Reborn

2

"When am I going home?"

Carol Stevens looked at the old man who had spoken: Calvin Dodd, seventy-two-year-old Caucasian male. Transient cerebral ischemia.

He looked a lot better than he had a week ago when he had been admitted through the emergency room. He had sported a seven-week growth of beard then, and had been dressed in a frayed, food-encrusted bathrobe that smelled of old urine. Now he lay in a clean bed and wore a starched hospital gown; he was clean-shaven—by the nurses—and smelled of Keri Lotion.

She didn't have the heart to tell him the truth.

"You'll be out of here as soon as we can get you out, Mr. Dodd, I promise you."

That didn't answer the old fellow's question, but at least it wasn't a lie.

"What's the holdup?"

"We're trying to find some help for you."

Just then Bobby from Food Service strolled in and picked up Mr. Dodd's breakfast tray. He gave Carol the up-and-down with his eyes and winked.

"Lookin' good!" he said with a smile. He was all of twenty and desperately trying to grow sideburns. He came on to anything in a skirt, even an "older woman," as he had once referred to her.

Carol laughed and jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward the door. "Beat it, Bobby."

"Like your hair," he said, and was gone.

Carol smoothed her long, sandy-blond hair. She had been wearing it in a gentle flip for a couple of years but had been letting it grow lately. She had the slim figure and oval face to carry off the long, straight look but wondered if it was worth the trouble. It was such a bother at times to keep it smooth and tangle-free.

Mr. Dodd was pulling at the nylon-mesh vest that enclosed his chest and was strapped to the bed frame. "If you really want to help me, you can get this thing offa me."

"Sorry, Mr. Dodd. The posey is your doctor's orders. He's afraid you'll get out of bed and fall again."

"I never fell! Who tol' you that crock?"

According to his chart, Mr. Dodd had crawled over his bed's siderails three times and tried to walk. Each time he had fallen after one or two steps. But Carol didn't correct him. In her brief time here at Monroe Community Hospital she had learned not to argue with patients, especially the older ones. In Mr. Dodd's case she was sure he truly did not remember falling.

"Anyway, I don't have the authority to discontinue your restraints."

"And where's my family?" he said, already on to another subject. "Haven't you been lettin' 'em up to see me?"

Carol's heart broke for the old man. "I… I'll check on that for you, okay?"

She turned and started for the door.

"You'd think at least one of my girls'd come an' see me more than once or twice in the whole time I been here."

"I'm sure they'll be in soon. I'll stop by tomorrow."

Carol stepped into the hall and sagged against the wall. She hadn't expected a bed of roses when she had taken the position in the hospital's Social Services department, but in no way had she been prepared for the daily heartaches she'd encountered.

She wondered if she was cut out for this sort of work. One thing they'd never taught her in all the courses she had taken toward her degree in social work was how to distance yourself emotionally from the client. She was either going to have to learn how to do that, and do it automatically, or risk becoming a basket case.

She'd learn. It was a good job, and there weren't many like it around. Decent pay and good benefits. She and Jim didn't need much to live on—after all, she had inherited the house from her parents, and it was free and clear—but until his writing career clicked, she would have to bring home the bacon, as it were. But sometimes…

A passing nurse gave her a questioning look. Carol put on a smile and straightened up.

She was just tired, that was all. She hadn't been sleeping well the past few nights… restless… vaguely remembered dreams. Bad dreams.

I can handle it.

She headed for the tiny Social Services office on the first floor.

Kay Allen was there. A beefy brunette in her forties who chain-smoked unashamedly, Kay was head of the department, a veteran of nearly twenty years at Monroe Community Hospital. As Carol entered, she looked up from the clutter of case reports on her desk.

"What can we do about Mr. Dodd?" Carol asked.

"The dump job on Three North?"

Carol winced. "Must you, Kay?"

"That's what he is, ain't he?" Kay said around the fresh cigarette she was lighting. "His family found him on the floor in his apartment, called an ambulance, dumped him here, then went home."

"I know, but there's got to be a better way to put it. He's a sick old man."

"Not as sick as he was."

True. Dr. Betz had stabilized him as much as possible, so now he was Social Services' problem. Another limbo case: not sick enough for a hospital but not well enough to live alone. He'd never be well enough to live alone. He couldn't go back to his apartment, and his daughters wouldn't take him into either of their homes. The hospital couldn't very well kick him out on the street, so they were stuck with him.

"Let's call a spade a spade, Carol. Mr. Dodd was dumped on us."

Carol didn't want to admit to the truth of that. At least not verbally. That would seem like taking her first step down the road to where Kay was. Hard and cynical. Yet she sensed that Kay's hard shell was just that—a shell, a protective chitinous carapace, the inevitable result of dealing with a steady stream of Mr. Dodds year after year.

"I'll never get used to daughters abandoning their father like that," Carol said. "They don't even visit him."

She understood their reasons for staying away, though: guilt. The daughters lived in small houses where there was no room for Pop. They'd have to baby-sit him all the time in case he passed out again. They didn't have the heart to tell him that he couldn't stay with them, so they avoided him. She saw it all too often. But understanding it didn't make it any easier to accept.

God, if I had my parents around, I'd never neglect them, she thought.

Did you have to lose your folks to really appreciate them?

Maybe. But that was beside the point. It was left to Kay and Carol to find a nursing-home bed for Mr. Dodd. The problem was he couldn't afford one, so they had to get him on welfare first and wait for one of the limited number of welfare beds to open up somewhere.

It was a merry-go-round: the paperwork; the persistent assaults against the bureaucracy. Medicare was only three years old, and already it was a mass of red tape. Meanwhile Mr. Dodd was occupying a hospital bed that could be used by someone with an acute illness who really needed it.

"I wish I could take him home. He just needs someone to look after him."

Kay laughed. "Carol, honey, you're a riot!" She held out a handful of papers. "Here. Since you're in a nurturing mood, see about arranging transport for this one."

Carol's heart wrenched when she saw that the patient was a child. "Where's he going?"

"Sloan-Kettering. He's got leukemia."

"Oh."

Steeling herself, Carol headed for the Pediatrics wing.

Twenty minutes later she was sitting on the edge of Danny Jacobi's bed, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she spoke to his mother.

I wonder if he knows he's dying?

He was squatting on the floor shooting suction-tipped darts at a mechanical dinosaur named King Zor. Danny was seven years old, towheaded, and painfully thin. His two top front teeth were missing and the new ones hadn't moved in yet, so he tended to lisp. Dark circles hung under blue eyes sunk deep in his deathly pale face; large, equally dark bruises ran along his arms and skinny little legs.

He hadn't been beaten, she knew. It was the leukemia. His white blood cells were multiplying like mad in his bone marrow, crowding out the red cells along with the platelets that helped the blood to clot. The slightest bump, even squatting on the floor like he was now, caused bruising.

"Can't they give him the treatments here?" Mrs. Jacobi was saying. "Sloan-Kettering is in the city."

"Dr. Martin thinks his best chance is there."

Mrs. Jacobi glanced at her son. "Whatever's best for Danny," she said.

Carol showed her where to sign for the medical transport and the direct admission to Sloan-Kettering, then they sat together and watched the boy play, moving from the adventure of an imaginary dinosaur hunt to a Mickey Mouse jigsaw puzzle.

Carol wondered which was worse: never to have had a child; or to have a child and lose him to something so vicious and insidious and so damn capricious as leukemia. She wondered only briefly, for she knew in her heart what her answer would be. Better to have the child. Oh, definitely better.

She prayed that she could have one. And soon.

She and Jim wanted a family. She just hoped she could fulfill her part in the process.

Her mother had had fertility problems. It had taken her a long time to conceive Carol, and although she had tried for years after Carol was born, there never had been a second. It seemed like pure luck that Carol was conceived.

According to Dr. Gallen, Carol was following in her mother's footsteps. Her periods had been irregular all her life, and although she and Jim had been following his directions— charting her basal body temperature and such—for almost a year now, nothing had happened.

Maybe nothing would ever happen. That was the dread that followed her like a shadow.

Please let us have one of our own, God. Just one. We won't be greedy. After that we'll adopt kids who need a home. But just give us one of our own.

Danny had the puzzle all together except for part of Mickey's left ear. He looked up at them.

"Piethe mithing," he said, pointing to the gap.

I know the feeling, Carol thought.

"Mrs. Stevens?" said Danny's mother, breaking in on Carol's reverie. "I think that nurse over there wants you."

Carol looked up to see the charge nurse holding up a telephone receiver and alternately pointing to it and Carol.

It was Jim, and he sounded excited.

"Carol! I've got great news! We're rich!"

"Jim, what are you talking about?"

"I've found my real father! Come home and I'll tell you all about it!"

Real father?

"Jim, I can't. What's this all—?"

"Forget work. Come home! We've got things to do! Come on!"

And then the line went dead. He wasn't giving her a chance to argue. And then some of his words cut through her confusion.

I've found my real father!

Why didn't that thrill her? She knew of the desperate searches Jim had made to uncover his biological parents, all to no avail. She should have felt happy for him.

Instead she felt a faint trickle of dread down her spine.