They May Not Mean To, But They Do(24)

“Welcome back to the world,” said Molly.

“Why are you dressed like that?” Joy asked.

“Isolation,” said Molly.

“You can be alone even in a crowd,” Joy murmured, and fell back to sleep.

Soon another nurse came in.

“Sir,” she said to the man in Bengay. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m sorry, but the smell of your, um, ointment is disturbing patients and staff and visitors up and down the floor.”

“Yes, but do you have the C. diff test results yet?” Molly asked the nurse. “I think both patients deserve to know why they’re in isolation with each other.”

“Sir?” The nurse ignored Molly. “Sir, please go home, wash it off, and then you can come back. You don’t need to use so much, you know. Just a little bit. Why don’t you try it at night, before bed? But for now…”

“Excuse me, Nurse, but if his mother catches something from my mother,” Molly said, “you will have more to worry about than Bengay.”

“I use it every day,” the man said. “I can’t leave Mommy. I can’t. Mommy is very sick.” He began to cry a little. He covered his face with his hands. “I can’t.”

Molly patted his back. The smell was less upsetting now that she knew what it was, but it was just as strong. It burned her nostrils. It stung her eyes. She said, as mildly as she could, “You don’t want your mother to catch something from my mother, do you?”

He shook his head.

“And if my mother catches something from his mother,” Molly said to the nurse, “you should know that my brother is a lawyer.”

But it was as if Molly were not there. The nurse, a small, even dainty woman, emanated authority, and she wanted this man, the source of disturbance on her floor, to go away. “Sir?” she said, her hands on her hips. “I really don’t want to have to call security.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Molly said. “This man will not be bullied and neither will we. We are in this together.” She stood in solidarity beside the unhappy, redolent man. “Aren’t we?”

He stopped crying and took his hands away from his face. He seemed afraid to look at the wee, mighty nurse, but he made eye contact with Molly, brief, furtive eye contact. Then he looked down at his mother. She didn’t move. The only sound in the room was her rasping breath. He gazed at her for what seemed a long time, then he squared his shoulders.

“Mommy,” he said, “we are calling your doctor.”

And he led the way to the nurses’ station.

When Molly got back to the room, the Bengay man was headed home and arrangements had been made to separate the two potentially infectious patients.

“Strength in numbers and the desire to get that poor guy off the floor.”

Daniel was holding their mother’s hand. She was awake again. “Good job!” he said to Molly.

Molly laughed. “That’s the voice people use for their kids. And dogs.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joy said weakly, reminding herself of Aaron, which made her worry suddenly and viscerally how he was. “Daddy! How is Daddy?”

“Dad’s doing fine,” Daniel said. “He’s out of the hospital, how about that? He’s home.”

“But who’s looking after him? What is he eating? How is he—”

“It’s all taken care of, Mom,” Molly said. “You’ll see.”





13

The apartment was full of voices, all timbres, tones, and accents. It was like an orchestra. The cushions of the sofa cradled her aching body. She listened to the voices: a deep, male, harsh African musicality; the free-for-all vowels of Portuguese English; the loops of female Polish. And Aaron, his intermittent wailing reaching back to Middle Eastern chanting in its cadences, as if all his ancestors were crying out at once.

Joy opened her eyes. A man the color of ebony smiled at her as he walked past the door toward the kitchen. He stopped to confer with a boxy woman in wide capri pants. And there was Elvira, too, the Bergmans’ housekeeper, tall and thin as a daddy long-legs, behind the boxy lady, nodding. It was such a lively group, the three of them speaking together, one more incomprehensible than the next, incomprehensible to Joy, presumably to one another as well.

Joy closed her eyes again and listened to the languages she could not comprehend. It was as though she could comprehend nothing at all, drifting comfortably on the soft outskirts of comprehension. Eventually Danny introduced the compact, quiet black man. His name was Walter. Danny said that Walter came at night. Joy smiled at Walter. How kind of him to come at night to care for Aaron. To care for her. Lovely, she said when Danny introduced her to Wanda, the woman shaped like a UPS package. Wanda emitted a gurgling laugh. Thank you, Joy said. Wanda emitted the gurgling laugh again. She spoke only Polish. Joy said, How kind of you.

“Wanda and Walter are trained in changing the colostomy bag,” Danny said. “And they taught Elvira.”

“Lovely.”

“You absolutely cannot do it anymore. The doctor said you can’t even touch it. That might be how you got C. diff.”

“C. diff is very, very dangerous.” She remembered now, she had heard about C. diff on The Joan Hamburg Show on the radio. “Treacherous.”