Chapter 29

"Would you like me to have one of the nurses give you something, June?"

"No thanks, Raul. I need to be here for my son and my daughter. I can't afford to be zombied out."

"OK. If you change your mind, let me know. I need to be getting back."

He left the room.

"Just say no, right Mom?"

"Yeah, right. Not when it takes money out of the drug companies' pockets, Jackie. Who do you think paid for this place?"

We went outside and sat down. There weren't a lot of people around. I noticed a couple who were obviously ready to deliver a baby at any minute. The paperwork nurse was trying in vain to get insurance information from the husband. The answer to every question was "No se." We were going to have a new citizen soon. And twenty years from now, that man would still be saying "No se."

A cop brought in a woman and sat her down before he held a conversation with another nurse over at the counter. She didn't try to force a clipboard at him. Maybe she had some sense. He went over to the woman and talked to her, pointing over at the nurse he'd just talked to before he walked out the door. She had obviously been beaten up. Her face had dried blood all over it and I could see she was going to have a couple of shiners. She was cradling her right arm and I realized it was broken. She kept glancing around as if she expected someone to jump out at her.

Mom leaned over to me. "Wife beating," she said softly. "She'll get patched up, hock her wedding ring to get him out of jail and they'll be back together until he does it again. Sometimes they don't even have time to get their rings out of hock and have to come up with something else to get him out the next time."

"God, Mom, does this happen often?"

"There are two or three of them in here each day. And more right after the welfare checks come out and their men can pay for booze. They show up here every couple of weeks or every month until they finally show up downstairs."

"What's downstairs, Mom?"

"The morgue."

"Why doesn't she leave now she has the chance?"

"They have their reasons. He'll cry and tell her he's sorry and he didn't mean it and it'll never happen again. And she'll believe it. You know that cop's probably brought her in a hundred times. I could tell he was just going through the motions when he was telling her she could file charges. They never do."

I looked over at my mother. She didn't look good. Twenty minutes ago, she'd had a target for her rage. Charlie. He had been taken away from her, plus she now had some concrete things to be worried about instead of a vague 'she's been raped' and now she had nowhere to point it. She was keeping it all inside, letting it stew.

They had "grief counselors" available for cases like ours. I'd heard enough stories from Mom over the years to prevent me from accepting "help" from them, much less request it. Mom said they were like vultures only vultures are patient enough to wait for their prey to become helpless. Once these guys got their claws on you it was only a matter of time before you were addicted to one of their "cures." Nobody ever got cured, somehow everyone came too late for the counselors to fix anything. There were some semi-cures when the insurance ran out, however. You could see them under some of the freeway overpasses, sleeping in cardboard boxes at night.

I heard the automatic door open and a couple came in. They looked to be in their 50s. I got the impression they were religious from their clothes. Not quite the black and white of the Amish, but they had that look to them, and were at least twenty years out of style. It wouldn't have surprised me to see him carrying a buggy whip. They were extremely nervous as they went to the counter. I thought of something I'd heard in Sunday School as a child. "The meek shall inherit the earth." These two would have it taken back from them within five minutes.

They were lucky, the nurse with the brain talked to them. I was surprised when she pointed over at us and the couple turned and looked at the two of us.

They walked over to us and the husband spoke.

"Excuse me, I'm Claude Dandridge and this is my wife Ethel. I understand you may know something about our son."

Mom was confused. I finally realized who they were.

"You're Charlie's parents."

"Yes, Charles is our son. I understand you talked to the doctor." He ignored me, looking at Mom the whole time.

"Yes. He mostly talked about my daughter. I'm sorry, but it looks like your son was beaten up pretty badly. He has several broken ribs and there was some damage to his face. He was evidently kicked by someone. I gather he was trying to protect my daughter when they were raping her."

Mrs. Dandridge spoke for the first time.

"You. You and that hussy of a daughter of yours. You're the ones responsible for seducing my son and putting him in the hospital."

My mother stood up in front of the woman and slapped her in the face. Mrs. Dandridge was knocked backward and she sat down as the couch broke her fall.

"Come on, Jackie. I don't want to be around here anymore."

I followed Mom to the cafeteria on the far side of the floor from Emergency.

The hospital is like two buildings joined together with a square hole in the middle. The four inside walls have windows all around on each of the seven floors. There is a hallway that runs around the building on each floor on the inside of these windows.

On the first floor, there are doors to the open area every fifty feet or so. There are some concrete benches, a small waterfall, some tables with big umbrellas and chairs. Some grass, but a lot of concrete for wheelchairs. And a lot of plants. There are rooms inside the hospital for patients to sit or visit, away from their rooms. This outside area used to be the place smokers went but that has been banned for years. There is no roof or cover of any kind so it's a place patients and visitors can go to be out in the sun, provided it's not raining. Mom referred to it as the quad.

The other floors have a view of the quad until you get up a bit. Then you can see the windows on the hallway on the other side of the square and a patch of sky if you look up at the right angle.

The east and west sides are narrow. The inside of the hallway is lined with patient's rooms on the outside wall. The far side of the rooms is the outside of the building. The south and north sides are the big ones. There are hallways intersecting the one we were in that cross other hallways parallel to ours. If you went south from our hall, you'd hit another about 75 feet down, a second another 100 feet further and the outside wall 50 feet past that. Emergency took up about half of the south wing, from that first hallway to the outside of the building. The cafeteria was on the north side of the building, next to the elevators. Both wings had their own set of elevators.