Mercy Street(85)

At five o’clock, Randy came to get him. Slowly, painfully, he made his way down the ramp. He lowered himself gingerly into Randy’s souped-up PT Cruiser. After a lifetime of driving big rigs, it was disconcerting to ride in a passenger car. The road raced beneath them like a conveyor belt, so fast, so close. Victor looked out at the world and read the signs.

TOUGH TIMES NEVER LAST. TOUGH PEOPLE DO.

Back at the log house he sank into the living room couch, as exhausted as if he had run many miles, and turned on the TV.

THE DETAILS OF THE ACCIDENT WERE VAGUE TO HIM, THEY LIVED in the realm of rumor and conjecture. The car he rear-ended in Massachusetts—a Toyota Prius—was totaled, though the driver was not hurt. He’d been distressed to learn, later, that she was pregnant. Though he had to wonder: What sort of female would put herself in such a situation, driving alone across the Berkshires in her condition? A pregnant female ought to take better care of herself.

The first time he came to, the EMTs were pulling him from the wreckage of the pickup. The second time, he was lying on a gurney behind a plastic curtain printed with tiny seashells. Victor verified his name and birth date and religious preference, and gave them a phone number to call.

My stepbrother, he said. We’re not blood-related.

Eventually he was moved to a different room, surrounded by a different plastic curtain—putty-colored, printed with moons and stars. On either side of the curtain, male voices made phone calls. The voice to his left was possibly Mexican. Victor recognized a few words of Spanish: mucho, hombre, gracias, nada. The voice to his right spoke a singsong language that seemed wordless, an undifferentiated torrent of sound.

When he woke from the surgery he heard a female voice. The sound was achingly beautiful, recognizable American English. Gratitude filled him. After what seemed like months of solitary confinement, he was not alone.

He heard the voice several times before he saw its source, a heavyset Black female with a round smiling face. Ernestine was his age exactly, he learned later, though at the time he wouldn’t have guessed it. The age of Black people was a mystery to him.

In the hospital he experienced a smorgasbord of humiliations, the daily trial of toileting. He could not wash or dress or shave himself. For these services and others, he was entirely dependent on Ernestine.

The services she performed were unspeakable. If she had been a White woman, he would not have survived it. The mortification might literally have killed him.

She placed the pan beneath him and removed it when he was done.

She worked in silence, which seemed preferable. On her left hand was a gold ring set with multicolored stones. Eventually his curiosity overcame him. One day as she was changing his sheets, Victor asked about the ring. His voice was phlegmy, nearly unintelligible. Except for the Indian doctor who came and went, he hadn’t spoken to another person in days.

He cleared his throat and tried again.

“It’s a mother’s ring,” said Ernestine. “My kids gave it to me for my birthday.” The gems were the birthstones of her four grown children, three boys and a girl.

Victor thought immediately of Doug Straight. A Black female born in 1950 produced, on average, four offspring. Again and always, Doug had been right.

Ernestine stripped the bed briskly, without fanfare. She maneuvered him expertly, as though rolling a log. “You never had any kids, Victor? Lift.”

He lifted. The question had taken him off guard.

“No, ma’am,” he said, blinking furiously.

There was a silence. Horrifyingly, he was near tears.

“That’s sad,” she said finally.

Victor said, “I think so too.”

Another silence.

“I guess I never met the right girl,” he added gruffly. “Met a few wrong ones, though.”

At this Ernestine laughed. Her laugh was remarkable, rich and melodic, a laugh that was larger than them both. She laughed at what he’d said and what he never could, at the dizzying variety of pratfalls and misfires and bitter regrets—absurd, brutal, irreversible, and irredeemable—a person, any person, could rack up in sixty-five years of living.

The moment passed, but Victor never forgot it. It was a pleasure he hadn’t experienced in many years, or maybe ever: the simple joy of making a woman laugh.

HOSPITAL DAYS WERE LIKE PRISON DAYS, LONG AND EMPTY. VICTOR ate and shat and ate again, like a factory-farmed chicken. Mealtimes were the only events worth noting, the highlight of his day.

Each morning a slip of paper was delivered with his breakfast tray.

The slip of paper was vitally important. The patient was to note his preferences for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Grilled cheese or tuna sandwich, meat loaf or spaghetti, oatmeal or scrambled eggs.

Victor filled out the form slowly, with great difficulty, the tiny type swimming before his eyes. Straight lines looked wavy. At the center of his vision was a blank spot, as though he were staring into a searchlight. He held the paper over his left shoulder and studied it out the corner of his eye.

Once Ernestine came into the room as he was filling out the form. “You need your glasses, Victor?”

“I can’t find them,” he grumbled—shamefaced, as though she’d caught him in some misdeed.

“Try these.” She took off her glasses, bright red plastic, and handed them over. He was so flabbergasted he couldn’t speak. There was nothing to do but put them on, the plastic warm from where it had sat on a Black lady’s nose.