“Don’t apologize,” I say quickly. “You just go on with your work.” I gesture toward the nurses’ station down the hall. “I’m going to read a magazine. Gracie and Lila will be out any minute. If we have any questions about Catharine, we’ll ask another nurse. Really. Please.”
“Don’t say that,” she says. “It’s just a surprise, that’s all. Eddie thought so highly of you. And the flowers you sent. Goodness, I should have thanked you long ago.”
“No,” I say, horrified. She can’t thank me for watching her husband fall off a roof. I won’t let her. I will change the subject. I will keep talking. I say, “I almost thought it wasn’t you, because of the name tag.”
She touches the name tag without looking down. “I use my maiden name professionally. I always have. It helps me,” she says, after a pause, “to have a different persona at work. I don’t think about Eddie as much here.”
“Of course, sure.”
“When I’m at home he’s everywhere I look.”
He’s everywhere for me, too, I want to say, but don’t.
“Louis.” It’s Kelly’s voice. I turn and see her walking down the hall. She has her car keys in her hand and her hair is slightly messed. I see that the sight of me talking to a nurse frightens her. “Am I too late? Have they already taken her in?”
“No,” Nurse Ballen says, her professional half-smile back on, her eyes growing calm and distant. “You still have time.”
WHEN MEGGY, Theresa, Angel, Mary, and Dina arrive, all bursting out of one cramped Toyota as if they have been at one another’s throats the entire drive and are now ready to take on someone new, I make my escape. Catharine will be in surgery for at least another hour, and with her two sisters and sister-in-law and nieces and daughters there, Kelly won’t need me. I kiss her good-bye on the cheek. She still smells like she does when she first wakes up, rumpled and like soap.
“You smell nice,” I tell her.
She shakes her head so abruptly that her nose hits my chin. I pull back, rubbing where contact was made.
“I took a shower last night,” she says, sounding angry. “I told you I overslept.”
“You look fine,” I say.
“I don’t care if I look fine. We’re in a hospital.”
“It’s a very common operation, Kelly. Your mother will be one hundred percent in no time.”
“I know.” She looks at Meggy, Theresa, Dina, and Mary in the chairs across the hall. Mary has a set of rosary beads she keeps fingering. Dina is wearing a ripped T-shirt that has LIFE IS A PARTY! written across it. Angel is on the other side of the hall with her hand pressed against Gracie’s stomach. Lila paces around them all.
Kelly suddenly looks down. “I don’t want to be here, Louis. Did you notice what Gracie’s wearing?”
“Should I give her money to buy some clothes?”
“My father’s cardigan. Don’t you remember? It was his favorite. My mother must have given it to her. Why would my mother give that to her? Why would she wear it?”
“Probably because none of her own clothes fit her.”
“I shouldn’t even try to talk to you,” she says. “You don’t want to be here for me. You’re faking it and I’m faking it, too. I’m too tired to pretend, Louis.”
“I’m not faking anything,” I say. I’ve become used to the way things are between Kelly and me, and I feel only a little guilty. After all, I’m not faking. That’s the wrong word. “But I do need to check on my men. I’ll come right back.”
“I don’t want you to pretend to care,” she says. “We’re past that. Just leave.”
Because I can’t bear to look at Gracie for another minute, I do as she asks. I take the most direct route out of the building. Once outside, in the hot, sticky July morning, I concentrate on swallowing the fresh air. As far as I’m concerned, what you breathe inside a hospital is not real air. It is sickness and medicine and air conditioning and ammonia. It is the unholiest combination of molecules and chemicals that can be found anytime, anyplace. Both of my parents died in the hospital, wrapped in tubes and plugged into machines. I spent days sitting beside their adjustable beds, first with my father and then with my mother, drinking lukewarm coffee. I rode in the ambulance with Eddie Ortiz, although he had died long before we