Jan Burke - Goodnight, Irene

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

“Well, they still won’t let you see him.”

“A very pleasant day to you, too,” I said, and went back out the doors and around the corner to the emergency room entrance. I went into the waiting room and up to the counter, and sure enough, there was Sister Theresa.

“I need your help, Sister,” I said.

“Yes?” she asked with a smile.

“The lady at the main entrance won’t let me near my brother-in-law’s room. I know he’s not in any shape for visitors, but I’m sure my sister could use a little diversion by now.”

“I think you’re right,” she said. “Come along, I’ll take you to her.”

We went out a set of doors down a wide white hallway and took a set of turns that got us to the ICU. Sister Theresa nodded to the nurse at the unit’s central desk and guided me to Kenny’s room. I hate everything outside of the maternity wards in hospitals, and I could feel my heart beat faster and my palms grow clammy as we walked into the room.

Kenny was almost hidden by the array of tubes and monitors surrounding his bed. He was on a respirator and his heart was being monitored. He was being given intravenous medication. His head looked oversized and was swathed in bandages, with openings where his eyes, nose and mouth should be. His respirator tube went into his throat; he had evidently needed a tracheotomy to get the tube in. Most of his upper body was bandaged as well. He looked like a mummy whose head had been filled with helium. I fought the sensation of my stomach plummeting.

Barbara was holding on to his hand through the bedrail, staring at him. She turned when she heard us, and Sister Theresa said, “Your sister is here to see how you and your husband are doing. Why don’t I sit with Mr. O’Connor while you two take a little stroll?”

If I hadn’t had a nun with me, I doubt she would have left his side, so the lady at the front desk had done me a favor. Barbara got up slowly and walked out of the room with me.

“How is he?” I asked her in the hallway.

She shrugged. “He’s what they call semi-comatose. Every hour they come in and give him neurological tests-see if his pupils respond to light and if he reacts to mild pain-like having his skin pricked, things like that. So far, he has. They tell me that’s good,” she said woodenly.

“And what about you?”

“I’m okay. I try to talk to him and read to him. The nurses told me Kenny might be able to hear me.”

We walked in silence for a moment. We passed a couple who sat in a waiting area, tension etched into their faces. Who could help wondering about the stories behind the people in hospital hallways and waiting rooms?

“Barbara, if you need to get some sleep or do some errands or something, maybe I could come down and give you a break. I would be grateful if you’d let me help you out a little.”

“I’m okay,” she said again. After a moment she said, “But thanks.”

She was anxious to get back to the room, so we turned around and headed back. Sister Theresa walked me out the main entrance, right under the receptionist’s surprised nose.

“Patience, Irene,” she said to me as I left.

“Not my strong suit, Sister, but I’ll try.”

On the walk back to the paper I thought about Barbara’s devotion to Kenny. Had she stayed secretly attached to him through the years of being divorced? Or was she just so lonely now that she was happy to be needed by someone, even someone who could make no response? I wondered if my own anger with Kenny made it impossible for her to tell me that she would, in fact, jump at the chance to be back with him. She did complain about him to me, but maybe it was that brand of complaining that turns about-face if you agree with the complainer.

I had never thought Kenny treated her well, and though I couldn’t help being softened in my attitude toward him by his current condition, I wondered what would come of it-for Barbara’s sake. Could I have been wrong about him? Like any other couple, they had a life of their own together, a private one that I could not learn of from family gatherings and the like.

Truth be told, somewhere inside me a voice that would like to be mistaken for my conscience said, “You wished this on him.” All those times Barbara had cried to me on the phone about him, all those times I’d said, “Don’t worry, Barbara, someday Kenny will get his. It’s only a matter of time before he crosses someone who’ll teach him some manners.”

Of course, I hadn’t expected Amy Vanderbilt to be carrying a baseball bat, but I hadn’t exactly wished him well, either. So now he lay half-dead, while my sister spun a web of fragile hope around him.

THIS KIND OF THINKING is not good for one’s optimistic outlook in life, so I was a little down when I reached the door of the Wrigley Building. As I opened it, I saw Frank politely signing in for Geoff, who took no one at his word. As he pushed the clipboard back across the counter, I realized how happy I was to see him. He gave me a smile. Just what the doctor ordered. “Sign him back out, Geoff, I’m making him take me to lunch.”

Geoff, another member of the “Coalition of Those Who Are Terribly Concerned About Irene Still Being Single,” gave me a knowing look.

Frank walked me out to his car, a battered, old gray Volvo. “Is this thing going to make it to L.A.?” I asked, trying not to laugh out loud. “What’d you do, steal it from Columbo?”

“Well, excuse me, Princess Di. Here I am, being a nice guy and offering to take you to lunch, and you give me grief about my car. I’m not a glutton for freeway driving-I’ll let you take us in your car, if you prefer, your highness.”

“I love to hear men talk that way. No, you can drive, and I promise to try not to make jokes about your car.”

“I just drive this thing to make the taxpayers feel good, anyway.”

Despite its external appearance, the car was very comfortable and clean on the inside.

“So where are we going for lunch?” I asked, as we pulled out of the parking lot.

“You’ll see,” he said. “By the way, I got in touch with Hernandez.”

“And?”

“He talked to O’Connor twice last month, once in person, once on the phone. O’Connor had come down to the morgue about the middle of May, to start gathering information for his Hannah article. The anniversary of the day they found her is next weekend-June seventeenth-and I guess that’s the day he does the write-up on the John Does. Hernandez told me it was the first time he’d met O’Connor, and he took a real liking to him. He wasn’t too happy when I told him what had happened.”

“So what happened in May?”

“Not much, I guess, except that Hernandez had never heard the Hannah story, so O’Connor told him all about it and about the annual articles. Hernandez talked to him about a couple of stiffs they haven’t been able to identify, and they shook hands like pals and said so long.”

Frank broke off long enough to negotiate getting on the 405 Freeway going north. Traffic was, as usual, ridiculously heavy. Where could all of these people be going at noon? We hunkered down for some “slow and go,” and Frank took up the conversation again.

“I guess O’Connor managed to spark his interest. He just took a real liking to the guy. Talked to each other for a couple of hours. They’re starved for the company of folks that can still breathe down there in the coroner’s office anyway-not too many people just go down there for a chat-and he said O’Connor was quite a talker.”

“That he was.”

“So after O’Connor left, Hernandez figured he’d go check out this Hannah story. He dug out the case file, and saw a reference to an evidence number. He was especially interested in the dental section of the report.”