The volunteer shook her head and locked the brakes on the chair. “Hospital rules, ma’am, no exceptions. Patients have to be transported in a wheelchair. We don’t want you to slip and fall or something, do we?”
Jane looked at the wheelchair, then at the silver-haired volunteer who was going to be pushing it. Poor old lady, Jane thought, I should be the one pushing her. Reluctantly she climbed out of bed and settled into the chair as the volunteer transferred the IV bottle. This morning, Jane was wrestling with Billy Wayne Rollo; now she was getting carted around like the queen of Sheba. How embarrassing. As she was rolled down the hall, she could hear the woman wheezing, could smell the old-shoe odor of cigarettes on the woman’s breath. What if her escort collapsed? What if she needed CPR? Then am I allowed to get up, or is that against the rules, too? She hunched deeper into the wheelchair, avoiding the gazes of everyone they passed in the hallway. Don’t look at me, she thought. I feel guilty enough making poor old granny work so hard.
The volunteer backed Jane’s wheelchair into the elevator, and parked her next to another patient. He was a gray-haired man, muttering to himself. Jane noticed the Posey restraint strapping the man’s torso into the chair, and she thought: Jeez, they’re really serious about these wheelchair rules. If you try to get out, they tie you down.
The old man glared at her. “What the hell’re you looking at, lady?”
“Nothing,” said Jane.
“Then stop looking.”
“Okay.”
The black orderly standing behind the old man gave a chuckle. “Mr. Bodine talks like that to everyone, ma’am. Don’t let him bother you.”
Jane shrugged. “I get a lot more abuse at work.” Oh, and did I mention that bullets are involved? She stared straight ahead, watching the floor numbers change, carefully avoiding any eye contact with Mr. Bodine.
“Too many people in this world don’t keep to their own damn business,” the old man said. “Just a bunch of busybodies. Won’t stop staring.”
“Now Mr. Bodine,” the orderly said, “no one’s staring at you.”
“She was.”
No wonder they tied you up, you old coot, thought Jane.
The elevator opened on the ground floor, and the volunteer wheeled out Jane. As they rolled down the hall toward Diagnostic Imaging, she could feel the gazes of passersby. Able-bodied people walking on their own two feet, eyeing the big-bellied invalid with her little plastic hospital bracelet. She wondered: Is this what it’s like for everyone who’s confined to a wheelchair? Always the object of sympathetic glances?
Behind her, she heard a familiar cranky voice demand: “What the hell you looking at, mister?”
Oh please, she thought. Don’t let Mr. Bodine be headed to Diagnostic Imaging, too. But she could hear him grumbling behind her as they rolled down the hall and around the corner, into the reception area.
The volunteer parked Jane in the waiting room and left her there, sitting next to the old man. Don’t look at him, she thought. Don’t even glance in his direction.
“What, you too stuck up to talk to me?” he said.
Pretend he’s not there.
“Huh. So now you’re pretending I’m not even here.”
She looked up, relieved, as a door opened and a woman technician in a blue scrub suit came into the waiting room. “Jane Rizzoli?”
“That’s me.”
“Dr. Tam will be down here in a few minutes. I’ll bring you back to the room now.”
“What about me?” the old man whined.
“We’re not quite ready for you, Mr. Bodine,” the woman said, as she swiveled Jane’s wheelchair through the doorway. “You just be patient.”
“But I gotta piss, goddammit.”
“Yes, I know, I know.”
“You don’t know nothing.”
“Know enough not to waste my breath,” the woman muttered as she pushed Jane’s chair down the hallway.
“I’m gonna wet your carpet!” he yelled.
“One of your favorite patients?” Jane asked.
“Oh, yeah.” The technician sighed. “He’s everyone’s favorite.”
“You think he really has to pee?”
“All the time. Got a prostate as big as my fist, and won’t let the surgeons touch it.”
The woman wheeled Jane into a procedure room and locked the wheelchair in place. “Let me help you onto the table.”
“I can manage.”
“Honey, with a belly that big, you could use a hand up.” The woman grasped Jane’s arm and pulled her out of the chair. She stood by as Jane climbed the footstool and settled onto the table. “Now, you just relax here, okay?” she said, rehanging Jane’s IV bottle. “When Dr. Tam comes down, we’ll get started on your sonogram.” The woman walked out, leaving Jane alone in the room. There was nothing to look at but imaging equipment. No windows, no posters on the walls, no magazines. Not even a boring issue of Golf Digest.
Jane settled back on the table and stared at the bare ceiling. Placing her hands on her bulging abdomen, she waited for the familiar jab of a tiny foot or elbow, but she felt nothing. Come on, baby, she thought. Talk to me. Tell me you’re going to be okay.
Cold air wafted from the AC vent, and she shivered in the flimsy gown. She glanced at her watch and found herself gazing, instead, at the plastic band around her wrist. Patient’s name: Rizzoli, Jane. Well, this patient is not particularly patient, she thought. Let’s get on with it, people!
The skin on her abdomen suddenly prickled, and she felt her womb tighten. The muscles gently squeezed, held for a moment, then eased off. At last, a contraction.
She looked at the time. 11:50 A.M.
SIX
By noon, the temperature had soared into the nineties, baking sidewalks into griddles, and a sulfurous summer haze hung over the city. Outside the medical examiner’s building, no reporters still lingered in the parking lot; Maura was able to cross Albany Street unaccosted and walk into the medical center. She shared an elevator with half a dozen freshly minted interns, now on their first month’s rotation, and she remembered the lesson she’d learned in medical schooclass="underline" Don’t get sick in July. They’re all so young, she thought, looking at smooth faces, at hair not yet streaked with gray. She seemed to be noticing that more often these days, about cops, about doctors. How young they all looked. And what do these interns see when they look at me? she wondered. Just a woman pushing middle age, wearing no uniform, no name tag with MD on my lapel. Perhaps they assumed she was a patient’s relative, scarcely worth more than a glance. Once, she’d been like these interns, young and cocky in her white coat. Before she’d learned the lessons of defeat.
The elevator opened and she followed the interns into the medical unit. They breezed right past the nurses’ station, untouchable in their white coats. It was Maura, in her civilian clothes, whom the ward clerk immediately stopped with a frown, a brisk question: “Excuse me, are you looking for someone?”
“I’m here to visit a patient,” said Maura. “She was admitted last night, through the ER. I understand she was transferred out of ICU this morning.”
“The patient’s name?”
Maura hesitated. “I believe she’s still registered as Jane Doe. Dr. Cutler told me she’s in room four-thirty-one.”
The ward clerk’s gaze narrowed. “I’m sorry. We’ve had calls from reporters all day. We can’t answer any more questions about that patient.”
“I’m not a reporter. I’m Dr. Isles, from the medical examiner’s office. I told Dr. Cutler I’d be coming by to check on the patient.”
“May I see some identification?”
Maura dug into her purse and placed her ID on the countertop. This is what I get for showing up without my lab coat, she thought. She could see the interns cruising down the hall, unimpeded, like a flock of strutting white geese.
“You could call Dr. Cutler,” Maura suggested. “He knows who I am.”