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At 9:00 a nurse appeared with a tray of meds. She verified his name by checking his hospital bracelet and then handed him a small pleated paper cup with two pills in it. When he was a kid his mother had given him cups the same size filled with M &M’s.
“To help you sleep,” she said when she saw the look on his face. “Do you need a urinal?”
The minute she said it, he realized his bladder was full and the pressure close to painful.
“Please.”
She set down her tray and removed a lidded plastic urinal from the cabinet beside his bed. The device had a handle and a slanted spout and looked like something his kids could invent a hundred uses for at the beach. “I’ll leave this with you. You can ring when you’re done.”
“Thanks.”
She pulled the curtain along its track, shielding him from the curious eyes of those passing in the hall. He waited until she was gone and then rolled to his left and angled his penis into the opening of the urinal. Despite his best intentions, nothing would come. He tried to relax. He put his mind on something else, but the only thing he could think about was his need for relief. He would have laughed if the need to pee hadn’t been so imperative. He’d suffered something similar when he and Carolyn were undergoing infertility treatments and he was asked to ejaculate into a cup so his sperm could be examined under a microscope and then washed before each of the five fruitless intrauterine inseminations they’d undergone.
He took a deep breath, hoping his bladder would relent. A pointless enterprise. He gave up for the moment and when the pressure was unbearable, he rang the nurses’ station. Fifteen minutes passed before the aide appeared. She palpated his abdomen and then went to consult a nurse, who returned to the room accompanied by a student nurse. She had a catheterization packet with her, and she opened it and took out the Foley, a pair of latex gloves, and a packet of lubricant. She viewed the situation as a teaching opportunity. She grasped his penis and explained how to pass the Foley into the bladder by way of his urethra.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said to him, as an aside.
“That’s fine,” Walker said. If she didn’t get on with it, his bladder would burst. He only half listened, distancing himself from what was going on.
“The size of a Foley is indicated in French units,” she was saying to the student nurse. “The most common sizes are 10 F to 28 F; 1 F is equivalent to 0.33 millimeters or.013 inches, 1/77th of an inch in diameter…”
After she instructed the student nurse in the proper technique, she encouraged her to try her hand at it. The girl was apologetic. Her fingers were ice cold and trembling. After two failed attempts, the nurse took over and inserted the catheter with remarkable efficiency. The relief was a miracle. The whole encounter was humiliating, but he was already converting it to an amusing anecdote he’d tell at the next cocktail party.
He finally managed to fall asleep, though he was awakened four times in the night-twice for a check of his vital signs, once when the pain in his ribs became insistent and he had to ask for medication, and once because an aide came into his room by mistake, thinking he was someone else. At some point during the night he realized Blake Barrigan, the shit, had never stopped by.
At 8:30 the next morning Carolyn arrived. The timing was such that he figured she’d just dropped Fletcher and Li
Carolyn took off her coat and placed it over the arm of the upholstered chair. It took him ten seconds to register the fact she wasn’t looking at him and another ten to realize how angry she was. Carolyn was ordinarily easygoing, but once in a while something set her off and then there was hell to pay. This mood he knew: cold, withdrawn, her face pale with rage.
“Is something wrong?” He didn’t much feel like the verbal beating he knew would follow. He had no idea what she was so pissed off about, but if he didn’t ask now, she’d freeze him out until he did.
“I take it Blake Barrigan didn’t stop by last night to bring you up to speed,” she said.
Fleetingly, he thought Blake’s being remiss might explain her attitude. Carolyn took these matters seriously. She had high standards for herself and she expected others to anticipate her requirements and behave accordingly. If Blake said he’d stop by, then by god, he’d better do it.
Walker said, “Not that I’m aware. The nurse said he had a patient on the surgical floor-”
“You killed a girl.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said.”
In a flash, he felt his body disco
Carolyn talked on, her tone indifferent, as though she were speaking of matters unrelated to him. “She was nineteen years old. She was on spring break, her sophomore year at UCST. She’d driven to San Francisco to spend the weekend with friends. She told her mother she wanted to avoid the late-afternoon traffic, so she left the city Monday morning at nine. At four-twenty she came over the hill on the 154, just three miles from home. She was halfway down the pass when you crossed the center line and struck her Karma
He shook his head. “Carolyn, I swear to god, I don’t remember any of this.”
“Oh, really,” she said, all cynicism. “You don’t remember going into the sports bar at State and La Cuesta Monday afternoon?”
“I didn’t even know there was one.”
“Bullshit. The Whizz I
“That’s not right. That can’t be.”
“There were three other witnesses-two joggers and a guy in a pickup truck you barely missed. He ended up going off the road. He’s lucky he didn’t end up dead as well.”
“I’m drawing a blank.”
“That’s called an alcoholic blackout in case you haven’t figured it out. Forget what went on and you absolve yourself of blame. What better way to sidestep guilt than to blot it out of your mind?”
“You think I did this on purpose? You know me better than that. When have I ever-”
Carolyn rode right over him. “You know what’s odd? We saw her-the girl you killed. The kids and I must have left San Francisco the same time she did. I didn’t realize who she was until I came across her picture in this morning’s paper. We’d stopped at that Applebee’s near Floral Beach. The kids were cranky and hungry and needed a break. She was sitting in the first booth eating a burger and fries as we walked in. We sat in the booth next to hers and the kids were being silly, peeping at her over the top of the banquette. You know how they do. She started making faces at them, which delighted them no end. She finished her meal before ours arrived and she waved from the door as she went out. She was so fresh and so pretty. I remember hoping Li