Evan Hunter - Far From the Sea

“Tha’s ri’,” she said, and lifted his gown.

“Who gave you permission to look at my belly?” he said, and winked at David.

“I don’ nee’ permission,” she said, smiling. “I’m dee boss here.”

“Some boss. If you’re such a boss, tell them to feed me. I haven’t had anything to eat in three weeks.”

“You’re gettin’ free t’ousan’ calories a day, darlin’.”

“Through a tube .”

“There’s some nice Jell-O on the windowsill, you wann it.”

“I don’t want Jell-O. I want a cigar. A good Havana cigar. Tell your cousins down there to send me one.”

“My cousins are all here,” she said, and smiled. “You have any pain here?” she asked, her hands moving over his belly.

“No. Listen, you don’t expect me to take this lying down, do you?” he said, and again winked at David.

The nurse pulled the sheet up over him. “Are you Mr. Weber’s son?” she asked.

“Yes,” David said.

She turned to the bed again. “Aren’ you happy your son’s here?” she asked.

“I’d be happier if he could speak Spanish. They jabber in Spanish day and night out there. At the nurses’ station. They have wild parties in Spanish.”

“Champagne parties,” she said.

“You think I don’t know it? Six years of French, what good will it do him down here?”

“Four years, Pop,” he said, smiling.

“What good will it do you? They only speak Spanish at the nurses’ station. Are you happy with your station in life?” he asked the nurse. “Are you finished here?”

“For now, swee’heart. We goin’ to nee’ some blood from you later.”

“It’s a wonder I’ve got any left. They’ve got Dracula here, in the basement, in a coffin. They keep sending my blood down to him.”

“I’ll be back in a li’l while, okay, darlin’?”

“No, not okay,” he said.

“Nice to mee’ you,” she said to David, and went out.

“In and out all day long,” his father said, shaking his head. “Won’t give me any peace.”

“They’re trying to help you, Pop.”

“Sure.”

“She seems very nice.”

“Bane of my existence. Anyway, what help? I’m already over the fence.”

“Come on, what does that mean?”

His father shook his head.

“Come on, Pop.”

“Another operation,” his father said, and closed his eyes.

The doctor came into the waiting room at a little past three-thirty. There were several other people there by then, waiting for the four o’clock visit.

“Mr. Weber?” he asked.

“Yes,” David said, and immediately got to his feet.

“I’m Dr. Kaplan,” he said, and extended his hand.

He was a short, dark man with thick eyeglasses, thirty-five or thirty-six years old, David guessed. There was a somewhat rueful expression on his face. He was wearing a brown tropical suit with a yellow shirt and a riotously patterned silk tie.

“Could you step out into the hall, please?”

They stood beside a window streaming bright sunlight.

“I’m glad you could come down,” Kaplan said. “Have you seen him yet?”

“Yes,” David said, and hesitated. “He seems all right.”

“Well, yes, he’s a bit more alert today. But he still has serious problems.

“What are the problems, exactly?”

“As I told you on the phone last night, he simply isn’t healing. We know there’s an infection someplace, but we—”

“How do you know there’s an infection?”

“Well, the fever for one thing. And the white-blood-cell count. We’ve tried a wide variety of antibiotics on him, but the count keeps going up. We’ve run all the pertinent tests — cultures of the wound, liver and blood cultures, urine counts, X rays, and so on. It’s truly baffling, Mr. Weber, a very difficult case.”

“How high is his fever?”

“This morning? A hundred point four.”

“Is that very high?”

“Only in that it indicates infection. I’ve got him scheduled for a gallium scan this afternoon, perhaps the pictures will show something in his belly that will—”

“Like what?”

“Who knows? That’s the problem.”

“But you think that’s where the infection might be? In the belly someplace?”

“Possibly. We simply don’t know.”

“From the surgery, do you mean?”

“No, no.”

“Then what?”

“Well, that’s why we’re running the scan, Mr. Weber.”

“What do you hope to find?”

“Anything positive. An abscess we can drain. Or maybe a small piece of fecal matter that’s become opportunistic in there. Once we can find the source of infection...”

Kaplan paused.

“Yes?” David said.

“Well, let’s see what the scan shows, shall we?”

“When will you have the results?”

“It’ll be a series of pictures, we won’t know anything definite till sometime tomorrow.”

“Will you keep in touch, please?” David said. “I’m at the De Rochemont.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And I have your number.”

“Call me anytime,” Kaplan said.

Bessie arrived at the hospital at a quarter to four.

“You must be his son,” she said. “I would know you in a minute.”

She was in her late seventies, he guessed, a thin birdlike woman with beautiful blue eyes. His mother’s eyes had been blue, too. It was Bessie who’d accompanied his father to the hospital three weeks ago. It was Bessie who’d called New York two days after the trial started, to tell David his father would be undergoing surgery. David couldn’t get away just then, even though he’d wanted to. Besides, Kaplan had assured him on the phone that his father’s heart and lungs were very strong, and whereas no major surgery could be considered “routine,” the tumor was in an easily accessible spot, and he foresaw no complications. Before Bessie’s call three weeks ago, David had not even known she existed.

“Did you see him yet?” she asked.

“Yes. He looks okay.”

“Not yesterday,” she said. “Yesterday, he looked like I never seen him since he came here. I’ll tell you the truth, I almost called you, but I was afraid to.”

“Dr. Kaplan called last night.”

“So it’s bad, huh?”

“Well... he’s not healing properly.”

They had been talking in whispers. There were perhaps a dozen people in the waiting room now. The clock on the wall read five minutes to four. A television set high on the wall, angled into a corner, was tuned to a soap opera. The people waiting kept looking from the clock to the television set. The volunteer worker behind the desk, an old woman in a pink uniform, kept watching the clock.

“We usually go in a few minutes early,” Bessie whispered. “They don’t say nothing.”

“I appreciate your coming here every day,” David said.

“Well, I do the best what I can,” Bessie said. “He should have been out of here by now. They should already be taking away the bag, closing up the intestines. Instead...” She shook her head. “What does it mean, he’s not healing properly?”

“There’s an infection someplace.”

“From what?”

“They don’t know.”

“Some doctors, they don’t know,” Bessie said.

“Well, there are still some things even doctors don’t know.”

“There are plenty things they don’t know,” Bessie said.

The clock on the wall read two minutes to four. Several of the people in the waiting room were already standing.

“We can go in now,” Bessie said, loud enough for the volunteer worker to hear her.

“Yes, go ahead,” the woman said.

They went into his father’s room.