Ursula Le Guin - The Beginning Place

“Where? Hang on.”

It was a small car, and Hugh never came to enough to be much help, but Redbeard, determined, got him folded somehow into the front seat, then jack-knifed Irena into the back and drove at eighty and enjoying it to Fairways Hospital. He was out of the car as he jammed on the brake at the emergency entrance, enjoying that too. Once Hugh had been taken in the glamorous part was over, but still Redbeard waited with her in the emergency waiting room, got her coffee and a candy bar from the machines in the lobby, did what a fellow human being might do; not an uncommon thing, in Irena’s experience, nor yet, nor ever, a common one. It is royalty that call each other sister, brother.

The doctor that talked to her at last asked a few questions. Irena had been listening to Redbeard talking basketball scores and had prepared no story. “He got beat up,” she said, all she could think of when she realized there had to be some explanation.

“You were in the woods,” the doctor said.

“Hiking.”

“You got lost? How long have you been there?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“I’d better have you checked over.”

“I’m all right. Just tired. I was scared.”

“You’re certain you weren’t hurt yourself?” the doctor said harshly: a middle-aged woman, tired, grey-faced in the merciless fluorescent light of the ten P.M. Labor Day weekend hospital emergency ward hallway.

“I’m O.K., I’ll be fine when I get some sleep. Is Hugh—”

“Have you somewhere to go?”

“The man that picked us up, he’ll drive me to my mother’s place. Is Hugh—”

“I’m waiting for the X-rays. He’ll stay here. Did you sign those—yes. All right.” She turned away. Cowed by the power of the Doctor, the Hospital, Irena turned to go in silence.

The orderly who had taken Hugh in looked out of a cubicle. “He asked would somebody get in touch with his mother,” he said, seeing Irena. “You do that?”

“Yes.”

“He’s all right,” the doctor said. “Go get some sleep.”

“They’re going to keep you another night.”

“I know,” he said, lying comfortably on the high hard bed, the next to last of the ward. “I don’t feel a whole lot like getting up right now anyhow.”

“But are you O.K.?”

“Fine. They got all this stuff wrapped around me, look. No, I can’t show you, this thing opens in the back, it’s indecent. But there’s all this bandage stuff around me, like a mummy. Every time I wake up I get a pill.”

“It’s a broken rib?”

“One broken and one cracked. How about you?”

“I’m fine. Listen, Hugh, have they asked you about, you know, what happened?”

“I just said I didn’t remember.”

“That’s good. See, if we had different stories they might think there was something fishy.”

“What did happen?”

“We were hiking in the woods and some tough guys beat you up and then ran.”

“Was that it?”

He saw her uncertainty.

“Irena. I do remember.”

She smiled, still uncertain. “I thought you were spaced out on those pills, maybe.”

“I am. Mostly just sleepy. I guess there’s parts…I don’t know how we got to the gate. We did get onto the right path finally?”

“Yeah. You were kind of out of it.” She put her hand on his. They were both made shy by the other people in the restless, busy ward, men in bed, half-dressed, swathed heads, bare feet sticking out of casts, sleeping, staring, visitors coming and going, television and radios on three different stations and the smell of death and disinfectant.

“Did you have to go to work today?”

“No. It’s still only Monday.”

“My God.”

“Listen, Hugh.”

He smiled, watching her.

“I went and saw your mother, this morning.”

After a minute he asked rather vaguely, “She all right?”

“When I called her last night, you know, she didn’t seem to understand very well. She kept asking who I was, and I said I’d been hiking with you, you know, but she kept asking the same things. She was upset. It was late, and everything. I shouldn’t have called. So when they wouldn’t let me in here this morning I thought I ought to go see her. She didn’t seem to understand you were here, in the hospital.”

He said nothing.

“Well, she…”

“She jumped on you,” he said, with so much anger that she hurried to speak—“No, she didn’t—Only she didn’t seem to—well, I said you needed some clothes and stuff. I thought she’d want to take them to you, you know. She went and came back with this suitcase, she had it all ready, it’s in the car, I’ll leave it for you. I—well, she sort of shoved it at me, at the door, and said, ‘He doesn’t have to come back after this,’ and she was—she shut the—I couldn’t do anything but just go. After what, did she mean? I must have said something all wrong and she misunderstood and I don’t know what to, how to straighten it out. I’m sorry, Hugh.”

“No,” he said. He closed his eyes. Presently he turned his hand, gripping Irena’s hand strongly. “It’s all right,” he said when he could speak. “Home free.”

“But doesn’t she want you to come back?” Irena said in distress and perplexity.

“No. And I don’t want to. I want to go with you. I want to live with you.” He sat up to get his head closer to her. “I want to get a place, an apartment or something, if you—I have some money in the bank, if this damned hospital doesn’t take it all—If you—”

“Yes, all right, listen. I wanted to tell you. After I saw her it still wasn’t visiting hours yet, so I went out to 48th and Morressey. There was this ad in this morning’s paper. That’s the Hillside district, you know. It sounded really good, two twenty-five a month with utilities, its really good for ten minutes from downtown. I went right there. It’s a garage apartment. I’ll take it anyway. I signed for it. I can’t go back where I was.”

“You want to take it together?”

“If you want to. It’s a really nice place. The people in the house are really nice. They aren’t married either.”

“We are,” he said.

Next morning they left the hospital together. It was raining again, and she wore the patched and battered cloak, he the stained leather coat. They went off in her car together. There is more than one road to the city.