Pale Kings and Princes

26

Caroline Rogers was sitting up in bed watching a soap opera when I went to see her at the hospital. Her hair was brushed back from her face and she had on lipstick. Her nightgown was white with a blue ribbon at the throat. There were flowers in the room.

“Hello,” I said.

She turned her head away from the television and refocused slowly on me.

“Hello,” she said.

I put my hand out and took hers and held it.

“I’m all right,” she said, as if I’d asked. “I’m a little dull feeling, he says it’s shock. And I know I have tranquilizers in me.” Her voice was not quite slurred, but slow and unanimated.

I kept hold of her hand.

“If I just concentrate,” she said, “on watching TV or eating my breakfast, or putting on lipstick, I’m all right.” She smiled at me a little, her head turned toward me on the pillow. “If I think about, you know, the future, I...”

Tears formed in her eyes. She rubbed them away slowly, with the hand I wasn’t holding.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You will,” I said.

“Will I?”

“Yes.”

“How will I?”

“You’re strong, and you’re young. You’ll come out of this. You’ll come out of this. You’ll have a life.”

The tears were there again and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Why do I want a life?” she said.

I sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know,” I said. “If I’d gone through what you have maybe I’d wonder too.”

“Did you?” she said.

“Go through something like this?”

“No,” she said. “Did you ever wonder why you should live.”

“Yes,” I said.

“But you didn’t die.”

“No.”

She was crying tranquilly. I leaned forward and put my arms around her. She sat straighter and leaned against me and cried against my neck.

“Why didn’t you,” she said.

“Die? I don’t know. Maybe I knew that I’d come out of it, that there was stuff to do that I’d want to do. Maybe just curiosity, see how things come out.”

“Curiosity saved the cat,” she murmured.

“What I found out is that sometimes when it’s all falling apart, there’s a chance to make something better.”

“Better than the old life?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No,” I said. “You can’t think so now.”

“I don’t know if I can stand it,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

“I haven’t any family, now.”

“Parents, sisters, brothers?”

She shook her head slowly against my neck.

“You’re enough,” I said.

She shook her head some more. “No,” she said.

“Yeah, you are,” I said. “And I’ll be around. I’ll help.”

She was silent, shaking her head, hugging me.

“I want to die,” she said.

“You can always do that,” I said. “It’s always there if things really are unbearable.”

She nodded. “You’ll help,” she said.

“I’ll help you live,” I said.

She was quiet, but she kept her face against my neck and her arms around me. During the commercial break on the soap opera, a nurse came in.

“Okay, Mrs. Rogers,” she said. “Time for pills...”

Caroline was compliant. She let go of me and lay back against the pillow. The nurse gave her two tablets and a glass of water. She took the tablets, gave the glass back to the nurse, and turned her head toward the television. The nurse nodded at me, and smiled and left the room. In five more minutes Caroline Rogers was asleep.

I left the room and stopped by at the nurses’ station.

“Is she getting any emotional help,” I said.

The nurse was cute and blond, with a green ribbon tied on her ponytail, under her nurse’s cap.

“Dr. Wagner has talked with her,” the nurse said.

“He’s her doctor?”

“Yes.”

“What’s he think?”

“You’d probably have to talk with him, sir. She’s had a terrible shock and he’s been keeping her sedated.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Dr. Wagner will be making rounds after five if you want to wait and speak with him.”

“He in Wheaton?” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll call him, thanks.”

I went on out of the hospital. I had questions that I wanted to ask Caroline, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe she didn’t know anything anyway. That would make two of us.