McDowell shook her head. “We get people in here with all kinds of problems, but I don’t ever remember a patient whose family wanted to dump her off on strangers before… Mrs. Frizell’s down in the ward, third partition from the end. Let me know what you think, Steve.”
When we left the nurses’ station, Steve explained that the ward used to be open, but that they had built partitions around the beds a few years ago. “It’s not a great system— the walls are so close in you can’t make the beds, and the patients don’t have any way to attract someone else’s attention if they need help. But the county board decrees and we try to make the best of it.”
When I saw Mrs. Frizell my stomach turned cold and I felt faint. Even on Monday night, when she’d been lying half naked on her bathroom floor, she had looked like a person. Now her head was cocked back on the pillow, her eyes staring blankly, her mouth open, and the skin drawn taut across her bones a faint gray. She looked like a corpse. Only her restless, meaningless movements showed she was still alive.
I glanced fearfully at Steve. He shook his head, his lips compressed, but squeezed in between the bed and the partition wall. I moved to the other side of the bed.
I knelt next to the bed. Mrs. Frizell’s eyes didn’t seem to track either me or Steve. “Mrs. Frizell? I’m V. I.— Victoria. Your neighbor. How are you?”
It seemed like a foolish question and I felt rewarded for my stupidity when she didn’t answer. Steve made a sign that I should go on, so I plowed painfully forward.
“I have a dog, you know, that red-gold retriever. We run by your house some mornings and you and I sometimes talk.” Sometimes she snarled at me, I amended in my head—maybe she’d never really noticed me. “And I found you on Monday night. With Marjorie Hellstrom.”
I repeated the name a couple of times and made myself keep talking, but I couldn’t bring myself to mention her dogs, the one thing that might have caught her attention. My knees were starting to ache from the cold, hard floor and my tongue felt like a furry clapper in a bell. I was starting to push myself standing when she suddenly turned her cloudy eyes to look at me.
“Bruce?” she croaked hoarsely. “Bruce?”
“Yes,” I said, forcing a smile. “I know Bruce. He’s a wonderful, dog.”
“Bruce.” It looked as though she might be patting the bed, inviting a nonexistent dog to jump up and join her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “They don’t let dogs into hospitals. You get well fast, and then you can go home and be with him.”
“Bruce,” she said again, but she seemed to have a little more color in her face. A few seconds later she’d fallen asleep.
Chapter 13 - Filial Piety
When I got back to the car I stretched the seat out as flat as I could and lay there, limp. I’d thrown up after leaving Mrs. Frizell, a sudden spontaneous retching to purge myself from the lie I’d had to tell. Nelle McDowell had produced a woman with a mop who refused to let me clean up the mess for her.
“Don’t worry about it, honey; it’s my job. And it’s good to see someone care enough about that poor old lady to be sick for her. You just get yourself a glass of water and put your feet up for a minute.”
I felt ashamed to lose control in front of Steve and Nelle McDowell, and brushed off their offers of help. “Your kids are going to be furious if you stand them up much longer, Steve. You go on home—I’m okay.”
And I was okay, sort of. I’d been out of control since ringing Todd Pichea’s doorbell last night. Why worry about losing it further at Cook County Hospital?
It was noon when I finally pulled myself together and started the car. I was on the South Side already, two blocks from Damen; a few more miles south and I could start checking the bars near Mitch Kruger’s old home. I just didn’t have the stomach for any more broken-down lives today.
Instead I turned toward Lake Michigan and drove north, past the city to the tony suburbs, where private grounds hid the lake from view, and finally to the open land beyond them. Although the day was clear and the water blue and calm, it was still much too cold for swimming. Clumps of picnickers dotted the lakefront, but I was able to find a stretch of deserted beach where I could take off my clothes and go into the water in my underwear. Within a few minutes my feet and my ears were aching with cold, but I kept pushing myself until I felt a roaring in my head and the world turned black around me. I stumbled to the shore and lay panting on the sand.
When I woke up the sun was low in the sky. I’d made a fine spectacle for passing voyeurs all afternoon, but no one had bothered me. I put my jeans and shirt back on and headed back to town.