An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [70]
“I was on the phone to Dublin with my youngest lad,” Henry says. “I was telling him, ‘Imagine a week of steady rain squeezed into one storm. Imagine snow instead of rain.’ He won’t believe me. ‘Go on, Da. Yer exaggeratin,’ he says. Forty centimetres in December. Bring in the army. Either that or raise the white flag. Surrender now while we’re still standing.”
“If the power station in Baie d’Espoir is damaged in the storm, the whole city will be in the dark,” Cyril says. “That’s excluding Carl. They’ve got their own generator here at the hospital.”
“He’s been in the dark most of his life. Isn’t that so, Carl?” Henry adds.
Mercedes frowns. “That’s a sin. Poor Carl.”
“I never seen the likes, not in seventy-four years and I seen plenty,” Mr. Mercer says. “We had no forecasts to warn us once upon a time. No such thing as the Weather Channel. We kept an eye on the wind and the barometer. Those were the days.” He sighs and drops his head onto his pillow.
Cyril bounces off Mr. Mercer’s memories to tell a story about how someone in Labrador was caught chopping down an electrical pole for firewood. Mercedes bounces off that story to complain about cabin break-ins. Edith ricochets off Mercedes to talk about the cost of property insurance. Norah bounces off nothing or no one besides the silence in between.
“I need to hit the road before the drifts turn into barricades,” she says not long after she arrived.
Cyril asks Norah where she lives.
She fumbles in her pockets for her keys. “In Cliffhead, near Cape Spear where there’s so much snow, you can’t distinguish the valleys from the hills anymore.”
Norah leaves. The room is quiet.
“It’s about time we met your friend,” Mercedes says. “Nice looking woman, isn’t she, Cyril?”
The nurse peeps around the door to announce the end of visiting hours. Henry says goodnight for everyone. “I must go chat with those lovely nurses and congratulate them on the fine job they’re doing. Stay alive till tomorrow, Carl. You too, Mr. Mercer. I’ll be by for another visit.”
Mr. Mercer falls asleep shortly after they leave. His snoring is steady except for the gaps in between when he doesn’t breathe and I wonder if I should call for a doctor or nurse to check on him. The weatherman’s voice plays in the background. It’s interrupted now and then by the loudspeaker in the corridor: “Paging Dr. Linegar. Paging Dr. Linegar. Dr. Linegar, please go to the emergency ward. Dr. Robert Linegar to emergency.” When I close my eyes I can hear everything brilliantly, including pages for Linegar, Mr. Mercer’s snoring, not to mention ice pellets hitting the window. The cacophony plays on like a raucous marching band until the nurse prescribes earplugs and a sleeping pill.
Early the next morning, they wheel me off for tests. The real test comes when they bring me back to the room. “Your wife called the main desk and your girlfriend visited,” Mr. Mercer says. “Too bad you weren’t here when she was describin’ the storm surge. The size of the waves! Right up to her window, she said. She left you some bread and jam there. She brought me some statistics from the Internet. Marvellous source of information. Ever used it?”
It doesn’t take much to piece together the details of what happened. Tatie contacts Elsa to tell her I’m hospitalized. Meanwhile, Norah comes for a visit but I’m not in the room so she goes to the nursing station. A nurse asks her if she’s my wife. The other nurse interrupts to say she already received a long distance message from Mr. Brunet’s wife in Norway.
I leave messages on Norah’s phone at work and home. “What happened today at the hospital was a mistake. In fifty-three days, I’ll be divorced. Call or come see me.” Later that day when I call again, she answers. There’s a trivial exchange of questions about my health, a description of damage caused by the storm surge at Cliffhead, then Norah lets loose with her own surge. “You’ve made things far more complicated than they needed to be. I don’t want