My old coach was alarmed when she heard what had happened—she didn’t know about any health problems April had, certainly she had never collapsed before. Several times last year, she’d suddenly run out of steam during drills, but Mary Ann had put that down to lack of conditioning. The coach knew nothing about health insurance, either: she assumed most of the girls on the team had green cards, entitling them to Medicaid, but she’d never needed to check. And, of course, both April’s parents worked, so the Czernins probably didn’t qualify for public assistance.
When I hung up, the admissions official told me if I couldn’t get April’s care sorted out they’d have to move her to County. We argued over it for a few minutes, and I was demanding to see a supervisor, when a woman burst in on us.
“Tori Warshawski, I might have known. What did you do to my girl? Where’s my April?”
Her use of Boom-Boom’s old name didn’t register with me at first. “Did you get the message I left on your machine? I’m sorry I had to notify you that way, Mrs. Czernin. April collapsed during practice. We were able to revive her, but no one knows what’s wrong. And they need her insurance information here, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t ‘Mrs. Czernin’ me, Tori Warshawski. If you hurt my girl, you are going to pay for it with the last drop of blood in your body.”
I stared at her blankly. She was a thin woman, not thin like Aunt Jacqui or Marcena, with the carefully tended slimness of the wealthy; she had tendons in her neck like steel cables, and deep grooves around her mouth, from smoking or worry or both. Her hair was bleached and scraped back from her head in waves as hard as coiled wire. She looked old enough to be April’s grandmother, not her mother, and I racked my tired brain for where we might have met.
“You don’t know me?” she spat. “I used to be Sandra Zoltak.”
Against my will, a wave of crimson flooded my cheeks. Sandy Zoltak. When I last knew her, she’d had soft blond ringlets, a plump soft body, like a Persian cat, but a sly smile, and a way of turning up when you didn’t expect or even want her. She’d been in Boom-Boom’s class in high school, a year ahead of me, but I’d known her. Oh yes indeed, I’d known her.
“I’m sorry, Sandy, sorry I didn’t recognize you. Sorry, too, about April. She collapsed suddenly in practice. Does she have anything wrong with her heart?” My voice came out more roughly than I’d meant, but Sandra didn’t seem to notice that.
“Not unless you did something to her. When Bron told me you was filling in for McFarlane, I told April she had to be careful, you could be mean, but I never expected—”
“Sandy, she was going in for a basket and her heart stopped beating.”
I talked slowly and loudly, forcing her to pay attention. Sandy had been riding with demons all the way to the hospital, worrying about her child; she needed someone to take it out on, and I wasn’t just convenient, I was an old enemy, from a neighborhood that stored grudges as carefully as if they were food in a bomb shelter.
I tried telling her what we’d done to help April, and what the impasse was here at the hospital, but she poured furious accusations over me: my negligence, my bullying, my desire to get back at her through her daughter.
“Sandy, no, Sandy, please, that’s all dead and gone. April’s a great kid, she’s about the best athlete on the team, I want her to be healthy and happy. I need to know, the hospital needs to know, does she have some kind of heart problem?”
“Ladies,” the woman at the admissions cubicle interrupted us in magisterial tones, “save your fight for the home, please. All I want to hear right now is billing information for this child.”
“Naturally,” I snapped. “Money comes way ahead of health care in American hospitals. Why don’t you tell Mrs. Czernin what’s happening with her daughter? I don’t think she can answer any billing questions until she knows how April’s doing.”
The administrator pursed her lips, but turned to her phone and made a call. Sandy stopped shouting and strained to listen, but the woman was speaking so quietly we couldn’t make out what she was saying. Still, within a few minutes a nurse from the emergency room appeared. April was stable; she seemed to have good reflexes, good recall of events: although she couldn’t name the mayor or the governor, she probably hadn’t known those facts this morning. She could name her teammates and recite her parents’ phone number, but the hospital wanted to keep her overnight, and maybe for a few days, for tests, and to make sure she was stable.
“I need to see her. I need to be with her.” Sandra’s voice was a harsh caw.
“I’ll take you back as soon as you finish with the paperwork here,” the nurse promised. “We told her you’d arrived, and she’s eager to see you.”