7
« ^ » “Even in our own times, with all the industrial appliances and the more extended knowledge which characterizes this epoch of modern civilization, a satisfactory bed has been realized only within the last few years.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872
For the rest of the night, without car keys or hotel room, I was a helpless participant in someone else’s drama.
Later I was glad that I’d been there for Dixie when she had no one else, but she hadn’t immediately needed my shoulder and I felt like an intruder.
While the guard summoned help, she left a message on her friend Pell’s machine, asking him to send the baby-sitter home and to hold the fort till she got there. Then we followed the ambulance over to the hospital and sat outside the ER while the trauma team worked to stabilize Chan’s breathing.
As a nurse took down his history and questioned Dixie about his allergies, I remembered that I’d seen a gold medic alert on one of his neck chains.
“He’s allergic to several things,” Dixie said, “especially bee and wasp stings. He almost went into shock the last time he was stung.”
Allergies? Could allergies have been the reason for his heavy breathing that spring in Maryland and not my fallen-woman status?
Dixie looked at me guiltily when the nurse was gone. “I must have just missed him. He knows I keep a stash of antihistamines in my office for my own hay fever, especially with pine pollen so bad right now. Maybe he felt an attack coming on and came looking for me.”
“If he’s that allergic, he must carry his own supply,” I argued.
“Maybe. Thank God Lynnette inherited Evelyn’s constitution and not his.”
Here in the ER waiting room with us were a black mother and an obviously feverish child who leaned against her mother’s comforting bulk with listless apathy.
A defeated looking middle-aged white couple—he in overalls, she in a faded print housedress—waited for someone to see them. The wife’s eyes were pools of anxiety and she kept asking him in low tones how he felt. He merely grunted and sat hunched over with his crossed hands pushing against his abdomen as if to hold back the pain that left him gray-faced and sweating.
Two shabbily dressed white teenagers whispered together on a corner couch and a large black woman with a dazed expression kept going up to the receptionist every few minutes to ask, “He’s gonna be okay, ain’t he?”
The black receptionist was patient, but obviously harried. “They still haven’t told me anything, Ms. Robinson. I promise I’ll let you know the minute they do.”
Two very bloody and very drunk white adolescent boys came rushing through the door, propelled by a white High Point policeman. They yelled that they were the victims of police brutality, probably maimed for life, and that their fathers would have his badge. The trouble was not that they really believed it but that their fathers probably believed it, too.
They alternated their belligerent threats with whining complaints and rather than sit there and listen to them, I went out to hunt up some coffee. It took a while but what I finally found smelled delicious and when I got back, Dixie sipped hers appreciatively.
“What happened to the Hardy boys?” I asked, but she looked at me blankly and I realized that very little about this waiting room was registering.
To take her mind off Chan, I said, “You mentioned earlier you wanted some legal advice?”
She sighed. “It seems so petty now with Chan like this.”
“It concerns him?”
She nodded. “I wanted an update on grandparents’ rights. You heard him earlier. Jacaranda’s merging with a company in Malaysia and he’s going to take that job. Uproot Lynnette and haul her off to Kuala Lumpur halfway around the world where I’ll never see her except in the summer. If I’m lucky.”
Tears filled her eyes. “She’s all I have left of Evelyn. What if he finds someone out there and remarries? What if she’s jealous of his first marriage with Evelyn and won’t let me visit Lynnette? Don’t I have any rights at all?”
“Well…” I said cautiously, “as a judge, I’m not allowed to give legal advice, but if you want to hear what a friend thinks—”
Dixie slumped back in the ugly plastic chair, discouraged. “I know, I know. As long as he’s a good father, I have no real rights, just what he chooses to give me.”
“Is he a good father?” I asked.
“Materially, yes.”
“But not emotionally?”
“How do I know, Deborah?”
“Don’t you?”
She gave a reluctant grin. “You really haven’t changed, have you? Okay. You’re right. He dotes on her and she adores him right back. But then, most females do adore Chan.”
“Like Drew Patterson?”
“Exactly like Drew. She’d marry him tomorrow and don’t I wish! She’s crazy about Lynnette, too, and even if they did move to Malaysia, she’d see to it that I stayed part of their life. But Chan—”
She broke off as a nurse came out and asked if we’d come with her. She led us into a small room furnished with only a few chairs and benches. A doctor in green scrubs was waiting for us. His face was young but his weary eyes were ancient.
“Mrs. Babcock?” There was pity in his voice. “I’m truly sorry to have to tell you this… We did everything we could. Unfortunately, Mr. Nolan didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it?” Dixie looked at him blankly, as if his words held no meaning.
I was just as uncomprehending. “He’s dead?”
That laughing, dancing, sexy hunk of manhood?
“I’m truly sorry,” the doctor said again. “He was already in anaphylaxis when he got here and we just couldn’t reverse it. Were you with him earlier? Was he stung or did he accidentally eat something he’s allergic to?”
“Not that I know of.” Her chestnut hair swirled around her face as she shook her head.
“Those chocolate brownies?” I offered, trying to be helpful. “Nuts?”
She shook her head even more vigorously. “Foods never seem to bother him all that much. It’s the histamines and pollen, of course.”
She looked at the doctor. “Pine pollen’s so bad this time of year, but he was taking something for it. Could he have taken too much?”
The doctor looked dubious. “His condition didn’t quite present that way, but I’ll check. Who was his allergist?”
“I’m not sure. Is there a Dr. Harrison over in Winston?”
“Amos Harrison. Right. I’ll give him a call.” He patted Dixie’s hand, murmured more apologies, then left us with a nurse to finish filling in the forms.
“You’re Mr. Nolan’s next of kin, right?” the nurse asked.
“Next of kin? No, not really. He’s my son-in-law. I guess my granddaughter? But she’s only six. She couldn’t possibly—”
“Oh, no, ma’am. It would have to be an adult. What about his parents?”
“They’re both dead, but his sister’s in Maryland. I don’t have her number with me though.”
Dixie looked at me in grief and dismay and I told the nurse, “Let me take her home now and she’ll call you in the morning with that information.”
The nurse nodded sympathetically. “Certainly.”
More than ever I felt the loss of my purse and keys and the lack of a hotel room. I realized now that Yolanda Jackson at the shelter must have been the “she” that Savannah had thought could help me with a bed. I offered to try to call her, but Dixie wouldn’t hear of it, so I followed her out into the parking lot and again the cool night air felt like spring and new beginnings.
As we drove to her house on the north side of town, Dixie spoke of Chan and her daughter Evelyn, of how she had never been able to trust his salesman’s charm, his smoothness, his easy way with women.
“He even flirted with me, for God’s sake. His own mother-in-law! I knew he wouldn’t be faithful, but you couldn’t tell Evelyn. Not that I ever tried to, once she was married to him. She had to have known though. Women couldn’t keep their hands off him. They throw themselves at him and he doesn’t—didn’t—always dodge. After Evelyn died, poor little Drew almost made herself sick before he started seeing her.”