Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [94]
I walked outside to the nurses’ station where everyone had gathered for the day. About fifteen nurses and interns stood awaiting orders from the doctors. I whistled as loud as I could. Maybe I didn’t look all that good, ’cause it got pen-drop quiet and everyone looked at me. I raised a hand and pointed. “Everybody! Follow me.” I realize I wasn’t making any friends, but I’d had it. Surprisingly, they followed. Maybe being a senator’s son-in-law has its benefits. I mothered everyone into the room and we all gathered around Abbie’s bed. Abbie’s eyes were heavy and she was slowly waking up. I stood near the head of the bed and said, “I’d like to introduce all of you to my wife. This is Abbie Michaels. You can just call her Abbie.” They looked at me a bit strangely. I held her hand. “She’s a wife, a daughter, a friend, she has a tendency to talk with her hands, she likes Lucky Strike jeans and she sees beauty where others don’t.” I paused. “She is not and has never been ‘1054.’” The head nurse spoke up while a doctor shook his head and started walking out. She said, “Mr. Michaels, HIPAA law mandates that we not—”
I cut the doctor off and shut the door. He huffed, but I had everyone’s full attention. I palmed the sleep off my face while the doctor stood a foot from me. “I know you all work hard. A lot harder than most give you credit for. I’m thankful for what you do and how you do it, but HIPAA’s wife is not lying in that bed. I need to ask you to look at the woman in that bed and think of her not as a number. Not as a statistic. Hope is what feeds us. And, to be honest, it’s running in short supply around here.” I cupped my hands together. “It’s like…like trying to hold water. Please don’t take what little we have. Please…”
I looked at each of their name tags and shook their hands as they filed out: “Bill, Ann, Elaine, Simon, Dean, Ellen, Amy…” They got the idea.
Days later, I was walking past the nurses’ station in search of coffee and heard one of the nurses nod toward our room and mutter beneath her breath, “‘High Maintenance’ needs some sheets.”
I shrugged. At least it was better than “1054.” Then I realized she was specifically talking about me. I leaned against the counter, speaking to her and the other three nurses writing in their patient notebooks. “You’re right. I am. And for that I’m sorry. But I’ll gladly let you trade places with her.”
They never really said much to me after that. I’m not proud of that. It wasn’t cool or tough and it didn’t really win friends and influence people. I’m just letting you know where I was. The bottom is an ugly place to be.
Problem was, I had a few floors yet to fall before I reached the basement of us.
34
JUNE 7, MIDMORNING
Petey strutted around the table while Bob tuned the antennae for better reception and I tapped my fingers on my chin. The reporter narrowed her eyes, lowered her voice and seemed overly dramatic. “I’m standing outside the office of Dr. Gary Fencik, a primary care physician in the Charleston area. A lifelong friend of Abbie Eliot’s, Dr. Fencik has actively followed her illness since the beginning. The Charleston police have just issued a statement saying that they have received video surveillance tapes showing Doss Michaels stealing large quantities of three different types of narcotics from a locked cabinet inside this building.” The anchorwoman at the studio interrupted her, “Virginia, do we know how he got into the cabinet?”
“The authorities believe Mr. Michaels had access to both the keys and the combination.”
“Do we know what amount of narcotics Mr. Michaels allegedly took?”
“Off camera, the office manager