly?”
The nurse looked up at me, glanced down at my stomach, and turned back to the chart. Patient confidentiality rules, I imagined her thinking. “This is a hospice room. She’s a DNR. Do Not Resuscitate.”
Madeeda was dying. I took a deep breath. “What happened to her?”
She looked up again, and her eyes narrowed. “You okay to be up and walking around?”
I nodded. “I’m fine. I’m just… Sorry, she was a friend, but I only just now heard about her.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“Okay.” I perched on the leatherette chair next to the bed. Thinking, We’re dressed alike, Madeeda and I. Sharing clothes again. “What happened to her? Can you tell me?”
“Assaulted,” she said. “And left for dead. It was in the paper.”
“Oh, God.” My chest heaved at the thought. “Do they know who did it?”
She checked a catheter and made a note on the chart. “All I know is they had cops outside ICU. But once her brain functioning stopped, they pulled the security.”
Since she was no use to the cops anymore. And no danger to anyone else. “But no one’s visited her?” I looked at the elaborate tropical arrangement on the bedside table, not quite fresh. A Somdahl & Associates business card peeked out from among the calla lilies. “No one from her office?”
The nurse wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Madeeda’s bruised arm. Her movements were gentle but efficient. “Where’d she work? We figured she was with the government.”
My throat went dry. “Why would you think that?”
“Her ICU nurse. She said the people in the waiting room looked like they were gathered for a tax audit. Short hair, sensible shoes, no flowers.”
“No, she was a secretary,” I said. “Somdahl & Associates. No one there wears sensible shoes.” How could you work in a place and not have coworkers come visit? Even in a coma, I’d like to think someone might keep me company. “Can I ask you,” I said, “what will happen when she dies? I mean, will you call people and notify them?”
“People in general? No.” She looked again at the chart, and flipped a page. Her eyebrows lifted, a spark of surprise, quickly masked.
A buzzer sounded, and a disembodied voice asked for a Nurse Shayne to please come to room 12E13w stat. “Excuse me,” she said and left quickly, taking the chart with her.
I had to follow her. Taciturn as she was, I had to make her tell me more, tell me something, anything. I stood shakily, clumsy with the weight of the baby, gave a last look to Madeeda, then left the room.
The nurse was already moving around the corner, out of sight. But there, next to the door, in a tiny alcove, was a cart on wheels. In the cart were binders. Patients’ charts. A dozen or more. Clearly labeled. I grabbed “M. Quadros. 12E21e.”
I read the binder tabs and flipped to “patient information.” I was terrified to be caught by the nurse, and half afraid, too, that Labor & Delivery would have sent out a search party by now. But there it was. Under “notes” was an arrow, pointing to a business card stuck in the tab page’s plastic sleeve.