well as clothes to replace encrusted ones from the night before), and took her car uptown. Since the car was specially outfitted, there was never any question who would drive. She parked by an elementary school on the far side of the neutral ground and we walked across Carrollton, dodging a streetcar that lugged its way toward St. Charles beneath towering palms, bell aclang. She was wearing sneakers, jeans and an old sweatshirt from the rehab hospital that read Do It—Again.
Lester told us how good it was to see us after so long, wiped quickly at the counter, set out tableware rolled into crisp white napkins. Without asking, he brought coffees with cream, and within minutes was also sliding our breakfasts onto the counter before us, pecan waffle for Clare, chili omelette for me.
We ate pretty much in silence, smiling a lot, then walked over to Lenny’s so she could get a New York Times.
“What now, Lew?”
“Maybe you could drop me off at Touro’s ER.”
“Would you mind too much if I stayed with you? It’ll probably be a long wait, and you never know how you might be feeling afterward.”
“You don’t have to do that, Clare.”
“I know I don’t.”
So she did.
At the triage desk I gave my name and other information to the clerk, answered that no I had no medical insurance but would be paying by check for services rendered, and earned for that a lingering, weighty glance, as though it were now moot whether I was the worst sort of social outcast and deadbeat, or someone important who perhaps should be catered to.
“Please wait over there, Mr. Griffin,” he said, pointing to row upon row of joined plastic chairs I always think of as discount-store pews. “A doctor will see you shortly.”
Shortly turned out to be just under three hours.
The place was more like a bus station than anything else. That same sense of being cut off from real time, much the same squalor and spread. Everything stank of cigarette smoke, stale ash and bodies. Stains on the chairs, floor, most walls. Steady streams of people in and out. Some of them picnicking alone or in groups from fast-food bags and home-packed grocery sacks, a few to every appearance (with their belongings piled alongside) homesteaded here.
Periodically police or paramedics pushed through the automatic doors with drunks, trauma victims, vacuum-eyed young people, sexless street folk wound in layers of rags, rapists and rapees, resuscitations-in-progress, slowly cooling bodies. Every quarter hour or so a name would boom over the intercom and that person would vanish into the leviathan interior. None of them ever seemed to emerge. Nurses and other personnel strolled past regularly on their way outdoors to smoke.
A young woman from Audubon Zoo came in with the hawk she’d been feeding attached to her by the talons it had sunk into her left cheek.
A detective from Kenner arrived to inquire after a body that had been dumped on the ER ramp earlier that morning allegedly by a funeral home that claimed the next of kin refused to pay them.
An elderly woman inched her way in and across to the desk to ask please could anyone tell her if her husband had been brought here following a heart attack last night, she couldn’t remember where they said they were bringing him and had tried several other hospitals already and didn’t have any more money for cab fare.
Clare, it turned out, was right on several counts. Once the whale finally got around to swallowing me, I emerged with a dozen or so stitches. I emerged also, barely able to walk, on wobbly legs, demonstrably in poor condition to attempt wending my way home unaided.
To her credit, she made only one comment as she watched me wobble toward her in the waiting room: “Well, here’s my big strong man.” Then she took me home.
I woke to bleating traffic and looked at the clock on my bedside table. Four fifty-eight. From the living room I could hear, though the volume was low, Noah Adams on NPR, interviewing a
Lester told us how good it was to see us after so long, wiped quickly at the counter, set out tableware rolled into crisp white napkins. Without asking, he brought coffees with cream, and within minutes was also sliding our breakfasts onto the counter before us, pecan waffle for Clare, chili omelette for me.
We ate pretty much in silence, smiling a lot, then walked over to Lenny’s so she could get a New York Times.
“What now, Lew?”
“Maybe you could drop me off at Touro’s ER.”
“Would you mind too much if I stayed with you? It’ll probably be a long wait, and you never know how you might be feeling afterward.”
“You don’t have to do that, Clare.”
“I know I don’t.”
So she did.
At the triage desk I gave my name and other information to the clerk, answered that no I had no medical insurance but would be paying by check for services rendered, and earned for that a lingering, weighty glance, as though it were now moot whether I was the worst sort of social outcast and deadbeat, or someone important who perhaps should be catered to.
“Please wait over there, Mr. Griffin,” he said, pointing to row upon row of joined plastic chairs I always think of as discount-store pews. “A doctor will see you shortly.”
Shortly turned out to be just under three hours.
The place was more like a bus station than anything else. That same sense of being cut off from real time, much the same squalor and spread. Everything stank of cigarette smoke, stale ash and bodies. Stains on the chairs, floor, most walls. Steady streams of people in and out. Some of them picnicking alone or in groups from fast-food bags and home-packed grocery sacks, a few to every appearance (with their belongings piled alongside) homesteaded here.
Periodically police or paramedics pushed through the automatic doors with drunks, trauma victims, vacuum-eyed young people, sexless street folk wound in layers of rags, rapists and rapees, resuscitations-in-progress, slowly cooling bodies. Every quarter hour or so a name would boom over the intercom and that person would vanish into the leviathan interior. None of them ever seemed to emerge. Nurses and other personnel strolled past regularly on their way outdoors to smoke.
A young woman from Audubon Zoo came in with the hawk she’d been feeding attached to her by the talons it had sunk into her left cheek.
A detective from Kenner arrived to inquire after a body that had been dumped on the ER ramp earlier that morning allegedly by a funeral home that claimed the next of kin refused to pay them.
An elderly woman inched her way in and across to the desk to ask please could anyone tell her if her husband had been brought here following a heart attack last night, she couldn’t remember where they said they were bringing him and had tried several other hospitals already and didn’t have any more money for cab fare.
Clare, it turned out, was right on several counts. Once the whale finally got around to swallowing me, I emerged with a dozen or so stitches. I emerged also, barely able to walk, on wobbly legs, demonstrably in poor condition to attempt wending my way home unaided.
To her credit, she made only one comment as she watched me wobble toward her in the waiting room: “Well, here’s my big strong man.” Then she took me home.
I woke to bleating traffic and looked at the clock on my bedside table. Four fifty-eight. From the living room I could hear, though the volume was low, Noah Adams on NPR, interviewing a
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