Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [107]
“Is Mama really sick?” Gina asked.
“She needs a check-up. You stay here, Gina. We won’t be long.”
He started hunting through the closet for a sweater or a jacket, something light, but all he found was Emily’s winter coat. He took it off the hanger and helped her into it. She stood docilely while he buttoned the buttons.
“It’s not that cold,” Gina told him.
“We have to take good care of her.”
He led Emily out the door, closing it behind him. Halfway down the stairs, he heard the door swing open again. Gina hung over the banister. “Can I have that last banana?” she asked her mother.
Morgan said, “Yes. For God’s sake. Anything you like.” Emily was silent. Like someone truly ill, she made her way falteringly down the stairs.
In the truck she said, “Do we have an appointment?”
“We’ll make one when we get there.”
“Morgan, it takes weeks.”
“Not today it won’t,” he said, pulling out of the parking space.
He drove to St. Paul Street, to Bonny’s old obstetrician. He couldn’t remember the number, but recalled very clearly the upholsterer’s establishment next to it, and when he found a display window full of dusty velvet furniture, he stopped immediately, blocking an alley, and assisted Emily from the truck.
“How do you know this person?” Emily asked, looking around her at the gaunt, grimy buildings.
“He delivered all my daughters.”
“Morgan!”
“What?”
“We can’t go in there.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“He knows you! I mean, we have to find someone else. We have to assume an alias or something.”
Morgan took her elbow and guided her up the front steps, through the brass-trimmed door, and into a carpeted lobby. “Never mind all that,” he told her, punching a button for the elevator. “This is no time to play around, Emily.”
The elevator door slid open. A very old black man in a purple and gold uniform was sitting on a stool in the corner. Morgan hadn’t realized that elevator men still existed. “Three,” he said. He stepped in beside Emily. The silence in which they rode was dense and charged. Emily kept twisting her top button.
In the waiting room Morgan told the receptionist, “Morgan Gower. Emergency.”
The receptionist looked at Emily.
“We have to see Dr. Fogarty right away,” Morgan said.
“Doctor is booked solid. Would you care to make an appointment?”
“It’s an emergency, I tell you.”
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“I’ll discuss the trouble when I see Fogarty.”
“Dr. Fogarty is very busy, sir. Perhaps if you leave a number where he can call when he’s through with his patients—”
Morgan stepped past her, around her desk, and through the oak door behind her. Often, biding his time in various waiting rooms, he had imagined doing this, but he had always assumed it would be necessary to wrestle the receptionist to the floor first. In fact the receptionist was a tiny, mousy girl with limp hair, and she didn’t even stand up when he came through. He barreled down a short white corridor, into a room full of instruments, out again, and into another room. There an older, grayer Dr. Fogarty was seated behind a kidney-shaped desk, placing his fingertips neatly together, holding a discussion with a very young couple. The couple looked bashful and pleased. The girl was leaning forward, about to ask some earnest question. Rushed though he was, Morgan had time for a little spasm of pity. How shallow they seemed! Probably they thought this was the most significant moment in history. “Pardon me,” Morgan told them. “I hate to interrupt this way.”
“Mr. Gower,” the doctor said, unsurprised.
“Ah! You remember me.”
“How could one forget?”
“This is an emergency,” Morgan said.
Dr. Fogarty let his chair rock forward at last, and parted his fingertips. “Is something wrong with Bonny?” he asked.
“No, no, it’s Emily, someone else. This is Emily.” He should have brought her in with him. What could he have been thinking of? He grabbed a hank of his hair. “It’s terribly important. She’s going to pieces, believes she’s pregnant … Fogarty, if she’s right, we need to know it now, this instant, not at two-fifteen next Tuesday or Wednesday