She picked up the phone, sure it would be Johnny. 'Hello?'
'Hi, Sarah.' It wasn't Johnny. It was Anne Strafford from school. Anne was a year older than Sarah and in her second year at Cleaves. She taught Spanish. She was a bubbly, effervescent girl and Sarah liked her very much. But this morning she sounded subdued.
'How are you, Annie? It's only temporary. Probably Johnny told you. Carnival hot dogs, I guess...'
'Oh, my God, you don't know. You don't ...' The words were swallowed in odd, choked sounds. Sarah listened to them, frowning. Her initial puzzlement turned to deadly disquiet as she realized Anne was crying.
'Anne? What's wrong? It's not Johnny, is it? Not...'
'There was an accident,' Anne said. She was now sobbing openly. 'He was in a cab. There was a head-on collision. The driver of the other car was Brad Freneau, I had him in Spanish II, he died, his girl friend died this morning, Mary Thibault, she was in one of Johnny's classes, I heard, it's horrible, just horr.
'Johnny!' Sarah screamed into the phone. She was sick to her stomach again. Her hands and feet were suddenly as cold as four gravestones. 'What about Johnny?'
'He's in critical condition, Sarah. Dave Pelsen called the hospital this morning. He's not expected ... well, it's very bad.'
The world was going gray. Anne was still talking but her voice was far and wee, as e.e. cummings had said about the balloon man. Flocked images tumbling over and over one another, none making sense. The carny wheel. The mirror maze. Johnny's eyes, strangely violet, almost black. His dear, homely face in the harsh, county fair lighting, naked bulbs strung on electric wire.
'Not Johnny,' she said, far and wee, far and wee. 'You're mistaken. He was fine when he left here.'
And Anne's voice coming back like a fast serve, her voice so shocked and unbelieving, so affronted that such a thing should have happened to someone her own age, someone young and vital. 'They told Dave he'd never wake up even if he survived the operation. They have to operate because his head... his head was...'
Was she going to say crushed? That Johnny's head had been crushed?
Sarah fainted then, possibly~to avoid that final irrevocable word, that final horror. The phone spilled out of her fingers and she sat down hard in a gray world and then slipped over and the phone swung back and forth in a decreasing arc, Anne Strafford's voice coming out of it: 'Sarah?... Sarah? . Sarah?'
3.
When Sarah got to Eastern Maine Medical, it was quarter past twelve. The nurse at the reception desk looked at her white, strained face, estimated her capacity for further truth, and told her that John Smith was still in OR. She added that Johnny's mother and father were in the waiting room.
'Thank you,' Sarah said. She turned right instead of left, wound up in a medical closet, and had to backtrack.
The waiting room was done in bright, solid colors that gashed her eyes A few people sat around looking at tattered magazines or empty space. A gray-haired woman came in from the elevators, gave her visitor's pass to a friend, and Sat down. The friend clicked away on high heels. The rest of them went on sitting, waiting their own chance to visit a father who had had gallstones removed, ~ mother who had discovered a small lump under one of her br**sts a bare three days ago, a friend who had been struck in the chest with an invisible sledgehammer while jogging. The faces of the waiters were care fully made-up with composure. Worry was swept under the face like dirt under a rug. Sarah felt the unreality hovering again.
Somewhere a soft bell was ringing. Crepe-soled shoes squeaked. He had been fine when he left her place. Impossible to think he was in one of these brick towers, engaged in dying.
She knew Mr. and Mrs. Smith at once. She groped for their first names and could not immediately find them. They were sitting together near the back of the room, and unlike the others here, they hadn't yet had time to come to terms with what had happened in their lives.
Johnny's mom sat with her coat on the chair behind her and her Bible clutched in her hands. Her lips moved as she read, and Sarah remembered Johnny saying she was very religious - maybe too religious, somewhere in that great middle ground between holy rolling and snake-handling, she remembered him saying. Mr. Smith -Herb, it came to her, his name is Herb - had one of the magazines on his knees, but he wasn't looking at it. He was looking out the window, where New England fall burned its way toward November and winter beyond.
She went over to them. 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith?'
They looked up at her, their faces tensed for the dreaded blow. Mrs. Smith's hands tightened on her Bible, which was open to the Book of Job, until her knuckles were white. The young woman before them was not in nurse's or doctor's whites, but that made no difference to them at this point. They were waiting for the final blow.
'Yes, we're the Smiths,' Herb said quietly.