The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [4]
Her pale, shaven scalp was hidden under a stocking cap, her bloodred locks having been dispatched to a wig maker, who would refashion them, at the girl’s request, for a child in the cancer wing. She wore a hospital gown covered in Donalds and Mickeys. The day nurse was partial to these patterns. She said they made the kids happy. The night nurse, who had two children of her own, thought it insidious that the hospital allowed sick kids to be made into advertising billboards.
And this girl’s a little old for Mickey Mouse anyway, the night nurse thought.
“Do you want me to find you a different gown, dear?” she asked.
The girl shrugged, barely.
“Do you even still like Mickey Mouse?”
The girl looked puzzled. She pulled the material away from her abdomen and stared at it. “I hadn’t even noticed.” Smiling, she added, “These are okay for now. In the morning, I’ll change.”
The night nurse scribbled a note to the day nurse: “She hates the Mickey Mouse. Says she’s too old for that!”
The girl was staring at a West Coast Cubs game on television, but the night nurse couldn’t tell if she was watching. The drip from the bag above her bed delivered a slow calm up and down the girl’s body, along with one last powerful dose of the drug cocktail that had barely managed her life for the last four years. There were headphones around her thin neck. On the table next to her bed, along with a tall Styrofoam cup of ice water topped with a cap and impaled with a straw, was a rubber mouthpiece in case the seizures recurred, and a CD by a band called Bomb Pop. The nurse even recognized it.
“My daughter likes Bomb Pop, too,” the nurse said.
The girl took a moment to respond. A delay, not very long, but almost as if there were a translator whispering in her ear. “Everybody likes them,” she said finally and pleasantly. “Not my dad, though. He doesn’t like any new music, only music by dead people.” She seemed immediately horrified by the implications of what she had said, and with wide eyes and a bitten lip, she appealed for both forgiveness and discretion, which the nurse granted with a smile. Watching the television news over the last few months, the night nurse had developed the impression that Solomon Gold was not someone you spoke frankly about in public—even if you were his only daughter.
The operation had gone well and the night nurse had little to do in the room besides housekeeping. She circled the bed and closed the drapes against the parking-lot halogens outside. Canada was an odd name for a girl, but pretty. “NAH-duh,” they sometimes called her. The mother had been to visit only once and very briefly. Rumor was that she had left the state, choosing to abandon her tragic, tabloid life altogether, leaving her troubled daughter as well as her husband—“She’s throwing out the baby with the bad father,” one of the doctors had punned. The night nurse didn’t think that was funny. Daytime visitors were limited mostly to a woman thought to be a nanny and another woman thought to be an aunt. The nurse had seen not a single friend the girl’s own age, but then, what parent would really want their kid playing at the Gold house these days?
Solomon Gold, accused killer recently freed by jury, had been here each night since the girl was admitted, avoiding the gawkers and cameras by keeping an odd schedule, after visiting hours, often when Canada was asleep, sometimes singing to her, humming to her, in murmurs and whispers. The nurse saw him arguing with Dr. Falcone, his arms swinging wildly between them, as if the doctor were a flutist in his orchestra, someone he could control like a marionette with his hands. The nurse found Solomon Gold intimidating, to be sure, and often rude, but like half the population, according to polls, she was happy for his acquittal. Her gut told her he couldn’t be a murderer. Despite what joking doctors might say, murderers wouldn’t care this much about their daughters.
In fact, he should have been here by now.
The night nurse tried to do her