“My safety? Murray was saying that some sources think the bombers were after me, not Sister Frances. Have you heard the same thing?”
Lotty dismissed the residents and the student, and sat on the edge of the bed, frowning. “I was thinking more about your recklessness. Does he have any proof?”
“I don’t know. You booted him out before I could get him to come clean. I wouldn’t even be worrying about it if the woman from Homeland Security hadn’t pressed me on what Sister Frances told me about the Newsome inquiry.” I looked at Lotty’s dim outline. “Lotty, I can’t go home with you if I’m a target of fire bombers. I can’t risk you being hurt.”
“You’d be safer at my place than in your own home. We have a doorman, we have security. You’re completely exposed in your building. And if someone threw another fire bomb, those children on the second floor would be hurt.”
“I’m so helpless!” I burst out. “To save my eyes and skin I have to sit in the dark. I need to be out talking to people, I need to be at my computer looking up data. What am I going to do?”
Lotty put an arm around me. “Does everything have to happen today? In a few days, you’ll be able to get around, as long as you’re careful about the sun. You know how it is when you’re in the hospital: you feel more helpless there than after you get out.”
She stayed until a supper tray arrived at six and insisted on my eating something that might once have been a chicken. When she left, I tried to sleep, since I couldn’t read or watch TV. Instead, I kept thrashing around in the narrow bed, worrying about my role in Sister Frankie’s death.
A little before eight, a volunteer came in with a shopping bag that had been left at the front desk for me. Murray’s gofer had come through with my clothes. The bra was a plain white that I wouldn’t have chosen for myself, but it didn’t matter. With my bandaged hands, I couldn’t fasten it, anyway. I managed the buttons on the shirt and pulled on the jeans. The gofer had dutifully brought me a size 31. After two days of living on IVs, I could have gotten away with a 30.
Just being dressed made me feel better. I pulled on my soft brown boots again and looked in the bathroom mirror. Something would have to be done about that hair: I looked like a freak show.
The by-product of hospitalization is plastic. The room was full of bags and trays and specimen cups and banana-shaped things for throwing up in. I filled a bag with cups, made a hump in the bed that might look like a sleeping V.I., turned out the lights, and looked into the hall.
Eight o’clock. Visitors were leaving, nurses were handing out meds. A crowd to mingle with. Auspicious.
You know the old movie where Humphrey Bogart has been sandbagged and pumped full of drugs and, even though his head is spinning, he gets up and goes after serious bad guys? I’ve always thought it was really stupid and unrealistic.
I was right. I tried to stride confidently, despite my freaky hair and the big plastic glasses, but, like Bogie in The Long Goodbye, I saw the hall spin around me. I had to clutch the wall to keep from falling over. Not so auspicious.
When I reached the front lobby, I was sweating and light-headed. The hospital was a bit over two miles from the building where Sister Frankie had lived. Normally, I could have walked it, but I was nowhere near normal. I still had eight dollars. Not enough for a taxi, but it would get me there and back on the bus.
I wobbled my way two blocks north to a Lawrence Avenue bus stop. Murray had unsettled me. I kept stopping, not just because I was unsteady but to see if I had company, whether cops or robbers. If I really had been the fire bombers’ target, I was hoping they were monitoring me so closely that they knew I was still in the hospital. Tonight might be my one chance to go back to the Freedom Center apartments without anyone knowing.
One thing about the Uptown neighborhood: women with weird hair who have trouble staying upright are a dime a dozen. Two women just like me, stooping to scoop up cigarette butts in the midst of a ferocious shouting match, passed while I waited for the bus. No one gave any of us a second glance.
A bus lumbered up to the stop. I fed two of my crumpled bills into the money maw, awkwardly because of my gauzy mitts, and slumped back onto one of the seats set aside for the disabled and elderly. I felt disconnected from the world around me, and when we got to the Kedzie stop I had to coach myself on how to walk down the steps.