Anne Tyler - Back When We Were Grownups

The girl laughed softly and squeezed his waist with such apparent affection that Rebecca wondered for a moment whether she was a relative. But no: more likely just one of those low-level, underpaid hospital employees who showed more genuine care than many physicians. She was opening a door now and shepherding him through it, one hand placed gently at the small of his back.

This was where they’d brought Patch when her appendix burst. Although the place had been remodeled since then, perhaps more than once. And NoNo when she broke her wrist. Or maybe not; that might have been Union Memorial. Oh, all those accidents, childhood illnesses, frantic late-night rides… Rebecca ought to publish a rating chart for Baltimore emergency rooms.

Joe had been taken here, too, but they’d moved him to Intensive Care before she arrived. She had spent four days and three nights in the Intensive Care waiting room — a much smaller space, with its own uniquely dread-filled atmosphere. Once an hour she had been allowed to come in and grip Joe’s unresponsive hand for five minutes before they made her leave again. Upon her return to the waiting room, total strangers would ask, “Did he speak to you? Did he open his eyes?” and she would ask the same of them when they returned from their relatives. They had grown as close as family through fear and grief and endless hours of just sitting. Although now, she couldn’t recall what those people had looked like, even.

A woman dressed in aqua scrubs called, “Mrs. Davitch? Is there a Mrs. Davitch?”

“Here I am,” she said, standing up.

“You can come on back now.”

Rebecca collected her purse and followed the woman through the swinging doors, down a linoleum-floored corridor. “How is he?” she asked, but the woman said, “Doing just fine!” so promptly that Rebecca suspected she had no idea. They entered a large, uncannily quiet area where doctors were going about their business without any appearance of haste, thoughtfully studying clipboards or conferring at a central desk. Curtained cubicles lined three walls, and the woman slid one curtain back to expose Poppy’s yellow-soled feet poking forth from his stretcher. “Company!” she sang out, and then she left, her jogging shoes squeaking as she turned to close the curtain behind her.

Rebecca walked around to Poppy’s head and found him wide awake, scowling at the machine that chirped and blinked beside him. “How’re you feeling?” she asked him.

“How do you expect I’d feel? With all this commotion going on.”

“Is the chest pain any better?”

“Some.”

“What have they done so far?”

“Punctured about six veins for blood. Gave me an EKG. Went off and left me lying here in the very worst position for somebody subject to backache.”

He was wearing a pastel hospital gown that made him look frivolous and pathetic. An IV needle was attached to the back of one hand. She covered the other hand with her own, and he allowed it. He closed his eyes and said, “It’s okay with me if you stay.”

“I’ll be right here,” she told him.

She kept her hand on top of his, shifting her weight from time to time when her legs started to tire. There was a chair over near the curtain, but she didn’t want to risk disturbing him.

If this turned out to be Poppy’s deathbed, heaven forbid, how strange that she should be standing beside it! Ninety-nine years ago, when he had come into the world, nobody could have foreseen that an overweight college dropout from Church Valley, Virginia — not even a Davitch, strictly speaking — would be the one to hold his hand as he left it.

Well, that was the case with nearly everybody, she supposed. Lord only knew who would be attending her deathbed.

The curtain rattled back, and all at once, there was Zeb — a comfort to behold, with his long, kind, homely face and smudged glasses. “How’re you doing?” he asked her.

“Well, I’m fine, but Poppy, here…”

Poppy opened his eyes and said, “I believe they’re trying to finish me off.”

“Nope. They’re letting you go,” Zeb told him. He was peering now at the chirpy machine. “Turns out it’s indigestion.”

“It is?”

“I just spoke with the resident.”

“Oh! Indigestion!” Rebecca cried. It was such a wonderful word, she felt the need to say it herself.

“I hear you had three cupcakes at the baby-welcoming,” Zeb told Poppy.

“Well, what if I did? I’ve eaten far more, many a time.”

“They’re going to bring you an antacid. That should help,” Zeb said. “It may take a while to spring you, hospitals being what they are, but sooner or later, we’ll get you out.” He looked over at Rebecca and said, “We should let them know at home. They’re pretty worried.”

“Did Joey get his shot?”

“He did, and he’s back at the party making up for lost time.”

“I’ll go telephone,” she said. She bent to kiss Poppy’s cheek and told him, “I’m glad it wasn’t serious.”

“Well, I don’t know what the world is coming to,” Poppy said, “if a man can’t eat three measly cupcakes without folks calling an ambulance.”

She patted his shoulder and walked out, feeling lighter than air.

During the period she’d spent with Poppy, the waiting room had acquired a whole different population. The blue-jeaned man had vanished from the couch. A boy in a yellow raincoat sat slumped in front of the TV. An elderly woman stared into space and bit her lip. Rebecca felt a distant, detached pity. When she dropped her coins in the pay phone and called home, she tried to keep her voice low so that none of them would hear what a lucky person she was.

* * *

By the time they got back to the Open Arms, it was evening and all the guests had gone home except for Biddy. She was tidying up in the kitchen. “Have some green-tea soufflé,” she told them. “There’s a ton of it left over, because none of the others would eat it. I shouldn’t have let on what kind it was. ‘Green tea!’ they said. ‘What’s wrong with chocolate?’ Oh, you had a phone call, Beck. Somebody named Will Allenby.”

Rebecca froze.

“’Green tea is for drinking,’ they said, and I said, ‘Listen.’ I said, ‘If you-all were not so prejudiced—‘”

“What did he want?” Rebecca asked.

“Pardon?”

“What did Will Allenby want?”

“Just for you to call him back, I think. He said you would know his number. How are you feeling, Poppy? Are you still having chest pains?”

“Pains? Oh, pains,” Poppy said. He was dishing out the soufflé, piling it into a bowl he had taken from the cabinet. “I don’t know why everybody had to get so excited,” he said. “I told them all along, I said—”

“I guess I’ll be going to bed now,” Rebecca broke in.

Everyone looked at her.

“Good night,” she said, and she walked out, leaving a startled silence behind her.

She climbed the stairs, went straight to her room, and sat on the edge of her bed. Felt for the little stick of paper under her telephone. Held it up to the soft yellow light shining in from the hall.

It meant something, she supposed, that she hadn’t thrown away his number.

He answered after several rings, just when she was starting to think he might be asleep. But his voice was alert. “Dr. Allenby speaking.”

“Hello, Will. This is Rebecca.”

But of course he already knew that, if he had looked at his Caller ID. So when he said, “Oh! Rebecca!” in a voice spiked with stagy surprise, it made her smile. She said, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, no! Goodness, no! No, I’m just… I was just…” There was some kind of scrambling sound, a rustle, a clink, something falling over. “I was just sitting here,” he said, out of breath. “Gosh, thanks for calling back.”