“Larry,” I say. “Tell Claire that I am having a stroke.” I say it, and I hear myself saying something that sounds like “Tell dare I’m outside having a smoke.”
“What?” Larry says.
I try harder: “Can you please tell Claire that I am having a stroke?”
“Is this you?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Are you crank-calling me?”
“No,” I say. I hear myself talking and it sounds like I’ve got rocks in my mouth.
“I can’t tell her,” he says. “It’s manipulative. And, further, how do I know you’re really having a stroke and aren’t smashed?”
“I’m in the Emergency Room, Larry; they’re asking for my insurance card, and I keep saying, ‘Don’t worry, I have insurance.’”
“You have no insurance,” Larry says. “Claire dropped you. She asked me to drop you.”
I throw up again, spreading sick over my gurney and across the EKG wires.
“Because you’re still legally married, you may have some recourse. You can fight it.”
“I can’t fight anything — I can barely talk.”
“Maybe they have a patient advocate at the hospital.”
“Larry, can you please ask Claire to fax me a copy of the insurance card,” I say, and the nurse takes the phone.
“Mr. Silver really shouldn’t get agitated — he’s had a cerebral incident. Agitation is definitely not a good thing.”
Larry says something to the nurse and she hands me back the phone. “He wants a final word,” she says.
“Fine,” Larry says. “I’ll take care of it, I’ll fix this one. Consider it a favor, consider it the last favor I’ll do for you.” Did Nixon have to deal with shit like this, or did he hunker down with a bowl of SpaghettiOs?
I think of Nixon’s phlebitis; was the first attack in his left leg in 1965 during a trip to Japan? I think of him during the autumn of 1974, just after his resignation, when again his left leg swelled and he also had a clot in his right lung. He had surgery in October, then a bleed, and remained hospitalized until mid-November, and when Judge John Sirica subpoenaed the former President, he was medically unable to testify.
As I lie waiting for my turn in the CAT scanner, which I’m thinking is like a cerebral lie-detector test, I am all the more sure there’s a link between Nixon’s clots and Watergate. And, not to put myself in the same league, but I’m sure the episode with George followed by Jane’s death has caused my brain to blow.
During the CAT scan to comfort myself I review Nixon’s enemies list.
1. Arnold M. Picker
2. Alexander E. Barkan
3. Ed Guthman
4. Maxwell Dane
5. Charles Dyson
6. Howard Stein
7. Allard Lowenstein
8. Morton Halperin
9. Leonard Woodcock
10. S. Sterling Munro Jr.
11. Bernard T. Feld
12. Sidney Davidoff
13. John Conyers
14. Samuel M. Lambert
15. Stewart Rawlings Mott
16. Ronald Dellums
17. Daniel Schorr
18. S. Harrison Dogole
19. Paul Newman
20. Mary McGrory
I am admitted to a semi-private room on a monitored floor. It occurs to me to call my “regular” doctor. Every word is a struggle. I do my best to explain my situation. The doctor’s office manager tells me it’s in God’s hands, and besides that, the doctor doesn’t practice outside of the city, and, more to the point, he’s on vacation. She asks if I would like to be transferred to Death Israel when the doctor is back.
“What is Death Israel?”
“The hospital where the doctor is affiliated,” the office manager says.
“Sounds anti-Semitic,” my roommate says, having heard it all.
“I hope I’ll be home before…” I say, my speech sounding slightly more coherent and familiar.
“If you change your mind, let us know,” the office manager says.
“There’s nothing worse than actually needing a doctor,” my roommate says.
“What are you in for?” I ask, though I think it comes out sounding more like “Why you here?”
“The show is over,” he says. “Clock’s ticking down. Have you noticed I’m not moving? I’m stuck — all that’s still going is my brain, or what’s left of my brain. By the way, are you blurry or is it me?”
Before I can answer, the dog volunteer comes in. “I’m a Furry Friends Companion Consultant.” She pulls up a chair and takes out an information packet and forms. “Do you have a cat or a dog?”
“Both.”
“If a stranger opens the door, would they attack? Where is the food, and how much do they each get? Is the dog all right overnight — or do you need a nighttime companion? We have students who occasionally will do sleepovers.”
“How long am I going to be here?” I ask.
“That’s a question for your doctor. Adoption is also an option in some cases.”
“Someone would adopt me?”
“Someone might adopt the pets — if, say, you weren’t going to be going home. …”
“Where would I go?”
“To a skilled nursing facility, for example, or onward. …”
“Dead. She means dead,” the guy in the next bed says. “They don’t like to come out and say it, but I can, because, as I mentioned, I’m heading there soon.”
“You don’t seem so sick,” I said to the guy. “You’re perfectly coherent.”
I wipe drool from my own mouth.
“That’s what makes it so rough,” the guy says. “Totally compos mentis, aware of everything, but that won’t last for long.”
“Did you consider hospice?” the furry friend asks my roommate.
“What’s the difference — the art on the wall? They all smell like shit.” His hand comes up to his face. “Was that me or someone else?” he asks, and no one says anything. “My hand or yours?”
“It was yours,” I say.
“Oh,” he says.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” the furry volunteer says, “but you two will have all day and I’ve got things to do.”
“All day, or not,” the dying man says.
“About the pets — their names, ages? Do you have the house key with you?”
“Tessie is the dog, I don’t know how old, and Muffin is the cat. There’s a spare key under the fake rock on the left before the front door — a fake key and ten bucks.”
The dying man hums to drown out the conversation. “Too much information,” he says. “More than I should know.”
“Like, what, you’re going to get out of bed and steal my house?”
“Can you take dictation?” the dying man asks.
“I can try.” I push the call button and ask for paper and pencil.
“It’ll be a while,” the nurse says.
“I’ve got a dying man who wants to confess.”
“We all have needs,” she says.
I nap. In my sleep I hear gunshots. I wake up thinking my brother is trying to kill me.
“It’s not you,” the guy in the bed next to me says. “It’s on TV. While you were sleeping, a cop came to see you. He said he’ll be back later.”
I don’t say anything.
“Can I ask you a question? Are you the guy who killed his wife?”
“What makes you ask?”
“I overheard someone talking about a guy who killed his wife.”
I shrug. “My wife is divorcing me. She canceled my health insurance.”
Someone comes in and says, “Which one of you asked for a priest?”
“We asked for paper.”
“Oh,” the guy says. He goes out and comes back with a yellow legal pad and a pen.
“Where to begin?” the dying man says. “For certain, there are questions that will go unanswered. The difficulty is that there is not an answer for everything — some things cannot be known.”
He begins to spin a story, a complicated narrative about a woman — how they came together and then apart.