Good Riddance(55)

It would reflect quite badly on me to admit exactly when the opportunism arose, but it could have been as early as hearing the first cry for help. But hadn’t I done the right thing? Answered her distress call? Got the door open? Called 911? As promised, I ran out to the hall, and I did flag down the attendants as soon as they stepped off the elevator. But between leaving her side and climbing into the ambulance for the thankfully short ride to Mount Sinai, I’d had time to enter her study, rummage through her desk, find the yearbook, and repossess it.





27


Who Are You Again?



Borrowing her thumb, I unlocked her phone, called all the numbers listed under Wisenkorn despite her protests from the stretcher. I figured out the one named Myron was her father and the “Mom” listing was her mother, whose 802 area code suggested she lived too far away to be of help.

I was relegated to the waiting room because I’d flunked the sister test—apparently a ruse used by every friend posing as next of kin. I said, “Okay, we do have different last names. I’m just her half sister. I’m the product of her mother’s second marriage. Doesn’t that count?”

“Her emergency contact is Myron Wisenkorn.”

I asked how they knew that.

“It’s on the computer. She’s been here before.”

“We’ll tell you as much as we can,” said the desk each time I inquired.

I also called Jeremy, who promised to get to the ER as soon as possible. I said no, not necessary, just an FYI. She’d be released after she was stitched up or x-rayed or whatever was taking so long.

After I left three messages for her father, he finally called back. And, after battling the Long Island Expressway, arrived two hours later. He was just what the situation needed, a take-charge guy, maybe seventy, tanned in winter, camel coat over high-end dad jeans, used to yelling and demanding the best doctors that money could buy.

“Who are you again?” he asked, finally taking a seat next to me.

“Just a neighbor. I live on her hallway.”

“You found her?”

“I did. I’d come over to talk to her—”

“About what?”

Yes, that kind of guy, illuminating in a bad way, deficient in manners when talking to a nobody. I continued, “I knocked on the door and she didn’t answer. Then I heard ‘Help!’”

“So you went in?”

What he implied with that, judging by the accusatory tone, was that I had trespassed. I said, “Are you familiar with the term Good Samaritan? Because I probably saved your daughter’s life. I did not go in. I didn’t have a key. I called the super. He opened the door and I rushed”—I put a Florence Nightingale spin on rushed—“to the back bedroom where she was lying prostrate on the floor in a pool of her own blood.”

Despite my protest that he did not have to meet me, Jeremy arrived, in makeup, in the middle of Mr. Wisenkorn’s cross-examination, which he paused only to bark, “Who’s this one?”

“Another neighbor,” I said.

“Named?”

“Jeremy Wynn.”

He didn’t seem to approve of that, either.

I said, “I’m sensing you think we had an ulterior motive. It’s very insulting. By the way, where’s your husband? Why isn’t he with you in a family emergency?”

Was I suggesting that he couldn’t be such a tough guy if he’d married a man and might be a tad more human and gentler than the heterosexual asshole he was portraying? No. My point was that I wasn’t some stranger who’d helped myself to a crisis, but that I knew Geneva well enough to have chatted about her father’s same-sex wedding.

“What did you have to discuss with her?” he asked.

I went right to the war Geneva and I were waging. “Her podcast, The Yearbook.”

“What about it?”

“She stole that yearbook, which belonged to my mother.”

Apparently, one did not use the verb “stole” in the same sentence as a family member of Myron Wisenkorn’s. Without asking me to explain, his whole demeanor changed from merely grouchy to bellicose. “You’d better watch what you say, young lady. You keep that up, and—”

“You’ll what?” asked Jeremy, now on his feet, looking none too scary. “Because if you use that tone with her, I’ll call security over here and tell them you just threatened my girlfriend.”

“Calm down! I didn’t threaten anyone. I’m trying to find out what’s wrong with my kid and I’ve got this one here telling me about some goddamn program I don’t watch.”

Finally, a nurse or aide or someone with a stethoscope wrapped TV doctor–style around her neck came toward us. “Mr. Wisenkorn?”

“What?”

“I can bring you in to see your daughter.”

Jeremy and I sat there, me trying to look absorbed in the medical emergency while thinking what I’d do once Geneva discovered my heist. Maybe we should slip away right now while the coast was clear. “I took back the yearbook. She doesn’t know,” I whispered.

“How? When?”

“She was lying on the floor, and the super was watching her, making sure she didn’t die. I ducked into her study and stole it—right off her desk! Whoosh!”