So Long, Chester Wheeler(66)

While I was waiting for them to put him on a gurney, watching from an emotionally safe distance, I called Ellie and told her where I was. Gave her the address and phone number of the hospital. Begged her to call them so I wasn’t in this alone.

Then I followed Chester’s body inside. And I took a seat in an outer waiting room with blinding fluorescent lights. And I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Possibly because it was off hours and only the night crew was on staff.

After about an hour a nurse came and stood over me and told me I’d done it all wrong.

“This is not really what we do,” she said.

She was big like a mountain, especially to someone sitting below her like that. She had her gray hair back in a braid.

“I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never had a person die around me before.”

“You should have taken him to the nearest mortuary or funeral home,” she said.

“Are there any open at this hour?”

“Probably not.”

“So what do I do? Please tell me you’re not going to give him back to me.”

“No. He’s here now. He was brought in. He shouldn’t have been brought in, but he was. So now I think you’ll have to arrange to have a funeral home pick him up from here.”

I breathed for the first time in the conversation. Or it felt that way, anyway.

“Someone is talking to his daughter right now,” she said.

“Oh. Good. So I can go?”

“Oh hell no,” she said. “You most definitely can’t go. When a person presents a deceased body, there has to be a confirmation of how he died. Someone has to confirm whether or not it was an expected death.”

“It was an expected death. He had terminal cancer. The doctors had given him less than three months to live.”

“So you say. But we need a confirmation of that to avoid the police coming in and turning it over to the coroner to establish a cause of death. If there’s no confirmation, then an autopsy will need to be performed.”

“Hopefully someone is doing that confirmation thing with his daughter right now?”

“Let’s hope. You’ll need to speak with a hospital administrator. But no one will be in until nine.”

So I waited quite a bit longer.



What felt like several weeks later, a woman came and got me. She was a striking woman in her forties, wearing a neat gray suit, with beautiful dark skin and hair shaved to just a shadow.

“Mr. Madigan?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Come with me, please.”

I followed her down a long hall. And then another. And then another. Then we stepped out into the cold, bright morning and walked outside to an entirely different wing of the hospital.

She led me into her office and indicated a chair, and we sat on opposite sides of her desk. She had a nameplate sitting right in front of me. It read, PAULINE FISCHER.

She looked right into my eyes with a very determined attitude.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve certainly complicated my morning.”

But it was the way she said it. It wasn’t really a complaint. She said it almost as a private joke. The way you tease someone when you know the person well enough to get away with it.

Her phone rang.

“This might be related,” she said, holding up one very-long-nailed finger.

She picked up the receiver and listened for a few seconds.

“Yes, put her through.”

Then she just listened again.

After a time, she said, “Before I say anything else, please let me say how sorry I am for your loss.”

I breathed deeply then, knowing she was talking to Ellie.

For a time all the conversation happened on Ellie’s end. I just sat there listening to the silence.

Then Pauline said, “Here’s what I need you to do, darling. I need you to call his doctor and get those documents sent here. That will enable a death certificate to be issued.”

Another bit of silence.

“Oh, you did. That’s good. Now you’ll need to call a local mortuary or funeral home. Local to us, I mean. Not to you. I can email or text you a list. They’ll pick up the body and arrange to get it shipped home to you. Which, I’m sorry to say, is not inexpensive.”

Silence.

“Oh. That won’t be bad, then. Cremated remains are fairly straightforward as far as shipping goes. Let me just confirm that we have everything his doctor sent, and that it’s all that’s needed. And then poor Mr. Madigan can get back on the road.”

She put Ellie on hold with one long, apparently strong fingernail, and pressed a couple of other buttons on the phone.

“Yes,” she said. And, “Good.” And, “What did he send?”

A longer silence.

“All right, then.”

And she clicked back to Ellie.

“I think we’re all set on the hospital end,” she said. “We just need you to arrange getting the body picked up. And, again, very sorry about the loss of your father.”

I wanted to say, “She doesn’t care. She barely knew him.” Of course I didn’t. It was unnecessary and rude, and in the fullness of time it might not have proved to be true.

She hung up the phone and leveled me with a gaze. She might have been relieved, too. Not nearly as relieved as I was, but likely more than I would have expected.