Bobby ignored the question. “Come on, Vicki—don’t fool around with me. What happened?”
“That’s why I’m calling you—I hope you can find out. I was coming home around ten-thirty, eleven, when the steering went and then the brakes, and I ended up running into a sedan. I think a Mack truck had hit it and knocked it into my lane.”
“Oh, nuts, Vicki. Why can’t you stay home and raise a family and just stay the heck out of this kind of mess?” Bobby doesn’t believe in using bad language in front of women and children. And even though I refuse to do woman’s work I count as a woman with him.
“I can’t help it, Bobby; trouble follows me.”
There was a snort at the other end.
“I’m lying here with a dislocated shoulder and a concussion,” I said plaintively. “I can’t do anything—get involved in a mess or raise a family—for a while, anyway. But I would like to know what happened to my car. Can you find out who scooped me off the Dan Ryan and see if they examined my car?”
Bobby breathed heavily for a few minutes. “Yeah, I guess I could do that. Billings, you say? What’s the number?”
I looked at the phone and read him the number. I asked him again for the day. It was Friday, 6:00 P.M.
Lotty must have gone back to her clinic on the North side. She’s the person I list to call in case of emergencies and I guess she’s my doctor, too. I wondered if I could persuade her to release me—I needed to get going.
A middle-aged nurse popped her head through the door. “How are we doing?”
“Some of us are doing better than others. Do you know when Dr. Herschel is coming back?”
“Probably around seven.” The nurse came in to feel my pulse. If there isn’t anything else to do, make sure the patient’s heart is still beating. Gray eyes twinkled with meaningless jollity in her red face. “Well, we’re certainly a lot stronger than we were a few hours ago. Is the shoulder giving us any pain?”
I looked at her sourly. “Well, it isn’t giving me any—I don’t know about you.” I didn’t want anyone throwing codeine or Darvon at me. Actually it was throbbing rather badly.
When she left I used the phone again to call Pole Star and ask for Bledsoe. The helpful woman in his office told me he was over at the Lucella, which had a ship-to-shore line. She gave me the number and told me how to get an operator to connect me. This was going to be complicated—I’d have to bill it to my office phone.
I was in the middle of giving the operator the dialing and billing instructions when my middle-aged nurse came back. “Now, we’re not to do anything like this until Doctor says we’re up to it.”
I ignored her.
“I’m sorry, Miss Warshawski: we can’t have you doing anything to excite yourself.” She pulled the phone from my outraged grasp. “Hello? This is Billings Hospital. Your party is not going to be able to complete the call at this time.”
“How dare you? How dare you decide for me whether I can talk on the phone or not? I’m a person, not a sack of hospital clothes lying here.”
She looked at me sternly. “The hospital has certain rules. One of them is to keep concussion and accident victims quiet. Dr. Herschel will let us know if you’re ready to start phoning people yet.”
I was wild with rage. I started to get out of bed to wrestle the phone from her, but the damned pulley kept me attached. “Quiet!” I shouted. “Who’s getting me excited? You are, pulling that phone away!”
She unplugged it from the wall and walked away with it. I lay in bed panting with exhaustion and fury. One thing was clear—I couldn’t wait for Lotty. After my breathing returned to normal I raised myself up again and inspected the pulley. It was holding my shoulder steady. Again I explored it with my right fingers, this time gingerly. The plaster was hard. Even if my shoulder was broken, the cast would keep it in place without traction. No reason I couldn’t go home as long as I was careful.
I undid the wires with my right hand. My left shoulder relaxed against the bed with a spasm of pain so strong tears ran down my cheeks. After much ungainly fumbling with the bedclothes I managed to pull the left arm forward again. But helplessness compounded my frustration and I felt momentarily like abandoning the struggle. I shut my eyes and rested for ten minutes. A sling would solve my problems. I looked around doubtfully and finally found a white cloth on the bottom shelf of the bedside table. It took a lot of effort to move around and I was panting and red in the face by the time I managed to turn on my side, reach the cloth, and pull it up to bed level.