The Painted Drum - Louise Erdrich [98]
“I’m sleeping in the chair.”
“Let’s get a roll-away in here,” the doctor said to the nurse.
“Now you”—the doctor touched Ira’s shoulder—“you’re going to have to keep your strength up. Your little boy is going to need you.”
“What about my other two, my daughters?”
“They’re going to be fine, but I’d like to keep them another day or two.”
“That’s good,” said Ira, “because I don’t know where we’re going next.”
“I hear your house burned down,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry.”
Ira said thank you.
“Do you have someone you can stay with?”
“I should go ask Bernard.”
“Okay,” said the doctor. “For now, let’s just take care of your little boy.”
A hospital aide brought in a roll-away cot and shoved it against the wall. The doctor stayed and went over Apitchi’s pulse and temperature again, then she left and later on the nurse left too. Alone with Apitchi, Ira didn’t dare take her eyes off of him. But finally she had to use the bathroom and when she came out he was still all right, he even looked a little better, maybe. So she unlocked the steel hook on the side of the cot and laid out the bed. Then she lay down on it. The bed was so comfortable that she fell asleep for perhaps an hour. When she woke, old Bernard was sitting in a chair on the other side of Apitchi’s bed.
“Oh, hey,” she said. “You’re here.”
“I came to work early,” said Bernard. “Zero visibility out there. I barely did make it. I heard this little one is sick.”
“Pneumonia,” said Ira. “But he had a seizure and they don’t know why. Maybe the fever.”
“Poor little guy,” said Bernard. “A seizure.”
“Scared the living hell out of me,” said Ira, sitting up and staring at Apitchi. “Now they have him on a medicine for that, too.”
“What about you,” said Bernard. “Did you eat?”
“I forgot about supper. I slept.”
“They left a tray here,” Bernard said, collecting it off a table behind the curtain. “Must have seen you were sleeping.”
Bernard brought the tray around the side of the bed and Ira put it on her knees. She’d lost her hunger, but she thought that she should eat, in case.
“Probably got cold,” said Bernard. “Should I go and leave you to eat?”
“No, no,” said Ira. “Stay here and talk to me. Can I interest you in a piece of”—she lifted the plastic dome, wet with condensed steam—“gray stuff? There’s chocolate pudding, too.”
“I’ll keep you company,” Bernard said. “I bring me a lunch every night, but sometimes I eat those good old hospital cafeteria leftovers, too. They bring ’em around to me.”
Ira found that, although she felt no hunger, she was eating everything with quick efficiency. She hoped that somebody had helped Alice cut her meat into little pieces. Perhaps they were asleep now, her daughters; it was late.
“Can I ask you something?” Ira was nervous. “You can say no.”
“All right. What is it?”
Ira stirred her pudding around and around. “Well, I’ve got to ask you, I mean, can we come stay with you? Until we figure out our housing?”
“Okay,” said Bernard.
Ira looked up in relief, she smiled. “Really?”
“I got room,” Bernard said.
“Oh, thank you.” Ira put her hands on either side of her tray. She nodded. Tears suddenly stung in her throat. “Chi miigwech, Bernard.”
“I got room,” he said again.
“I can cook,” said Ira. “I’ll cook for you.”
Bernard waved his hand aside and they both sat in the quiet looking at Apitchi, watching the glowing numbers of his oxygen and the graph of his heartbeat on the monitor. Ira finished up the food on her tray and set the tray on the broad windowsill.
“I sat with your dad in the nights,” said Bernard, “when he was sick in this here hospital. We used to talk.”
“I didn’t know that. I mean, of course I knew you two were friends, and that, but I never knew you stayed with him in the hospital.”
“Oh yes, he told me things I never knew. I learned things about him, when he was here in the hospital.”
“I guess people talk,” said Ira, watching Apitchi’s face, “at night. It can be a lonely place. I wish I could’ve stayed with him. I was taking care of the kids.”
“He sure loved these little ones,” said