Now that I have put onto this blog, for posterity, the letters my father wrote to my mother during the thirteen weeks he spent in Augusta, George for Army Reserve Training, I am returning to transcribing his short short stories. Not all of them, because some were clearly unfinished experiments, but there will be many. It will take time, and this part of the project which I have undertaken, the preservation of a family whose line has ended with me, will alternate with my general blogging of thoughts.
The story that follows makes reference to a woman that my father met about four or five years after my mother died. Actually, it was a blind date set up by one of Dad's colleagues who knew the lady. Their relationship, which I encouraged, for both altruistic and selfish reasons, was beautiful, and lasted about a year. My father said he ended it, and the reasons are reflected in this story, her age, which was much younger than his, and his health. She became my friend both before and after Dad died. She said it was a mutual decision, that the timing wasn't right. I knew a little of her situation; it was possible that it was mutual. I do wonder why my father took the responsibility for the break-up. I so wanted them to stay together. She was an infusion of life for him, and for me. I always told him he made a mistake. Ours was not a family that pursued happiness. In fact, sometimes it seemed to me that we swatted it away when it approached.
It is hard not to note my father's cynicism toward religion. He was always questioning. Even after he decided to join me in my faith, officially at least, as a Catholic.
I walked towards the Admissions desk. It was three deep with applicants for service. Somehow, I caught the eye of a nurse. In that brief glance, I managed to point my index finger towards the middle of my chest. She was beside me in an instant, her unusually strong hand grasped my arm. She led me to the glass-enclosed office behind the emergency desk and sat me in a wheel chair, adjacent to another desk and a computer flashing kaleidoscopic colors.
I was reminded of the pin ball machines of my youth, and in my mesmerized state fully expected the clangor of a win--coins dropping noisily into a metallic pan and bells announcing, "JACKPOT".
She was young, pretty, long-haired. Her carefully burnished nails did not impede the speed with which she manipulated the computer.
"Are you a nurse," I asked. No secretary could have such long nails.
"Yes," she replied, never missing a stroke.
She stopped long enough to take my pulse.
"One hundred and twenty," I guessed.
"One hundred and fifteen," she corrected.
The typing was brief. I have a long history of service from Cedars-Sinai. The necessary vital material was available on the computer memory banks.
"We're short of beds," she noted, "but I'll try to set you up."
Indeed. It was the day after Thanksgiving.
The nurse smiled. It was a warming gesture. She handed me over to a volunteer, who squeezed my arm in the ritual of mercy.
The volunteer wheeled me to the entrance of the emergency room. It was barred by a large metal door that opened from time to time at the electronic signal of a guard.
It slammed shut with the authority of a prison gate, a kind of prophetic finality.
In the brief moments to allow passage the door remained open to disclose filled emergency rooms.
Before each, gurneys, wheel chairs, conveyances of all kinds guarded the spot that assured possession of the next empty bed.
I was relieved each time the door shut out the symphonies of pain, particularly the two note repeating cry of a very young child.
I was wheeled into room six. I wondered that the previously placed patient, already at the entrance had not been given the space. "Triage," I thought, apprehension overcoming my being. He looked and sounded worse than I felt.
I stood, silent, lost, not knowing what was expected of me. The room had a comfortable bed. The walls were full of equipment. My reverie was broken by a very small Japanese nurse, who threw a onto the bed.
"Get into this right away. I have to hook you up to the monitors. I did as I was told. I watched as she placed sticky circles about my upper body which had metal teats to which she snapped the leads. "An EKG," I thought.
She left. I closed my eyes and waited like old Scrooge for the next visitor. HE came. He was young, with a pointed goatee. He was dressed in a maroon shirt and trousers over which a a black leather devise, crossed against the breast squeezed against his waist and upper hips. A back support, I guessed. He had the look of an imp from some frightening darkness.
"I'm your nurse," he announced, "There'll be a little sting. . ."
There was. I could feel it--and a sudden sensation of liquid rolling down my arm. I dared a look, but he had wiped it clean. He held three vials of blood I had no idea he had taken. A little receptacle remained in my arm, secured in a fat vein, ready to receive whatever might be offered.
"Just in case," he said, pointing to the device.
I tried to doze but was interrupted by a succession of visitors, all looking at the monitors and taking notes. I forgot about the automatic blood-pressure machine and was startled by its unrelenting squeeze against my arm.
The curtains parted again with a metallic swoosh.
"I'm your volunteer." She did not elaborate. She had extraordinary, large unblinking blue eyes. They were hypnotic.
"The doctor will be in soon with the results of the tests," she whispered. I was transfixed by the ocular splendor.
She smelled pretty, though there was no hint of perfume. Probably regulations did not allow. Curiously, even with my awareness of that eternal shadow reading the kaleidoscopic monitor about my head, reaction to beauty was not dulled.
They're all wrong, Saints Paul, Peter, Jerome, Origen, the vaunted Church Fathers--those Biblical purveyors of guilt, who accuse of of Original Sin--they're all wrong. The Maker of all things watched, approvingly when Adam shared that eternal apple with Eve. It was God's way to insure the immortality of His chosen species. He opted for life.
An author said it better than I can. "Allah looks darkly on a man who refuses a woman's love, when she calls." The infinite being so near, I thumbed drowsily through memory for any faults Allah may have with me. Yes, there was one grievous sin, one for which twenty years later those who knew of us castigated me darkly, but not nearly as bad as my self-imposed penance.
I will not describe her beauty, that warmth of inner love that was transmitted with a touch. When we danced, it was as if one body was in motion. For more than a year, we dallied with the world of music, glitter and dance. Sardi's, El Morocco, The Forum of the Twelve Caesars. Rita Dmitri, of the famous Candlelight Room, descended the piano from which she sang nightly, to sit with us, and to probe--in the parlance of the milieu--whether we were "anybody."
People in love are a curiosity, and blatantly obvious.
My eyelids became too heavy to ponder this ancient sin, but the memory refused to leave on its own.
I was in a dream as real as life. We were on our way to greet the New Year. It was New Year's Eve, 1978, as we sped towards the restaurant where we had our first date, to a reserved corner table in the Chateau Henri IV, with its unique bridge over a moat, and the plus circular table setting that allowed us to sit close together, where we joined hands, and were seldom apart after that.
She sat close as I drove and her heady scent and warmth reinforced my determination. I would ask her to marry me. It was not an impediment that there was twenty years between us, that the summer her life was beginning I was well into fall. I could withstand the cynical, pervasive remark at social gatherings--"Introduce me to your daughter." It was her decision. She had assured me it was what she wanted.
I would wait till midnight. . .for sure, this time. . .I was happy.
The phone was insistent in its importunate ringing. I fought the unwanted persistent hand of the nurse on my shoulder. . .
"The doctor is here with the reports."
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