Burn Marks

26

Doctor’s Orders

“What are you doing with your clothes on?” Lotty Herschel was sharp to the point of unfriendliness.

“I’m going home.” Getting dressed with both hands taped in gauze had been a chore. “You know I hate hospitals- it’s where they send people to die.”

“Someone should have burned those,” Lotty said coldly. “They smell so bad, I can hardly stand to be in the same room with you.”

“It’s the blood and the smoke,” I explained. “And I guess stale sweat-I worked up a pretty good meltdown hoisting myself up those ropes.”

Lotty’s nostrils curled in distaste. “All the more reason to remove them. Dr. Homerin cannot possibly examine you with that stench coming from you.”

I’d noticed a slender middle-aged man standing patiently behind Lotty and assumed he was another resident seeking education at my feet. At my head, actually.

“I don’t need another goddamn examination. Twenty-four hours here and I feel like a pot roast every housewife in Chicago has taken a poke at.”

“Mez Homerin is a neurologist. You got a nasty blow to the head. I want to make sure that that thick Polish skull of yours hasn’t taken any irremediable harm.”

“I’m fine,” I said fiercely. “I don’t have double vision, I can tie my shoes with my eyes closed, even with these baseball mitts covering my fingers, and if he sticks pins in my feet, I’ll know about it.”

Lotty came over to stand next to me, her black eyes blazing. “Victoria, I don’t even know why I bother. This is the third time you’ve been hit hard enough to knock you out. I don’t wish to spend my old age treating you for Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s-which is exactly where you’re heading with your know-it-all reckless attitude. If you don’t get your clothes back off this minute-this instant-you may be sure of one thing-I will never treat you again. Do you understand?”

Her anger was so intense it made my knees wobble. I sat back on the bed. I was pretty angry myself, enough that my bead started pounding savagely as I spoke.

“Did I send for you? This is Michael Reese, not Beth Israel-you came barging in without so much as a by-your-leave, at least not a by-my-leave. Someone tried to murder both ray aunt and me. Getting out of that building was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life and you scream at me about my clothes and Alzheimer’s disease. It that’s your attitude, leave with my blessing-I don’t need your kind of medical care.”

Dr. Homerin coughed. “Miss Warshawski. I can understand your being upset-it’s a natural side effect of concussion and the other experiences you went through last night. But as long as I’m here, I think I might as well examine you. And it would be easier to do if you could take your clothes off and put on your hospital gown.”

I glowered at him. He turned to Lotty and said apologetically, “Dr. Herschel?”

“Oh, very well,” she snapped. She whirled on her heel with the precision of a figure skater and swept out of the room.

Dr. Homerin pulled the curtain around my bed. “I’ll wait out here-give me a call when you’re ready.”

I could go ahead and leave, but it would make me feel incredibly stupid. Angrily I kicked my running shoes off. With thick clumsy fingers I unfastened the buttons of my shirt and unzipped my jeans. I took as much time as I possibly could before sullenly calling out that I was ready.

Dr. Homerin sat on the chair next to the bed. “Tell me a little about your injury-what happened?”

“I was hit on the head,” I muttered churlishly.

He refused to acknowledge my ill humor. “Do you know who hit you or what was used?”

I shook my head and saw black circles swirl around. “No. He was hiding in the room. I was looking at my aunt, who was drunk.” I frowned. “No. I thought she was drunk, but it turned out she had been coshed. That’s right, I realized someone had hit her and that he might still be there and as I was jumping up to protect myself I got hit from behind.”

He nodded, like a professor at a promising pupil. “It’s very good that you have so much recall-very often the memory immediately before such an incident is blocked out by what we call protective amnesia.”

I rubbed the tender spot on the back of my head. “What I don’t remember is what happened afterwards. I know I was climbing a rope in an elevator shaft but I can’t remember how I got Elena up with me. And then we came out. The fire fighters had to bring my aunt, but I think I got out on my own…”

My voice trailed off as I tried to focus the blur of memory. Mallory had shown up along with Furey when I was in the emergency room, but someone had been in the crowd around the fire who didn’t belong there. I remembered a faint inflection of surprise mixed in with a sense of my imminent death as the paramedics carried me through the barricades. The face swam on the edge of my consciousness. Tears of frustration pricked my eyelids when my aching head refused to concentrate.

“I can’t remember,” I said helplessly.

“Do you have any idea of why this happened?”

His gray eves looked harmlessly genial behind their thick lenses but I stiffened at once. “Did Bobby-Lieutenant Mallory-tell you to ask that?”

There’d been quite a scene in the emergency room, with Bobby roaring at me like a bull elephant on a rampage. Dominic Assuevo and Roland Montgomery from the Bomb and Arson Squad had joined him, but it was only because I kept passing out that the resident on call finally threw them out of the examining area.

Homerin shook his head. “The police haven’t spoken to me at all. I’m just checking your ability to answer logical questions.”

In the intervals between sleeping and tossing in pain I’d been testing that skill myself, without any happy answer. Maybe someone arriving to torch the building had seen Elena come out. He followed her, heard her phone me, then when she went back inside he knocked her out and waited to get me, too, before setting the place on fire. It could have happened that way, but it seemed awfully elaborate: Why not just torch the place while she was out of the way? Maybe she’d seen him clearly enough to recognize him again, so he felt she had to die. But then why go for me too? My head was starting to disintegrate. I couldn’t figure it all out. I wanted to go home and I was starting to feel too helpless even to get out of bed again.

Seeing my fatigue and frustration, Homerin switched to a general interrogation-did I know who the President was, the mayor, people like that? I wished I didn’t but rattled off the names. After that we went through the pins-in-the-feet routine and he banged on my knees and elbows and felt my head-all the usual medical stuff that lets the doctor know all your pieces are still attached to your aching body.

When he finished looking at my eyes and rotating my head around a few times, he sat back in the visitor’s chair. “I know you want to leave, Miss Warshawski, but it would be better if you stayed another day.”

“I don’t want to.” I was close to breaking down and sobbing.

“You live alone, don’t you? I just don’t think you’re up to looking after yourself right now. There’s nothing wrong with you that I can see, barring the side effects of concussion. They did a CAT scan of your head in the emergency room Wednesday morning and nothing alarming showed up. But you’ll manage better if you let us look after you another day.”

“I hate being looked after, I can’t stand it.” I didn’t want to be like Tony, reduced to such helplessness he couldn’t even breathe on his own at the end. The sound of his harsh wheezing breathing cut through my brain and against my will I found myself crying.

Homerin waited patiently for me to dry my eyes and blow my nose. He asked if there was something specific I wanted to talk about, but the memories of my dying parents were too painful to mention to a stranger.

Instead I blurted out, “Is Lotty right? Am I going to get Alzheimer’s disease?”

A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “She’s worried about you-that’s why she dragged me down here and got the house staff to agree to let me see you. I’m not a prophet, but three blows in seven years-it’s more than you need, but you’re not taking the regular pounding that a boxer does. I’d worry more about feeling better now. And give me a call if you have any unusual symptoms.”

He fished a card from his wallet and handed it to me: Mez Homerin, boy neurologist, with an address on north Michigan and another in Edgewater. “What kind of symptoms?” I asked suspiciously.

“Oh, blurred vision, trouble with your memory, any tingling in your fingers or toes. Don’t lie around worrying about them-I’ll be startled if you have any. Concentrate on getting your strength back. But please call me if you want to talk about any concerns.”

He put a gentle stress on “any” and I stupidly felt like crying again. “There is my aunt,” I said as assertively as I could. “Do you know how she’s doing?”

“Your aunt? Oh, the woman you rescued… She’d been hit on the head, right? Do you know if she’s here?”

I didn’t, but he said he’d find out and get a progress report for me. I’d been planning on getting up and dressing as soon as he left, but my crying bout had put the finishing touches to my fatigue. I was asleep almost before his hospital coat disappeared behind the curtain.