could have said it was just a lucky guess; maybe she would’ve even believed me. But I wanted an end to all the lies, not just hers.
Last night the hospital called. You were asleep when the message came in, so I erased it. And then I made it so your phone wouldn’t get any more calls.
“You asshole,” she whispered.
I kept on writing, trying to explain, but she was already getting dressed.
I was scared you really meant what you’d said about the bridge. I couldn’t just stand by and let that happen.
She refused to look at what I’d written, no matter how much I ran around the room trying to shove it into her line of sight. Finally I grabbed her shoulder, and she spun and delivered a stinging slap right to my bruised cheek. I was blind with pain for a few seconds, and by the time I recovered, she was gone.
HOSPITAL FOOD
LUCKILY, I WAS PRETTY SURE I knew where she was going: the University of San Francisco Medical Center, back in the Sunset. I didn’t have the money for a cab, but I caught the N Judah below Market Street and made it there in less than half an hour.
A homeless guy in a Yale sweatshirt was sitting just a few feet away from the sliding glass doors, smoking a cigarette directly underneath a NO SMOKING sign. He nodded to me when I passed.
And pow! Hospital smell like a sucker punch to the nostrils, sending me reeling back to the month I’d spent here after the accident. Mushy food on beige plastic trays. The perpetual beeps and boops of machines that kept people alive or made sure they were still alive or sometimes even brought them back to life. The doctor like some distant father who never stayed quite long enough. Nurses of all shapes and sizes—everything from the gum-smacking almost-teenager to the humorless schoolmarm, from the spheroidal cat lady who insisted on showing me pictures of her “furry darlings” to the hippie nurse with dreads who gave me a book called The Power of Now. All that daytime television, and the weird fascination I had with the Univision telenovela starring the twin sisters who hated each other but loved all the same men. My mother asleep in a couple of wobbly chairs pushed up front to front, whimpering in the darkness.
I fucking hate hospitals. Which is funny, actually, because they’re a lot like hotels. Both places are populated mainly by people who aren’t planning (or hoping) to spend a lot of time there. Both places have a ton of rooms with more or less the same shit in every one. Both places are constantly being cleaned but still somehow feel incredibly dirty. Of course, there is one important difference: nobody goes to a hotel because they’re about to die.
The triage nurse looked up from her computer and noticed my epic black eye. She spoke with some kind of Caribbean accent. “You looking for the ER? That’s a nasty one you got there.”
I’d already prepared my question in the journal. My name is Parker. I don’t speak. I’m looking for Nathaniel Toth. He’s a patient here.
The nurse began to type into her computer. “Don’t speak, huh? That some kind of religious thing?”
I shook my head.
“I got a kid married to a Jehovah’s Witness. Man doesn’t believe in blood transfusions. I say, ‘You know how many lives I’ve seen saved because of blood transfusions? Every day, dozens of people.’ But maybe I’ll get up to heaven and the Lord’ll tell me I can’t come in because I had a blood transfusion once. Then won’t I feel stupid?” She laughed loudly. “Here we go then. Nathaniel Toth. Seventh floor. Follow the signs for Geriatrics.”
I shared the elevator with a doctor and a bald kid on a gurney. The kid gave me a big smile when I flashed him the peace sign.
It was past ten o’clock, so the ward wasn’t exactly popping. In fact, no one was working the front desk at all. I walked the hallways, looking into every room. A lot of the patients were still awake, watching their ceiling-mounted televisions or reading some thick paperback. Their names were printed on labels just outside their rooms. It only took a couple minutes to find N. TOTH. I put my ear to the door but didn’t hear anything, so I went inside.
It was a private room. An old man was sitting up in bed, but he wasn’t awake, or else just